May 2015 Meeting

We met on May 26 at Helen's house with Helen, Linda, Dawn, Randi, Peggy, and Tricia attending. For the main course, Dawn brought a fresh salad with beet greens and many fixings from her garden, and Tricia brought chicken salad. I know Randi brought dessert, but I think we ate it later during the meeting so I didn't write it down, and I'm sorry, but I just don't remember.

Next Meeting

*** Tuesday, June 30 at Helen's house ***
(Fifth Tuesday)
Queen Bee: Peggy
Food: Main salad - Peggy;  Bread - Helen;  Dessert - Linda

Business Meeting

Linda was Queen Bee for this meeting. No one had anything new to report in the world of quilting. 

Randi told us about a Facebook site she really likes called Folt Bolt. Its focus is the "Colourful Art Palette."

Ugly Fabric Projects

What a shame Margie and Rita couldn't come to the meeting. They would have enjoyed seeing our creative efforts; hopefully the photos will do our projects justice. Margie, Rita, and Helen -- we hope you will bring your "ugly projects" to the June meeting.

Dawn made a cute school house wall hanging, and Linda made a sweet and perky pin.

  

Randi made place mats, and notice how what we thought was the ugliest of the ugly fabrics actually looks really nice as a backing. Peggy made a cute Christmas wall hanging, which she is giving to Tricia to hang on her front porch.

   

Tricia made a table runner for a small table in her entry hall. She added few extra fabrics. 

Show & Tell

Peggy finished a beautiful Christmas redwork quilt done with machine embroidery. She isn't sure what she will do with it but might donate it for raffling to the Women's Society at St. Gall Church in Gardnerville.

Linda showed us some totes she made from feedsacks. What a great idea. Not only are these bags cute because of the colorful feedsack designs, they are an excellent way to "reduce, reuse, recycle."

Demonstration

Queen Bee Linda then did a demonstration of freezer-paper paper piecing. Linda says she enjoys paper piecing and likes the precision of the blocks, but she finds it tedious to remove all the paper. So, she demonstrated a folding method using freezer paper where you don't have to remove the paper and the freezer paper foundations are reusable for about 3-4 times.

Here are some photos. First the pattern gets copied onto the dull side of freezer paper. There is sheet-sized paper available that will run through a printer, but the kind of paper that comes on a roll is fine for hand tracing. It's not all that easy to see through freezer paper, so Linda recommends just making dots on the corners of the design and then drawing lines with a ruler.

Placement of fabric on the numbers is the same as for regular paper piecing. The main difference is that the paper gets folded back, and then the seam is stitched very close to the fold. Linda recommends using a stitch-in-the-ditch foot because the blade will run along the edge of the paper nicely. The seam will get trimmed later, so the size of the seam doesn't matter at this point.  

After placing, folding, trimming, and ironing, a finished block will emerge. Notice the perfect points!

 

For those of us who are spatially challenged, paper piecing can be hard to conceptualize, so I tried to find a YouTube video that would demonstrate this technique as succinctly and clearly as Linda did. Unfortunately, I was not able to find one that gets right to the point, but I did find a two-part series that covers the technique thoroughly: Freezer Paper Foundation Piecing - Part 1 and Part 2. Enjoy!

April 2015 Meeting

We met on Tuesday, April 28 at Helen's house with every Bee attending -- Margie, Peggy, Linda, Helen, Rita, Randi, Dawn, and Tricia. Rita brought delicious broccoli soup, Helen provided a yummy salad, and Linda brought home made lemon bars.

Next Meeting

*** Tuesday, May 26 at Helen's house ***

Queen Bee: Linda
Food: Main dish - Dawn;  Salad - Tricia;  Dessert - Randi

Business Meeting

Margie was Queen Bee, and she shared a few items of interest during the business meeting. 

• The Sewing Expo at the Grand Sierra in Reno will be on June 11-13. A $2.00 discount coupon is available on their website.
   
• The Sierra to Sage Shop Hop will be on September 10-12, Thursday through Saturday only. No Sundays this year.
   
• Quilting Tahoe is going to close permanently on August 2, 2015. Merchandise is currently marked down to 30% off through July 5. The shop will then be closed from July 6-July 23. It will reopen from July 24 to August 2 at 50% off. 

Show & Tell

Randi showed us her memory box quilt #2. She decided to make two quilts from the memory blocks because some of the squares just didn't seem to go together. That means she made a lot more squares herself from the left over fabrics. 

Ugly Fabric Challenge

Prior to the meeting, Queen Bee Margie had asked the Bees each to bring at least one ugly fabric to the meeting, but she didn't tell us in advance what we were going to do with them. As we looked at all the fabrics, most of us decided the ones the other Bees brought weren't really all that ugly -- except for the one Linda brought (on the right, black with multicolor print -- yikes!)

Margie challenged us to select at least three fabrics and then to incorporate them into a project to complete by next month. At first, some of the Bees didn't feel as though they had time to take this on, but in the end, we had so much fun comparing and bargaining for the fabrics that everyone decided to join in. We can't wait to see what everyone will come up with!