December 2012 Meeting

On December 18, we had our Christmas party at Helen's house. This was a festive occasion with everyone but Dawn attending (and we missed her very much). We followed through with our Jewish-Italian holiday theme and dined sumptuously on antipasto, hummus, matzo ball soup, tabouli salad, Israeli beef stew, lasagna, garlic bread, sumptuous desserts, and sparking apple cider.

After dinner, we did a final exchange of the box quilts and ooh'd and ahh'd over all the beautiful squares. We then did Show and Tell followed by our round-robin gift exchange. All in all, it was a fun and festive evening.

Food for January: Margie - salad; Randi - chili; Tricia - cornbread; Peggy - dessert.

Sweatshirt Workshop

The Sweatshirt Workshop took place on December 1, with everyone except Randi attending. As usual, we had a great time spending the day together sewing. Peggy gave us excellent instructions, and we all sewed, and sewed, and sewed while chatting on many topics. It's amazing how quickly the time passes on these "sew days," and I don't think anyone actually finished her sweatshirt jacket (although Dawn came close). Hopefully in the next few months, we'll have many photos to post of these completed projects.

Show & Tell

Ellie showed some really cute animal throw scarves made by her granddaughter.

Margie made a dress for a friend's daughter and a 60-degree table runner.

Randi made a quilt for her 10-year old granddaughter.

November 2012 Meeting

We met at Helen's house on Tuesday, November 20 with Peggy, Margie, Randi, Helen, Ellie, Rita, and Tricia attending. Dawn is still visiting her parents and will be there indefinitely, although we hope she will return home periodically and be able to attend our meetings. Linda was in the air during our meeting, on her way to Tennessee to visit her daughter Mollie. We missed them both. Our meetings are just not the same when even a single Bee is missing.

For dinner, Margie brought a chicken salad casserole topped with potato chips and cheese. Yum! Tricia brought salad, and Rita brought pumpkin spice cake with vanilla ice cream for dessert. 

During dinner, our discussion focused on Thanksgiving preparations and Thanksgiving memories from the past. As usual, we shared both hilarious and touching stories about our families. 

Christmas Party

Talk then turned to our Christmas party, when we should have it, and a theme for this year. We decided that the date for our usual meeting, Tuesday, December 18, was a good day for the Christmas party. Margie suggested using the Bees' travels during the year as a theme and the group jokingly came up with the idea of celebrating a Jewish-Italian Christmas. Of course Peggy, who had just returned from her trip to Israel, pointed out there is no such thing as Jewish Christmas, so we decided it would be a Jewish-Italian Winter Holiday. After a lot of giggling, we actually thought of some food items we could bring:

• Rita: Antipasto and hummus
• Helen: Matzo ball soup
• Linda: Tabouli salad
• Margie: Israeli beef stew
• Peggy: Lasagne
• Tricia: Challah bread, garlic bread, and sparkling cider
• Randi: Dessert (probably tiramisu)
• Ellie: Upside-down creme brulee (actually, her fabulous flan)

We will do our usual $10, round-robin gift exchange. Everyone will draw a number and we will pick presents starting with #1. After that, each Bee, in numerical order, can either pick a new present or "steal" one that's already open (but cannot take back the same gift immediately after it's been stolen from her). A gift can only be swapped three times, i.e., after the third swap, the person who took it gets to keep it. 

Sweatshirt Workshop

Will be held on Saturday, December 1 from 10 AM to 4 PM at the Cooperative Extension meeting room in Carson City. Bring machines, irons, etc. Each Bee should bring her own bag lunch, drinks, snacks, etc. See the Sweatshirt Workshop tab at the top of the blog for detailed information. It's highly recommended that you cut your fabric before the workshop; otherwise, you'll spend a good deal of time at the workshop cutting instead of sewing. 

Nevada Quilt Guild

In September, the Bees decided to withdraw from the Nevada Quilt Guild, and Randi reported that since that time, other groups and individual members have dropped, too. The guild is really struggling, and it's unclear what the outcome will eventually be. Randi remains in contact with some of the former members, so we'll see what happens during the upcoming year. 

Donation Quilts

Our plan had been to invite the director of the domestic violence shelter to our October meeting to present her with the quilts, but since we did not have an October meeting, that didn't happen. We decided to put off completion of this project until January when we will make plans for the coming year. Please bring finished quilts to the January meeting, and we will decide at that time what to do with them.

Show and Tell

Peggy experimented with making a rag quilt from the fabric samples we received in September. It proved to be an arduous task, taking much longer than she expected. The resulting few squares ended up being stiff and heavy. Peggy does not recommend this method for using the fabric samples.

As usual, Peggy was busy with all kinds of projects.

Randi found this old log cabin quilt at a second hand shop. It needs some work to be restored, but it appears to be made from silk. She is looking for just the right fabric to use for backing.

Another project of Randi's. This is actually one giant square that comes out to be the size of a quilt.

Margie made a table runner and free-motion quilted it. Yay, Margie!

October 2012 Meeting

This meeting was canceled.

September 2012 Meeting

We met on September 18 at Helen's house as usual with Peggy, Helen, Ellie, Linda, Rita, Randi, Margie, and Tricia attending. We really missed Dawn, who was visiting her parents in California. We had a delicious and very healthy dinner of ratatouille with fresh garden vegetables, salad, and rice.

Nevada Quilt Guild

For our first item of business, we revisited our involvement as charter members of the Nevada Quilt Guild. Given the expense of maintaining our membership (including the obligation to make a gift basket for the quilt show), the small size of our group, and continual pressure on the Bees from the guild officers to become individual members of the guild, we decided to drop our membership. Randi will communicate with the guild officers to let them know our decision.

Shop Hop

We all shared experiences from the Shop Hop. Margie did the bus tour, which covered all Shop Hop stores over a period of two days. Margie thought the tour was really well done with the bus group spending about 45 minutes at each store. Other Bees visited some of the shops but did not get to all of them. Three of the Bees won prizes in the shop drawings: Margie won a prize from Sylvia's Quilters' Quarters in Yerington; Tricia won from Sierra Sewing in Reno; and Peggy won from Sew 'n Such in Reno. No one had yet picked up their prizes, so we don't know what kind of goodies they will receive. Those are pretty good stats, though, for three members of our small group to win a drawing.

Sweatshirt Workshop

The date of the workshop has changed tentatively to Saturday, December 1 from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM at the Cooperative Extension meeting room in Carson City. Linda needs to check another event she has that day to make sure the times do not conflict.  An alternate date of January 5 was also discussed as a possibility.

Donated Fabric

As a result of the DragonLord project, Linda was contacted by a someone from the battalion whose children had received quilts about whether we were interested in receiving some fabric donations for our group. Information about the fabric was sketchy; at one time, she was told the fabric was cut into 1" x 1" squares; another time they were described as 12" squares.

As a result, Linda was put into contact with a man named Rolando in California. She told him we were certainly interested in fabric donations, and thanked him for his generosity. Rolando then shipped to Linda three large boxes of quilted fabric samples. They look like the type of thing that drapery stores and interior decorators would use to show samples of quilted bedspreads and matching fabric and sheers. There are literally hundreds of these squares in a number of different patterns. Our mission, should we decide to accept it, is to figure out what we can do with these samples. They are oblong in shape, about 9" x 12" in size, and bound or hemmed along the edges. Each square also has a metal grommet in one corner for hanging. We divided up one box of samples, with each Bee taking some for experimentation.

Finishing Up

We then exchanged the box quilts, did show-and-tell, and finished up with delicious turtle brownies brought by Randi.

Peggy made this quilt using Bernina's cutwork tool. It is made from hand-died fabric and is even more beautiful in person.

Linda's loves zen doodling, both on paper and on fabric.  

Rita submitted this quilt to the Pacific International Quilt Show, but unfortunately, the dimensions of it were just slightly too small. What a gorgeous, original piece!

August 2012 Meeting

We met at Helen's house on Tuesday, August 21 with Ellie, Peggy, Helen, Randi, Rita, Margie, and Tricia attending. We missed Linda and Dawn but hope they had a good time visiting their families. Dinner was a delicious deep-dish quiche made by Helen and a broccoli salad made by Rita. Ellie brought ice cream Drumsticks for dessert, which were perfect for a hot summer night.

 *** Next Meeting, Tuesday, September 18 at Helen's ***

Food: Linda and Dawn volunteered to bring all food; however, Margie would like to make dessert because it's her birthday.

Business Meeting

Although the minutes are short, we had a lively and very fun meeting. We decided that the reason we don't have a lot to discuss is because we have been so efficient this year at taking care of business. We are now just carrying out our plans with very little fuss and bother. Yay, Bees!

Sweatshirts: At the last meeting, we decided that everyone would get her own sweatshirt(s) rather than asking Rita to take on the task of ordering for everyone. However, after we found out that good quality sweatshirts cost around $25, Rita again volunteered to place an order. Much of our meeting was then devoted to picking colors and sizes, which was accomplished throughout the course of the meeting. At this time, Rita has everyone's order and I believe has also been paid for all the sweatshirts. Please contact one another directly for questions about order status and payment.  

Box Quilts: We showed our blocks and exchanged boxes with very little fuss and bother this month. We all scratched our heads at how difficult it had been the month before making sure everyone got a box she had not yet made a block for. Absentee members can use their imaginations to wonder about that discussion :)

At this point, everyone should have three more blocks to make, including the block for September. We discussed the idea of continuing the rotation of boxes until each quilter has 12 blocks, but didn't make a decision. We will discuss more later when everyone is present. 

Donation Quilts: We decided that the best course of action for the domestic violence quilts is to plan to bring them to the October meeting. Then, if a representative from the shelter is available to come to the meeting, she can take the quilts with her. If not, then Dawn or Margie can make arrangements to deliver the quilts. 

Bees' Logo: Margie brought up the idea of using our Bees' logo on clothing or tote bags. Peggy took on the task of seeing whether she could digitize the logo for machine embroidery, and she is working on that now and will report back at the September meeting. We will also discuss further possibilities, such as screen printing, with Rita.  

Show & Tell

There was not a lot of Show & Tell this month with everyone busy, busy, busy during the summer. 

Randi, however, completed two projects -- her purse from last year's workshop, and she made more placements for the challenge project from a couple of years ago. Not pictured here, although Randi shared a photo, are the messenger bags she made for a Girl Scout outing. 

Peggy made a very cute table runner/wall hanging using the cutwork tool on her Bernina. That tool cuts out little applique pieces and then also somehow saves the pattern for stitching. Very high tech! 

She also showed the Great Jelly Roll Race quilt she made at a class at the Quilt House. That technique involves sewing together all strips from a jelly roll end-to-end on the bias. Then, that very, very long strip is cut in half and sewn with long sides together. That process is repeated about four or five times to form a quilt top. This is a fun and easy way to make a quilt top in only a few hours. The technique can be used with any strips -- does not have to a jelly roll. Before cutting the original very long strip in half, cut 18 inches off of one end to make sure the bias seems are offset from one another. 

July 2012 Meeting

With our June meeting being canceled, we had a full house for our July meeting with Margie, Rita, Helen, Randi, Linda, Peggy, Dawn, Ellie, and Tricia attending. Peggy brought a light summer dinner of Chinese chicken salad, crusty Italian bread, and chocolate chip cookies. Yum! It was a great time to catch up on everyone's summer activities.

*** New Feature***

Blog calendar: Note the new calendar tab at the top of the blog. This page contains a calendar that Tricia will do her best to update every month with both Bees' events and other local shows and activities that are of interest to the Bees. To see more information about an event, just click on it. When possible, a website address (URL) will be included where you can go for full details. Unfortunately, those URLs are not "live" links, so you will need to copy/paste into a web browser to visit those sites.

One cool feature is that clicking on the Bees' meeting entries will show who is bringing food, doing a demo, etc. That will make it easy for everyone to keep track of what they said they would do.

Next Meeting

Tuesday, August 21, 5:30 PM at Helen's
Food: Helen, main dish; Rita, salad; Ellie, dessert

Business Meeting

Sweatshirt workshop: Saturday, September 29, 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM. Location for the workshop has been changed to the art room at Douglas High School, hosted by Rita.

Bees' logo: Now that we have a logo for the Nevada Quilting Bees, we discussed the idea of Bees clothing, such as sweatshirts, T-shirts, etc. Bring ideas to the next meeting.

Box quilts: The exchange is becoming tricky now that over half the blocks have been completed. Dawn and Linda will not be at the August meeting, so they took boxes they can exchanged with one another. Everyone else, keep up the good work! We've all done a great job of finishing the blocks and bringing the boxes back for exchange every month.

Upcoming Events

Coming up soon are the Outdoor Quilt Show at Fabrics Unlimited on July 21 and the Churchill County Fair, August 3-5. Such events are now listed on the calendar, so please check there for times and locations and visit the provided websites for details.

Show & Tell

Tricia was very excited to show the cute baby quilt and matching burp cloths she made for her daughter's baby shower. It was made from a "jelly-roll race" quilt top she made just for fun, not specifically for her grandbaby. But with the baby's gender yet to be known, the soft colors turned out to work well for either sex and the addition of some fussy-cuts from a panel dressed it up nicely for the new baby.

The "happy party baby" bib (made by Peggy) and burp cloth are for Tricia's son-in-law. That's another story best told in person.

Peggy also made shower gifts for Tricia's daughter, which were picked out by the expectant mom last time she visited Nevada. She will be thrilled at how cute it is and with Peggy's fabulous quilting.

They also made purses. (Peggy and Tricia were busy!)

Peggy is now not only an accomplished free-motion quilter, she is starting to dabble in art quilting. This little quilt, which she made in honor of Rita, uses a paint stamping technique she found in Quilter's Newsletter magazine. Peggy has been attending the monthly art quilters' club at Fabrics Unlimited.

Linda brought the disappearing nine-patch quilt made by her daughter Rachael. This is made from the fabric Rachael shared wtih us at the last meeting she attended. Linda is now quilting and finishing the quilt for her daughter.

Dawn made a patriotic raffle quilt for the July 4th Show & Shine Car Show.

Rita's fabulous art quilt for her neices. She used a combination of techniques with both fabric painting and screen printing. (Please correct me if I'm wrong, Rita. Sometimes I don't fully understand these things.)

Helen made an inspirational quilt that is somewhat remeninscent of the disappearing nine patch.

That's all for now. Till August --ciao!

May and June 2012

I apologize, but I don't think minutes for May 2012 will ever be posted. I (Tricia) left for vacation in Italy shortly after this meeting and didn't have time to update the blog, and now I can't find my notes. If anyone has anything specific they would like to post for the May meeting, please send that information to Tricia.

We did not meet in June with many Bees being on vacation.