June 2013 Meeting

The meeting was held on June 25 at Helen's house with Ellie, Helen, Rita, Randi, Linda, Tricia, Peggy, and Margie attended the meeting. Helen and Ellie made scrumptious tostadas, and Randi brought a fruit salad that everyone raved about. It turns out that her secret ingredient is a little bit of cinnamon, which really brings out the fruit flavors and, surprisingly, goes particularly well with watermelon. Who knew!?

Next meeting: July 23 at Helen's. Margie will bring chicken salad sandwiches, which are a re-creation from a favorite restaurant (sorry, I don't have the name or location of the restaurant, but I think it's a place she visited on vacation). Linda will bring a salad and Randi will bring dessert.

Meeting

We really didn't have any business to discuss, but Rita mentioned that Donna Greenwald, a well known art quilter, is starting an Art Quilt Club at Fabric Chicks. I checked on Fabric Chicks' website and didn't find any information, but hopefully Rita will keep us updated.

This is a quiet year with every Bee just doing her own thing. Just a reminder that our only "goal" is to finish up our memory box quilts from last year and bring them to the Christmas party meeting in December.

Show & Tell

Peggy's quilt, called "Go Bloom," was accepted into the American Quilters Society's quilt challenge. It will start in Paducah, Kentucky and then travel to shows throughout the country for a year.

Peggy showed her "cruise quilt," which was designed by one of the McCall's magazine staff as a special project for the cruising quilters. It is certainly colorful and evokes memories of Caribbean. Great job, Peggy, in finishing up that project in such a timely manner.

Instead of attending this year's sewing expo and adding more fabric to her stash, Peggy pulled out a collection she purchased at an expo several years ago and made a log cabin throw for her couch. This was Peggy's first log cabin project, and she had a great time arranging the blocks to form a pleasing design.

 

Rita finished her sweatshirt jacket and got buttons for it at the sewing expo in Reno. She is having a hard time deciding which button to use and how to do the closure. Of course the Bees all had great ideas to share with her. She also finished a wall hanging for one of her friends. It quotes a Bible passage from Jeremiah, who is known as the "weeping prophet."

 

Linda finished baby quilts for boy and girl twins. What a great idea!

Randi completed the quilting and binding of a quilt top made by her granddaughter Zoe. Surprise, surprise -- this is another project made from those infamous 6-inch squares. Zoe designed and made the quilt top herself when she was 10 years old; she is now 13. That just goes to show that we quilters don't really forget about our projects, we just get sidetracked.

May 2013 Meeting

Our May meeting found us gathered in Helen's home but missing Margie, Peggy and Tricia.  Margie was on vacation;  traveled to her granddaughter's graduation.  Tricia and Peggy were helping their mother because she fell and broke her ankle.  We are keeping their mother and our sister Bees in prayer.

Rita did a great job of preparing our meal; lasagna, salad, and french bread.  We got to meet Dave's mom, Joan and enjoyed spending the evening with her.  Sitting around the table we found Dawn, Randi, Helen, Ellie, Joan and Linda.

 News and  updates!  

• Windy Moon is opening a new store in Sparks on Pyramid and rumor has it that they may become a Bernina dealer.  
• Helen reported that all five of her donated quilt tops were finished and donated. She does this through her membership in Old Clear Creek Road Quilters.
• Dawn announced that Lisa and Bobbi, the director and advocate for the Women's Shelter accepted the ten donated quilts from the Quilting Bees and Ditch Stitchers for the Domestic Violence shelters.  They were complimentary and impressed by the talent in both groups.

Show and Tell!  

• Dawn had a pile of quilts to show off and we loved every minute of it!  She made a patriotic D9P for Blue Stars Moms and a raffle quilt for the Fourth of July car show in Fernley.  She showed off her car quilt to raise money for her car club and brought her box quilt, assembled, yet to be quilted.  The corner blocks were lovely.  Lastly, she showed off an unfinished quilt appliqued by her grandmother, Caroline Myer from Florida.  Beautiful irises in shades of lavender. Dawn wants to machine quilt it using an old time pattern.  What a find that was!
• Rita, now that school is officially over, is diving into projects and brought along her day-glo orange shirt, resplendent with Monarch butterflies!  Helen brought out the jacket Tricia made so Rita could figure out how to complete her project.  It will be dazzling!
• Randi also had a pile of quilts to get our creative energy flowing.  She showed off, yet another D9P made from our block exchange.  Titled, David's Crayon Box, he was delighted to find the textile manufacturing edging on his quilt.  (That's what happens when you run out of fabric!)  Monkey Shines in pink and green will delight the baby in her Girl Scout Troop and Pretty N Pink, a sweet pink and yellow quilt using blocks from the block exchange and the 10 minute block.  Randi has been very bzzzy!
• Linda shared her domestic violence quilt created with her friend, Toni.  She also showed off the graduation quilt made for her niece, Jenna Mae, graduating from high school in Flagstaff, AZ on May 31. Congratulations and love to my sweet Jenna!

Rita served the White House Lemon Bundt Cake served at Julie Nixon's wedding in the White House.  Even the Democrats liked it!

Ellie's tip for the night was to improve our memories start juggling with flaming sticks.  With that said our next meeting is Tuesday, June 25.  No plans as of yet for dinner so we are looking for volunteers.  Or we could go out for ice cream!

Smile....you're on candid camera!

Toni and Linda Domestic Violence Quilt donation

Dawn and Grandmother Caroline's

Linda and Jenna Mae's graduation quilt

Dawn's donation quilt.

Dawn's donation quilt

Randi and the 10 minute block quilt

Randi and Monkey Shines

Dawn's Car Show Quilt

The Box Friendship Quilt by Dawn with lots of help from her friends.

David's Crayon Box Quilt designed by Randi

Lovely Rita, meter maid, and her glo-in-the-dark jacket

Filling in for Tricia and looking forward to the next meeting.
Linda

April 2013 Meeting

We met at Helen's house on Tuesday, April 23 with Linda, Peggy, Randi, Ellie, Helen, and Tricia attending. Peggy made delicious chili, Helen whipped up a salad, and Linda brought a homemade chocolate and cinnamon Bundt cake.

Next Meeting

*** Tuesday, May 28 at Helen's house ***

 

At the March meeting, Rita said she would bring lasagna to the May meeting. Peggy will get the lasagna from Rita and will then bake it and bring to the meeting. I don't have notes on who else is going to bring food.

 

Business Meeting

 

The Bees seem to be on a break with no more guild business to keep track of, so we don't have much in the way of business. Linda brought copies of the article on the DAR award that was published in the Leader-Courier on March 27, 2013. Tricia sent a copy of the article to Anita Parker.

 

We decided that a worthy goal would be for everyone to finish her memory/box quilt by Christmas. It seems as though that will be our individual "challenge project" for this year.

 

Donation Quilts for Domestic Violence Shelter

 

On May 2, Dawn delivered our donation quilts to the Advocates to End Domestic Violence. In the photo are Dawn on the left, the advocate from Storey County in the middle, and Lisa, the Carson City director, on the right. They LOVED the quilts and are planning to have a raffle for one of the quilts at their thrift store.

 

 

April Show and Tell

 

Randi put together Linda's memory/box quilt top. She found the colors challenging, but everyone agreed that the red pointed border really pulled everything together. (Hmmm, does that mean Linda will quilt Randi's memory/box quilt for her?)

 

 

Peggy made a cute spring table runner. Tricia made an adorable wall hanging featuring a "peek-a-boo" photo of her granddaughter as a gift for her daughter. Unfortunately, her daughter and son-in-law didn't like it, so Tricia got to bring it back home. (This wall hanging was shown in a recent issue of American Patchwork and Quilting magazine, and Peggy and Tricia figured out how to make it without a pattern.)

 

Helen showed several quilts she is finishing up. I don't have notes, so I would welcome corrections and recollections. I believe the squares came from various sources and Helen is planning to donate these quilts to various charities. 

 

March Show and Tell

 

I seem to have lost my notes from March, so I'm not able to post the meeting minutes. Fortunately, though, we have these photos.

 

Helen is making blocks from all her scraps. What a colorful feast for the eyes. She will make donation quilts from these blocks.

 

 

Tricia made a purse from charm squares and a matching insert bag. Linda finished her purse from last year's (or was it the year before?) purse workshop. 

 

Colorful quilts from Rita and Linda. 

 

 

Peggy was busy with small projects, placemats and a table runner. 

The design on this pouch (also made by Peggy) was made with a special Bernina tool called PaintWorks. It uses pens in conjunction with the embroidery unit to draw designed on the fabric. This technique can also be done on paper to make cards and other crafts.



 

February 2013 Meeting

We met on Wednesday, February 19, 2013 at Helen's house with Margie, Peggy, Dawn, Linda, Helen, Randi, and Tricia attending. Randi's little Helen and Linda's sister Jackie joined us as guests. Peggy brought scrumptious chicken enchiladas for dinner accompanied by a spicy ranch salad brought by Tricia. Let's just say that we all cleaned our plates! For dessert, we had cookies, including Girl Scout cookies donated by Randi.

NEXT MEETING

***  Tuesday, March 26, 5:30 PM  ***

Rita - main dish; Margie - dessert; Linda - salad.
(Also, please see the email exchange about the change of meeting day.)

BUSINESS MEETING

Worldwide Quilting Day

March 16 is Worldwide Quilting Day (WWQD). None of us were familiar with that, so Tricia said she would investigate and report back in the blog. Worldwide Quilting Day is brought to us by an organization called the Fabric Shop Network, a trade organization for independent quilt and fabric shops. It appears that the purpose of WWQD is to support and promote local fabric shops, and many shops are listed as participators, including Windy Moon in Reno and Fabrics Unlimited up at the lake.

The website discusses a sweepstakes and some challenge quilts, but information is a bit sketchy, and some of the links don't work. It might be interesting to visit a participating store on March 16 to see what, if anything, they are doing to promote the event.   

Quilting Cruise

After dinner, Peggy and Tricia described the McCall's Quilting Cruise they went on in January. First, they were very grateful that their ship didn't break down in the middle of the ocean -- their cruise was in the same vicinity, near Cozumel, Mexico, where that incident occurred. Both Peggy and Tricia agreed that the quilting portion of the cruise was a bit disappointing. There were 120 quilters and only 60 sewing machines, so they only got to sew half of the time allocated to classes. The other half was spent on hand projects, which, while enjoyable to a degree, just weren't quilting. Their sewing project was a mystery quilt designed by one of the McCall's staff just for the quilters on the cruise.

The cruise itself was nice. The Royal Caribbean ship was beautiful and had all the amenities anyone could want. They had a nice balcony cabin and were seated with fellow quilters at dinner. The weather was disappointing, and they were not able to go on the shore excursion they booked in Jamaica, but that, of course, was just the luck of the draw. Overall, it was a relaxing and fun vacation, although neither is sure she would do a quilting cruise again. 

DAR Project

At the last meeting, we discussed doing something for the DAR to show our appreciation for the community service award, and Margie said she would contact Anita Parker with that idea. Margie reported back that a DAR convention will be held in 2014, and it's possible that we might be able to donate a raffle or auction quilt for the Battle Born Chapter at that time. Linda suggested sending a story and photo to the Fernley Leader newspaper, and she and Tricia will work on that this month.

2013 Donation Project

We are still thinking about a charitable donation project the Bees might take on as a group this year. Tricia said that she read in a newsletter that Fabrics Unlimited is a drop-off point for quilts for the Shriners' Hospital in Sacramento. Everyone thought that sounded interesting, and Tricia said she would investigate it further and report back to the group.

Other Projects

Margie discussed an article she read wherein the author thought that "the need" to finish UFOs might be stifling creativity. If a quilter feels obligated to complete a project she has lost interest in, she might lose the motivation and enthusiasm to continue sewing. Or, more likely, her sewing room might just pile up with UFOs. We haven't decided whether or not to do an organized club project (like the box quilts) this year, but someone had the idea of doing a UFO exchange, wherein we could trade unfinished projects and then finish them either for ourselves or for the original quilter. More discussion will be needed if this is something we're interested in doing.

Clippings for Dog Beds

Helen has a friend who uses the detritus and dross of our sewing rooms as stuffing for dog beds. These are not scraps as we think of them, but instead, small bits of fabrics and batting and even thread clippings that we usually throw away. It's second nature to toss these discards into the wastebasket, so we discussed a few ways we could get into the habit of saving them. One idea was to have two wastebaskets -- one for trash and one for trimmings; another was to have a separate bag inside the wastebasket to collect usable trimmings. We can also donate the clipped threads and fabric trimmings we discard while sewing at our machines as long as we make sure those don't contain any pins or broken sewing machine needles. Please bring to our meetings, and Helen will deliver them to her friend.

SHOW & TELL

Peggy was busy Bee this month. Her niece (Tricia's daughter) asked Peggy to make an Easter dress for Tricia's six-month old granddaughter, and she particularly requested smocking. Peggy brought the work in progress to show the group because she needs to mail it off before the next meeting.

 

Peggy also made a laminated bag and a cute quilt panel for a friend's baby.

Dawn completed the quilt top from the box-quilt memory blocks the Bees made for each last year.

She also made a quilt commemorating her son Justin's bicycle trip across America, which he did last summer after graduating from college, to give to the family in New York who hosted Justin and his friends at the end of their trip.

Linda made a disappearing nine-patch quilt for her sister (she passed around a photo, but it's not pictured in our blog), which she gave to her as a surprise before Christmas. Linda also made some place mats to donate to her bee-keeping group's silent auction. (Bzzz, bzzz -- it's hard to see the cute little bees in the fabric.)

Helen showed us the donation quilt she made for the domestic violence project. 

January 2013 Meeting

We met as usual at Helen's house on January 15. Attending were Randi, Dawn, Peggy, Ellie, Margie, and Tricia. Yay that Dawn was in town and able to attend. Sad to be missing Rita, Helen, and Linda. Although we met at Helen's house, Helen was not at the meeting, but she invited a surprise guest -- her friend Kay. Hopefully we made Kay feel comfortable as we acted our silly selves during dinner and the business meeting. Kay commented that she found the meeting "interesting."

Dinner consisted of Dawn's flavorful chili, a winter salad from Margie, cornbread from Tricia, garlic bread from Randi, and a whipped cream cake from Peggy.

Next Meeting

*** Tuesday, February 19 ***
Peggy and Tricia will take care of dinner.

Business Meeting

Nevada Quilt Guild: During dinner, Randi informed us that the Nevada Quilt Guild has formally disbanded. The website is defunct, and the annual quilt show has been canceled. It's sad that this endeavor did not succeed as common ground for the widely dispersed quilters in Nevada, and it's hard to know exactly what lead to the guild's demise. But sometimes quilters' most creative works are made from scraps, so who knows what may emerge from the remnants of the former Nevada Quilt Guild.

Financial report: Margie, our faithful treasurer, gave a financial report and collected updates to our contact information. She will email the Bees an updated roster.

Goals: During the business meeting, the Bees decided to take a break from setting goals. Instead, we decided to follow our hearts and honor our instincts as we approach our beloved hobby. Many of us came up with mottos and watch-words to live by during the coming year. It's amazing how these just flew out of our mouths, with each of us sharing her own perspective, which very well may apply to life in general and not just quilting.

• Margie: "Lead with love."
• Dawn: "Finish what you start."
• Tricia: "Who knows what tomorrow may bring?"
• Peggy: "I'm free!"
• Randi: "Spontaneity works."
• Ellie: "I can see clearly now, the brain is gone," and "Do what?"

Other sentiments to think about: "It's a totebag, not an heirloom." "It doesn't have to be perfect." "Nothing is set in concrete."

Ellie also came up with the idea of embroidering the sayings onto a quilt. Food for thought at a later meeting.

Bees who were absent in January -- Please feel free to email me your mottos, and I will add them to the Goals page, where I have stored them for future reference.

DAR award: Margie, Tricia, and Peggy reported on the DAR meeting at which the Bees received a community service award. Please see the permanent tab at the top of the blog where a description of the award will remain permanently. We then discussed something we might be able to do for the DAR chapter to show our appreciation. We wondered if they have any fundraisers for which we might make a raffle quilt or something of that nature. Margie is going to discuss the idea with Anita Parker.

Donation projects: We discussed briefly dontation projects for the coming year, and in the absence of anything compelling, we decided that this could be a year where we all decide individually what charities we want to make quilts for. We also agreed that we would discuss this agenda item again later, in case anyone comes up with a better idea. All of us seemed a bit uninspired at the January meeting. Maybe it's the cold weather, or maybe it's just that we missed three of our creative, resourceful sister Bees.

Show & Tell

Dawn has been keeping busy while staying with her father.

This quilt was designed and the quilt top sew by Randi's little Helen. Randi helped out with the quilting and finishing. Helen is eagerly looking forward to displaying it in a quilt show. 

A quilt Randi made for her son. He picked out the fabric.

 Tricia's, Margie's, and Randi's donation quilts for the domestic violence shelter.