April's meeting with lots of show & tell and a wonderful demonstration

 We had a wonderful meeting that makes for a very long blog post.  And it was nice to see so many of us there.

Order of this post (click the colorful names to go to those parts of this post):

News

Show & Tell

Block of the Month

Wool appliqué demo

First, some news.  Lydia received the labels for our donation quilts.  They will be kept in our meeting room.  The quilt maker or another guild member can hand-sew the label on during a meeting.  These are not iron-on, and if you happen to iron over it, consider using a press cloth in case the ink runs.

Lydia needed 80 cards for Mother's Day and has 53 so far.  Take a look at Charlene's pretty cards.

SHOW & TELL

More Kentucky Chains have been made.

Cathie's

Lydia's

Leslie's

Jean S showed us two projects.

She made this pillow cover, and there's a matching quilt too.

She also added a border to this Janet Kime patterned quilt that she won in the Auffle.

Lydia received this quilt as a thank-you for a good deed.

Ruth showed us three projects.  

She helped a friend with a Kaffe Fassett quilt and the friend gave her pieces in thanks.  This Disappearing Hourglass is the result.

 She had a Roxanne Carter UFO but didn't like the center, so it became a small quilt.

 Like others of us, she has Row by Row kits and no intention of sewing them to each other.  Her solution is, everyone's getting table runners for Christmas!  Here's one from the 2015 Row by Row.

Leslie showed us this Cathedral Windows quilt.  She received some of the blocks in the Auffle and made more.  This wasn't the traditional method, and Leslie was not thrilled by the "cheater" technique used for these blocks.  She's donating it.

Gail won this quilt at the UFO Auffle.  It's ready to quilt now by Leslie.

Sue has a quilt and a project source.

She's not sure where this top came from, but suspects it was the Auffle.  Justine provided this interesting back, except the red center which is Sue's.

She's been very satisfied with the pre-basted Grandmother's Flower Garden she purchased from One Common Thread, a Honduran-aid charity.

Pam showed us four projects.  The first two came from the recent UFO exchange.

This colorful quilt.

This table runner that she turned into a bag.

She's working on a Hawaiian appliqué baby blanket.

 And she made this bright log cabin.

Block of the Month

Sue presented the block known as Antique Modern or as Antique Tile.

Three examples she made.

Use 3 fabrics: one light/neutral and two coordinates

Cut from the light/neutral (light blue below)

4 -  2 1/2" x 4 1/2"

1 -  4 1/2" x  4 1/2"

Cut from one coordinate (blue print below)

4 -  2 1/2" x 2 1/2"

4 -  2 1/2" x 4 1/2" 

Cut from other coordinate (green solid below)

4 -  2 1/2" x 2 1/2"

4 -  2 1/2" x 4 1/2"  

If you prefer the steps written out, here's my order of construction.

1. Sew the little 2 1/2" squares together.

2. Sew the neutral rectangles to the rectangles from one coordinate.

3. Sew the remaining rectangles to the sewn squares from step 1.

4.  Make the central section by sewing step 2 pieces to opposite sides of the big neutral square.

5.  Make the flanking sections by sewing the step 3 units to the remaining step 2 pieces, and PAY ATTENTION to the orientation of the little 2" squares. (The neutral fabric should be surrounded by only one of the coordinates.  In this picture, the blue surrounds the light blue.)

6. Sew the strips from step 5 to each side of the step 4 unit.

Add one side.

Add other side.

7. Trim to 12 1/2" x 12 1/2".

Wool appliqué demo with Deanna

In addition to prepping kits for everyone to try their hands at wool appliqué, Deanna gave us lots of information about sourcing materials from a variety of places.  She also showed us a plethora of projects she's made. 

First, her projects.

crazy quilt style

pin cushion

This is the pot decor that Deanna kitted for us.

Some of her advice included:

• the 5 basic embroidery stitches are enough for most projects
• any kind of thread is usable
• the advantage of buying kits is that they are complete 
• Blocks of the Month can be a less expensive way of getting projects
• There are many kinds of wool and many places to find it.
• If you find wool at a thrift store, bring in home in a plastic bag and place it directly into a hot washer and then dry it hot.  This both kills wool-eating insects and felts the wool (if it doesn't contain too much synthetic fibers. This can be hard to determine for thrift store finds.)

Here's her list of sources.