Tuesday, August 21, 2012

august 12 meeting


Five of us met at Flora’s tonight: Flora, Janet, Harriet, Miriam and Patricia. It was a night for watermelon and quilt talk.

Flora was kind enough to take notes on her laptop during the meeting. Thank you, Flora!

Show N Tell

Flora told us about her trip to Maui and the two denim pillow tops she found at Goodwill for Miriam and about her butterfly quilt on the wall downstairs.

Patricia’s quote: “You can never rush a quilt and be happy”
The group didn’t go to Vashon in July due to Patricia’s appendectomy.

Harriett told about a quilt she’s making for a nephew. He brought a sweatshirt with a cartoon character bearing swords and he said he wanted red, yellow and orange, but the t-shirt character was in blue and green. He likes bats. Harriet came up with an abstract pattern of bats made out of multi-colored fabric with black streaks with the cartoon in the center. She has a challenge to figure out how to remedy the zig zag stitches that ended up tearing the fabric.  She didn’t bring it, but will show us before she sends it to Colorado.

Harriet also brought a Queen size quilt she made for her and Rob’s master bedroom in “quilt-as-you-go” style with open seams that were clipped and brushed to appear uniformly ragged. There was a discussion about her wonderful wide binding.

Another quilt Harriet brought is for her sister—a basic rectangle design in batiks with similar colored batiks forming a diagonal design. It’s single-bed sized with a light gray backing so the quilt could be an all-year cover depending on which side is up.
Patricia told a story about pre-washing 100% cotton batting in her washing machine—first presoaking without detergent or agitating, then draining and spinning before fluffing in the dryer.

Miriam reported on the apartment items she is gathering up and what is still needed:
                2 placemats—Harriet
                2 glasses—PB
                Silverware 2 place settings—PB

Miriam produced two shopping bags for giveaways as well as soap she got from the lavender festival. 
Harriet got a miniature die-cast sewing machine from Miriam too, which is a pencil sharpener.
Janet is still working on her double wedding ring quilt and had 95 more football shapes to finish.
She’s also making a pillow for a friend with sheep knitting their own wool and is looking for a black sweater to felt for finishing the other side of the project.
Janet has three Piece Maker quilt tops queued up to practice on her Gammy and three more of her own to get done.
Patricia made the sky pink in her big tsunami quilt and is now starting all over to make it another color
 In August she spent a weekend with modern quilt guild members from Portland, Seattle and Vancouver BC. In September Patricia is speaking to two quilt guilds.

The evening ended with Flora taking us down to her creativity studio to view some projects in-progress—a butterfly quilt for a friend and a memorial quilt honoring a young man.