Tuesday Sewing

We are in a "Winter Advisory" although it looks like all the bad weather (including 2-3 FEET) of snow is way north of us, it's possible we could get a little snow here Tuesday. 

Our Tuesday sewing will be cancelled if Hanover County Schools are closed, so in the event we do get a little snow, just check the news to see if schools are closed - before you make the drive out to Montpelier. Some of you, Terri, Carole, Helen, Nancy and Betsy have a longer drive. 

HOPE to see you all tomorrow! - Becky

More Quilt Designs

Here are the final quilt designs Vicki did for us. So many possibilities! Thanks Vicki for inspiring us with the quilt designs and to Annie for sharing the pattern. (See earlier post for directions.)

Change the fabrics, to change the look!

 

 

Sew Together

TUESDAY SEWING - mark your calendar for January 27!

We are on the calendar with Hanover Parks and Recreation to sew the 4th Tuesday of each month - that's January 27. 

Those of us who come and sew together know what a good time it is and welcome others to come sew and visit with us. A cold day might be a good day for us to make soup. Who's coming?

Membership cards

Do we need new membership cards for 2015?  Does anyone feel like these are necessary? 

I rarely am asked for my card in quilt shops, and I'm not sure there's any other reason why these are needed. 

Please respond with your opinion!

- Peg

More Designs - Annie's Star

Here are some more quilt designs by Vicki using our January Block of the Month. 

Directions can be found here - these 12" blocks are easy to make from 2-1/2 and 4-1/2" squares - great for quilts for veterans.

 

 

 

JANUARY SHOW & TELL

Here are some pictures from Show & Tell at our January meeting:

Karen showed 3 different ways she used 4-patch blocks. She makes several donation quilts each month, and she's the only person we know who has NO UFOs! 

 

Karen always creates happy scrappy quilts!

 

Betsy made a quilt for a veteran using the January block of the month pattern, which she got at Saturday Sewing and went home and got busy chain-piecing this 2-color quilt - sure to be a hit with a veteran!



Another beauty by Betsy - can you tell she likes red and black?

Mary K  made this quilt for a veteran.

Back of Mary's quilt - don't you love how she did this?
 

Another great scrap quilt made by Peg.

Cathy made this colorful quilt for her granddaughter.

Julie's husband named this quilt FRUIT LOOPS - a great name for our August block of the month.
Julie had it machine quilted and just finished the binding at Saturday Sewing.
CSQ is donating FRUIT LOOPS to QUILT BINGO, a cancer fund-raiser in May.





 We ended the meeting with some nice door prizes, including this
beautiful iridized patchwork dish, made and donated by Vicki.
Peggy was the lucky winner!

 

 

UFO Busting

Vicki here. I'm sorry I missed the meeting last night. I was off learning how to do letterpress printing. So far I can tell you that it's a great field for dyslexics. You really have to turn your brain backwards. Needless to say I had to set mine twice.

Had I been at the meeting I would have been encouraging you to take on the UFO challenge for this year! I think Julie had a great handout for dealing with UFO project and I'm going to up the ante with prizes. I'll draw a winner from everyone who posts a comment on the UFO post each month.

I hope you will consider participating and you will have the bonus satisfaction of finishing some projects!

To join the UFO busting go to this post and enter a comment telling us how many UFO projects you have and how old the oldest one is. So far the UFO count is up to 79 from 4 people!

It turns out that there is one member who is not qualified to enter the UFO contest. At Friday sewing Karen told us that she had 2 UFO projects but on further inspection we learned that they were both started in the past 2 weeks! KAREN HAS NO UFO PROJECTS!!! How does that happen?

Karen, I have a couple of baby quilt UFO projects if you want them. I found them recently and didn't even count them in my own count.

Reproduction Fabrics

As requested here's the link to Barbara Brackman's newest Block of the Week which starts TODAY with a new post each Wednesday.
 
civilwarquilts.blogspot.com
 
The topic is reproduction fabric where we will learn about dye methods, fabric styles, colors, etc., with many good examples. 
 

TURKEY RED

You may read along or join in and make a 6" block each week (or any size you want to do)

Go to the blog and in the column on the left you can:

1.  click on the Star Pattern (my block) to get directions (the same pattern is used each week)

2. click on the young girl with the camera to share your blocks and see pictures of the blocks made by others - its always fun to see everyone else's fabrics

3. sign up to follow by email

Enjoy!

January Block of the Month

 

Annie, our cyber friend in Vashon, WA has shared a pattern with us for our block this month.

She made this quilt last year for a veteran:

FROM ANNIE:

Unnamed January Block of the Month  

Finishes to 12”

I saw a picture of an antique quilt made in this unidentified pattern and drafted it to make this scrappy quilt.  It is a very easy block to make, and is composed of just three units – one plain 4-1/2” (finishes at 4”) square for the center, four units with triangle corners to make the center star, and four units with background fabric corner triangles for the outside squares.  The key is accurate quarter inch seams to assure blocks match when quilt is assembled.

Piecing directions
Cut one contrasting color 4-1/2” square for center

Cut eight 4-1/2” squares of primary fabric.  If using directional fabric, adjust your cut squares to accommodate the placement.  Easier and uses less fabric to use non-directional fabric.

Cut eight 2-1/2” squares of contrasting (same as center) color.  Draw diagonal line across wrong side of each.

Cut eight 2-1/2” squares of background fabric.  Draw diagonal line across wrong side of each.

Star maker units – make 4:  Right sides together, align one contrasting square so drawn diagonal line runs from center of one side of unit to center of perpendicular side. (Remember there are seam allowances, so pieces will be slightly above exact center). Sew along drawn line.  Leaving a quarter inch seam allowance, cut along outside of drawn line.  Discard extra triangle. Press attached contrasting triangle toward outside. Repeat on other side.  Make four units.    

 

Corner Diagonal Units – make 4: Employing the same method, align background fabric squares on opposite sides of primary color fabric square.  Stitch along diagonal lines, trim and press outward.

Assembly: Layout nine units, rotating the corner pieces to create crossed effect.  Sew top three units together, press connecting seams toward right.  Sew center three units together, and press toward left.  Finally, sew bottom three units and press toward right.  Nesting seams, sew top, middle and bottom units together, pressing seams open.  You’re Done!

*******************************************************************************

 

This block offers so many ways to use color and design to create great quilts. So very nice of Annie to have seen the antique quilt, draft the block and share it with us.

CSQ had a good amount of batik fabric left over from the raffle quilt we donated to W.H.E.A.T. last year, so we are going to make a veteran quilt using some of that fabric. Miriam brought her Go! Cutter to Saturday Sewing and we used it to cut the fabric and make kits for the quilt. Please sign-up to take and make a block and bring it back to the February meeting.

The design may appear to be difficult to piece, but sewing it with squares to create the triangles is really quite easy. Only 2 sizes needed for this 12" block: 4-1/2" and 2-1/2" squares.

 

This is the block we are going make. There were a lot of left-over pieced squares, so we decided to cut them wonky to 4-1/2" and use them for the center. The light background fabrics will vary from block to block so we will have somewhat of a coordinated scrappy look.  ALL the 2-1/2" squares are cut from the same fabric, although the batik fabric contains various colors of green/blues. Place them color-wise as you like.

 

 

Kits have been made and will include:

1 pieced square for the center

8  4-1/2" squares

16  2-1/2" squares

 

The cast of characters for one 12" block.

 

Draw a diagonal pencil line from corner to corner on all the small squares.
Align one small square to the corner of a large square.

 

Stitch along the pencil line. Trim away the corner leaving a 1/4" seam.
(sew just a hair away from the pencil line on the side that will be trimmed)

Do the same to the opposite corner.



Make 4 units like this.

Add corner square, sew, trim press as before.

Add second square in this position, sew, trim and press.

Make 4 units like this.

Position units to look like this - sew in rows and sew rows together,
pressing seams in opposite directions.

Two blocks to show how the quilt will look.

This pattern offers so many possibilities in color placement and the 12" blocks make a really nice veterans quilt. - hint, hint ;-)  Two color, three color, or totally scrappy, this makes a nice quilt.

Thanks again to Annie for sharing it.  If anyone can find the name for this pattern, please let us know; otherwise we will call it Annie's Star.

****************************************************************************


Vicki designed several quilts for us - here are the first ones,
and there will be more posted over the next several days.

The end. 

:-)

 

Friday Sewing

Here are a few pictures from Friday sewing. 

A quilt for a veteran by Betsy

Baby quilt by Betsy

 

Julie finished the binding on a quilt that CSQ made to donate to Quilt Bingo

 - a Cancer Fundraiser at the Montpelier Center.

 

Miriam made good progress on her red stars

 

Nancy and Julie sat across from each other piecing their hexies.

They are both making "Handful of Scraps" a BOM by Edyta Sitar.

(they are using different fabrics)

 

Vicki ironed/starched 25 yards of fabric

 

 

Miriam brought her GO! cutter for us to use on Saturday which we put to use cutting fabric for kits for the January BOM. We had an assembly line going with Karen cutting, Sandy and Becky prepping fabric, and Jenny counting and putting it into zip lock bags. It was a lot of fun! I forgot my camera, but Julie brought hers and we'll post more pictures soon. 

 

How to Clean an Iron

Today at Friday Sewing Vicki spent the entire day ironing about 25 yards of fabric, some of which is for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. With all her fabric starched she will be ready to start cutting and sewing! She starches her fabric with her homemade starch and used a lot of starch today - about 75 ounces which after a while builds up on her iron and makes a big burned on mess which looked like this:

 

She cleaned the iron over the sink with water and a Magic Eraser and in no time at all it looked like this:

 

The nice thing about sewing together for two days is that we can leave our stuff overnight. We'll return in the morning for Saturday Sewing. I'll post more pictures late Saturday.

 

Happy sewing.