BUSINESS MEETING/TREASURER'S REPORT
Marcia conducted a brief business meeting. She reviewed the Treasurer's report and told the group that there is $220.08 in the club fund to be used for quilting and supplies for our donation quilts. Marcia mentioned that the club did not collect dues for this year because the treasury at the end of last year had close to $500, but we may need to collect dues next year if the fall auction does not bring in as much as it did last year.
At this time the club has about 22 quilts ready to be donated! This is surprising in that we don't usually have that many quilts this early in the year. Everyone has been busy making the donation quilts, it seems. One of the upcoming projects is to take orphan blocks donated by members and making quilts out of them, which will result in even more donation quilts. Someone suggested that perhaps we may not need to make that many more during the rest of the year, and can spend club meetings on other projects.
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS
Sunshine: Estela said that she has been doing really well after her kidney transplant although there have been a few minor glitches along the way. She is still planning on coming back to Arkansas at the end of May, then go back to Texas for a couple of weeks for family graduations, etc., but should be back full time by mid June.
Shadows: Marcia's husband John had surgery and will be deciding whether to undergo chemotherapy. Meg reported that her daughter Glynis had a pacemaker implanted and is still recovering from the procedure. We learned also that Linda Jones' husband is having some heart problems. Prayers are invited for these families.
BIRTHDAYS
There were no birthdays in April, but Estela was absent in March, so her birthday fat quarters were presented to her at this meeting.
BLOCK OF THE MONTH
Marcia handed out this month's copy of her mom's old quilt patterns. The block is called Cypress. Here's a picture of Marcia showing what the Cypress block looks like. Marcia is making each block using a red, white and blue palette, so she'll have a color coordinated set of blocks at the end of the year that will make a very pretty quilt.
APRIL PROJECT
The night's project was to make a "moebius" scarf, which is also called an infinity scarf or infinity circle scarf. Susan had precut the strips of fabric for everyone to make one. The best fabric for these scarves is something soft and silky, something that drapes well. Rayon, polyester, silk are all appropriate; wool and cotton would not work well. The scarves make up very quickly, and everyone in the group made one in about 15 minutes, most of which was spent listening to the instruction on how to turn the scarf right side out. The directions are hard to put into words, and it is much easier if you do it while watching someone else turn it. Fortunately, Susan is a great teacher and was able to demonstrate the technique very effectively. Here's a group picture of everyone wearing one of the scarves. Please note that although it looks like Meg was falling down, she was actually trying to hunker down so as not to hide the people behind her. Apparently I took the picture just as she moved and Marcia was trying to help steady her. The lady between Meg and Debbie is Tara, a new quilter who was Meg's guest as she is in town for a few days.
SHOW AND TELL
After finishing the scarves, we had show and tell. Susan made a beautiful Easter Bunny Quilt that had just been quilted and is not yet bound. What colorful bunnies!
Estela brought three items for show and tell. The first was a Christmas quilt of her own design. The idea is for the quilt to make the bed look like a large Christmas present.
The second quilt Estela showed is a Texas theme quilt made from blocks that she had previously made (about 1996) in a "mystery quilt" class that she took when she was a brand new quilter. Estela explained that the blocks were all wonky and crooked because at that time she was not too careful about 1/4 inch seams, squaring up blocks, etc. So a few months ago she took the mystery quilt apart, trimmed the blocks so that there were at least squared up, then framed them either in red or blue. The blocks were then reassembled into a nine-patch quilt sashed in a red-white-blue print, with red and blue four patches for cornerstones. The Texas theme comes from the names of some of the blocks--yellow rose, blue bonnet, road to Texas, T for Texas, lone star, etc.
Here is a picture of the pillow shams that will be used with the Texas quilt.
Marcia showed us a small quilt made from the left over rainy day umbrella blocks that she had previously made. This quilt is a good stash buster or scrappy project because you only need small pieces of each fabric, and even the backgrounds don't all have to be the same. Marcia used leftover scraps of Laurel Burch fabrics for these blocks. Can't you just feel the comfort of snuggling down under this quilt with a good book on a cold and rainy Arkansas day!
Marcia also showed us the treasure she rescued at a garage sale a few months back. The scrappy quilt, consisting of hexagonal star blocks, is completely hand pieced. She said the quilt was irregular in shape because it seemed that the quilter had added block after block to it, without thought of where each was placed. Rather than trying to move blocks around to make it more symmetrical, Marcia said she just cut off some of the dangling pieces and bordered it in a rose print that picks up the pink of the star blocks. Meg quilted it beautifully.
Tara showed us a bath mat that she made, which impressed everyone because no one had thought before to make a quilted bath mat. What a great way to color coordinate with towels and/or the shower curtain. Not shown is the back of the mat, on which Tara had sewn fabric triangles at the corners to form pockets so that she can tuck in a non-skid rubber back to keep the bath mat from slipping around. Good safety measure!
Meg showed a jigsaw puzzle quilt that she made as a cover for the TV in her church's youth room. The cover will protect the TV while not in use. This is another great pattern to use up scraps. Although this is a scrappy quilt, Meg chose a palette of black, blue and gray, so the top looks very coordinated.
Meg also showed us a quilt that she quilted for Cyndi. Each block is made from the front of a "one-sie" worn by Cyndi's granddaughter. It's sort of like a T-shirt quilt because the one-sies are made of soft knitted fabrics that need to be backed with stabilizer in order to be set into a quilt. Cyndi's granddaughter was a well-dressed infant, judging by the number and variety of one-sies!
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