January's meeting

Here is the crowd, waiting for the church ladies to finish setting up the buffet.  These gals were hungry - many of them had spent all day sewing.  We had shepherd's pie, salad, rolls, fresh veggies, squash, dessert (which I cannot remember at this time).  Yum.

I presented the evening program.  It was a fun game, challenging teams to assemble puzzles of quilt blocks.  A word scramble of the block name accompanied each bag of pieces, and points were awarded for both the name scramble and the block piecing.

Stay tuned for our February 13th meeting when the Quilts of Africa team gives us a preview of their spring show at the London International Quilt Festival.

January meeting coming up...

Well, the first meeting of 2013 will be happening in two days.  Happy New Year to y'all.
Our Christmas pot luck in December was brimming over with food, as usual.  I was camera-challenged, again, so there are no photos.  For those of us who had to undo the button on our pants after supper, I guess that is a good thing.  ha ha.

Our program gal had us play a memory game, and did not give us a chance to practice first.  Mean Charlotte, mean!  It was fun though.  As usual we had lots of show & share to keep each other inspired.

I provided the members with a pattern to make this bag, from THIS tutorial.

Yeah, ok, I got a little carried away and have made 11 of them now.  This is for our MAKE A BAG, TAKE A BAG, VALENTINES SWAP which will happen at our February meeting.  If you make a bag, fill it with $10 worth of stuff.  Any kind of stuff - sewing things, cosmetics, food, gift cards, liquor, tea, whatever.  You will bring your filled bag, and take a different one home.

Here are my personal EXTRA instructions regarding the ZIPPER.  This will make sense when you are actually doing the zipper.

• Sew the first thingy on the TOP end, leaving the two metal bits exposed so you don’t hit them with the needle.  This will leave ¼” space at the folded end that does not have any of the zipper tape, and will not get in the way when you are grading the seam later.
• To get the other end with the same empty space – get out the pliers and rip off the metal end stopper of the zipper, so you don’t hit it with a needle or cutting blade.  Cut the zipper to a length of 7.75”, starting at the folded edge of the pretty thingy
• Sew the second thingy to the end piece, allowing ¼” space where the fold is.  The length should be 8” when you are finished.

This will eliminate a lot of the bulk at the zipper ends and makes it MUCH EASIER to turn these buggers right side out.

As for our January meeting on the 9th - I will be hosting a puzzle game.  We will split the attendees into groups.  Each group gets a set of quilt block puzzle pieces that they have to assemble.  I suspect we will discover some, um, NEW blocks.