Guild Meeting 04-11-23

The April meeting of Surfside Quilters Guild today - an easy hour drive to San Clemente in SUNSHINE with a little fog along the water.  And hillsides of flowers on backgrounds of bright spring greens.  There was good attendance with about 90 members and guests to enjoy the presentation by Lauretta Crites.   https://laurettacrites.com  Lots of Show and Tell and a number of donated Philanthropy quilts.   I am a little amazed at the hundreds of quilts made and donated by members to support non-profits in our area.  Not just quilts, but also pillowcases, placemats, and other items given freely and from the heart.  Today there were 17 donated quilts in the "quilt parade" that  were  walked a round  the perimeter of the room.  

Some are large and complex. 

Some were more organized.

And some were very basic, but will keep someone warm. 

A good resource if you need pattern  ideas for quilts,  especially scrap quilts, is on the website:   https://www.surfsidequiltersguild.org/philanthropy.html

Here is a photo going down the hill from the meeting place to get back on the I-5.  All the wild mustard turns the hills to gold.  

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Moonglow and Quilt Guild meeting 07-13-22

The full moon is so lovely tonight.  Wish my photo did it justice.  

Yesterday I went to the meeting of Surfside Quilters Guild in San Clemente.  It is a daytime guild and is doing well despite the pandemic.  In the past two years we have added about 35 new members and our membership is about 180.  About half the members attend the meetings.  We no longer do ZOOM. 

This month's speaker was Cindy Myers, a certified Judy Neimeyer instructor who updated us on paper piecing quilting techniques among other things.  Her quilts are quite colorful and, in the Neimeyer tradition, have lots of spikes.  

This quilt is brighter than the picture, can't seem to improve the color. 

Most of the quilts Cindy showed were very large.  I think this is a queen. 

Many of the quilts had this serpentine flying geese 'border'.

I like this pattern very much.  Cindy showed half a dozen variations, I like the subtle color in this one with the white sashing. 

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Checking in with friends 04-03-20

Today the group I belong to in SDiego had a meeting - online with ZOOM.  It was great fun, how wonderful to see my friends again after missing several meetings.  We visited, did Show & Tell, asked and gave advice - just like a regular meeting.  And we were able to meet our dogs and cats - such nice furry babies.  I hope we can do it again next week.  

I showed the unending yellow strip quilt I have been working on as the mood strikes me. 

Yellow Strip quilt - basically a jelly roll quilt only I cut the yellow strips from my fabric library.  The mostly red separators are from a bag of fabric pieces from a lady who cleaned out her sewing supplies.  They were sewn as prairie points and I just ripped out the stitching and evened them up. This is a sort of autumn in New England color scheme.  It is currently 65" long (why didn't I make it 70"?) and 56" wide.  I'll be figuring out some borders..  

All of the quilts I make have a bird in them somewhere.  In this quilt they are on one of the printed fabrics.  Yellow fabric with birds?  How could I not buy it?

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Another Ruth B. McDowell quilt that didn't make the exhibit. 01-26-20

This quilt was purchased originally by an Orange County quilt maker who had it hanging in her large quilting studio until her death.  After several years her husband asked one of his late wife's quilting friends to help him dismantle her studio.  That person thought to contact me about reselling this quilt.  Of course, I bought it.  The picture is much more blue than the quilt actually is.  You can see a truer rendition in Ruth's book "Art & Inspirations".  (A book that is available at the Visions Art Museum in San Diego during the current Ruth exhibit).  And I quote from that book, "Each flower and leaf is pieced within an irregular pentagonal block."  This represents Ruth's work with Symmetry (also one of her books, might be available used at Amazon).  

"Delphinium"  Ruth B. McDowell - Massachusetts 1986  60"W x 67"L

Machine pieced, hand tied, hand quilted.

Cotton, silk, blends.  Polyester batting. 

"A hybrid Delphinium has a cluster of petals called a "bee" in the center [of each flower], usually in a contrasting color.  In [this quilt] the center "bee" is a small puff of silk inserted in the center of the piecing and tied down with heavy cotton thread 'stamens'."  Art & Inspirations: Ruth B. McDowell.

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Rediscovering UFOs 11-16-19

I have temporarily moved my sewing machine table into the family room to take advantage of a medium sized table I can back the machine table up to so I can work on a larger quilt than I usually make.  Normally the machine table backs up to the dining table, but it is so piled with stuff I can't work on a quilt there.  It has worked well with some slight shifting of my recliner and KoKo's chair.   

And it gave me access to a couple plastic boxes of stuff under the dining table that I can't get to with the machine table in place.  So, I pulled those boxes out and discovered some ancient UFOs.  Oh, my goodness, some of them I just vaguely remember.  And many are partially hand quilted.  I haven't been able to hand quilt for several decades, since the arthritis in my hands got worse and worse.   I have no memory of why I stopped working on any of them, except a few from classes that didn't engage me very much.  I don't know what I will do with most of them, but I do remember this one and will probably finish it with machine quilting.  A friendship group I belonged to at the time did a project where everyone brought a paper bag with a certain number of cut squares (1-3/4").  Looks like the color choices were red, beige, blue, and green, but I don't remember how those were chosen.  Then we put the bags around a table and everyone went around and took a certain number of squares from each bag.  At least that is how I remember it.  For some reason they were called Laundry Room quilts - maybe because if they turned out badly they could hang in the laundry room where nobody else could see them.  We were to sew them together into a quilt adding whatever we wanted to add.  I was very much into spiky borders then and sewed many by hand as a carry-around project.  Here is "Red Bird's Quilt" from 1991!!!!

"Red Bird's Quilt"  Del Thomas August 1991

21.5W x 23.75L

Cotton & metallic fabrics, cotton batt, cotton thread.

Machine and hand pieced, hand applique, pen work,

machine and hand quilted.

This is the only spike that is quilted and it is out of align. 

Red bird on the back, a 13.5" block.  I paper cut this bird and used her in a number of different applications. 

Here is the label written right on the back right corner. 

This really takes me back in time when I was much more productive than I am now.  Gosh, 28 years ago. 

I will look deeper into the box when I have more time. 

Who knows what treasures I might find?

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Blue - To help you stay cool. 07-05-18

It has been a rather cool June in SCalifornia, what we call June Glooms.  But now at the start of July the temperature has risen to new heigths.  Projection for tomorrow is 111F.   So, I ran through some picture files looking for some cool blue to take the edge off the heat. 

Some of these pictures were ripped off the Internet.  

Blue Teapot nest for a house finch.

"A Cold Day" quilted sculpture by Susan Else.  Piece is contained in an 8" square acrylic box. 

"Gilia" Ruth B. McDowell - Colrain, MA  2011  22.5"W x 38.5"L

Painted Bunting - NYC  2015

Puget Sound from Whidbey Island 2013

Agapanthus  2013

Blue Flowers  (name?)  Washington State  2013

Blue Fountain  2013

Blue Sky - New Mexico  2013

Blue Rhody (this is a little more violet than blue, but it is so beautiful) Eugene, OR

Blue skirt on a very tall lady - San Diego Trader Joe's  2013

Blue Iris - Kalispell, MT    04-28-10

Blue Whale hooked cushion 

Blueberries and white peaches  08-15-08

Great Blue Heron  02-27-14

Eastern Bluebirds in their bath   02-10-13

Blue door in Orange, CA.  01-15-10

Scaveola, or fan flower  06-17-12

Blue Toad   05-19-03

Blue Tree puzzle from one of Ruth McDowell's quilts.  04-27-15

Gosh I could go on for pages.  Hope this cools us all down. 

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Quilts at Surfside Quilter Guild meeting 04-10-18

The Surfside Quilters Guild meeting today in San Clemente, CA, featured speaker Jean Impey who spoke about CREATIVITY.  This is a new presentation she has originated and it was very educational.  She showed a Power Point program detailing many aspects of creating and also shared some of her diverse quilt creations.  

If your guild or women's group is looking for new, innovative speakers check out Jean's website:  www.SewJean.com

Here are a couple of the quilts she shared at our meeting.

A busy village with pink trees.   Jean Impey

Jean Impey   - Detail showing a bird in the window,  Any quilt with a bird is special to me!

Based on "Spider Web"   Jean Impey

We also had some very nice quilts in Show & Tell.  Here are a few:

"Applique Sampler"   Joann Bishop

"Bee Happy"  Janis Toman

"Busy Puzzle"  Donna Matukas

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