Elegante Mother was active in the Empty Nesters group of her church. We hosted the sewing ladies meeting at our home once a month, and I got to know the ladies as I helped with desserts and an occasional project. This year I became friends with a new member to the Empty Nesters and when I found out that she quilted, I invited her for a quilting day.
Mary lives half the year here with one son, and half the year in Texas with another son. She has been very active in a charity quilt program in Dallas. As we pieced and chatted, it was decided that we would try to get our Empty Nester group to participate in one of these programs. We began putting together kits for small quilt tops, and chose meeting dates for September and October.
Today was the big day, the first meeting for this new activity. We had been working for about six weeks, cutting fabrics and trying to make the best use of scraps that had been given to us. I had five kits ready to start sewing and two or three more on the design board. Mary had made some kits up, too.
I got up early, did dishes, cleaned, shopped for raspberries, green grapes, strawberries and blueberries for a fruit salad at lunch, and swept the front sidewalk. At 10:00, Mary arrived, and shortly after that just one more member came up the drive. I have no idea where everyone else was.
The situation gave me the chance to work one on one with a woman who had never pieced quilts. Hildy is an experienced seamstress, but she had never worked on quilts before. She chose a kit of squares that will make a three dimensional pinwheel quilt. I showed her how to press the squares into the right sized triangle, and then how to assemble the blocks. I was able to talk to her about the need for a consistent quarter-inch seam, and show her tricks to make it easier to get the seam allowance right. She seemed happy as a clam to take the kit home with her to work on this month!
So, perhaps this was a really good thing. Not all of the ladies are quilters, so I may learn from today and type up a page with a few tips that will help. I hope in the future we will be able to give them fabric and a pattern and get them started, but I think for now, I’ll need to do the cutting to create the kits.
It will be good to have the sweatshop up and running and the ladies visiting here again. I’ve missed them.
Category Archives: QUILTS!
Doin’ The Happy Dance
My youngest sis, Frankie, of Just My Opinion, is coming to visit tomorrow. Yippee!!!! She’ll be with us for several days before she has to get back to her family.
A year ago, she called me from a fabric store and said, “They’re having a fabric sale. How much should I buy?!” She picked out fabrics for a Log Cabin Quilt, and brought with her a book called “Quilt in a Day.” Now, there are SOME people who can actually make a quilt in a day, but I’m really not one of them, and it seems Frankie isn’t either. We’ve been working on the top of this quilt for the past year, with two hours here and two hours there, separated by months of other activities.
I believe that we may actually finish the quilt top this week, and Frankie plans to send it off to my favorite professional machine quilter. She’ll be able to wrap up in this quilt within a month or so.
YEAH!!! I just love finishing projects! I’ve been clearing them off my shelves right and left this year. I won’t ever run out of unfinished projects, but I’d like to get them to the point where they are more manageable, and they don’t take up so much room. THEN….I can start using up my fabric making MORE QUILTS!!
I love it when plan comes together. See ya tomorrow, sissy!
Souper Supper, 2010
The first Friday of each month I host seven ladies in a quilting bee. We each work on our own projects unless someone has a deadline and is in need of assistance. The ladies are quite advanced quilters. One is a fabric artist, another is a certified quilt appraiser, another is the most professional appliquér of my acquaintance. The others are all experts in multiple techniques and a range of quilting styles. My contact with them has kept me up on the news of the quilting world, and the news of my quilting friends.
Some time ago I asked if they would like to have dinner here in February, with soup as the entrée, and they unhesitatingly said, “Yes!” So, for years, we have met for dinner before bee in February. I almost always make two soup choices, but there are days when I feel energetic and make as many as four. The past few years they have told me they would like to have the cheddar chowder and one other soup of my choice. This time I added pasta e fagiole, similar to that which is served at Olive Garden, and those choices seemed to have satisfied everyone. I sent containers of soup home with four of the ladies, and we still had enough left for lunch yesterday.
The ladies each bring something to share, so we had a chopped salad with pasta, and a salad that had orzo, spinach, sun-dried tomato, and feta cheese. One woman brought a wonderful collection of fresh fruit including huge sweet cherries and fresh pineapple. Another brought honey wheat bread. There was a cheese tray, spinach dip, crab dip and a variety of dippers. We eat well at bee!
To end the evening, our dessert specialist provided a heavenly dark chocolate cake with fudge frosting! I don’t crave chocolate, but I’m addicted to this cake!
It seemed it was our night to talk about family problems. Three of us have parents who need caregivers. One woman has just lost her mother to a long battle with Alzheimer’s, so we had lots of thoughts, suggestion and sadness to share. The younger members had their share of family issues bugging them, so we had our own support session in gear.
I’m so delighted to have friends like these. They make a great support system, and I really enjoy being able to offer them the hospitality of my home. Hmmmm…..maybe next time I should have quilted place mats for the table! *G*
Reinforcements
Last night I walked into the studio to get a chalk marker for a wall hanging that I am quilting, and as I reached toward the utensil organizer the shelving that holds my books, utensils, magazines, batting and unfinished projects, leaned sideways parallel to the wall. I grabbed the upright nearest to me and called for help from the men in the living room. Reinforcements arrived, and the bookshelf was righted, with a promise to tighten up the screws in the morning.
Dear Husband and I emptied the shelves and pulled the unit out from the wall. DH used two boards to create an “X” across the back of the center section to give a little more stability. Because the shelves rest at the outer edge of the floor, the carpet tends to make them tilt in a bit, toward the center of the room. DH found wood strips to slip under the front feet to offset the tilt, and he tightened all the screws that hold the shelving together. Whatta guy!
Of course, I have to return everything to the shelves, but I consider that to be a good thing. It’s always good to have the chance to look over what you are storing. Perhaps you will have the solution to a problem that kept you from completing something earlier, and you can move it to the “Ready to be finished” stack. Or, there may be things that you can finally part with, and there are always new things that need to be fit into the collection.
While DH worked on the shelves, I took a few stitches in a lady reindeer that Elegante Mother made as a Christmas decoration, and I cut and pinned the hems on a new pair of pants. I’ll have two things done and out of the shelves.
Progress. Don’t you love it!?