March's Cool Trick

Connie's trick came in handy today - I bound a quilt.
Look at that pretty 45 degree angle! Thanks for sharing with us Connie!

Just a little note: You should have received an email with our new newsletter attached to it. If you did not receive it, email Deonn, deonnstott@yahoo.com so she can update your email address or figure out why you did not receive it.

2008 Retreat

Quiltin' in the Woods Retreat 2008 May 1-3

Ladies, it is time to decide if you are attending this super great time of sewing and laughing, and oh yeah, eating, and more laughing with your fellow quilters.

Shantelle sent us all home with a retreat paper that needs to be returned at the April 3rd guild meeting. You need to return it even if you are not going, just so she will know.

The cost is $15.00, you need to bring this with you on April 3rd along with the survey form you received. If you missed a paper, get in touch with Shantelle before April 3rd.

Hopefully we will get to cackle together (it does happen), get to know each other better, get some sewing done, and learn all about those Kaleidoscope quilts!

Margaret Miller

This quilt is called Angleplay Ribbons and the colors are wonderful. Margaret Miller is the author of a few books that deal with fun, crazy angles. If you visit her website, www.millerquilts.com and click on the teaching tab, then workshop tab you can see some fun quilts like this. After you get to the workshops tab, click on the see sample quilts links.

March Show and Tell

One of the most inspiring parts of quilt guild meeting is Sew and Tell, here you go, be inspired!
This is a round robin quilt top that Barbara is doing with a group of friends. I don't think this one is hers, we will have to wait to see hers.

Wendy's kaleidoscope quilt - she brought this as a sample of what we will be doing at the retreat this year. Mark your calendars for the first weekend in May.

A fun quilt that Linda has made to display at Season's of Home. She said she is going to do a scallop binding, so pretty.

Debbie made this quilt for her daughter's wedding this month. It is a signature quilt, the guests of the wedding and reception will sign one of the lighter colored pieces for the bride and groom.

These are two of the blocks from the Lullaby quilt made by Jenny. Not sure how many others are doing the applique Lullaby quilt, but I saw some of Margaret's blocks too!

Cute cute cute jacket made by Beth. It used to be a sweatshirt, maybe we need to learn this technique!

Fun stars by Tamara. She wanted a boy quilt so she altered a pattern and made cute boy looking stars.

Beautiful baskets by Kazuko. How very pretty!

Barbara brought this pretty quilt to sew and tell. I think she said her granddaughter made it and now Barbara gets to bind it for her.

I am in love with this block of the month quilt of Twila's. The colors are great. I think she said she got this at The Cotton Mill, tell me if I am wrong Twila.

THE ELEMENT FIRE

Here are the FIRE Design Challenge tops for the month.

Barbara's, Wendy's, Crusan's, and Rachel's

Stella's and Joan's

THE ELEMENT AIR

Here are the AIR Design Challenge quilt tops after the applique has been added.
Cat's and Sherron's

Mara's and Kazuko's

Bad picture, sorry, and I think this is Wendy H, but I am not sure. Let me know if I am wrong.

Twila's

Stay tuned to see what they are going to do with their beads!

BEADING baby BEADING!

Okay ladies, you all know that our design challenge for March is bead embellishment. This is new to alot of us, so I have done a little research for us and I am getting excited. I was in my bed last night thinking of what I was going to do with my FIRE and the beads I received. This will be fun to learn something new.

Here is a website about a book that Nancy Eha has written. She is a bead guru and when you click on it, don't judge her by the crazy hat! There are some good illustrations to give you more ideas about beading than just one bead at a time if you scroll down the article.
http://beadwork.about.com/library/weekly/aanancyeha.htm

Many of you are familiar with Great American Quilt Factory in Denver Colorado. There are two ladies that run it, Nancy and Lynda, and they have a publishing company called Possibilities. This link is just a Possibilities handout type document with a few tips on it about embellishments.
http://www.greatamericanquilt.com/pdffiles/mccallsarticles/simplequiltembellishment.pdf

There is another bead guru named Mary Stori. She has been on Simply Quilts a few times to talk about beading. She has some great beading books. Here is her website: http://www.marystori.com/

One lady named Melody Crust says about bead embellishment "Making a quilt is like baking a cake - all the fun is in the frosting." She has an embellishment book out called Quilt Toppings. I bet Amazon.com will let you look at a few pages of it. She also has a website: http://www.melodycrust.com/

One more, Mary Lou Weidman, http://www.marylouquiltdesigns.com/.
She is a well known beader. I went to her site and I didn't see anything that would necessarily help us with our design challenge, but she has some amazingly beautiful quilts on her site. Her blog is really fun too, click on that link from her website.

Good Luck ladies! Live and learn.

Lions and Tigers and Bears Oh My!

Oh my goodness, you should go check out Kim's new Wizard of Oz fabrics and all the fun jelly rolls she has for sale!
http://www.noveltyquiltfabric.com/

THE ELEMENT WATER

Here are the WATER quilts for our 2008 Design Challenge.

Courtney's and Bethany's

Connie's and Michele's

Good job ladies! FIRE and AIR coming up!

THE ELEMENT EARTH

Here are some of the EARTH Design Challenge quilts. Our challenge for February was to applique something onto our quilt top that went along with our element.

Heather's and Tricia's

Tamara's and Nita's

KayeDawn's and Jenny's

Julie's

Liz's, Beth's and Barbara's

Stay tuned for FIRE, AIR, and WATER! So very exciting!

Marilyn Toone

Marilyn Toone spent the evening with us last week at our March quilt guild meeting. She was our guest speaker and instructor. She showed us many of her beautiful quilts and then led a workshop on starch applique. She uses Mylar sheets to make her templates, so everyone did the same. We purchased sheets of mylar for $2.50 and then we got busy! Check back for more Mylar news.

Her trunk show consisted of many many quilts, but for some reason this one really struck me. I am not sure what the name of it is or the story behind it. If someone does, please leave a comment for the rest of us to read.

This quilt is called Pinks My Favorite Color and it has won a few awards. It won second place in the hand quilted division at the Utah Quilt Fest in 2006 and also the Best of Show in the Springville Art Museum quilt show in 2007. It IS a beautiful quilt and the hand quilting is amazing.

I do remember her saying that she doesn't use cotton batting. I think she said it is too hard on her hands to quilt it. She likes wool and polyester.

For the starch applique workshop she had a little project for us to work on. I didn't get a picture of the applique pillow, sorry. Here is a little tip she gave us about pressing our seams in. She said that after we place the mylar template on the fabric we have cut out, apply starch around the seam allowance, along the outer edge where we will NOT be sewing the applique piece to the background. She said to press down the tips of the flower, or the points of the shape first, then press the two sides of the point in. That will give us more precise points.

She also said to clip the inside corners of the fabric to get a smooth, accurate shape. I was surprised by how far she did clip, there is only a thread or two there in the corner of the flower tips.

Marilyn Toone was a wonderful guest to our guild and hopefully everyone learned something. Post a comment about what you learned, so we can all remember the great tips she passed on to us.

February's Cool Trick

Deonn showed us an amazing trick for our Cool Tool and Trick of the month at our last guild meeting. The trick is how to make a flying geese, I mean goose, with only 1 seam! Plus, it makes a 3 dimensional goose! So very COOL!

You start with 2 squares that become the background, and one rectangle that turns into the triangle shape. You sandwich them together with the rectangle folded in half right sides out, and the squares on the outside of the rectangle. You need to align the 4 raw edges, those being the 2 edges of the rectangle that are opposite of the fold, and then the 2 squares. The folded edge of the rectangle doesn't meet the raw edge of the squares so you have a perfect 1/4 inch seam allowance on the top of the flying geese unit.
If you are holding your sandwich together with the fold at the top, sew a 1/4 inch seam up the RIGHT side of the sandwich, and waalaa, open it up and you have the cutest little flying goose ever.
You can look in your Quilters Bible for cutting measurements on the the Flying Geese Chart page, or it is in our Newsletter this month. Thanks so much for such a fun trick Deonn!