Finish a Project Winners!

The lucky winners of the first 1/2 of the FINISH A PROJECT drawing were Tamara and Rachel. KayeDawn, our president had a challenge for us this year and that was to finish a project, or as many as we wanted. Each project that we finish we are able to put our name in a jar for a drawing. Tamara won a $25 gift certificate donated by Natalia for her machine quilting and Rachel won a fun custom, embroidered by KayeDawn, clutch purse. Congrats ladies! You can still continue to finish projects and put your name in the jar for our end of the year drawing!

Queen Bee

Nita was our Queen Bee this last month. You can read about her and her fun story in the last newsletter. Nita brought some really fun quilts and projects to our July meeting to share with us and inspire us! Thanks Nita for a great night, you are a wonderfully fun member of our quilt guild.

Don't Chuck It!

Don't chuck that Summit and Wasatch County Sterling Magazine in the garbage! There is a great coupon in there for Season's of Home in Midway! Go dig it out of the trash or rescue it from your "pile" and go use that coupon!


The coupon is for 25% off one item. I also saw a coupon just today in The Beeline which is the Utah Quilt Guild Newsletter!
Thanks Season's of Home for being such a great store in our wonderful valley!

July Sew and Tell

As usual, Sew and Tell was wonderful at our July Summer Picnic. Here are a few snippets:


This is a cute lady named Ruth that will be with us for a little while in the summer and again in the fall. She lives in Ohio and spends some time here in our valley. She is a fun addition to our guild. She made this chicken quilt at a class that Deonn taught. This is one of Deonn's original patterns and it is so cute!

Kathleen finished her round robin! Quilted and all! So cute Kathleen! If you happened to do one of these borders she would like to know!

Natalia and a bunch of her cousins got together and had a MAJOR sewing party, this cute flower quilt is one of the results! The quilt below is one that she did with her cousins also. All the crazy circles are made from fabric that all the ladies brought and shared with eachother. The fun thing about this quilt is that the batting is green. Truly green in color and because it is made from recycled plastic bottles. She told us how many bottles are in this quilt, it was 8. She has this batting, among others, to use with her long arm machine business.

This fun quilt is Wendy's. The pattern is called something like 'bullseye' and this quilt is a preview of what our November quilt guild meeting will be. Sherron is going to teach us this fun pattern and we will go home with a block made - mark your calendars!

This is Rachel's sew and tell. She made most of these blocks in quilt guild in 2005 as part of a Cheri Saffiote Americana quilt. It is finally finished and Natalia quilted it, so fun!

These two pictures are also of a new quilt guild member, Carol. She lives in California and is staying here in the valley for the summer. Welcome Carol and thanks for showing us this fun fun Asian quilt!

This is Nita's millennium quilt she made for the year 2000. 2000 pieces of DIFFERENT fabric!!

Shantelle is finishing the binding of one of her round robins from a few years ago. Good Job Shantelle!

Shantelle was working on this fun 3-D pinwheel quilt top at our retreat in May, the top is now finished and she is giving this beauty to a fun neighbor that just had a baby.

More baby quilts! Bethany made this cute quilt for a friend that had twins, actually she made 2 of them but different colors. It is so soft and silky, plus there is yummy minky on the back that makes it delicious!

Bethany also recently finished this hand quilted baby quilt, good job Bethany!

July's Summer Picnic and much more

Our July's Quilt Guild meeting was wonderful! We dined and played with fabric - so perfect! Our meeting was a super fun dessert social with a couple of make and take projects taught by Linda Beecher from Seasons of Home quilt store in Midway, UT. Actually, if you have been to Seasons of Home, you know it is much much more than a quilting store and we are so lucky to have it in our community.

Our projects were a fun little cherry needle case and a beautiful etui, both made of darling wool and appliqued. I believe there were a few kits left if you would still like to get one. Call Linda at Seasons of Home to see if she has any left for you. The number is on the right hand side margin of our blog. Thanks Linda for your hard work and also KayeDawn for your cute already-made project to inspire us!

The desserts were bountiful and there are too many wonderful chefs to thank, so thanks to everyone that brought something delicious to share. Hopefully there will be a few recipes posted here or in the next newsletter.

Thanks ladies for a great night at quilt guild meeting!

10 things all quilters should know

Our June meeting was a treat because we got to learn 10 things all quilters should know. Thanks to Debbie who taught us some great tips, tricks, and showed us some great tools.

So here they are:

Fabric quality - the quality of your fabric will determine the outcome of your quilt, buy good quality fabric

Thread - also buy good quality thread. She referred to an article in a quilting magazine all about thread. The article said that you should use thread that will make the overall project turn out correctly. If you are making a quilt for your college daughter that will be washed 15 times in a year, use a nice polyester thread that will move and stretch with the use, abuse, and washings. If you are making an heirloom quality thread or a wall hanging that will never see use, abuse, or a washing machine, use that wonderful nice cotton thread.

Needles - change your needle! Your needle should be changed (for a new one) before every new project or around every 8 hours of sewing. WOW! Why are we sewing with dull needles?

Cut accurately - to have a project turn out accurately, you need to start with accurate pieces of fabric. Debbie showed us some orange stickies that are made to adhere to your ruler to prevent it from slipping when you cut fabric.

Accurate 1/4 inch seams - you need accurate 1/4 inch seams to make your project turn out nicely also! No cut off points! Debbie suggested something called a Q tools sewing edge. You can put it on your machine and mark that 1/4 inch and prevent the fabric from moving over that tool resulting in a seam larger than 1/4 inch. She said that Kim Shannon sells these tools on her online store - http://www.noveltyquiltfabric.com/.

Matching seams - make sure those seams nestle together nicely when sewing them together. The true term is called abut, but nestling sounds good too. If you don't understand what this means, ask Debbie at the next meeting.

Pressing - be sure to set your seams with the iron. This means that you press the seam flat before you press it to either the left or the right. Setting the seams tells the stitches where they are going to live for the rest of their lives in that fabric. You get a much crisper product if you set your seams first. Press not iron! There is no rubbing the wrinkles out, there is only pressing up and down in a very nice way! Debbie brought a pressing tool that in the past has been used for making clothing, but is becoming a quilting tool. It is called a clapper or a wooden iron and it is a piece of wood that you can use as an iron for a crisper pressing job. After you press your fabric with your normal iron, press with the clapper and the steam from the fabric is absorbed by the wood and makes a crisper press.

Borders - there is a wrong way and a right way to adding a border. The wrong way is to cut a piece that is far too long, putting it on the quilt and sewing until you hit the other side, then cutting off the remaining border fabric. That is such the wrong way and it will make HUGE waves in your quilt. The correct way to add a border is to measure the width of your quilt in 3 places, the top, the middle, and the bottom. Take the average of those 3 numbers and cut your border piece to that number. Pin one end of the border piece to your quilt, then the other end of the border piece to the other end. Match up the middle of the border piece with the middle of your quilt, and then you make the rest fit. You might have 1/4 of an inch that you need to ease in, but that is MUCH MUCH better than making the Atlantic Ocean out of your borders!

Quilting - Debbie talked about a cute quilting pattern she found in a Fons and Porter magazine for 9 patch blocks. It is called lady bug quilting and to make a nice continuous quilting pattern, you pretend you are a lady bug, climbing stairs, climbing walls, and crossing ceilings. I will see if I can find the issue for you.

There is also the joke of 'there are 3 ways to quilt - by hand, by machine, and by check.' If you are a by check lady, make sure you look at the links on the right side of the page for our amazing local machine quilters.

Binding - I can't remember what she said about binding but she loves a great trick for joining binding edges once it is sewn to the quilt. It is a little hard to describe here, but once again, ask Debbie at the next guild meeting.

These are just the notes I took from Debbie's lesson. Please feel free to add or correct in the comments section! Thanks Debbie for a great basics of quilting lesson!! Thanks for all the quilting and sewing patterns too Debbie!

2008 Round Robins, first group

Here are most of the round robin quilt tops. A few were missed but I am not sure who I missed. Please let me know so we can see a picture of your round robin. If anyone wants to fess up to the borders they added, leave a comment and let us know what you did! They turned out so fun, good job ladies!

Wendy's

Crusan's

Wendy with Courtney's

Kazuko's

Connie's

Kathleen's

Deonn's


Debbie's

Rachel's

Brenda's

Michele's minus the last border

I remember there being around 17 round robins so we are missing quite a few. If your's isn't up here, please bring it to the July 10th meeting so we can get a picture of it. Thanks!