December 2012 Sewing Day Recap



Hi Everyone!  Jessie here.  Per Katie’s suggestion, I will post a formal introduction soon, but for now, here’s a recap of December's sewing day! 

First, our most exciting bit of news, in case you didn't see her comment on the previous post, is that Carrie attended our sewing day, went home and took a nice walk with her husband, and then went to the hospital and had her baby girl!  Baby Claire was born Sunday morning, 12/9/12.  Congrats Carrie! We can't wait to meet her!

We had some great informal discussions of where the group is headed in the next year, and I will write those up in a separate post as well, so there is lots of room for commenting and discussion. 


Most of us brought personal sewing projects to work on, and a lot of us also contributed to the charity quilt that we are doing through QuiltCon, which will go to a children’s shelter in Austin next spring.  We got a packet of donated blocks from the national MQG, to which a lot of our members added another block or two at the meeting, and we played around with the design as well.   
These are the blocks we started with- mostly from the national challenge but a couple were made by our group.

We settled on massing all of the improv blocks together towards the bottom of the quilt, and adding white negative space above them as well as a sort of rainbow effect around the edges.  It for a kid's shelter, after all, and we want it to be cheery.   

You can see the top of the rainbow in the background here.

Deanne, who owns a quilt shop and pattern company outside Austin, TX, was in town and so she popped in on the meeting, and helped us work on the design and construction of the charity quilt.   


Thanks mostly to Deanne, who has lots of experience busting out samples for her pattern business, the improv blocks and the rainbow sections are assembled into rows and are just awaiting their negative space before final assembly.  A few members are meeting at Elle’s house this weekend to finish up the assembly and Aubrie has volunteered to quilt it!  Yay!

And here are the pics from the best part of any sewing day: Show and Tell!  Click on the photos to take you to our Flickr pool, where some discussion and commenting is going on. 
Frederick's amazing, English Paper Pieced Rose Star quilt
People couldn't get over all that hand work!
Elle's charity finish #1 (everyone loves Elle's original design on this one!)
Elle's charity finish #2
Elle's charity finish #3
Linda's Christmas Trees
Linda's slippers- so cool!  She says knitting stores carry the leather soles.
Linda's scarf
Anne started a baby quilt with left-over Thangles
Aubrie's pretty, pretty, pink-purple and grey quilt
Katie's Stained Glass quilt- the leading is a folded strip inserted into each seam.
Katie assembled machine quilting practice pieces into an awesome quilt.
Frederick's Seminole Piecing
Frederick had to bring a suitcase to haul all his show and tell :) Love these gorgeous Dresden Plates!
Wendy, formerly of the famous Salt Lake MQG, shared a Single Girl top


One more thing, I am so sad that I did not get any pics of a new attendee’s project:  Amy had hundreds of little squares of Liberty scraps and shot cottons to be assembled postage-stamp style.  My heart was fluttering so much at the sight of all that beauty that I completely forgot to pick up my camera.  Amy, if you have a picture of your squares, please add it to the Flickr pool, or email it and I will put it up so everyone can admire them!  

Lost and found after the meeting: a tiny rotary cutter, box of straight pins, Wendy's pin cushion (my fault for hiding it, sorry!) and a root beer scented pencil.   Let me know if you are missing these things.

Enjoy the rest of your year, everyone, and see you in January!