Did everyone enjoy our Colour presentation by Johanna Masko? We certainly have a lot of things to think about! What Mood do you want your quilt to have? What’s it’s voice? Look for inspiration everywhere but quilting magazines where the goal is to sell complete lines of fabrics. Don’t worry about matching colours. Think more about what “looks good with”. Open those fat quarter bundles and sort them by colour. And mix your batiks in with everything else. Gradients are fun! You can follow Johanna on Instagram @jmaskoquilts. You might find inspiration in “Things organized neatly” by following Instagram @thingsorganizedneatly  Johanna showed us a colour blending game/puzzle. I already had the Blendoku app on my iPad so I started again at level one. There are apps for both Apple and Android. You can learn more about it here. It is a great tool for sharpening your colour sense.

Carrie Woolley is our speaker on December 10. Carrie is a young shepherdess who is raising local grass fed sheep. We will also have a chance to play with some wool from her sheep. You can find Carrie here and follow her on Instagram @carriewooley1

Hopefully everyone will be able to see the “Red Cross Quilts of the Great War” exhibit at the Waterford Heritage and Cultural Museum. Details are here. The Opening Gala is this Friday, November 16th. It is on until February 15th and the museum is open Tuesday to Friday 10-4:30 and Sunday 1-4.

We are having our pincushion swap at our December meeting. Any design you wish.

A tutorial for Marguerite’s husband’s Big Shirt Apron can be found here

Here is a link to Jinny Beyer’s page for calculating diagonal quilt backings. You will need to add your required overhang to the width and height of your quilt. if you are sending it to a long armer, add 8” to each measurement before you do the simple adding and subtracting.

Here is a link to the big block Lone Star quilt I showed.

And finally, Julie’s recipe for the yummy wheat-free cookies. They look simple enough for me to make! And they were so good.

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies Makes 2 Dozen

1/2 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1 egg

1.25 cups quick cooking oats

1/2 teaspoonful baking soda

In a small bowl, cream peanut butter and brown sugar until fluffy. Beat in egg. Add oats and baking

soda and mix well. Drop by tablespoonful 2 inches apart onto greased baking sheets. Flatten slightly.

Bake at 350 degrees for 6-8 minutes. Remove to wire racks to cool. Store in an airtight container.

What a great night! Lots of very useful information on some tricky topics. Hopefully everyone has something new to try.

Here is the link to the big PDF file that it has all of the topics. But if you are interested in just one or 2, you will be able to print only those pages. Instead of using the default “Print all Pages” selection, use the “Print Pages __  to  __ “ just below.

Our Next meeting November 12 and our speaker is Johanna Masko. She teaches extensively at The Workroom in Toronto. Here is her bio.

Our next Joy of Stitching is Monday, November 5. There may be a spot or 2 left. Contact Monica.

Congratulations to the winners of of our Accuquilt Challenge: Diane Luke, Vicki Harris. Maggie McEntee and Evelyn Rosa. I loved the Drunkard’s Path quilts that were shown and one is in my future!

We had many members participating in the Kaffe Fassett Rip and Pass Exchange. It always seems to be confusing to start. Your Challenge now is to Make Something with many assorted fabrics of different sizes. There were several chunks of fabric left. You should be able to lay your fabric out and have about a yard when it is all patched together. If you are missing fabric or have some duplicates, bring them to the next meeting and we will try to even things up.

 

I hope everyone enjoyed our first meeting of the year and our awesome speaker Elaine Theriault. Elaine spoke about Modern Quilting including some or all of the following: use of negative spaces, using asymmetrical layouts, using bold colours, using solids, using improvisational piecing and using differences in scale.

You can follow Elaine’s blog at Crazy Quilter on aBike. http://crazyquilteronabike.blogspot.com  Here is a link to her tutorials on Quilt Social https://quiltsocial.com/author/qs_elaine/ and her machine binding tutorial is here https://quiltsocial.com/stitching-down-the-binding-thread-color-stitches-and-stitch-length/  This is part 4. Be sure to click the other parts (at the bottom) as there are some really good tips there. Don’t be put off by the sewing machine part of the reviews. It is the sewing machine companies that pay for all this free content. You don’t have to have a Husqvarna to learn these tips.

Joy of Quilting will be on Monday, October 1. 6:30-8:30 at Joy’s Bakery. Monica has 1 or 2 spots left. $5. Email her if you are interested.

Our May speaker is Beth Garner, a dyer and textile artist from the Kingston area. Since she is coming so far, and because she is an awesome instructor we are going to offer 2 workshop. Tuesday, May 14th Beth will be teaching Flat Dyeing to Quilt and on Wednesday, May 15th Gelli Plate Printing. These workshops will be at the Vittoria Community Centre. You can see her classes here. The workshops will be $50 each day with a $15 materials fee each day. We have these workshops almost half filled but you can sign up at the October meeting.

Here is a link to using adding machine tape to piece your scraps. http://thewomanonthehill.blogspot.com/2013/06/pieced-strip-blocks.html Did you take one? If you didn’t you can still try the technique. Just cut some paper into a 2-3” wide strip and start to sew. I used newsprint initially but you can use a plain lighter weight paper, even the telephone book pages Bonnie Hunter uses. Just cut strips not squares.

We passed out a page from a Moda Cupcake Mix Recipe 3. Basically you take two 5” squares of fabric, place them right sides together and place the paper on the back of the lighter one. Sew around all the dotted lines, starting where it says start. Cut on the solid lines. These 4 HSTs and 4 4-patches can be sewn together in a number of ways. 3 are suggested on the package. You can see that here https://www.fatquartershop.com/cupcake-mix-recipe-3

Here is a Youtube video that shows how to do it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtfbdwCpxZw She is using wild fabrics but all the steps are there.

We are going to have a pincushion exchange at our December meeting. You could use these squares for yours, or you can make any other  pincushion. More details and suggestions later.

Enjoy your sewing this month. As Elaine said, you can really learn when you do challenges!