meeting date wrap up

A wet and windy day here in Alabama. Other than a trip to the post office, I am ready to stay home today, finish up some binding for Aline and finish up my butterfly challenge today. I just realized that this month is half over with commissioned quilts and that round robin waiting to be done--time's a wastin', LOL.

We tried something new yesterday for holding a few of these quilts. Ginny had brought this quilt holder thinking that perhaps we could use it or actually be allowed to mount it somewhere to take our pictures. I put it across the doorway yesterday but it a little "fumble fingers" loading the quilts. Judy is taking it the frame home to ask her husband to invent a better wheel. We think a board about 6 foot long with cup hooks or screws every 6-8 inches would let us put binder clips on the quilts and then hook them over the hook. The doors could be open wider and the board moved out further if the quilts were bigger. He is quite creative if she explains what we want. I suppose a cafe curtain tension rod with clips would work too--my mom does that across a wide doorway--but I wouldn't want it rolling off the door frame with quilt in it!

The quilt is one of five that Joy sent back with me for WTIL. She used a Twisting, Hexagonal Star at the center alternating with a large snowball block to make these cool chains across the quilt. She made another just like it that goes to the Gadsden guild for their donation efforts and is working on two more. Please click to take a closer look at the quilting. Joy's former up the street neighbor who does a lot of her quilts lately did the honors on all the donation quilts but Joy is getting one of her own set up--starts with an "N" and is smaller--guy used to be a partner with Gammill, she said??

This is the other one that was garnering a lot of attention yesterday especially since Judy was working on 16 patches (or double 4 patches.) for a "Whatever" block. If you look at the quilt you see just two scrappy blocks of the pinwheels and 16 patches. But, this is one of those quilts that you see a secondary pattern emerging--tilt your head a bit to the left and it looks like a pieced water wheel /pinwheel block. Joy did hers 6 inch finished so the squares would have been 2 inches cut and the HSTs 3 inch finished but easy enough to adjust to the 2 1/2 inch strips Judy had cut.

(This is an example of what I am referring to at left--waterwheel/pinwheel block.)

There were 12 of us at the meeting yesterday. I think about 7 quilts, maybe more, got pinned yesterday. Theramae, Sarah and Jane had the pinning table under control with assistance from Betsy, Beverly and Pat. It wears you out to stand and pin all day so we kind of float in and out from that job and sew or rest between. Judy was sewing, Carolyn was cutting her challenge quilt using an album cross pattern. Lois pinned for a bit and then started working on labels when she needed a sit down job. Aline was binding like mad. I showed how to do the buzz saw block but I was working on labels, assembling handouts, filing pictures, taking pictures etc---the "usual"

The last quilt we pinned proved to be the most challenging as none of us could quite get our heads wrapped around the idea of putting what was the backing on top. Carolyn had used race car fabric panels and dressed them up with sashing and cool car border fabric for the front of a quilt she is making for her grandson for Christmas. The backing was black and white checkerboard with a red border and then a black outer border cut wider as that part was to be trimmed off. She was going to follow the checks to quilt in a grid and not have to mark it so it made sense to turn it upside down. Centering it and centering it atop the bottom layer which was really the top was where we just couldn't get it right. We folded it, notched it trying to line it up and center it and we would get two sides right but then it would be too close to the edge on the other side. This went on for about 15-20 minutes just trying to get it lined up properly. Finally we mounted the bottom (top) to the table like we always do--along the edge of table on top and left side. I marked in 2 inches with a soapstone for registration marks and we lined those up with the table edge with the design straight on the table---finally success. Bet Carolyn doesn't do that on a back for a while, LOL. Striking and a great idea for the quilt but not when the brains are tired. After we got the tables we drug out put away and Pat vacuumed a tad (church dinner tonight so we didn't want to leave a mess) and our stuff packed up and cars loaded, it was about 3:30 before we got out of there. Normally everyone is gone about 2 or 2:30 or so.

I still need to put my stuff away now that I'm home---in my rush to get packed up I just stick stuff anywhere in my tote bags and then have to sort through it. Last night I finished putting two more labels on the quilts and called several of the girls who were not at the meeting to tell them the plans for the Christmas party. Also I am preparing to send off a box to headquarters along with the updated copy of my document and a CD I burned with pictures of all the quilts for 06 for the gallery pages. Since many of our quilts stay here locally, I have to do my part for record keeping for Ellen. Looks like I'm ready to seal up the carton and brave the rain. Well, after I get dressed that is, LOL. And so it goes in my little corner of the world............