Good Heart Quilters — Summer Fun Day

I’m leading with this shot of a houses quilt, because this was the very first project our group, the Good Heart Quilters, had ever done together.  I designed all the houses on my QuiltPro quilt program, passed them out.  Leisa and I went shopping and bought two fabrics, and we passed them out.  The requirements: make eight houses all alike, using pieces of the two fabrics.  The trees were created by each individual quilter, as well as the setting.  When we met yesterday at Lisa’s house (a different one that the above Leisa), she was busy putting borders on everything and found this first quilt.  I was glad to see it again.

Our group has changed, shrunk, expanded and changed again, but the core members shown in this photo are me (2nd from left), Lisa (in bright green shirt) and Leisa (on far right).  JoDy is in the red-stripey shirt, Jean is next to Leisa on the right and our newest member is Carol, just moved here down from the mountains near our city.  Our first unofficial meeting was when Lisa was pregnant with her daughter when she helped us tie a quilt for my son.  Her daughter is now 15 1/2.

Here’s a slideshow of our day, with lots of finishes.  The blue quilts with all different patches is another one we did together, when we had about 12 members.  Lisa was “headed for the borders” all day long, getting things done.  I didn’t catch a photo of Carol’s finishes, but she was working on flannel rag quilts for charity–the local hospital, and you’ll see Karen working on her bargello quilt.

As usual, WordPress puts in ALL the photos from the post, so you’ll see the above two again as well.

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I brought my Polaroid patches to show and one of Simone’s girls (soon-to-be-added member) asked me “What is a Polaroid?”  Gulp.  How do you explain the magic of what we saw when the picture would develop right before our eyes, rather than having to take film down to the drugstore?  These are young girls of the digital age, and the idea that it would take 5 minutes to get a photo is rather like us having to imagine hand-cranked ringer washers.  But she listened politely, and afterward had fun sorting through all the squares.

You’ll also see Lisa’s collection of EPP rose stars, and the other set of patches laid out is my Summer Treat quilt (click for the tutorial).  I hope to wrap that one up today, as well as work on my last two squares for the Far Flung Bee.  I’m still a little tired from yesterday, but it was a lovely day of quilting: our potluck was delicious (recipes are above under “Good Heart Quilters”), the quilting was fun and the company was divine!