Good Heart Quilters – Page 4 – OccasionalPiece

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!

Leisa and I hosted Quilt Night again–a fairly regular first-Friday monthly event for our group. Tonight’s theme: Fright Night! and Leisa had some really fun treats and decorations, like witch’s shoes, caldrons, bubbling-over vases of black flowers (atop the cookie stand) and spider-topped cookies.

She’d put together little favors for us, along with ghost pops and cake pops; I brought the savory in the form of bruschetta and crostini and some pumpkin cake as well. We quilted and ate and chatted.

The fabulous feathered witch’s hat that arched over everything.

Our favors. We’d picked up the little jars from the Temecula Quilt Company and Leisa adorned them with ribbons and spiders.

We had two new quilters: Caitlin (on the right) and Deneese (in the middle) who brought licorice caramels that were delicious. Okay, Deneese. We all want the recipe! Karen, on the left, holds Deneese’s new little boy.

Leisa passes around the caramels.

More quilters arrive: Chantal, her mother JoDy (chewing on a caramel?), and Tracy.

We set up the table for our fat quarter exchange, along with the Halloween House handout, plus some flyers. Yes, that really is a Burger Boss flyer you see there–it’s a yummy gourmet hamburger shop that has opened near us.

Gee, maybe we should get busy and start quilting. Chantal works on her first quilt (see later in the post for photos).

Leisa’s got some plans for the stack of things she’s working on and no, you can’t ask questions near Christmas time. We’ll show you later.

JoDy’s working on a Christmas quilt, too.

And Jean continues working her flying geese patches for the quilt shown behind her.

We break for Show N’Tell, and first up is JoDy’s purse, all ruffled and cute. Many commented on my purse, but you’ve all seen that one.

She’d also finished up this Lakehouse Quilt–I love this quilt! It’s nice and bright and those fabrics really pop.

She’d also finished this Christmas quilt, made from a kit (Jean’s also doing this one). JoDy said it took her about three years to finish this–she toted the squares wherever she went–and then finished up the quilting on her long-arm machine.

Detail.

Jean went next, showing off a quilt that she’d done in a desert retreat, sponsored by a local quilt shop. It’s a mystery quilt, and I think it’s beautiful. She also finished it on her long-arm machine.

Close-up of Jean and her quilt. The fabric had shoes all over it, and her quilting (hard to see in this photo) also had shoes everywhere.

This is a quilt top that she also did in one of the desert retreats. I like the interlocking and interplay of the blues and browns. Another mystery quilt.

Laurel, who insisted that she takes terrible photos (although I disagree because she is lovely through and through) held up her quilt that had its genesis in our dotty fat quarter exchange in January. It’s a wedding quilt for her son and his wife, and I’d treasure this if I were to receive it!

My daughter Barbara (on the right) arrived just at the beginning of Show and Tell. She’s here visiting me for the weekend and had to settle her three little children in bed before she could leave them in Grandpa’s care and come over. It was really fun to have her there–she’s exceptionally talented as well, but not a self-professed quilter, although she has made several.

My clever friend Tracy went next. And why is she so clever? She has the most wonderful design for scraps.

One day, wanting to use up her scraps, she cut them into a lot of little pieces and starting sewing them together in nine-patches. I’d say those nine-patch blocks measure 4 1/2″ across? I’ll check with her. Just sew sew sew. Lights and darks in a traditional nine-patch block. When she had a billion of them completed, she set about to put them together into a quilt.

She tried nine-patch, with the blocks arranged in a “double-nine-patch” arrangement, but she said it became all “mushy” and you couldn’t see the blocks. She she worked out this one: four in the middle surrounded by twelve blocks in a contrasting color and/or value.

Detail of her top so far. Sometimes she uses a contrasting value: like pink with darker reds. Sometimes it’s a contrasting color, like the blue centers with the golden yellow blocks surrounding that. I love this quilt! She gave me permission to blog about it. When I had finished with my colorwash quilt (think 1990s) and had all those teensy 1 1/2″ blocks left stacked up by value in six different pizza boxes, she took them, cut light fabric fabrics in little squares and made a wonderful postage stamp quilt.

Here’s Chantal with her quilt. Tonight she was working on satin-stitching around the petals of her flowers.

Here’s the full quilt. Lovely and beautiful and hard to believe it’s her first!

And what did I do, besides eat those sweets and take photos and visit? Karen and I took some of those Halloween fat quarters and we cut out our Halloween Houses. At the end of the night, here’s mine:

I fussy-cut the doorway to show off a trick-or-treater from one of the fabrics. Only three more to go and then I’ll have a Halloween House quilt–hopefully by Halloween!