July 27th Notes

We had a few mixed feelings at this afternoon's meeting.  Wednesday I received an email from the Villages Recreation department saying that, when they started working on our permit for 2017, they found a conflict.  It seems that the Boggy Creek Bear Sewers have a standing reservation for the room we are in for January, February and March. Since that club was formed in 2011, they get priority on the room and we will either have to change our meeting time, change our meeting date, change our meeting location, or not meet for those 3 months.  I have been going back and forth with the rec department and they are looking for another room for us.  I have also sent an email to the leader of the other club in hope we might be able to work out a compromise. I will let everyone know the results when I hear back.

After getting that info out of the way, we had a great meeting. After show and tell, Kathy Jones showed us how to make aprons out of a shirt.  Everyone seemed to be having a great time making these.  I heard a lot of laughter.  It is always so nice to hear everyone having a good time.

We only had 3 people bring items for show and tell this week:

Bev Minnerly showed some of the doll clothes she makes and a purse insert for transferring items from one purse to another.






 Kathy Jones showed a mesh bag she made.  She will be demoing this as a future club project.

B.J. showed the neck pillow from last week that she finished.








Kathy Jones started the demo right after show and tell.  As the meeting progressed, several members finished their aprons.  The following are photos of finished aprons.

Susie Pendry, Cathie Shuart, and Kathy Franklin finished first.

Linda Parr was next

Diane Placek finished third.










And Eileen DiSanto was the last to finish before the end of the meeting.


Like so many others, I had to take mine home to finish, but I did it.  There was a suggestion that everyone who finished should bring their apron back in next week so we can get a group picture I think this would be fun, so please, bring your finished aprons in next week.



Thanks to some volunteer presenters and some suggestions from the group, we now have a project schedule taking us into November.  See the list below and I hope to see you all next week.

3-Aug	Iron Caddy	Donna Rissman
10-Aug	Fractured Fabric Art	Lois Rose
17-Aug	Charity Projects	Lois Rose
24-Aug	Mesh Purse	Kathy Jones
31-Aug	Prairie Point Wreath	Donna Rissman
7-Sep	Denim Water Bottle Cover	Nita Hand
14-Sep	Triangle Table Runner	Lois Rose and Donna Rissman
21-Sep	Charity Projects	Lois Rose
28-Sep	Potato Bag	Marty Rhyne
5-Oct	Fabric Pumpkin
12-Oct	Candy Corn Cutie	Donna Rissman
19-Oct	Fabric Squares Wreath	Lois Rose
26-Oct	Tissue Holder	Linda Parr
2-Nov	Suggestion??	Volunteer??
9-Nov	Wine Cork Horse Ornament	Lois Rose

July 20th Notes

It sounds like those who made it last week had fun with the neck pillows.  I missed being with you all, but I did have fun working with Camp Villages kids on Tuesday and Freedom Point oldsters on Wednesday.  Ray had a stomach virus on Thursday, so I stayed home to take care of him and used the time to organize my fabric stash.  He was well enough by Friday afternoon to want to get out of the house so we went to a couple of quilt stores on the Florida Lighthouse shop hop.  We continued that quest all day yesterday, so after 3 outings I now have 18. The contest has 3 levels of prizes, 20 stores, 30 stores, or 42.  I'm trying for the 30!

I'm looking forward to our shirt apron project this week.  The instructions and diagram Kathy Jones provided were attached to this week's email.  Please print your copy before the meeting.   I will only have a few with me. 

Remember to bring a shirt you would like to work with.  If you can't find an old shirt in the closet that you are willing to transform, go to one of the thrift stores in the area. You can pick one up for only a few dollars. The only other supplies needed are a rotary cutter and your sewing machine.

Show and Tell:

 Donna Rissman showed an Art Quilting Board and she did an impromptu demo

 Eileen DiSanto made 3 pillowcases this week.

Nita Hand had purse pocket to show

 Kathy Nichols led the group in making travel neck pillows.



















Audrey Phillips, Jane Swafford, Sue Campbell, and  Linda Parr completed the neck pillow before the end of the meeting.

These look great ladies!I may have to try one myself someday.

























Looking forward to seeing you all on Wednesday!

Lois

July 13th Club Notes

I can't fully express how happy I am with the way this club has developed.   Each week I come in and see a wonderful group of ladies who are having fun and helping each other.    You are making my job as group leader easy and I love you all for it.

This week we welcomed 2 new members and 3 old friends into the group.  We now have 36 members, including a few snow birds who have promised to join us when they return. I collected 4 more member's dues, so our treasury is now up to $67.   I am confident that this system of a one-time initial dues for membership will be sufficient to take care of the club's needs for quite a while. 

My main concern at the moment is that we might outgrow our room.   I think we can accommodate 24 sewing machines in the current room.  Our choice may be either to cap our membership or find another room.  Although I love where we are, I am going to initiate a change request to see if a larger room is available.  It doesn't mean we are definitely moving, right now this will just be a check to see if we can find a larger room in the same time slot.

Show & Tell:

 Bev Minnerly started us off with some Hand & Foot game card holders and another of her great purses.

She also brought a filled doggie bed and worked on sorting scraps to fill more.  (I have placed empty dog bed envelopes in the bottom drawer of the little plastic cabinet we have in the storage room.  If you need one to fill, please take one from there.)

 Diane Placek showed a lovely baby quilt.  Nicely done!

Eileen DiSanto found some Disney fabric in the charity supplies I brought last week and made a great pillowcase.   She also shared some of the other charity fabric she found with Nita Hand and made a few more adult  pillowcases during our sewing session.

Linda Parr completed her patriotic heart project as a one piece hanging and it came out lovely!   She also showed a tissue case that she found a new pattern for.  Linda will be leading a project to make these in October.

Jane Swafford brought a cute baseball themed pillowcase to show.

Jane's sister Sue Campbell came in a little late and hadn't signed up for show and tell, but Jane made sure that Sue had a chance to show the 2 cars themed pillowcases she made. 

 I was the last to show, as always.   I learned how to properly hoop a T-shirt on my embroidery machine in a class last week and embellished this one with an autumn leaf.

As some of you who follow me on Facebook know, my main insanity for the past few weeks has been to make a row by row quilt in time to enter it in the annual contest.  The contest requires rows from 8 different quilt shops.  Once the quilt is complete, it can be submitted to any participating quilt shop for a prize if it is the first one that shop receives, and if the shop's row is included in the quilt, the shop awards an extra prize.   I finished this about 30 minutes before our meeting and submitted it to Sharky's Vac & Sew after the meeting.  I won a stack of Christmas fat quarters and a $25 gift card!  The quilt is now hanging on the wall next to the door at Sharky's.
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After Show and Tell we got into our project of the week - pillowcases.   I had sent out 3 patterns, but the one that won over was the Burrito!   Donna Rissman gave us a great demo of how to do this without getting confused, which I have documented in photos below:

She began by asking for 3 volunteers to hold up the letters A, B, and C.  She then rearranged them to spell CAB, The letters stand for Cuff, Accent, and Base Fabric.

First she laid down the Cuff, right side up. (See yellow fabric on the cutting board.)

Then she placed the Accent (blue) fabric strip on the top of the cuff, also right side up. Note, this is a narrow strip (2 or 3 inches), folded lengthwise.

Finally she placed the Base fabric right side down on top of the other pieces.  The bottom of the base fabric is then folded up to the top and all the layers are pinned along the top edge.  One straight line of stitching is then done along that top edge to hold Cuff, Accent and 2 sides of the Base together.  Once that is done, the fabric is pulled through so it is right side out. 
The bottom and open edges are then sewn together with right sides together, using a 1/8 inch seam.  It is then turned wrong sides together to sew a 1/4 to 1/2 inch seam again, making this a hidden, French seam.

I hope I got all that right.   At any rate, I saw a number of completed pillowcases (including the first time I was able to successfully make one!) and at the end of the meeting I had 6 pillowcases to take for the Ocala Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Shelter.    Note, this was not primarily a charity project.  Everyone had the choice of making a pillowcase for themselves or for charity, since everyone supplied their own fabric.

I can't be at the meeting next week, so Kathy Jones will be leading the meeting and Kathy Nichols will be leading a project to make travel neck pillows.  I will send out the pattern in my email.

See you on the 27th.

Lois

July 6th Club Notes

We had another fun meeting this week. To start, I brought in all the charity project supplies we inherited from Fabric Fun for anyone who wants to make Fidget (aka Activity) quilts for area memory care patients, charity quilts, dog beds, cat hammocks, etc. I will be bringing these boxes of charity supplies the first meeting of each month.   PLEASE, take anything you think you can use for any charity project. That includes projects for other groups such as Busy Hands.  If the fabric is going to a good cause, it is available for you to take.

Show and Tell:

 

Marty Rhyne showed a cute bag that she embroidered for Susie Pendry. The embroidery is of a blond in a little sports car.  Susie drives an adorable mini-cooper, so this is perfect for her.

Chris Leedy showed a great autumn leaves table runner she made. Lovely work!

Sue Campbell's granddaughter Caroline just completed sewing camp and she brought the items she made there for us to see.  This talented little girl made a pillow out of fabric squares, a heart, a turtle, a monster, and a bag to hold them all.  We were all impressed to see her pull item after item out of the bag.

Bev Minnerly showed 2 small square bottomed totes she made. These are great projects, and we hope she will lead us in making these at a future meeting.

Eileen DiSanto completed her Heart Flag from last week's project.  It's always nice to see completed projects come back.  Donna RIssman suggested that this might be a project the Shoebox group might want to pick up on as a fundraising project.  This would be great.  I think we should be happy to share ideas with other groups doing good work.

I showed a "Morning Glory Farm" quilt I have been working on off and on for the past 6 months.  This will be a gift for my nephew's wife.  I am also working on a quilt for my nephew, which I hope to complete in time to give both by Thanksgiving.

After show and tell Eileen DiSanto led a project to create tea bag caddies.  This cute project is designed for tea bags, but the caddie could be used to hold other items, such as a needle assortment, id cards, etc. Use your imagination!  I saw quite a few of these completed during the afternoon. I know mine will be used for traveling with the chamomile  tea I enjoy at night.

Nita Hand also made a suggestion to me.  She told me that Busy Hands makes walker/wheelchair caddies for area nursing homes. One of the facilities I delivered fidget quilts to a few months ago asked for these.  They have 125 beds and a constant turnover.  Since we really don't need another project, I told Nita that if she puts Ocala Oaks on Busy Hands' list, I will gladly deliver any they can make for this facility.  I am in Ocala every Monday, so this is on my way home.

Next week's project is pillowcases. This is not something I have done much of, but I have several patterns and will send them out within the next few days, along with fabric requirements.  I know there are several ladies in the group who have made pillowcases using the various patterns, so I am hoping they will chime in with hints and tips.

One thing I keep forgetting to mention - I have a white binder on the check-in table.  In the front this contains our permit and the rules and expectations for how clubs conduct themselves and for the facilities.  Behind that I have printed pictures of many of the craft ideas I have collected over the past few years.  Please look through these when you have a chance and let me know if there are any projects shown that you would like to try.   I have instructions for all of them, so if you like something I will present it to the club and if enough people want to do it I'll put it on the schedule. 

See you all next week.