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