August 31st Club Notes

Demo of the Week

Our traveling friends continue to return. Welcome back Kin Hart and Lu Karatxas.  It's so good to have old friends back in town.

The Daily Sun reporter who was here last week, Ciara Varone,  came again for a follow-up interview this week.  Last week she said she was doing an article on all the Villages Sewing groups, but this week she wanted to concentrate on our group. She said she would let me know when the article is scheduled to run.

Show & Tell

Last week's mesh bag project was a success.  Pat Pipa and I brought in small mesh bags to show and Kathy Jones brought in an extra large one.  Kathy's will be great for packing clothes for travel.

Donna Rissman had lots to show.  First she showed 2 cute snap bags she made and the Candy Corn Cutie she will be demoing in a few weeks.  Then she showed a beautiful American Flag quilt top she made for a fundraiser event.

Kathy Nichols made an iron caddy, but not according to the pattern we worked on a few weeks ago  She found a mat in the Goodwill store that had the right backing and transformed it into a caddy for her small iron.  i love the inventiveness of our members.

Jane Swafford made a cute Mickey Mouse pillow case.

Pat Pipa and Jane Swafford both brought in more blocks for our charity quilt.  I can't wait to put this together.

I made another iron caddy and an embroidered caddy for my mini iron, using a travel iron pattern.

After show & tell I did a brief demo of my Accuquilt Go Cutter so anyone who had not cut the squares for this week's project could use it to speed up the cutting.  A couple of ladies got brave and tried it and were very happy with the results.  I plan to bring it in again on charity project day so we can even off some blocks.

Then Donna Rissman proceeded to give her excellent demo on how to make the prarie point wreath wall hanging, with NO HAND SEWING!  Her use of glue makes it easy to do without hand sewing or pins.  I expect to see a few of these finished wreaths come back next week.

Special Thanks to the ladies who stayed and helped clean up at the end of the meeting.  You make my life easier and I really want you to know how much I appreciate your efforts.

I will send another email later in the week when I have info for next week's project.

August 24th Club Notes

It was great to see a few of our friends who haven't been around come back again this week. Mary Nazgiewicz has been away for the summer and joined us for the first time yesterday.  Marty Rhyne and Joyce Yarborough have been flitting about but were able to join the fun this week.  Audry Phillips and her daughter Lynn Delgado have been spending their time hunting for a new house in the Villages and now that they found one, they were able to stop in yesterday.  It was great to see you all.

The blocks for our charity quilt continued to come in.  I now have 42 in the pile.  Keep them coming ladies!

We had a few visitors show up that delayed the start of the meeting just  little.  A reporter from the Daily Sun came in to interview some of us.  She is doing an article on sewing clubs in the Villages.

I gave her my card so I hope she will let me know when the article will appear.

We also had a man and a woman come in with donations for our club.  I took the boxes and will be going through and sorting the contents.  So far, I found a thread stand that I gave to the first person to claim it (Susie Pendry was the lucky one to raise her hand first.), and some strapping that I gave to Kathy Franklin for the cat hammocks she makes.  There were several pairs of scissors which I put in our drawer and will label as club property.

They also had 2 small sewing machines which they may be interested in selling, a Necchi and a Viking.  I advised them to look them up on the internet and get back to me with a price.  Here are pictures of these, in case you are interested.

 

 

Show and Tell

Kathy Jones brought in a fidget quilt to add to our stash.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kathy Nichols showed a string art piece she made with her grandchildren.  She promised to lead a demo on this at a future meeting.

 

Kathy Franklin showed her finished iron caddy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marti Rhyne showed a fabric bowl she made in a 6 hour session with her daughter in law. I hope they didn't have other plans for that day.

 She also showed a little zipper bag she made with her embroidery machine.

Donna Rissman wowed us with a ruler bag, a beautiful bargello quilt, and a fun use for leftover mesh as earing storage!
 

 Susie Pendry showed a great scarecrow wall hanging.















Pat Pipa and Eileen Navikas brought in fidget quilts

Nella Rose also brought in her first fidget quilt.  She was too shy to show it, but I got a picture of it anyway. ;-)

I showed 4 walker bags I made out of 1 yard of upholstery fabric I found in Joannes sale bin, a tote bag I made from a kit I had,  and an embroidered Halloween wall hanging.

 After show and tell, Kathy Jones lead us in making mesh zipper bags.  It was lots of fun and I saw quite a few completed ones before the end of the meeting.

Next week Donna Rissman will show us how to make a prairie point wreath.  I sent out the material list in a note last night.

As the summer comes to an end our room is getting fuller.  If you bring your sewing machine you probably want to make sure you arrive by 12:30 because space is getting tight.  If you don't want to bring a machine, no problem.  We will find a place for you to sit and will usually have some non-sewing things to do.  

We currently have 42 members on our list, including a few snowbirds I am holding spots for.  Due to room size, I plan to close the club at 50 members.

August 17th Club Notes

Thanks for all the help yesterday sorting the boxes of donated supplies, making drier sheet quilt blocks, and fidget quilts.   I got the impression that everyone really enjoyed this type of meeting, so I've decided to put it on the schedule on the 3rd Wednesday of each month.  That will give us one week each month that we don't have to come up with a new project for and maybe we can whittle down the amount of stuff we have while at the same time doing some good. 

I'm happy to say I brought home 32 completed quilt blocks. Figuring 8 across and and 7 down for a lap quilt (plus sashing added), I'm thinking we only need  24more.  If we get more than that the quilt can be bigger.  The quilt doesn't have to be finished until January, so we have plenty of time to get it done.

Show and Tell:

 Pat Pipa made a fidget quilt and a set of pillow cases this week.

Bev Minnerly showed another stack of doll clothes for Giving Dolls, and 2 shopping bags she made to replace ones she lost.

Eileen DiSanto made 2 sets of pillowcases for the shelter.

Kathy Jones finished her iron caddy and also made a pillow from her fractured art work.    Both came out great.

BJ Herter showed a wall hanging she made for her daughter's 50th birthday!

I showed a space shuttle themed lap quilt I finished for my husband.













Tomorrow afternoon I am going to deliver 10 fidget quilts to the Bayview Nursing Center in Eustis.  I have been debating about contacting the area nursing homes again to see if they need any, but have decided not to do so until our supply gets up to about 50.  I currently have about 20.  The last time I sent letters out we got more requests than I had on hand, so I don't want that to happen again.  For now I will just try to fill requests that come to me instead of me reaching out to them.

I will also be making deliveries to the Marion County Animal Shelter and the Ocala Domestic Violence and Sexual Abuse Center, probably on Saturday.  Thank you all for the donations.

I have been listening to feedback from club members and now that we have our permanent schedule approved by the recreation department, I have revised my notes on the club operation guidelines.  I've attached the updated version to my email.   Please, if you have any comments or concerns, please let me know, either in person or by email.  This is OUR club, not mine.  I hope to lead and guide, but this is not a dictatorship.  I welcome your feedback always.

Lois Rose,
Sewing N More Club Leader

Aug 10, 2016 Club Notes

Several of our old friends who have been unable to join us over the summer made it to this week's meeting.  Welcome Eileen Navikas and Joyce Yarborough. We hope you will be able to join us often.

I got a little good news this afternoon.  as you know, I have been in negotiations with the Villages recreation services rep regarding our winter meetings and we have reached what I hope will be an acceptable compromise for all of you.  There were no other craft rooms available anywhere in the Villages for the afternoon time slots.  However, we have been approved to use the Beach Room in El Santiago every other Wednesday afternoon during the winter months and return to the Hula room April - December.  Our approved time remains the same - 12:30-1pm set-up, 1pm-3:50pm meeting.  The Beach room is one half of the large room next door to where we are now.  There will be fewer electric outlets, so we may want to do projects that don't involve sewing machines over the winter.  I know we can come up with some good ideas.  It might even be sewing projects where we do the prep work at a meeting and the final sewing at home.

So the schedule will be as follows:
Jan & Feb we meet the 1st & 3rd Wednesdays in the Beach Room
March we meet the 1st, 3rd and 5th Wednesdays in the Beach Room
April - December we are back in the Hula Room

On the off weeks maybe we can plan some outings/road trips.  What do you think?  I'm going to look into some possibilities and would welcome any ideas you have as well.

This is less than I hoped for but at least we are keeping our time slot and location.  This will also give us the opportunity to chat with the Boggy Creek Bear Sewers and see if we can work anything else out over the long term.

Show and Tell:

Kathy Nichols missed last week's meeting, but she made up for it this week with 5 show and tell items.

First, she showed her finished shirt apron.

Next, she showed 2 pillows she made.  I believe she said they are for her granddaughter.  The pink one is done in crazy quilt style and the green one is done with a bit of chenille work. 






Last she showed 2 plates she decorated, using clear glass plates, fabric, and Modge Podge.

We agrees that this would be a great project for her to lead sometime in the winter.

Donna Rissman was next with her completed iron caddy.  She also talked about how the pattern we used was for a large iron, and it could easily be adjusted to make a caddy for a smaller iron.

Donna is also coordinating a road trip to purchase mesh for the mesh bag project we will be working on in 2 weeks.  Those who are going are meeting at Sterling Heights at 10am on Friday.  Please contact Donna if you plan to join the group.

Eileen Navikas joined right in with a beautiful cat-themed fidget quilt. 

I will be bringing supplies to make these next week during our charity work week and my stash include many small panels that will suggest a theme. 

Kathy Jones showed a bag she made out of a fractured art piece.   








Pat Pipa showed her completed iron caddy.  (love the fabric!)

I haven't had anything to show for the past few weeks because I have been spending most of my free time on the Florida Lighthouse shop hop.  I finished that quest last Friday, so that let me get a few UFO's done over the weekend.

My first was to make a wallet.  I have a great pattern and made one a few months ago out of fabric scraps as a test.  I liked it but it was just a little too small to fit one of my loyalty card holders.  I made this one using nicer fabric and adding an extra inch to the total length.

I also finished the iron caddy I started last Wednesday.  We'll use this one to store one of our club irons and I hope to make a second one for the other iron.

Finally, I had 2 quilts waiting to be finished.  This first one is for Honor Flight.  I quilted in in my embroidery machine, using the Amelie Scott Edge-to-Edge embroidery method and added the binding to finish it off.

 The second one is a Star Wars themed quilt for my nephew.  It only needed the binding, so I tried out the faux piped binding method I just learned.   I will demonstrate this at some future meeting, now that I have tried it.  It's a great method because there is no hand sewing involved!








Next week has been designated as charity project week.  I will be sending out several patterns for your consideration and will bring all the charity project supplies I have stored in my house.

During this week's meeting I talked about a possible group project.  The VHA is holding a fund raising hoe-down in February, and they are looking for quilts to auction off at this event.  They have asked the quilt guild to supply some, but, since we have fabric to use, I thought we could make one too.  Next week I will show how you can make quilt blocks from strips of leftover fabric and dryer sheets.  If we each make a couple of these, I will put them together (or if anyone volunteers to help, that will be great too). 

I think that's it for now.  Hope to see you all on Wednesday.

Lois