Club Notes Dec 19, 2018

As I expected, many of our members are busy this week, but we still had 11 members in attendance.  

Show and Tell:

Mic Pickard was inspired by Linda Parr's effort last week and made 4 casserole carriers last week.  She also showed a new purse she made for shopping with her granddaughter.

Lorraine Manz made 2 checkerboard quilts for the Panhandle 

I found a stack of 7" blocks already sewn in sets of 4s, so I put them together in a quilt for the Panhandle.  (Lynn K. said she was the one who put them together a while back.)

Just before the end of the meeting, Eileen DiSanto finished a cute panel quilt to give Lynn for the Panhandle collection.

**************************

For today's project I explained how to make a microwave potato bag.  I have 2 designs for this.  The one from Pelon is attached.  The one we made once before uses the same 9" x 20" fabric and batting pieces, but just overlaps instead of shaping an envelope point.  The directions for that one are as follows:

******************************

Potato Bag

Steps:

1.  Layer your three pieces -right sides facing and batting on the bottom.
2.  Sew all the way around the pieces, leaving a 3″ opening for turning
3.  Snip your corners to reduce bulk and turn right sides out
4.  Iron the edges and push the points out
5.  Sew all the way around the piece of fabric -close the opening with the stitching or by hand with the ladder stitch.
6.  Over lap the ends and pin in place– approx 1"- 2″ overlap.
7.  Flatten the bag,aligning the overlap near the top of the bag.
8.  Sew the sides directly on top of the stitching from step 5.

****************************** 

I've also attached the use instructions to this week's email. Whichever one you make, make sure to include the instructions if you are giving them as a gift.  Otherwise, most people don't know what they are or what to do with them.

Next week is Christmas week, so there is  no meeting.  Then we go on our winter schedule until April.  Here is the schedule as it stands now: We need a project for March 6th, if anyone has any ideas.

Date	Project	Leader	Room
26-Dec-18	NO MEETING		El Santiago,Hula Lounge
02-Jan-19	Ditty Bag	Linda Parr	El Santiago,Beach Club
16-Jan-19	3 Pocket FQ mini purse	Ellen Hein	El Santiago,Beach Club
06-Feb-19	Charity Projects - Dryer Sheet Quilt Blocks	Pat Pipa	El Santiago,Beach Club
20-Feb-19	Duffle Bag	Mic Pickard	El Santiago,Beach Club
06-Mar-19			El Santiago,Beach Club
20-Mar-19	Charity Projects - Fidget Walker Bags	Lois Rose	El Santiago,Beach Club
03-Apr-19			El Santiago,Hula Lounge

Hope to see you all on January 2nd.

Club Notes - Dec. 12, 2018

What a great party today!  I love the fact that, without any specific sign-up, we had plenty of main dishes and plenty of desserts.  All the food was really good, I know I wasn't the only one who went back for seconds.

Thank you all for the Christmas gift.  I really appreciate your thoughtfulness.  I couldn't ask for a nicer group of friends to share my Wednesday afternoons with.

Each year I give a special gift to the person who has attended the most club meetings over the year.  This year it was Bev Minnerly. 

In other business news, Ray and I delivered 33 dog beds a bag full of tennis balls, and another bag of towels and dog treats to the South Lake Animal League last Saturday..  They were very happy to get them. 

I began keeping a record of the value of our charitable donations this year, starting in March.  This is just the estimated value of materials used and does not reflect the time spent in making the items.  As of this past week, we have donated $17,689.55 worth of items to 11 different organizations.  Included in that total are 60 quilts, 173 pillowcases and 218 dog beds.  Thank you all for all your efforts.

Show and Tell:

Somehow the list didn't make it home with me, so I'm writing this from memory.  Don't worry, I know who you all are.  

Last week's easy quilt lesson was a great success, judging by the quilts that came back today.  

Pat Pipa, 

Mic Pickard, 

Eileen DiSanto, 

Brenda Severa, 

Ellen Hein, 

and I all brought in completed checkerboard quilts.

 Pat Pipa also finished one of the dolls and little elephants we made a few weeks ago.

Mic Pickard made a set of place mats for her daughter's in-laws.

Bev Minnerly showed another set of cute doll clothes and a nice travel toiletry bag she made.

Lu Karatzas showed a quilt she made for her 13 year old grandson and shared the story of how she took him shopping to pick out the fabric.

She also showed some more of the pocket scarves she showed and explained last week.

Charlotte Cecilio showed her "Florida Reindeer", made from the palm bark that fell on her lawn.

Donna Rissman finished a piece of flannel with a coordinating flannel border.

Ellen Hein took all the flannel I brought in last week and added borders to each piece   All of these flannel blankets are going into the January delivery to Panama City, with the quilts.

Linda Parr made a casserole carrier and an embroidered holiday banner.

Alice Meunier showed a stack of place mats that she and the others at that back table made for the Sheriff's Ranch.

I finished 3 Gingerbread Man dolls and 2 little dinosaurs.

*********************

The challenge of the day was a sheet of pictures representing 24 Christmas songs. The test was to name the song the picture described.  Everyone had fun with this.
We then played December word Bingo.  I think everyone had fun.

*****************

Since I expect many of you might be busy or traveling, next week I've scheduled a repeat project.  We'll be making microwave potato cooking bags.  I have the correct cotton batting which you can buy from me for $.50 for the correct size piece.  I will send out more into in a separate email.

Club Notes - Dec 5, 2018

Thanks to Lynn for a great demo today. Lynn reported that she has now delivered 244 quilts that have been donated by people from The Villages and surrounding areas.

It seems like everyone was working on the Checkerboard quilt today.  I've attached a copy of the instructions to this email and am looking forward to seeing a bunch of quilts for the Panhandle come back next week.

Show and Tell:

Mic Pickard turned in 4 dog beds and a set of 12 place mats for the Sheriff's Youth ranches.

Lorraine Manz took another set of blocks and backing from our donated stash and made another quilt for the Panhandle.

 

Eileen DiSanto donated an Elephant panel blanket to the Panhandle, and a bunny to the stuffed toys collection.

 

Donna Rissman showed her completed snowman pillow and a completed  stuffed doll.

Pat Pipa  finished her snowman pillow.

Lu Karatzas finished a stuffed bear and showed a stack of scarves with pockets that she is making for Christmas presents.


 

  
Alice Meunier showed her Snowman pillow, a holiday placemat, and a mug rug for the reindeer.

Marty Rhyne  showed her finished Snowman pillow.

 
Ellen Hein showed 2 sleep sacks for her grand kids and a sleep mask for her son.

Audrey Phillips showed a reversible, cross-strap apron she made.

Instead of a pillow, I made a smaller size snowman as a quilt block for later use.

 I also finished a Cornerstone Hospice Veteran's quilt that was in my UFO pile.

 Last week we had 2 John Dere fleece panels donated.  I backed them with cotton farm scene fabric and turned them over to Lynn for the Panhandle collection.

 

I also had a stack of hex blocks I was saving to learn how to sew these together. This finished quilt is also going to the Panhandle.

*****************************************

 

Everyone jumped into this week's project after Lynn's demo.  We had donated fabric to choose from lots of available batting.

********************

Next week is our holiday potluck party.  Bring a dish to share and your show and tell items.  As always, I will bring the plates, plastic ware, etc., and ice tea. We will have food and fun games.  See you next week.

Club Notes - Nov 28, 2018

Sorry for the delay in sending out these notes.  I really have to take some  time to read the manual for my camera.  Somehow I set it to "post focus" , which turned out to mean it recorded a one second video instead of a still picture each time.  This meant I had to extract a still photo from each video.  I guess I have to let go of my techie pride and actually read the manual to figure out how to set and unset these crazy features.

We had a great turnout this week, actually had to pull out all 6 of our extension hubs.

Announcements:

Nita Hand is recovering well from her first knee replacement surgery.  She is scheduled to have her other knee replaced on Dec. 11th and , if all goes well, hopes to be back with us in February.

The Villages has decided that quilt and sewing clubs should not use their own irons or ironing boards.  They will supply approved equipment to each rec center.  El Santiago will be getting these within the next few weeks.  The Sheriff's Youth Ranch is going to have a program to teach girls at the ranches to sew, so I will be giving the ironing boards and irons we have to them. 

Show and Tell.

Mic Pickard was busy.  She made a holder for her embroidery hoops, a duffel bag and a set of ice cream pint holders for a friend.









(She's having fun with her new embroidery machine.)

 

Diane Placek made several origami fabric ornaments (

demo next fall)

Donna Rissman made a lovely Menorah wall hanging and a 10 degree wedge table runner. (demo to come).

Eileen DiSanto showed 2 quilts.  

The second was planned to be the back for the first, but it came out so nice her husband said it should be a separate quilt,.






She also finished 12 Star Wars themed place mats for the Sheriff's youth ranch.

Carol Riggs turned in a dog bed and 10 place mats for the Sheriff's Youth Ranch.

Ellen Hein made 2 sleep sacks for her grand children and a pair of pajama pants to go with a pajama top she received.

Pat Pipa showed a quilt she made from blocks and r club donated to our club.  This quilt is going to the Panhandle.

I finished a queen size quilt top Eileen Navakas gave us a few weeks ago. I also created a  twin size quilt from the red-white-blue drier sheet blocks created by our club members.  Both of these will go to the Panhandle.

Over the past few months I have been working on a quilt for my great-niece.  She is a music teacher, a book worm, and a cat lover, so all those elements are included in the quilt.

***************************************

B.J. gave a great demo on making a snowman pillow.  I saw a lot of ladies working on variations of this project and am looking forward to seeing the results. .

Those not working on demos helped me go through the 5 bags of fabric we received from the 4H club's excess.  We separated the fabric into large, potential backings, under 2 yd pieces for pillow cases, flannels, and small pieces to be cut into blocks.
Next week the 4H club will be giving me batting that they don't need.  I don't know how much but it may be  a lot. I also received a donated queen size batting this week and we still have much of our latest bolt of 90" wide batting, so we are in good shape for batting. 
Next week is charity project week and Lynn will be showing us how to make a quick checkerboard quilt.  I will send out supply requirements in a separate email.