Saturday, April 28, 2018

April 2018

We enjoyed a beautiful spring day for our April meeting. Thank you Maurene for hosting and Darla for helping with the food!  
On May 30th we will be meeting at Darla's home and Caren is helping with the food.
Jeanie was asked by our local library to help make some "fidget quilts" for people with alzheimer's. If you would like to help her make those, please contact her and she'll arrange a date to get together and sew.
Also, a tip that was given for making T-shirt quilts--the best thing to use on the back of the T-shirts is Pellon fusible woven interfacing SF101.

SHOW AND TELL


Darla made this using a Villa Rosa Design pattern. She used shark material for one of her grandsons.
This is also a quilt Darla made for another grandson. He likes tractors.
This is the pattern Darla used for the quilt below.

This is the pattern Darla used for the quilt below using all batiks.

Using a birds and hearts panel fabric, Darla made this quilt and used the two leftover panels to make placemats.
Diane made both of these quilts (top and bottom) for baby girls. These are made using scraps. The top quilt is a brick pattern and the bottom quilt is small 4-patches.

Jeri used French fabrics for the this quilt she made for her daughter. She made up her own pattern for this.
Rachel made this wool bird wall hanging using her own hand-dyed wool fabric.
Close of up wool wall hanging
Nancy made this cross body Bali bag.
Darla made this duffle bag
Maurene made this diamonds quilt for her 49th great granddaughter. She also quilted it by hand.
LUNCH

Thursday, April 12, 2018

February and March meetings 2018

March 2018



Lenette and Cindy hosted in March and we had a great turn out, beautiful quilts, a fun demo and delicious lunch. Enjoy the photos below!



Cindy made this quilt to give to a couple who will be leaving soon to serve a 3 year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They will be serving as president over an entire area and will get to work with lots of young missionaries who will also be coming to that same area. 






Cindy also made this camping quilt. She used clip art for this quilt and also the mission quilt above.



Another quilt made by Cindy for Christmas.
Nancy C. made this quiet book























Cindy made this sewing bag from fabric given to her by her sister.


Jeri made this row by row quilt top.



Susan made this quilt for one of her beds. It's called the Double Square Star from Missouri Star Quilts. It was quilted by Terri Hair.

Rachel made this Christmas quilt. She and Susan both made the same quilt (below is Susan's).


Susan's Christmas quilt. It's called Holiday Forest

Rachel made this Hawaiian quilt for a friend at her husband's work. Each block has meaning and a little history from Hawaiian quilt makers. She even did echo quilting which is traditional Hawaiian method for quilting.

Caren made this pillow using a ruching technique for the flowers.

Jean made this bag using a linen blend fabric.


Jean also made this bargello quilt from a Cozy Quilt Design pattern.


This is a flannel heart quilt made by Jean. It's called Patchwork Hearts.


Monica made this quilt using one charm quilt and added some of her own fabrics.


Nancy made this flying geese quilt using vintage sheets. It was quilted by her husband, Gary. He used a bamboo batting which made it very soft and supple.







DEMO
Cindy showed us a quick and easy way to make the card trick quilt block using only rectangles and squares instead of the traditional half square triangles. She used 4 yards for the background fabric and one jelly roll. Missouri Star has a great tutorial for this method.
One thing Cindy suggests however is to trim the card trick square before you add the setting triangles so that the points will be closer to the seam.



Card trick square. Sew the last two top and bottom seams to form the card trick square.

Trim this square before you add the corner triangles.




Lenette made this rope basket to hold her sweet smelling bunny gifts that she gave to each of us.
For a link on how to make these rope baskets, go to the post on this blog from January 2017.

LUNCH









Wednesday, February 28, 2018

February 2018

A cold February, but Jeri helped us all feel a bit warmer with our tropical themed quilt meeting this month. Thanks for hosting and thank you to Robyn for helping with food!

Show and Tell

Caren finished her Pizza Box Christmas quilt. She hand quilted it.
Jeanie made these two tumbler quilts for her great grandtwins. She used the Accuquilt to cut it all out.

Nancy F. made this fun quilt for her granddaughter and it's made of flannel.
Jeri made this flower quilt for her granddaughter using a pattern she got from Jean.
Jeri also made this yoyo pillows using the yoyo's we received last year from Susan.
This is Jeri's dresden quilt that was made using blocks from her husband's cousin's grandma. The material is at least 50 years old and all of it is handpieced.
Close up of the fabrics
Jeri made this Hunter's Star using her batik scraps and then she demonstrated an easy way to make Hunter's Star.

DEMO
Cut 6 1/2" white squares and add 3" contrasting fabric around each side. Then cut 6 1/2" squares from the contrasting fabric and add 3" white borders around them.
Cut each resulting square in half diagonally.
From each diagonal piece, cut a strip 2 1/2" away from the center or long side of the triangles. Then sew two of those strips together matching contrasting colors together as shown above.
Then either cut 9 1/2" squares from both the color fabric and the white fabric, and cut it diagonally...or cut a long strip of both fabrics 6 1/2" wide, then using a ruler like the one marked below or your cutting mat, cut out triangles from the long strip turning the ruler as you go.  Add a white triangle to the side that has the white center piece and add a color fabric triangle to the side that has colored fabric in the center (as shown above).  This will make one square. Place 4 squares together to make a larger square, turning each square so that it will make the Hunter Star design. Jeri's quilt was 7 of the smaller squares across by 9 squares down. She estimates that the amount of white fabric she needed was about 5 yards.
2nd DEMO

Jeri showed us a way to make a more interesting binding. Cut two sets of strips for your binding-the first one is 1 3/4" wide and the second is 1 1/4" wide. Sew them together then fold in half creating something that looks like piping. Attach to your quilt as you would any other binding but the effect is a two tone binding.

LUNCH


Coconut Layer Cake

2 ¾ c. flour
1 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
1 ¾ c. sugar
1 c. butter, room temperature
1 c. canned sweetened cream of coconut (buy a 15 oz can of Coco Lepez – save the rest for the frosting)
4 large eggs, separated
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 c. buttermilk

¾ - 1 c. raspberry jam  
2 – 2 ½  c. sweetened shredded coconut (you may want to toast ½ c. of this to use on the very top)
Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut three circles of wax paper to fit the bottom of three 9” diameter cake pans. Put wax paper in bottom of pans then butter and flour pans.

Beat egg whites with a pinch of salt in a large bowl until stiff but not dry.  Set aside.

Mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt then set aside.  In a different bowl, beat together butter and sugar until fluffy.  Beat in cream of coconut then beat in egg yolks and vanilla.  On low speed, beat in flour mixture and then buttermilk, each just until blended. Fold beaten egg whites into batter.

Divide batter between prepared bans.  Bake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about  23-28 min.  Cool about 10 minutes then run a knife around pan sides and turn cake layers onto racks to cool completely, removing wax paper.

Place one cake layer on cake plate.  Spread thin layer of frosting over cake layer . Spread ½ the jam over frosting.  Top with second cake, thin layer of frosting and the rest of the jam.  Top with third cake layer then spread remaining frosting over top and sides of cake.   Sprinkle coconut over cake, gently pressing into sides to adhere.  (This can be prepared up to 1 day ahead.  Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate.  Let stand at room temperature 2 hours before serving.)

Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting

6 oz. cream cheese
¼ c. butter
3 ½ c. powdered sugar
½ c. canned sweetened cream of coconut (leftover from cake recipe)
1 tsp. vanilla

Beat cream cheese and butter together until fluffy.  Beat in cream of coconut and vanilla, then add sugar, 1 c. at a time and beat until fluffy.

Hawaiian Haystacks
Rice on the right is a Rice Medley from Winco. It even has lentils with it.