November 2018

Happy Thanksgiving weekend! 

We had a boisterous meeting today.  There must be something in the air.  Everyone was busily working on one project or another.  Sue was making aprons, Sheree was making Christmas stockings, I was working on Bonnie Hunter's new mystery quilt Good Fortune, Rhonda was working on her blocks for the Anniversary Mystery Quilt and Linda was working on one of her projects.  (Linda, I don't think I got what you were working on-let me know so we can all know!)  Poor Peggy was unable to make club as she was nursing a sick husband.  I hope he is feeling better soon.

It had been pretty dry for some of us the last couple of show and tells, but the dry spell is over!  We had a lot to share today.

 Sheree is finishing some Christmas stockings.

 Sheree's beginning design for her triangle quilt.

 Sue did a round robin quilt with her other quilt club and this is her Halloween fabric version of that.

  The is the top of the Fancy Forest Quilt I am making for Sarah's graduation from nursing school next month.

 I have done a little bit of knitting too.  This is a hat I just completed. 

 Rhonda made a couple of these Missouri Star's pattern quilts.

 How different they look with the different colors.

 This is the back of the Patriot's quilt.

 Rhonda's memory quilts.

 This is the one that was giving her so much trouble and it turned out great.  

Here are the Cloverleaf Sampler Quilts.

 Rhonda's  Cloverleaf Sampler quilt.  She used a very unusual and interesting layout.

Sue's Cloverleaf Sampler quilt.  Just wow!  Look at that Mariner's Star she made to complete the top.

This is my Cloverleaf Sampler quilt completed.

Linda's Cloverleaf Sampler quilt quilted and ready to get its binding.

Quilt blocks for the Anniversary Mystery Quilt

Rhonda's

 Sheree's

 Linda's

 Pam's

Patty's

Sue's

Peggy's

Virtual show and tell.

Sue made this from the left over blocks from Jim's quilt of valor he made for his friend.

 Sue's butterfly memory quilt finished.

 The back of the butterfly quilt.

Sue's Halloween quilt.  She free hand quilted the spiderwebs in the orange blocks.  She has really upped her quilting game!

We had pizza and snacks today to eat.  Sheree made mini cheesecakes for dessert.

Rhonda sent out the next clue for the mystery quilt.

This is all about applique.  You can use any technique you like.  (Needle turn, iron on, machine-stitched.

Block #1  9 X 9 square.  Since this is the holiday season, applique a Christmas theme image onto this block.  Pinterest is a good resource for images and of course Google.  

Block #2  9 X 12 Applique the initial of your first name.  You can find ABC templates on the internet, any style you prefer. https://tinyurl.com/yc3a37f9

Block #3  Go to 2018 Moda Blockheads and make Block 13.  It is a 6 X 15 inch block.

If you run out of things to do there is always your border strings. 

This was the final quilt club for the year.  Everyone has plenty of time to finish your sampler quilts and mystery quilt blocks.

In January Peggy is going to show us how to make the fabric bowls.   You need a zig zag stitch to do these.  Sue is going to show us how to do reverse applique in case we want to try this on our initial applique block for our mystery quilt.  She will let us know what we need to have prepared for this.

I hope everyone has a very happy and blessed Christmas and New Year!

Fifteenth Anniversary!!!! October 2018

Happy Anniversary Cloverleaf Quilt Club!!!  What a wonderful and fun adventure it has been.  Those 15 years have just flown by.  I hope that we can have at least another 15!

Rhonda has been our mentor and the catalyst behind our little group.  Without her, we would all probably still be doing some quilting and sewing.  With her we have done some amazing things.

We have done many charity quilts:  some for Special Olympics that raised a lot of money for that organization and some for Veterans. We have made bags for NICU.  

We have done a lot of group projects-Thimbleberry quilts and table runners, stack and whack type Christmas tree quilts, charm square quilts, round robins quilts,and sampler quilts to name a few.  This year we are doing a special Anniversary Mystery quilt that Rhonda has created.  

There have been a few of us who have done Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilts together.  

We have made purses and bags together.  

At least once a year we have gone shop hopping together.

There have been quilting retreats where we learned new skills together-Rehoboth, Cape May and Bedford.

And of course we have had our monthly meetings where we sew, socialize and eat!

Just looking over these few things I have listed that we have done together as a group is amazing.  We have had fun and enjoyed each other's company and even learned some things along the way.  

Cloverleaf Quilt Club is a jewel in my life that I cherish and I am sure everyone else does too.  

This last weekend in October we began our 15th year celebration by doing one of our favorite activities-shopping for fabric!!!

This is our attempt at a selfie during our stop at Goods!  Sorry Sue for missing your chin!  You still look cute!

We shopped at Zincks .  We didn't visit Obie's this time, but we did have a laugh about that during lunch as someone posted pictures of Obie's and made comments about it on Facebook.  

We stopped at the Kling House in Kitchen Kettle for lunch after first shopping at Zooks.  We all had delicious lunches.

Then we spent time in The Country Store.

We visited the Yarn Nook.

Then we went to the Log Cabin (I think that is what it is called.)  

The day flew by.  We headed home with a trunk full of fabric.  We didn't do as much damage to our wallets this time as we have done before, by the looks of it.

As usual, our shop hopping was an enjoyable time together.

Our shop hop was on Friday and only the beginning of our anniversary celebration.

Saturday night we all met at the Hillside Restaurant.  After a bit of confusion over our reservations, we settled into our own private room.  

Sheree had gift bags for everyone. They added a festive touch to our party.

To get our gift bag we played  What's your Quilt Town Name.  We had some pretty crazy names!

The cute bags contained some personalized gifts.  Are these not the cutest?  Sheree's daughter in law did the glasses.  There was also a cloverleaf cookie with 15 on it.  If anyone has their's and wants to send me a picture I will post it.  Mine didn't survive.  I just sampled the sangria-yum!

We took a break for dinner and I think we all had very good meals and drinks.

After dinner we played another game.  The Left/Right game.  We all brought gifts to share.  We started out with our gift in front of us.  Then Rhonda read a quilt story.  Every time Rhonda said left we passed our gift to our left and when she said right we passed out gift to the right.  We did a pretty good job of getting our directions correct.  At the end of the story, the gift in front of us was ours.  All the gifts were quilting/sewing related.

For dessert we has special cupcakes with candles.  We toasted our anniversary with these.  You can see the cupcakes in the photo below.

Talking about pictures-we got some group pictures.  We are a cute looking group of ladies, if I do say so myself!

 

There was one more special gift that Rhonda had made for us.  She had the same Cloverleaf Quilt Club 15 year celebration theme put onto a square of muslin, in our own colors, for our anniversary mystery quilt.  We were delighted with these.

We spent more time socializing and laughing together.  What a special evening this was for all!  Thank you Rhonda!

For our Cloverleaf Anniversary Mystery Quilt, CAMQ, Rhonda emailed the next clue.

• 1 - 12 inch Shamrock block (file attached) It doesn’t have to be green.
• 3 - 6 inch blocks with block names using the first letter of your first name
• 3 - 6 inch blocks with block names using the first letter of your last name

At the party she gave us directions for another Shamrock quilt block.  We can use either one.  I am not sure about the time frame for getting these finished.

We will be meeting next month right after Thanksgiving.  That will be our last meeting until 2019!

Here are some virtual show and tells.

These are Patty's 18 inch blocks and the start of her string block borders.  This is going to be beautiful!  

Peggy made this cute Fall quilt.

 This is another one of Peggy's quilts.

If anyone else wants to add pictures to our virtual show and tell send them to me.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

September 2018

Happy Fall!  Please allow me to whine-but I feel like we  skipped summer pretty much this year.  Hopefully the damp weather will go away so we don't have a wet winter!  I am getting too old to like all the snow!

We had a wonderful September meeting.

Doris and Deb from New York were visiting.  It was a lot of fun spending time with them.

Doris and Deb are going to join in on our 15th Anniversary Mystery Quilt!  It looks like we will have more than our immediate group working on this besides Deb and Doris.  Deb's sister Marie is joining in.  Our own Deb Beam will be joining and so will Patty!

We are already having such fun with the AMQ project.  We discussed blocks and layouts after Rhonda gave us our first clue.  This is going to stretch our skills again as we work on our colors and resizing blocks we like.  A great challenge for us.  I am excited to see what we all come up with.

To recap what we have for the AMQ.  Last month we each blindly selected our main color.  Here is that list in no particular order.
Pam-green
Linda-lime green
Peggy-peach/apricot
Rhonda-brown
Sheree-blue
Sue-indigo
Patty-gray
Deb Beam-yellow
Doris-red
Deb-yellow
Marie-turquoise.
Our hint from last month was Bonnie Hunter's Jamestown Landing quilt.

First clue-make three different 18 inch blocks.  These will need to be finished by November.

Rhonda thinks we will need about three yards of our main color-scrappy of course!

I was playing around with the sizes and Rhonda also had suggestions for figuring out the sizes if you are resizing a block to get to 18 inches.  Rhonda said to use graph paper with each square equaling an inch.  She said to divide it into three.

I think any block that can be broken down into a nine patch can easily be resized with simple math.  I was looking as some blocks I like, and they don't fit a nine patch, so I would have to use fractions to get the pieces to fit.  Not undo-able-just more math involved.

Rhonda suggested a few different sites to look for 18 inch blocks.  365 Challenge,  Moda Blockheads, and Quilter's Cache .  Google is your friend, so that may be helpful.  So is pinterest.  Another resource are the 100 Blocks magazine by Quiltmaker's.  I have a couple of those.  Have fun selecting the blocks and making them!

If you have time, you may begin to work on the border.  The border will be around 56-6.5 inch string blocks made with neutrals.  The inside of the quilt will measure around 72 x 84 before this border is put on.  Here is a picture of what they will look like.  Note the picture is for 8.5 inch blocks and ours will be 6.5.

Rhonda has had questions, so she will send more info about the AMQ and I will post it when I receive it.

After eating the wonderful lasagna Rhonda made, along with garlic bread, peanut butter fudge, pumpkin whoopie pies and lemon meringue pie, we had show and tell.

Linda has been busy!  She has tops and backings finished and quilts quilted.  First up is a tropical panel she made into a quilt for her niece.

 ...and the pieced back.

 A Paris themed quilt....

 ...and the pieced back.

 Her Round Robin quilt top.

 A Take Six quilt...

 ...and its pieced back.

 A pastel quilt too.  These last two quilts are ones that she did as she was teaching her friend Bridget how to quilt.

 Another piece backing.

 This is the beginnings of a memory quilt she is making using ties and a wedding dress.

Rhonda is working on some memory quilts too.  This is a tie dye quilt top.  She has another one for this same family with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that has zapped her creativity.  I sure hope she can just get that one done so she can go back to having fun designing and making quilts again!  Here is a link  (another)  to one that may help get those creative juices flowing again!

Peggy sent in some pictures of her work over the summer.  She has been mostly crocheting and knitting.

This is the denim quilt she made.  Great for picnics and the beach!

Patty sent a picture of her Round Robin quilt top.

I wanted to get a picture of our guests, but we got busy doing other things and I forgot.  Sorry.

Next month is our 15th Anniversary celebrations.  We are going to start out by shop hopping on Friday, October 26th.  Then Saturday, the 27th we will be getting together for dinner?  Do I have that right?  Maybe someone can send me the correct details and updates on this and I will add them to the blog post.

Have fun working on your AMQ!  See everyone next month!