Our theme for the November 2010 meeting was "Your Favorite Quilting Tools". Each person was to bring one or two favorite tools to show and share.
Some tools were new to us. Some we had been using for decades. Here is the familiar quarter inch sewing guide that two members shared that day. Many of us have used this particular tool for years.
Your Roving Reporter wishes she had thought to keep a running list of what folks brought to share. Instead she has bugged Anne Dawson all evening to verify details when she couldn't find the needed EQ member at home.
Some of the tools were quite fascinating and new to us. Others were familiar but with suggested new uses.
Becky Huffington recently lucked onto 1934 model of a Singer Featherweight portable sewing machine as a result of being asked to help a woman sort and clean up after another family member had moved away.
These particular sewing machines weigh about 11 pounds so are very popular with quilters who have to haul sewing machines to a class. They are also highly collectible among all sewing machine afficiandos.
Here Christy Sturgill shares a thread dispenser and pin holder all rolled into one that E. L. Heickel of Goldendale, the brother of a friend, used to make.
Carole Knutsen (below) showed us of one of her favorite "how-to" quilting books, explaining how clear she finds each step of its illustrated instructions. (Oh yes, the hat....i.e. fabric on Carole's head. That does deserve an explanation.)
Woodman Hall is very cold but it's amazing how much body heat one can conserve by placing a square of coloful fabric on one's head. It actually works! At the next meeting, bring a square of fabric for your head as well as a small quilting project for your lap and you'll stay toasty warm the whole meeting!
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| L-R: Christy Sturgill, Carolyn Woodbury, Carole Knutsen |
Karen Alexander shared an array of measuring devices that her mother-in-law and EQ founding member Wini Alexander used in her earliest years of quilting in the 1970s and 1980s. Wini had even made a storage bad for them of corduroy.
Candy Midkiff shared an iron that surely doesn't seem that old to most of us. But do you remember ever seeing so many different types of fabrics listed on an iron before?
Click on the photo to read the list of fabrics de regueur of the day!
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| L-R: Peggy Schuld, Candy Midkill, Carol Whetten |
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| L-R: Joyce Landau, Nancy Wallace, Barbara Carver, Joanne Bryant |
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| Kathy Montgomery, Carolyn Baldwin, ? , Laurie Latta |
Anne also shared a new white mechanical pencil which several members picked up from her shop and love. Several also mentioned how indispenable the small bendable tiny "lamp" is that attaches to your sewing machine. (Anne can also get this item for us. (See mine below).
Nancy Givens shared a new tool used to make perfect binding and mitered corners. She even gave us a short demonstration. The tool is marketed as "Binding Thingy". Yes, you read it correctly!
Barbara Carter shares how she uses the special viewer to see a quilt from a distance. If you can't actually stand back and get that distance physically due to lack of space, this is the tool for you.
Even though the images are slightly out of focus, I couldn't resist adding them; especially this second one because I accidentally captured Barbara's face in the glass.
Since many of the tools were often quite small, your Roving Photographer was unable to get a good photo from across the room of many of them for which she apologizes.
She had great plans for showing you lots of photos and, indeed, did take lots of photos. But!.....quilters were so animated in the showing of their tools that more than half of her photos turned out blurred!
So if you don't see your photo here, it's either because it was so out of focus (see Joann's below as an example) or your object was so small she couldn't catch it on camera from across the room.
Hating to interrupt people's flow of sharing by demanding "Would you please hold STILL!!", she took her chances and lucked out with a few. (Of course it could also have to do with her somewhat limited photography skills. She hopes to have better luck next time with your help.)
Now for some of the quilts that were shared!
The following three quilts are a result of Kitty Sorgen's class, Butterbutter & Jelly. Each participant gave her interpretation of the pattern a different food name. Later the group threw a potluck, each bringing the food which reflected the name of her quilt.
"Raspberry Fizz" by Kathleen Montgomery
Laurie Latta's "Butter & Marmalade"
Barbara Carver's rendition of the same pattern, appropriately named Wine & Cheese.
Charlene Demetrick's "One Block Wonder" from a class she took at the quilt shop in Anacortes. The first snapshot gives you a good sense of the movement created by the color and liveliness of the fabrics in this quilt!
Ok, a little less motion here and the pattern comes into focus.
And a still closer look shows us the detials of the fabric itself! The eye's have it here!
Anne Dawson recently offered an applique class at The Quilter's Studio in which you brought your own pattern. Edi Blomberg's fat little turkey based on a pattern Nancy Givens shared at the last EQ meeting.
Janicie Coltran shared a colorful clutch bag recently stitched as a result of a class also at The Quilter's Studio.
Long-time EQ member Anne Dawson, owner of The Quilter's Studio located above Vita's in the village, recently offered another class, "Garden Path". Here is Carol Whetten's interpretation of that pattern thru her own fabric selection of lovely flower prints.
Carolyn Woodbury passed around a photo of her latest quilt for a grandson living in Holland. The quilt contains photos as well as fabric from her recent visit to Holland.
Karen Alexander shared a fragment of an antique quilt top from the 1890s she recently acquired. The pattern is commonly known as New York Beauty and is all hand pieced.
What state of the art needlework tools do you suppose this quilt maker used in her era to make such an intricate piece?
You'll have to ask Candy! I didn't get a photo of the contents! But I do know that some of the very tools that had been shared were included!
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