Happy New Year! Jan 2017 Meeting

Let's start off the year by thanking Janet and Michelle for organizing our meetings and Charmaine for being such a fabulous note taker.  I can well imagine the organizing is a bit like herding cats - and I know note taking is a challenging art form.  So a big thanks to all of you!

Janet started off by taking care of some past business, specifically the Hunter Star class that Gail will be doing again for those interested.  Contact Janet if you are.  

Another item we discussed was the matter of "homework blocks".  We've sort of stalled on that front.  The previous blocks are all posted on a separate tab in this blog.  We decided that going forward, in addition to email, Mary would post the monthly block on the group's Facebook page (which she has done for the upcoming month's block).

Stephen Rice of Sewing Sensation/Sewing World hosted our meeting.  Thanks Stephen!

Here is our happy little group.  Actually not so little!  But our attendance was down this month, likely due to the frosty weather.

Charmaine - above - taking notes and below - show and tell.

The minutes would not open for me, so my apologies - the names won't be coming unless I happen to know your name.  I don't know this lady's name, but I do remember that she said this was her first time out trying feathers.  She did a great job on this log cabin!

Sandy, above, did an "infomercial" for Quilts of Valour.  There is even a new line of fabric that can be used, which she is showing here.  She noted that in Alberta, we have tall Veterans, so we like our quilts to be larger than the "official" size.  Ours should be 60" * 80" or even bigger.  She had 5 with her that needed quilting and in short order, quilters volunteered.  We are such a great group!  😀 (I found the emojis - look out now!  😎)

Allison, enthusiastic as always, talked about her recent training and that she now has Pro-Stitcher on her Handi-Quilter machine, which she was testing for the first time the other day on this quilt.

And maybe this quilt?

Again, a name I don't know but she did this pretty fabulous quilt.

And here is Heather.  I asked if I'd read she was in a magazine with this quilt.  She said no.  But now that I've done a quick search on our FB page, it turns out I wasn't dreaming - I just remembered wrongly - it was not a magazine, it was on the APQS blog, so she is famous and her quilt is famous!  Yay!

I believe this lady said her name is Joan...(?) She did this baby quilt - we discussed quilting as she had a few questions.  She did a fabulous job!

And Janet, taking her inspiration from Terry's bags, made herself a quilted tote.

Kim, above, showing Quilters Connection - her recipe is in there and I think she's a regular contributor.  I actually picked up a copy of this rag as I've been asked to submit a quilt - it will be in the next issue.  But it was fun to see people I know in the mag - in addition to Kim J-H, Gail and Kim H are in this issue and there are a couple of Calgary people on the editorial board as well.  I had not heard of this publication until recently.

Jane gave a presentation of her tricks and tips or "Quilting Hacks" as she likes to call them.  She has some really great ideas for making quilting easier and it's great that's she's so willing to share them. 

Jane shows how to bury threads with a self-threading needle.

Let me know what I've missed - I am going strictly from memory here so by definition would have forgotten something critical!   Cheers and stay warm!  😍☃