Classes at the City Quilter for Winter 2015

Here is the link to the new class schedule.

Please check it out!

New Year (nearly!), New Napkin Project!

Again I wanted to say thank you to everyone who made reusable sanitary napkins for Craft Hope. For anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about, please take a quick look at my earlier post here!

A few people mentioned that they would like to contribute but didn't have time before the fairly short deadline for this particular project was up. So! I contacted another group I support in Kenya, Johnny and Kate Brooks of A Future and A Hope.

The Brooks live in Kenya where they have welcomed nine(!) orphaned girls into their family. Family is the crucial word here, they go above and beyond for their girls to provide a safe, loving, learning environment to give them the best chance at a normal life. They also run a boys home and provide as much support as possible to their local community. When I mentioned the idea of making napkins to Kate, she told me that not only would her family of pre-teens and teens appreciate them, but that she also talks to women in the local community about reproductive health and would have many more young women in her area that would benefit from owning these items. The issues in Africa concerning menses and young women missing school due to not being able to afford pads isn't limited to one project, and I hope you will join me in helping these girls get as much education as they possibly can!

Since this is a project I am organizing myself, I am setting a very long, rolling deadline for any contributions. I will happily collect as many napkins as possible at any meeting I attend and will ship them out as they are given to me. I have just purchased some more cotton batting, cotton flannel and have a few yards of microfleece that I can offer up as kits for the next meeting if people are interested (please leave a comment). Again I will also add snaps for anyone who needs them once pads are sewn.

I hope people are as excited to participate as I am :)

Happy Holidays!
Tina

Emily's quilt.

Emily's quilt was finished and delivered!

Proof! See that smiling face! I was pleased to see Emmy and hand her our loving healing quilt from the guild. Way to go MODS!!  Emily was very touched and thanks you all greatly for your loving thoughts and prayers!

Now she's off to Florida to rest up in the sun, and mend.

Much love to you Emmy!
xoxox
NYC MODS

Can anyone help me find this fabric?

Hello everyone~
I bought just a couple of yards of this fabric at Jo-Ann's in March, and since then have decided I really would love to have more:

That selvage edge says "CP42539 Ikat Floral Floral All Over LEGACY STUDIO TM." Jo-Ann's doesn't have any more and can't get any more. I called The City Quilter and Patchworks and neither of them know how to get it. I looked on eBay and found some fabric by "Legacy Studio" (some of which I also own!) but not this one. Does anyone have any other ideas on where to look? I would really appreciate any thoughts... thanks very very much!

Rachael's December Group Quilt Info

Lots of firsts in this post. My first post on the NYC Metro Mod blog (whoo!), my first group quit (yeee!) to end my first year with a group of lovely & inspirational people (rousing round of applause and appreciative nods all around.)

So here are the guidelines for the group quilt idea that I spoke about at the December meeting. Get your inner minimalist out and your improvised piecing on (or should it be in?)

- Blocks made from provided dark grey background. Finished block can be any size.
- You should use the neon material to make a strip (of any shape through the block. The strip of neon fabric should be a finished 1" exactly at any exit & entry points. Finished blocks will be arranged to all line up within the quilt.



- You can add other shapes to the block but please keep the fabrics pretty modern - minimal of print - no Laura Ashley esq prints!

Please pay attention to seams. Press the neon strips out towards the grey background.

Seams in the grey background fabric press open (this will help them blend during the quilting process.) 

Any questions/concerns please e-mail me at rachael_dorr@yahoo.com.

Until February - have a wonderful holiday season and stay warm & safe everyone. x

Wrappers to flowers

So I finished my blocks for Rosanna.  Gotta find a suitable way to mail to here. Small box perhaps so my flower isn't crushed.

I had to figure out how to preserve the foil.  For more pics ... Head to my blog at www.cocktailsandthread.blogspot.com...

Here is the finished product.  Hope you like them Rosanna...

No tea, dark chocolate peanut butter cups, or chick-I-stick was harmed in the making of these blocks.  Eaten and sipped but not harmed lol.

A project finished in less than a day!

Hello all-
I was so happy to see the NYCMMQG meeting recap from November. Having sadly missed the meeting last Saturday, it was nice to see those smiling faces and gorgeous quilts again. I'm also so happy that Jess' Monday Morning Star Count is still going strong! This week, I am sharing a project that I finished in less than a day. I started this pincushion

while watching a movie on a Friday night, and finished it completely (including a trip to Petco for the crushed walnut shell filler!) just after lunch the next day. The project is based on an idea in Jess' book Quilting on the Go, which is a terrific reference for any quilter. Not only are the projects clever and inspiring, but the detailed instructions on hand piecing are extremely helpful. And the layout of the book is absolutely beautiful! Do you have a quilter on your gift list?

I've got three quilts nearly ready to sandwich together, but they are mostly in varying stages of stalled. I needed to finish something, and this was very satisfying! Here's hoping I have something to show at our meeting in February... 
Happy holidays, everyone!

November 2014 Meeting Show & Tell Recap

I wish I had attended this meeting as it looked like it was so much fun! No fancy frames on this month's photos, but thanks to Lisa, Christa, and Maria for capturing all the details and quilts!

Brian showed us a quilt top for a baby boy made from beautiful Dear Stella fabric. He will send it out to be quilted.

Another baby quilt top! This time from Chris E. For this beautiful design, Chris Googled coloring pages and transferred the designs and hand embroidered them in one night.

Debbie K. shared her first medallion quilt top, using a great palette. Debbie still doesn’t know how she should quilt it.

Another wow piece from Rachael that elicited many "Ooohs!" from the members. She estimates the quilting took about four days on her long arm. The quilt is a commission from a lady who wanted the Scottish flag. Rachael, very appropriately, chose a stylized thistle flower as the main quilting design and then completed it with feathers. Rachael shared her marking technique, which consists of only dots very lightly marked to use as reference.

Maren made this quilt for her mother-in-law. It is a replica of an old quilt she had owned and that was beyond repair. Her mother-in-law chose new fabric but Maren kept the design and dimensions identical to the original. She used the no-waste method to make the flying geese, until she discovered it doesn’t work well with directional fabric!

Chelsea attended a quilt retreat in Lancaster, PA with her mother. She finished the quilt in that weekend! Her mitered corners look very precise and the quilt has very smart use of fabric and color.

Kathy’s mother has a basement full of treasures. An example is several boxes of her grandmother's Dresden Plate wedges, all cut and ready to be appliqué. Kathy asked and was given permission to do as she pleased with them. For her sister’s 60^th birthday, she created this wall hanging quilt, using purples and greens, all 1930s fabrics. The solids are current fabric. Her sister loved the quilt but asked to have the sleeve placed horizontally, which would suit her better.

Karen H. made this lovely quilt for a couple, friends of her husband, who are expecting a child. They lived in Canada, hence the use of cozy flannel backing. Very ingeniously, she sparingly quilted using a decorative stitch.

As in previous meetings, Anita held a wonderful mini-class to show members how different blocks can be made from the same piecing. Her tutorial is published in Quiltmaker magazine and can be downloaded here.  With her paper piecing method, you can make all the pieces in the block except the center. Additionally, there is no trimming as she has done all the calculations for us!

We took a short break...

Some Cloud9 Cirrus Solid Challenge blocks.

More submissions to the Craft Hope challenge! Thanks for organizing, Tina.

More about the Art Quilt challenge from Bernadette and Michele.

Yvette showed us a quilt she made for a co-worker’s baby. She used the Charming Quilt pattern created for her new joint venture with Andrea D, an online fabric shop, GothamQuilts. Gotham Quilts also offers the pattern and a kit. Yvette also talked to us about her experience at Market.

Sarah D. showed us her only 2014 quilt, and we can see why! It is a true two-sided quilt, and she did the quilting as well.

Lisa got into a Pat Sloan mistery quilt-along, which features one block from a different place in the world. This globetrotting top of Lisa’s, featuring her signature bright colors (she confessed that they might even be a bit too bright even for her!), needs quilting, but she is not sure yet how she will tackle the next step.

Faithful to her environmentally conscious quilting style, Tina’s quilt – a Christmas gift for her boyfriend’s mom-- is made of repurposed or recycled material. She lifted some HSTs from our swap table (they were Lisa’s), got some shot cotton at a thrift store, used some yoga pants, an Indian shirt and even a bedsheet. All together, a beautiful quilt!

Laura realized that completing a whole quilt to donate to a charity auction was less than realistic, so she lowered her own expectations and worked on making four pillowcases for a gift basket instead. The pillowcases feature Frozen characters, the most popular this year for young girls. Using the burrito method, making the cases was super easy!

Jennifer is taking a Color Class at City Quilter with Susan Sato and this is her rendition of using her least favorite color in a quilt. She used Katie Pederson’s flip triangles method.

Jennifer also showed us a fantastic quilt she bought at an estate auction for $60! (many gasps here from the audience) She tried to clean it softly first but at her mother’s advice, she washed the quilt on her machine to get rid of the musty odors. She doesn’t know the quilt’s provenance or its date but she is looking forward to fully restore this beauty.

Karen showed us a quilt she made and had handquilted by somebody in Arkansas.

Karen also shared with us an experiment in hand-dyeing. The tight weave of the fabric she used made it quite difficult to hand quilt.

Wina is a new member who just moved from Colorado. She showed us a quilt she made using the fedora hat paper piecing pattern by Penny Layman. Everybody welcomed her and complimented her quilt.

Too busy with bees, challenges and block lottos, Maria did not finish a quilt to show. Instead, she brought two cushion covers she made by continuing sewing the HSTs from the Cloud9 challenge. Maria made two blocks from amazing Cirrus Solids, backed them with batting and appliquéd them to two Ikea cushion covers. No zipper was installed during this project!

A lucky winner of Block Lotto, Rossanna used her winnings and mixed disappearing  nine-patch and railway blocks. She long-armed the quilt at a friend’s house.

Cynthia showed us two beautiful baby quilts made for our Inwood House charity using the fabric from Cloud9 Fabrics. Andrea will deliver them to two happy moms-to-be!

More outtakes!

Look forward to seeing everyone on Saturday!