Weekly Update - Novemver 28, 2015

Here are the photos I got from Lu from last week.  See you on Saturday, Dec 5, for our all day sewing day.  I plan to use the time to make some table runners using my 60 degree triangle.
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Helen Lawrie - talk about lovely ladies... made 3 stockings and gave them to FFAC for our goodie box!!

Lu Karatzas - showed us her crafty key ring pouches

Nancy Cartlidge - finished charity quilt!!  Great job girl!!!   table runners

 Pajama Project:
Pauline Sheehan & Lu Karatzas - Tee Shirts!  beautiful sewing
 







Carol Riggs - clown and our surprise celebrity - WOW








Eileen DiSanto - pillowcases and table scarves.

Ladies - One of the best things I saw all week is that dogs rescued from the Michael Vick hell hole were able to be retrained and learn love again.  It happened at Best Friends Rescue in Utah.  Want to make a nice Christmas gift in someone's name, consider that would be an awesome place to contribute to for sure.  One of the pictures I saw was so dear of one of the dogs hugging a care giver.  And Chris Moore, a Villager who lives in Village of Hillsboro, who from time to time brings us big pieces of fabric for our charity work, actually visited Best Friends in Utah over the summer and saw first hand their great work.  So Chris has purchased a whole bolt of fabric for FFAC!  It's really fabulous to get these big pieces of fabrics for our work!  

Saturday is an ALL DAY SEW opportunity for our club!!!  I'm very excited about this.  We'll start at  9 am and go to 4 pm - we'll have show and tell at 1:00 just after lunch.  Come early, come late, come in between - whatever works in your schedules.  We'll have lots of charitable projects going on, so take your pick and join in!!  

Thank you to Carol Riggs for bringing us the lovely Maisie Baird and her beautiful Christmas Trees last Saturday for us to meet in person.  Totally awesome!!  Maisie was highlighted in The Daily Sun (front page) last Friday with lovely article about how she masterfully makes handcrafted Christmas trees with fabric using a magnifying glass because she is legally blind.  What's the saying, when God gives your lemons, make lemonade??  Maise does that and more and all with a beautiful smile on her face.  Truly and honor for us to meet her - thanks Carol!!!

Weekly Update - Nov. 21, 2015

I'm back in The Villages, so I've added commentary to the photos below.  Lois

**I'm posting the photos Lu kindly took for me today without comment because I will have limited internet access for the next week.  Once I return home I will update this with Micki's commentary. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday everyone!**

 Micki's demo this week - creating easy children's fabric books.

Lu Karatzas - 2 sets of Trees and one hour fabric baskets - got to mention cool idea Lu is putting together for Christmas gifts.  She's made the recipe pot holders, now the baskets, and she's going to put together some of the ingredients, etc. needed for the recipes and package all together in the baskets with maybe paper plates, napkins, etc. - pretty cool!

Mary Ann Emrick - pillow cases and tissue holder

Audrey Philips - 4 pillowcases - good to hear you are all moved in and feeling better, too!!

Carol Riggs - table topper - sorry to see and hear about your boo boo left arm break in cast - I really sympathize on this one!  

Sue Campbell - quilt top - very pretty work!!

Elaine Krise - pillow cases and quilt!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Linda Parr - pillow cases, quilts, table runners - goodness! you must have that "Lois Rose" syndrome coming on!!

Patty Cooke - pillow cases, table runner - lovely sewing as always!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eileen DiSanto - flower - very, very pretty one!!! 

Pat Pipa - assorted - of course doggie bed was part of that - and an armful of little bears made with fleece, cute faces, for the baby and toddler quilts for Christmas - Pat's happy heart and busy hands at work as usual!!

Jane Swafford - pillowcases and Halloween tablerunner all ready for next year - wow! that's really working on stuff in advance (ha ha).

Lois Rose - lovely quilting of Elaine Krise pieced top!!

And, the first block of a Lighthouse block-of-the-month project

Eileen Navikas came in a little later with a great man's fidget quilt.

Helen Lowry made2 doggy beds, going the extra steps to add to the dog'scomfort. Beautiful work.

I did a quick overview/demo of making fabric books from scap - ideas on book themes, several construction options, stitch options, and edge finishing.  Heads up:  We plan to have a sewing day at Carol Riggs' house in the New Year to make some books from scratch - date & time TBD.  If you are interested in participation, space will be limited.  Once Carol is out of cast, and back to sewing, we'll get this set up so you'll need to get your name in for a spot.

Weekly Update - Nov 14-15, 2015

Thanks to all the ladies who chipped in to make fidget quilts on Saturday.  We now have enough to fulfill Harbor Chase's request for 20.  I plan to deliver them on Wednesday.
Lois




















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Ladies - Saturday was a beautiful day here in The Villages and our club had a wonderful meeting at SeaBreeze and completely accomplished filling the request from memory care unit of Harbor Chase for fidget quilts - thanks for your ingenuity, creativity, and hard work! 

First of all, Linda Parr shared with us her demo "Memory Pillow" - this is incredible - so many of us who watched just were amazed by how it is really so easy and ingenious.  Linda shared the 3 pillows she has made.  Her son-in-law lost his father, Linda made a memory pillow for him with one of his father's shirts, made a memory pillow for the grandson with one of his father's shirts; and made the prototype memory pillow (before using those 2 shirts) by using one of her husband's shirts and that pillow will go to her daughter - how absolutely cool is that!  Thank you, Linda, for sharing this very enlightening project with us. 

Also on Saturday we started work on PJ bottoms for the Pajama & Book Drive sponsored by Girl Scout Alumnae of The Villages.  We were really fortunate that a couple ladies just stopped in to see what going on and decided to help.  One of those ladies spent 3 hours stuffing doggie beds, and her friend spent 3 hours cutting PJ pieces out for us to sew up.  And that is exactly what we did then on Sunday at SeaBreeze - thank from the bottom of my heart to the lovely ladies who came out in force, worked so well together, more PJ's cut out, and alll total at 3 PM we have now 21 completed bottoms, with 3 more getting down at home.  Now we'll purchase the tee-shirts to pair with PJ bottoms to make the complete sets.  

Tee Shirts embellishment to pair with PJ bottoms will now be part of this coming Saturday's fun!    We'll be adding borders and appliques from scrap fabrics left over.  We can add pockets.  We can add buttons.  We can add rick rack.  We can... well, that's up to you all... creativity, sharing, caring!!!  Ladies, you will see how easy this is.

Additionally - Saturday we're going to look at ways to make and customize Fabric Books from scraps!!  These are not difficult, they can be very basic, they can be very artistic... from beginner to intermediate sewing crafting techniques - it's just a wide open, plain palet project that individuals can work on at their own pace and expertise - and each and every completed one will be its own perfect piece.

And did I mention that we have Sweatshirt Conversions going on???  Yes we do.  Have you done one previously, want to bring it in to share??   

I'd like to see the 12 pillowcases that were cut out come back on Saturday so Lois can add them to the stash being created for the Christmas Charity giving to the shelters.  Thank you.

One more item... the little quilts you all have started.  We've got to finish some of these up now.  If  you have tops in process and want help with next steps, please bring those in and let's get you to the "quilt sandwich" stage so you can quilt it up.

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Although there wasn't going to be a show and tell this week, a few ladies brought in their creations, so I took their pictures anyway.

Ellen Hein added blocks to 2 smaller quilts to make them big enough for our Christmas toddler quilt effort, plus completed another wonderful scrappy quilt.

 

 Elaine Krise brought in her quilt top to be finished



and Susie Pendry brought her completed quilt.

 A little later Pat Pipa brought in another of her completed charity quilts.











Our final show and tell was Eileen Navikas showing a quilt she has been working on for a while and has finally completed.