Hello to all and Happy National Sewing Month! Also Glenna Shephard notified us that the Guild Meeting Day on Saturday September 17th is National Jelly Roll Day! Wow! Never knew of it before! Let me know if you find more sewing/quilting related days of the year. National/International Quilting Day is the 3rd Saturday in March – there must be more. Maybe each precut fabric gets a day!
Our next meeting will be at the same place as usual – The Trinity United Methodist Church in Phenix City at 1600 5th Avenue. Park on the downhill side, and if you don’t mind walking a bit, please unload at the church and move your vehicle just across the corner in the parking lot of Uptown Jewelry and Pawn where 4th Avenue and 16th Street meet. I am delighted to say that we have so many attendees now that we overflow park over there. We need to keep spaces near the ramp available for those who can’t walk very far, and for new visitors to find us.
Our workshop starts at 10 AM sharp. Please come in and set up your stuff early. I’m there by 9:00 and appreciate your help setting up guild stuff too. The main workshop will be working on the Mystery Christmas Project with Juanita – you will have already signed up and been getting her weekly email instructions. Bring your machine and sewing supplies, small cutting mat, rotary cutter, straight rules. Bring your Christmas fabrics – you start with Focus fabric 1/4 yd or FQ, Zinger fabric 1/4 yd or FQ, and background 1 yard.If you are not in the workshop please come and help with 2 other projects. I will bring 2 patterns to make one yard bags so bring your machine and supplies. We have the fabric already. We will work in the middle room. The patterns are: 1 yard Magic Hobo Bag Sewing Pattern from Lecien Fabrics from Sewcanshe.com; andWith Love Tote Bag from LazyGirlDesigns.com/blog. These bags are for people in crisis and in shelters. Please keep bringing your travel sized supplies to donate to fill them.If you don’t want to sew please come and cut our scrap fabric for quilt kits. I am giving us all a postcard pattern that I bought at Sunday Best called Vienna – it uses 42 10″ squares. (these are then subcut into 4 pieces that get sewed back together in a scrappy layout). If you have a square template that cuts 10″ squares, please bring it and a cutting mat and your rotary cutter and a big straight long ruler too. I will bring extras of those also.
We have been very busy this year working on Jelly Roll and other donation quilts and will continue on until we present them to a Columbus Shelter and the Phenix City Crisis Center in January. The kits that we cut for the Postcard Pattern can be made now or worked on next year for future donation projects. I don’t want to push too hard on charity sewing when I know we all have so much else on our to-do lists; quilting and otherwise.. We already have completed dozens of donation quilts with dozens more in the works.
Please bring 2 1/2″ squares to exchange at the afternoon meeting – cut 30 squares each out of 3 autumn themed or colored fabrics to share. We line up our stacks of 30 along the big table and go around picking up one of each. You can also make piles of 30 fabrics of various scrappy fabrics too -(could be any number of each fabric – doesn’t have to be 30 different) – that way we all don’t get exactly the same fabrics. And feel free to bring more than 3 fabrics worth – I cut about 12 different fat quarters up to share from my stash along with miscellaneous ones too. We love to see what you can do with your squares at a future Show and Tell!
The afternoon program for September is about Journaling/Documenting our Quilts.
In October the morning workshop will be taught by me and Frances on Seminole Strip Piecing. You will get a kit of strips of a solid color fabric and a background solid fabric, and learn one of the Seminole techniques. We will have the sign-up sheet at the September meeting if you haven’t already put your name down.
In November we want to do a Sit and Sew Workshop working on our donation quilts and one yard bags. The dying workshop that was planned will be pushed into 2023 because our teacher from Auburn – Cindy Renky – is having eye surgery. We want her to be in great shape and all healed up to teach us next year.
On October 29th Fort Mitchell is having their Fall Festival. Please visit their Historic Fort Mitchell Facebook page for details. We will have a sales table of items you sew that we can sell for the Guild’s profit. We plan to raffle several quilts as well, and have a small quilting display. If any of you would like to bring some hand sewing/quilting to work on in the Visitor’s Center, that would be great. Visitors may wish to ask us questions about quilting or the guild. We will be there from 9-3 and will appreciate any of you that can represent us for an hour or two. Fort Mitchell has stands to hold horizontal quilt poles so we can display quilts or sales items on those. We will also ask if anyone has laundry racks, coat trees, or other easily portable objects to display sales items.
Please review the attached minutes from Frances for more details on our last meeting and everything coming up.
I wish to express the condolences of all our guild to Carla Stickles who lost her husband Gary this past week. She has already heard messages of support and love from many of you, and I have sent a card on behalf of all of us. I know many of us have faced illness and loss among our loved ones over this past year, and hope you know we care about each of you. I also hope the fellowship and fun of the guild can sustain you when you join us. Linda Walker GALA President
GALA Quilt Guild 