Christmas Day

I am sorry that I have not been blogging. I have been very busy and am glad that Christmas is over!

So, let’s catch up!

Our December meeting started off with our potluck! This is always a hit!! Plenty of good food and good conversation.

Then, we drew the name of the lucky winner of the Christmas quilt!! We sold 830 tickets and voted to round up the donation to the Food Shelf to $1000!! That’s fantastic!! Be thinking of another idea and recipient for a raffle for this year.

We drew for the Block of the Month, the basket block that Annette had given us in November and  she won them. So she will bring the pattern for next month. Lori brought the pattern for January’s block. We are to make two, one with a blue border and one with a purple one. The pictures of her blocks  are posted here.

There are little beads where the leaves meet the stems. What a beautiful block Lori!!Blue beads on the blue block and purple ones on the purple block!

We also have an extra block to draw for in  January. It is any 12 ” finished (12 1/2 ” ) block in 30’s prints.

I am going to share an idea for a “green” baby quilt at the January meeting. Does anyone else have an idea for a demo?

We talked about some special things to do this year. We will start out in January with a UFO Challenge. Bring a list of 6 UFO’s numbered one to six, to the January meeting and a gift for the “kitty”. Every month we will draw a number and that is the item you are to finish for that month’s challenge! At the end of the six month’s, whoever has finished their six projects will have their name put in the hat for the drawing of the items in the “kitty”. Diane has already said that she is going to put a quilt in. It certainly doesn’t have to be that big of an item, but something sewing related! If we have six items done by the July meeting,  think of all the new things we will have ready for the RCQ Quilt Show.

Speaking of the quilt show…..We again will set up the evening of July 24th with the Show being the 25th, at St. Felix.  Jan and Judy will be sponsoring the show this year! Thank you,  RBQ, very much!! They would like to show the Block Of The Month Quilts that they have been doing! What a great idea!!

We are going to do a  Brown bag exchange! This is where we put about two yards total of fabrics  in  a brown paper bag, add embellishments and a note about the items that you chose.  We will exchange these at the January meeting and return them in April to their rightful owners! The person receiving the bag of goodies has TOTAL control of the project!

At the March meeting we are going to trade center medallions for the start of the Round Robin. These are always fun, and the quilts are ALWAYS beautiful!

I passed around the patterns that had been at River’s Mercantile in our pattern box. I will have these again for the February meeting to share with anyone who has not gone through them. There are quite a few and some date back a ways.

The store has been closed a week, as of tomorrow. The store , John, Bonnie and the girls will be missed! Bonnie has hopes of coming to the RCQ meetings once she is back from her vacation! It will be good to have her back, I know how busy she has been.

Thanks to all who donated non perishable items. I delivered 3 full grocery sacks, to the food shelf,  the Saturday after our meeting.

I hope that you all had a very Merry Christmas and hope that you have a Happy and Healthy New Year!

Hope to see you at the next meeting, on January 6th  at 7 pm.

The Halloween Retreat

There were several of us from River City Quilters, at the Villa, along with a few friends from last year and some new friends joined in on the fun! Friday night started out with a potluck!! As you can imagine, with nearly 30 women, we had a great variety of food that was delicious! I love potlucks! Plus, we had an eight foot table FULL of snack items!

At 8 pm, we put on our Halloween pajamas and outfits!The witches were everywhere! And a couple had some pretty good “visions” of themselves!! Jan led us in a pretty good SCREAM to get us in the mood!  We even had some trick or treaters stop by! Thanks Jan for having candy on hand so we could treat our little visitors! We had a great time! It was a late night! It’s hard to go to bed when you would “rather be sewing”!!!!

Saturday morning, we had breakfast and started back in on our projects! Everyone brought what they wanted to sew on! It is sew much fun to see what everyone else is making, their choices of fabrics and their take on the pattern!

I think that I accomplished a lot again this year! I made two Cracker Box blocks for our November meeting. I cut two Nurses panels apart and turned them into two wall hanging (done except for hand stitching the binding down), I put three Moda Wildflowers charm packs together in our “famous” Disappearing Nine Patch. I agree with Gay, it needs a thinner plain green border and then a floral? border. Jan suggested a picket fence! Which I think is a wonderful idea too, because I don’t have any yardage of the Moda Wildflowers! So, if I combine the two ideas I think I know how to finish that quilt top!!! After all that, I also worked on my Ladder for a Giant!!

Even with the time change, (adding an extra hour to our sewing time………….hahahaha), the time went way too fast!

A touch of fall color

Another beautiful tree

On Saturday afternoon, several of us took a walk!

The Sisters' Cemetery

The first stop on our walk, was a quiet spot where the Sisters’ are buried in circles around the trees.

The girl’s that live in the area are very knowledgeable of the area’s history. They shared many interesting stories with us!

After our walk, several of us visited with the knitters that were having a retreat on the third floor! They were  working on their projects, when we stoped in! One lady was finishing up a beautiful sweater, another was working on a pair of socks and another was working on an afghan! It was fun to see their projects, and fondle (not to mention, buy!) the yummy yarns that they had for sale!

By Sunday, we were starting to see a lot of progress in our projects!

A table runner

A good time was had by all!

I hope to see you at the next retreat in February 2009!