Uhuru Quilters Guild home page

Next Meeting:
May 19, 2007

  Agenda:

  10:00 a.m.
  Fons & Porter Study Group

  11:30 a.m.
  Business Meeting

  12:30 p.m.
  Refreshments

  1:00 p.m.
  Show n Tell

Note:  Please turn all cell phones to vibrate during the meeting.

Coordinator's Corner

April’s meeting at Patuxent River Park was “intimate and cozy.” The weather cooperated and Jug Bay sparkled in the sun. So did the raffle quilt as several members photographed it in rustic surroundings. Thank you to park staff and volunteers for your hospitality. As Uhuru searches for a suitable home, several alternative locations have been suggested and will be investigated in the coming weeks:

• Meeting space in downtown Washington, DC near 16th & L Sts, NW
• Cedar Heights Community Center, Seat Pleasant, MD
• Lake Arbor Community Center, Mitchellville, MD
• Oxon Hill Library, Oxon Hill, MD

In the meantime, we are scheduled to meet
            May 19:           Bladensburg Water Park
                                  4601 Annapolis Rd
                                  Bladensburg, MD 20710

            June 16:           Hyattsville Library
                                  6530 Adelphi Rd
                                  Hyattsville, MD 20782

Please consult www.mapquest or www.aaa.com for directions.

The Uhuru exhibit at G Street Fabrics in Rockville opened Friday, May 4. Twenty-two quilts are on display. The exhibits runs through July. We will not be displaying the raffle quilt at the Sotterley Quilt & Needlework Show, but several members will have quilts on display. Please support both venues and let the local quilting world we exist.

Thank you, Uhuru members, for volunteering for several new projects:

• Brenda McKelvin for volunteering to assist the nurses at the Beltsville Hospice in creating a quilt for their lobby. If you’re interested in helping, please contact Brenda.
• Linda McKenzie for volunteering to serve as the Uhuru liaison to the local area quilt guild network now forming.
• Deb Sanger and Elsie Houston for volunteering for the 2008 raffle quilt committee.

As emails and phone calls come in asking for teachers and speakers, it would be helpful to me if I had (as I did several years ago) a directory of members who are interested in teaching or speaking opportunities. Please send your information to me (Carol) if you’re interested.

We also need leaders for a series of mini-workshops and demos for the rest of the year. Topics include paper piecing, journal quilting, postcards, thread lace, photo transfer, basic embroidery, quilt labels. If interested, please call or email ASAP.
County fair season is almost upon us. Let’s get those entries done!

Sewfully,
Carol
PS: Happy Mother’s Day

Fons & Porter Study Group by Carol Williams

This year our workshops will mainly focus on learning the skills featured in Quilters Complete Guide by Marianne Fons and Liz Porter in order to improve our piecing and appliqué techniques. We will be following the skills-based curriculum.

At May’s meeting we will use the sawtooth star block to practice rotary cutting and piecing skills by hand or machine. In the Guide (revised edition) the pages are 40 – 41. Whether you wish to complete the block by hand or machine, you will need

• ¼ yard each of two colors
• Graph paper
• Basic Sewing Kit [hand sewing needles, pins, thread(s) to match and/or neutral, scissors and/or thread snips, seam ripper, rotary cutter and small mat, ruler, pins, glue stick, pencil, tweezers, thimble]

Machine Piecing:

• Sewing machine in good condition with feet (open toe, quarter inch, etc.)
• Power strip and/or extension cord
• Extra machine needles

There is probably some neat, handy gadget that I’ve forgotten. What’s listed here is enough to get us started. Bring your questions and helpful hints. They are for the good of all. Volunteer teachers and guides are needed for upcoming sessions. Each one teach one.

The Charm Exchange Cornelia Carter-Sykes, Chair

The theme for the May Charm Square Exchange is "Indigo." Eleven people have signed up - they are: Nadine Mills, Shirley Hodge, Debra Sanger, Pat King, Pat Johnson, Camilla Younger, Sandra Benjamin, Mia Baker, Myra Sumpter, Cynthia York, and Cornelia Carter-Sykes.

To see the complete 2007 Charm Square schedule, as well as a description of each month's selection, visit the Charm Squares page.

Cut 6-1/2” (six-and-one-half-inch) squares of 100% pre-washed cotton (please make sure that the size and quality of your squares are what you yourself would like to receive). Please remember to cut off the selvedges before you cut your squares. Place squares in a baggie with your name on it, and put it in the "Charm Squares" basket.

If you have any questions, please e-mail or telephone Cornelia. If you have signed up and then are unable to come to the meeting, please mail squares or have them delivered to the meeting. If the number of exchanges is small enough, charm squares will be sorted and distributed before the end of the meeting.

Birthday/Hospitality The Hospitality Quintuplets: "CC" Campbell-Flowe, Dawn Felix, Jocelyn Herbert, Pat Johnson, Deb Sanger

The Hospitality Committee would like to offer light refreshments, i.e., beverage, fruit, cookies. Any member is invited to bring items to share. When the refreshment period begins, please put away all quilts and materials. This will prevent any damage to your valuable items. Upon completion of the refreshment period, please dispose of unfinished food and drinks before we open Show N Tell or continue a workshop. 

When you bring food, please assist me in the cleanup after refreshments have been served. We want to ensure that the room is back to its original order before leaving the Center. Thanks! 

A Very Happy Birthday to Rosa Walls (11th); Dawn Felix (25th); and Lawana Holland (31st)

When Life Hands you Scraps, Make Quilts

Sew Help Me. . .
Tips to boost your creativity

Mastering Your Scraps - cotton

If you have odd-shaped pieces of fabric left over ... not really useful for anything but your heart just won't let you throw them away ... try cutting them into 2" or 2-1/2" squares and storing them in a handy container. You can sort these squares by color family or by light-medium-dark shades. Or, you can sew two pieces together and cut them into half-square triangles.

When you get a healthy amount cut, sew them into dark/light or dark/medium pairs. You've just sewn seeds for a future quilt!

Leftover Cotton Batting

Cut leftover batting into 3" or 4" squares and keep them in a handy place. They can be used for making coasters, to dust off your machine, wipe off excess oil when performing machine maintenance, and clean off fabric fuzzies from your cutting and ironing boards.

Just Sew You Know. . .

Review: Quilted Photo Xpress 3.0

Tammie Bowser's Quilted Photo Xpress is a software program that helps you turn your photographs into mosaic quilt patterns. You can design your mosaic quilt with straight-set squares or with squares placed at an angle. The software also includes an option for using rectangles instead of squares, and in her related book Tammie explains a technique that lets you overlap patches to create quilts with a very painted look.

Open a digital image from within the mosaic software and you'll discover that you can manipulate it in many ways. Choose the way you want the photo to display: as a realistic image, in grayscale or in sepia. Now's the time to choose the orientation of your patches, straight or angled.

Tammie recommends you use 24 fabrics, eight darks, eight mediums and eight lights. Move a bar if you would like to tell the program to use more or fewer fabrics. You'll slide another bar back and forth to choose the amount of detail you'd like the photo to have. More detail equals (lots) more pieces of fabric, but the finished quilt will be well worth the extra time you spend creating it.

When you're ready, the software compiles pages of grids that you can link together side by side to show where fabrics are located in the quilt. An accompanying printout shows you how many squares you'll need of each fabric. Your fabric squares will ultimately be arranged onto a gridded fusible web, and Tammie offers several options for assembling it.

Visit the Quilted Photo Xpress site for more information. Tammie's book, Simply Amazing Quilted Photography, is a good companion to the mosaic software because it helps guide you through the process of selecting fabrics and getting them into place on your grid.

Interestng Web Sites:

UFO Orphanage for Quilters http://www.ufo-rphanage.com/index.html

Foundation pieced quilt labels: http://atyourwhimsy.com/labels1.htm

2007 Block of the Month - "Twelve Days Of Christmas" Renea Bailey, Chair

View the lyrics of "The Twelve Days Of Christmas" by clicking the link at the left.

Web sites and books on Applique:
http://www.quilt.com/HowTo/AppliqueHowToPage.html
http://quilting.about.com/od/appliqutechniques/Learn_How_to_Applique.htm
http://www.roserushbrooke.com/how-to-applique-1.html
http://www.quilterscache.com/StartQuiltingPages/startquiltingfour.html
“The Easy Art of Applique: Techniques for Hand, Machine, and Fusible Applique” by Mimi Dietrich & Rox Eppler
“Hand Applique with Alex Anderson”
“The New Applique Sampler: Learn to Applique the Piece O’Cake Way” by Becky Goldsmith, Linda Jenkins