Yesterday 23 ladies attended. The highlight of the day was when Judy S. came in with Marie's finished quilt. This is the first quilt Marie has had machine quilted. She prefers to hand quilt but age has caught up with her and won't allow her to do hand quilting anymore. She has had this top around for awhile so decided it was time to pull it out and let a professional quilt it for her. She made a beautiful back for it our of some leftover blocks and the quilt is just lovely. It is a stack and whack  block in turquoises and purples. (Picture to follow). It is just beautiful and I think Marie is pleased as punch with it. She certainly had a big smile on her face! Fran also had a quilt she had just gotten back from the quilter. It is a large black and white quilt to go in her blue and white bedroom. It was also very nice. Jo-Ann had knitted a scarf which she gave to Cathy Y. to give to her daughter who is collecting winter items for her church. Linda O'C and friends (including me) are still busily making fabric flowers for the quilt show this summer. Sandie, Ethel, Pat L. and Rosemary are all working on cross-stitches. I found some chicken patterns in a book by Gwen Marston and decided some of the others of us should make chicken quilts to keep Tina's quilt company at our show next February. We'll see if we can have more that 1 chicken quilt. Deb was amusing us all with her talk of surfer boys in South Carolina. This weekend Jo-Ann, Diane M. and I are doing the shop hop so I assume that Jo-Ann and I will be bringing in new purchases to show next week. I can barely wait to spend my hard-earned money on more fabric, more tools, more of everything quilty none of which I need but all of which I want!

17 ladies attended today. Tina brought in her finished chicken quilt. It is just delightful! And Agnes was finishing the binding on a quilt she made for a young couple. Agnes does beautiful work. Some of us had attended the Embroiderers' guild show the previous weekend and were excitedly discussing the show and our various purchases at the boutique. The Embroiderer's guild may find itself with some new members. Their show was very impressive with some absolutely beautiful pieces. It definitely made me want to try my hand at some cross-stitch and embroidery again.

18 ladies attended today. Jean K. was back from Florida today! She says she's glad to be back to the group. There just isn't anything like it in Florida. Marie brought in her appliqued flower quilt top to get some advice on her border. Right now it's a square and she wants to make it a rectangle so is adding a large border. I think it will work out very nice. This weekend is the embroidery guild show at the Pruyn House. I hope many of you will attend. Sandie and Ethel have been working hard to prepare for it. Linda O'C was still working on flowers so I helped her again. She needs a lot of flowers. I don't know how many people are working on them. Pat L., a new member, had finished her small cross-stitch. She is in another group where they challenge each other to make something which could be in cross-stitch, needlepoint, knitting or some other kind of craft so she has to be prepared to try something new. Sounds like fun!

25 ladies attended today. We were a large and noisy group. Linda O sat up a table for flower making with Sue R. at another table sewing flowers on the machine. Fran had a finished wool applique pillow. It is very cute. Hopefully it will be in our show in February. Winnie and Agnes were working on their wool applique doorknob hangers. They are making them for the methodist church bazaar. The hangers are so cute--I hope they put a big enough price on them because a lot of work goes into the making. The cooks were busy this morning: Deb brought in a lemon cake, Jo-Ann a pineapple upside down cake and Daryl a carrot cake. Last weekend Fran, Jo-Ann and I all went on the bus to the Somers, NY quilt show. I brought in my purchases to show. It's the first time I've been to the Somers show though I've heard about it for years. I was surprised because the show wasn't all that big but they had 30 vendors there. I know I spent more time with the vendors than I did looking at quilts. I did try to restrain myself with the buying because the shop hop is just around the corner and I'm going to do it again this year. So instead of buying any of the books I saw at the show, I came home, checked to see if they are available in the library system and put requests on them. I'll see how much I like them before spending the money.

25 ladies attended today. We had a group from the Village Quilters set up a fabric flower factory during the meeting. They are making kits for the group to make for our quilt show this summer. They were busily cutting up fabric and some of us were keeping our eyes on them because they were throwing away big pieces of fabric!! Heaven forbid!! Needless to say we rescued as many of these valuable scraps as we could. Pat OR finished her beautiful blue table runner she has been working on. I took a picture and will post it as soon as I get it off the camera. It was made from a kit and the blue fabrics are just gorgeous! I hope it will be in our show next February. Jo-Ann came in wearing a spectacular beaded cape a friend gave to her. We all wanted a closer look at it. There were quite a few cross-stitchers around the table today. Marie showed me a book of pin cushion patterns she had bought. It had a lot of nice little pin cushions. Marie was also showing us a short article about seniors and "the green thing" which she thought was great. It was about how in the old days we saved energy by such means as drying our clothes on the line, walking instead of driving, etc. The moral of the story was: don't tell old people that they aren't doing their part in saving the planet--they've lived more frugally than any of our children will. It was quite good. Apparently Winnie is at home not feeling too well. If you have a chance you might give her a call.

19 attended today. Kathy O's husband came in to visit with his cousin Carol so I made him sign in too so we had 18 ladies and 1 man today! Our big activity today was dividing up the batting that the Jacksons donated. We cut the thin and the thick batting into big pieces. There weren't enough pieces for everyone so we drew names out of a bag. Then we cut the bondable batting into table runner sized pieces and everyone who's making the challenge table runner took a piece of that. I think everyone went home happy. They all contributed to the donation fund for the Friends of the library too. The Friends are making out like bandits thanks to the Jacksons. We passed around a thank you card to send to the Jacksons so everyone could sign. Other than that...Sandie was doing cutwork embroidery. I was truly amazed because I haven't seen that done before and it just looks like it would take forever! Ethel had almost finished an embroidered hanging. I assume it will be in the Embroiderers guild show at the Pruyn House that is coming up. It was beautiful with beads and ribbon embroidery. Tina made some adorable knitted owl hot pads. I couldn't convince her to sell me one though. They were very cute. Betty brought in her serger to get some more instruction from Kathy O. who seems to have become an expert. I really admire Kathy's fearlessness at learning new machines, new techniques, etc. Plus she is such a natural teacher!

23 ladies attended yesterday. Tina brought in her adorable chicken quilt to work on. I think it will be the hit of the show next year. Fran had a rather large chicken pincushion to show. And I had made a quilt top over the weekend I wanted to show. Of course, the big excitement of the day was the return of Skip and Sharon with more sewing room giveaways! Skip suggested that in lieu of payment for all they were giving that we make a donation to the Friends of the Library. This was very generous of them and the ladies were all very happy to show their appreciation. Yesterday alone I collected $120! and not everyone had money or checkbook on them. The Friends will be very happy I'm sure. Other goings on yesterday, Kathy O., Sue and Betty all brought in their sergers to take some serger lessons. Kathy O. decided she wanted to make an all serged quilt so brought some serged pieces to show. I'm afraid most of us were so busy looking through the giveaways that we didn't pay much attention to the serging going on. Sandie was back from vacation and had purchased some very interesting "yarn". It was more like a ribbon with holes in it. You knit through the holes. The finished scarf looks like a boa or a clown's ruffle. It was most intriguing! Unfortunately, you need that specific kind of "yarn" to make that scarf and since they don't sell it around here Sandie's likely to be the only one to make a boa scarf. I passed out patterns for the table runner challenge and told people to feel free to change the pattern up some to make it work for you. As long as it looks like a rail fence pattern and has the same measurements it will be fine. The point is to take the same pattern and make our own versions of it to see the variety possible. I don't know if this is a good, workable challenge but I guess we'll find out if anyone actually makes it.