What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

"I've got rhubarb if you'd like some," W.D. posted on Facebook.  I went to her house and came home with this. 

A half hour later it was cut, bagged, and frozen. (Though today I made a rhubarb-strawberry pie. I found a bag of sliced strawberries at the back of the freezer dated June 30. Time to use them!)

Dicentra (bleeding heart)

Hardy perennials and wildflowers are the mainstays of our garden.  I appreciate flowers more than I like cultivating them.

The vegetable patch will be tilled this coming week.  We are late but we are hopeful.

Aresaema ...

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It was cool but sunny on Friday for the Rotary Golf Outing at Shepherd's Crook in Zion. This is our club's major money-maker.  We hope to net over $25,000 to fund international and local projects. (We award $12,000 each in college scholarships to Zion-Benton Township H.S. graduates --  $144,000 so far.)

We are among the major sponsors (and we also get a hole sponsorship sign).  I donated a quilt to the live auction and two tote bags with books to the bucket raffle.  The woman who got the quilt has been the successful bidder in ...

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I'm late with my report this week.  I've been busy making labels for my quilts, and preparing cloth bags with labels for each as well.  My guild's quilts show is approaching quickly.  Tomorrow I'll be running a photography session all day, to take pictures of the entries for our CD, that will be for sale at the show.  DH is my able assistant, helping with setting up stands, backdrops, lighting, etc., and he is skilled at handling quilts as well!  I think he's a keeper.

I completed a Christmas table topper - I had made one ...

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I have three of the four parts of my One Monthly Goal completed.

A -- Two tote bags for the Rotary Golf outing on May 18

B -- A mug rug for a colleague who is retiring (luncheon May 17)  (And while I was at it I made one for a friend who's graduating from Gateway Technical College this coming Tuesday.) 

C -- Three mug rugs for P.E.O. committee members with whom I've served this past year
(presentation June 1).  (Daisies are the P.E.O. flower.)

I am narrowing down ideas for D, a tote bag for the ...

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"It's All About the Habit" was Sharon Evans' presentation at Wednesday's NLCQG meeting.
 She wore a nun's habit as a costume and set out Ten Commandments for good quilting habits.  The delivery was light-hearted, the advice serious. Great fun!



(And, by the way, Sharon has made SIX Dear Janes, each in a different genre and colorway. Wow.  Karen McTavish quilted them. Wow again.)












The guild round robin came full circle. We got our own starter blocks back.    I had forgotten what I wrote in the design notes, but it turned out that I suggested a rectangular setting ...

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Q/B/L = Quilted, Bound, and Labeled

I made the flimsy in January. The design is by Tammy Silvers.  The back is a duvet cover from Salvation Army with a strip of churn dash blocks from the swap that Barb hosted a couple of months ago.

This will be donated to the ALA silent auction.







Batik hexies have been my travel handwork for a while. The photo shows two "islands" of rosettes put together. I may incorporate these into a couple of tote bags that are on my to-do list.

Monday linkups:
Design Wall Monday
Oh, Scrap!
Moving It Forward

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Projects this week were like the Three Bears.

Here's Mama Bear (medium):
 The wallhanging is quilted and bound. I have printed the label but haven't sewn it on yet.  I had a heck of a time getting the pinwheels to fit. I measured the center block several times and cut . . . too small! So I had to add coping strips. Then I had to trim the side strips a bit more.  It's 16 x 20.











Here's Papa Bear (large):   This is approx. 52 x 60.  It's the very last round of the guild round robin. My ...

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On Saturday friends and family had a wedding shower for my niece at the groom's parents' house (just up the road west of Racine).  Though the bride and groom are registered at Target, I shopped in my vintage stash.

The suitcase is from Lillian's Legacy   The Fiesta c/s with figure eight tray was an estate sale find.

I was late getting to the shower because I took the wedding wheels quilt to Barb J., the longarmer.  We spent a long time selecting quilting patterns.

















Preparing the backing and getting the quilt to Barb was #1 of my ...

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We had a pleasantly uneventful Easter.  The church service was at 9:00 (its usual time). There was no coffee hour this week.   I cooked lamb in the crock pot and served it with roasted vegetables and new potatoes. Orange-and-avocado salad.  Cheesecake for dessert.  Afterwards I put a half-cup of barley in the crock pot with the cooking liquid and let that sit overnight.  Now we have Scotch broth soup.

But this is not a cooking blog.  There's quilting to talk about!

March stash report:
Fabric OUT:  87-1/8 yards.  That includes 48 yards given to two quilters.  That ...

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 We voted in the Illinois primary on Tuesday.  It will be a long, nasty, and expensive campaign season.



Saturday was Tech Savvy , a STEM exploration program for middle school girls held at Triton College in River Grove.  Pat, Janet, and I were the volunteers from the Waukegan Area Branch.  We each assisted at one of the hands-on sessions and then staffed the AAUW information table.


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I gave up buying fabric for Lent, Quilt books aren't fabric  When the Martingale blog announced its annual warehouse sale I went shopping right away. These 19 books were $6 each with free shipping ...

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Thank you, everyone who entered the Orphan Adoption giveaway.   18 people replied with 28 entries. Four people (five entries) disqualified themselves by not providing an email address.  I numbered the remaining entries and Random.org chose #8 -- DJQuilting.  Congratulations!

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I came down with a cold or mild case of flu (yes, I got a flu shot).  I was able to mitigate the effects with a lot of sleep (ah, NyQuil) and I am all better now.  AAUW met on Tuesday with an interesting program about the Underground Railroad in Waukegan and Lake County. (Nary a peep about the "quilt code ...

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Sue Pawlowski was the speaker at the NLCQG meeting on Wednesday. Her

design business is  Jack's Square Studios.

She began the trunk show by passing around this ball of thread, collected from her sewing when she conducts classes. It was heavy.

(c) Sue Pawlowski

Here are photos of some of her wonderful quilts. She is not afraid of small pieces -- 1-1/4" that finish at 3/4" or 1" that finish at 1/2".  Her pattern instructions have large and small block sizes

(c) Sue Pawlowski

Sue has a great sense of humor, too!

On Saturday I participated in ...

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ZWC

AAUW

The Lake County Women's Coalition honored "women empowering women, fighting all forms of  discrimination" at the annual Women's History Month luncheon on Saturday.  AAUW honored Maria Elena Jonas, founder and director of HACES (Hispanic American Community Education Services). Zion Woman's Club honored Sadie Watts who founded several agencies and a church in Zion. Sadie could not attend (she is 99 and has dementia).  The program was a portrayal of Holocaust survivor Alicia Appelman Jurman portrayed by Betsey Means of WomanLore .

The silent auction raises funds for LCWC's scholarships at the College of Lake County ...

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I made 80 Double X blocks.. I thought I had  decided on a double-sash setting. That is, I will make sets of four and sash around each set. But I have another idea in the works!

Remember that I'm trying to use up -- exhaust -- clean out the 30's stash. All that's left of the yellow (inner sashing) are two 6" strips and a few 1.5" squares!

(Yes, I know I could give away / swap / sell the 30's stash. But that would be giving up.)






The guild round robin is in the fifth round so the ...

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An announcement from the area United Methodist Women caught my eye. The Midwest Mission Distribution Center needs sewing machines!  I arranged to meet with one of the UMW reps on Friday.  I handed off four machines: the 1994 serger (hard to thread; used about once a year); the Viking MegaQuilter (bought third-hand, used a dozen times); The Ambassador (a Singer clone from Lillian's Legacy that had been on a shelf in the garage); and a 1970's Singer (someone donated it to the library).  The rep explained that volunteers clean and repair donated machines and harvest parts from those ...

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Giveaway still open - see last Friday's post.  I haven't shown you my 2nd Design Wall in a long time.  Here are some bits and pieces that reside there. LOL - I'm hoping they won't always reside there. New-ish are the three new hexagon flowers I machine appliqued to the backgrounds and some more teeny pinwheels for My Small World. The rest is a holding ground for things I"m working on. The

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Giveaway still open - see last Friday's post.  I haven't shown you my 2nd Design Wall in a long time.  Here are some bits and pieces that reside there. LOL - I'm hoping they won't always reside there. New-ish are the three new hexagon flowers I machine appliqued to the backgrounds and some more teeny pinwheels for My Small World. The rest is a holding ground for things I"m working on. The

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I went full steam ahead on the Blockheads!  I finished the flimsy at the end of our TV watching Sunday evening. (We saw the final minutes of the Super Bowl in between PBS programs.)

I added 1.5" (1" fin.) sashing and cornerstones to give the blocks some breathing room.  (I ran out of Kona Snow for the sashing, but before I went out to buy more I looked again. There was a 5-yard piece that I bought in late December. I do not remember buying it but I'm glad I did, and I'm glad I checked.)

No ...

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Heidi Stevens and Waukegan Area Branch members

Chicago Tribune columnist Heidi Stevens was the speaker at the AAUW Networking Luncheon on Saturday.  Her talk was an extension of her column, "Balancing Act":  Identify your core values and apply those to making the world a better place. She cited three examples:
*  the Jackson Chance Foundation that provides parking passes for parents with NICU babies at Prentice Hospital in Chicago
*  the Cook County judge who provides books to juvenile offenders . (She asked one teen if he ever read books. He had *one* book at his house which he had read over and ...

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