Another Summer Day/CCQG Meeting

Today was another warm and sunny day. Summer is not giving up easily and I am really happy about it. One of my coworkers has accepted a new position with another state agency and so we all went to Bravo for lunch. Our meals were extremely late and to apologize, the manager gave us all free meals. My salad was excellent once it arrived and so I would encourage you to enjoy a meal at Bravo, but not when you are in a hurry.

Tonight was our monthly quilt guild meeting. We had a rather large crowd. Each March and September our guild collects small quilts we call Heart Warmers. They are made by guild members and are donated to the local hospitals for infants and critically ill children. Our guild has donated more than 1000 quilts in the past several years. The children get to keep the quilts.
After the parade of Heart Warmer quilts, we had our Show and Tell. Members show their latest quilts. Here are some that were shown:
This quilt was shown by a member. It was made for a family member. The fabric is based on the children's' book by Eric Carle, The Hungry Caterpillar.
The Hungry Caterpillar.
Julia finished the top for her wall hanging. This will be for her office at the Capital Region Community Foundation. She doesn't have a name for it yet so if you want to leave a comment with your suggestion, she would appreciate it.
A close up. Julia is a new quilter and she told me tonight that she is now hooked. Yippee, another quilt junky.
Dan, our guild Vice President, won two ribbons at the Michigan Quilt Network show at the Lansing Center this past weekend. This is paper pieced.
Up close.
Dan won Best Pieced Quilt and Best Machine Quilted Quilt. The machine quilting was done by Kari.
Isn't Kari's quilting wonderful?

I like the color combo in this block.

Our program this month was a presentation by Patsy Thompson of Toledo, Ohio. She did a presentation on Thread Power. She does really fantastic machine quilting with a regular sewing machine. She explained how to Seduce the Viewer with your machine quilting. Wow!!! I never knew quilting could be so sexy......Hey big boy, wanta come hither....come look at me.....a little closer please.......you know you just can't resist me........oooohh....don't touch, just look..........what a tease!
Patsy uses hand dyed fabrics and all types of thread.
This picture was taken from too far away but you can get an idea of her work. I now wish I was taking one of her workshops on Friday or Saturday. Oh well. Maybe another time.
She discussed threads by fiber content, different color uses, different weights, textures etc. She has unique names for the threads, such as, Psycho something or other.......
When posting this really bad photo of one of her quilts, it dawned on me, I have seen this quilt before. It was my favorite quilt at the Ann Arbor Quilt Guild show. I posted pictures earlier but here they are again.

I love the colors, the leaves and the machine quilting.
Very fine work.
This shows her seductive machine quilting.
More.
And more.

Patsy explained that she does the embroidery stitching on the leaves before she fuses them to the background fabric. If you click to enlarge these pictures you can see more of the detail in her work. Patsy has DVDs on machine quilting. Check out her website. http://patsythompsondesigns.com/It will be worth it. One thing that stuck with me was her insistence that if you find machine quilting difficult, just keep practicing and you will eventually feel comfortable and it will be easier. I think that worked for me. I kept doing the same type of machine quilting over and over on various quilts. I am not really overly concerned with perfection and that helps too.

Our "gang" went to Cappuccino Cafe for coffee, tea and discussion after the meeting. We had the largest group ever: John, Dan, Lisa, Irene, Kate, Mary, Jan, Coreen, Minda, and others. We closed the place down as usual. What a long day.