February 2016 – Amherst Quilters Guild

February 28, 2016

Who quilts your quilt?

Hello all, Mary Ellen here. I’ve been working on several projects lately that all had deadlines. Because of the time crunch I decided I would quilt one myself that I would usually have sent to my favorite long arm quilter. The style of the quilt is somewhat modern, so I decided to try out some of the very dense quilting that one sees on so many of the Pinterest quilts. I did lots of wavy walking foot quilting and some free motion in opposite corners. The quilt measures about 48″ x 60″. I have a new appreciation for women who quilt bed size quilts on their domestic machines. Granted, my set up of my sewing room does not lend itself to positioning lots of tables around me to support the weight of the quilt. That’s my “fault” I guess you could say. I did put my ironing board next to […]

February 16, 2016

wabi sabi

Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Sometimes I get great ideas for blog posts sent to me by a reader. Karen G., a member of our guild, put me onto this blog post from that great shop, Quilter’s Corners, in Ithaca. I had never heard of wabi sabi, which turns out to be a Japanese philosophy. It espouses appreciating simpler things and embracing imperfections in daily living. For those of us quilters who are “recovering perfectionists” (a term borrowed from Beth Ferrier, a past seminar teacher for us), wabi sabi is a concept to explore. If you are interested after reading this post from Ithaca (click here ), maybe we should come up with a banner design to hang in our sewing rooms to remind us!

February 11, 2016

cleaning up

Hello all, Mary Ellen here. I took the opportunity today to throw a few quilts in the wash. I have some scrappy quilts, certainly not heirlooms, that I usually have on my couches to protect them from my dog. He likes to get comfortable wherever the sun in pouring in on his back. The quilts collect dirty paw prints and lots of hair (maybe I should join the weaver’s guild to learn how to spin his very prolific hair into a usable yarn? No, I don’t think so. That’s just a little too weird, although I have read about it on the internet. A very reliable information source…Not!) When I wash those couch quilts I just toss them in with towels, cool water, regular detergent and away we go. They go into the dryer along with the towels. In the summertime I take them out after a few minutes and […]

February 5, 2016

button, button, who’s got…

Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Like many of us, I have WAAAAYYY too much sewing stuff in my craft room. I have become the repository curator for many of my friends who get sewing or crafting things given to them by friends and family. Yesterday I was attempting to reorganize some shelves to make room for more stuff (why don’t I just get rid of some of it? Oh no! I might be able to use it some day!) and decided that I need to come up with some projects to use buttons. I’m talking lots of buttons. You know those boxes that are made for storing 4 x 6 photos, slightly larger than a shoe box? Well I have about 8 of those of buttons. One is full of white/cream buttons, another dark buttons, another metallic buttons, etc. So today when I got an e-mail from Fave Crafts about […]