Amherst Quilters Guild
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July 26, 2015
Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Although it’s going to be pretty hot for turning on the oven, here’s a very easy recipe for using all the great fresh fruits and berries of the season. Mix together 1 can of crushed pineapple (20 oz) and the dry ingredients of an angel food cake mix. That’s it-nothing else. Bake at 400 degrees for about 30 min. (Do the toothpick test for doneness). As it cools the center will sink, not to worry. This will have the texture of a sponge cake. Serve with fresh fruit and cool whip. Yummy! and can’t get much easier. Let me know what you think. Got this recipe off the radio, and it was a hit with my family. And if you like them easy, have you seen these recipes? Click here.
July 19, 2015
Hello all, Mary Ellen here. If you are of a certain age, that phrase has an entirely different meaning to you than it will in this post. I spent some time this morning looking around on Pinterest for NY Beauty block quilting designs. Didn’t find what I was looking for, but ran across this series of posts instead. Click here. I took the pledge this morning. I am often asked questions by my quilting students which have answers all boiling down to one simple fact. I make my quilts to be used; “for keeps” is the phrase the author uses. I would rather have them used up, worn out, stained with grape jelly, or skidded with green grass and red dirt stains than have them be still in pristine condition 20 years from now. That is why I prewash my fabrics (baby skin is so sensitive to chemicals in fabric […]
July 17, 2015
Hello all, Mary Ellen here. We had our monthly guild meeting last evening. Committee chairs spoke about their groups, activities and how one can get involved if so desired. It is amazing to me how much we have going on in our guild. We can rightfully be proud of all of the charity work that gets made and given away with little, if any, fanfare. True giving from the heart (and hands). Lori R and I demonstrated our guild’s Accuquilt machine. It is available for any of our members to use whenever the BNHV is open. You can find documents of what dies we own at our guild’s web page. Some of our members were not aware we owned the machine, and some of our long time members had not seen how easy it is to operate. In today’s e-mail I got a link to a video where a shop […]
July 15, 2015
Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Do you recognize that term “boutis”? I thought it was a French term for whole cloth quilts, but apparently in the French quilter’s mind there’s more to it than that. The link I’m including I found in my Pinterest feed today. It’s completely in French, but the pictures are absolutely gorgeous. This quilter (blogger) has some wonderful things to share. If you have Google translator you can do that for yourself, but the pictures alone are worth “a thousand words”. Get ready for beautiful images. Click here.
June 28, 2015
Hello all, Mary Ellen here. I’ve mentioned here before that many of the ideas for my blog entries come from other bloggers. I subscribe to quite a few blogs and receive daily or weekly updates from many of them. Leah Day, a phenomenal quilter, who wrote the 365 free motion designs blog, is one of them. She has added a few new threads to her blogging posts. Today her post was titled “You have permission to quit”. After listening to what she had to say in her youtube post, it got me thinking about some of the UFO’s I have accumulated. I can think of 2 that are unfinished because I do not like them anymore. One was so poorly written by the designer that every step of the way requires some sort of correction. Her math calculations were atrocious, and you can just imagine how that irks me, the […]
July 15, 2012
Hi again It’s ME. Got away from blogging for a bit, didn’t I? I was surprised to see how long it had been since my last posts, since I didn’t have anything impressive accomplished during my “hiatus”. I have been taking 2 online classes this month–one based on sewing, and one on my other favorite hobby of paper crafting. In a way the 2 classes are related. The sewing class is from Craftsy.com called Stupendous Stitching. The final project will be an “art” piece suitable for framing, based on machine decorative stitches, hand embroidery, and embellishing through couching etc. Right now I am working on what the instructor is calling a “stitch bible”. The idea is to make a sample book (fabric actually) of all the stitches that your machine will do, in the default mode and with changes to the stitch length and width. I have done this for […]
July 14, 2012
Hello everybody, it’s ME. The month of July has really gotten away from me. I’ve been busy with lots of odds and ends-have no big deal to report on. No fabulous vacation, or beautiful new room in my house. I have been in the garden quite a bit-mostly dragging a sprinkler around on a regular rotation schedule, and trying to keep up with the weeds. The ground is so hard that weeding is really a chore; usually my beds are nice and loose and the weeds come right out. Not this year. Getting set for a mulching and painting blitz outdoors next week-will have a young helper working with me with a strong back. I’ll be playing the “sidewalk superintendent” as my dad used to call it. I did finally get my next Lucy Goosey block done today. Will post a photo soon. Chose cool colors (blues and greens)-can’t imagine […]
July 10, 2012
Hello everyone! I guess this amazing, hot summer has us all away from indoors and hence, from our computers, blogs, quilting…? TRUE or FALSE? In my case – a bit of both! Definitely spending more time outside of course, but then, when it becomes really hot, air-conditioning calls… and sewing in nice cooled-down room is just as good as sewing in a nice warm place while winter winds are blowing outside, right? If you ask me, I would be quilting just as much, but summer is also time for the garden, time for house remodeling…and I have been deeply into both! Just spent a long, 4th of July weekend remodeling our family room – started as “only needs fresh paint on the walls” and ended up with ripped out old carpet and installation of hardwood floors – yaiks! What can I say – now that kids are grown-up, family room […]
July 1, 2012
Good morning all, it’s ME. Can you believe it’s the first of July already? Wow! It’s time for the next Lucy Goosey star block. This one can be made to look very different dependent on your color placements. I’ve given you a few extra block skeletons so you can get out your crayons and experiment a bit before cutting your fabrics. Have fun with it. Remember you can jump in to this quilt-a-long whenever you want. If you haven’t done the other blocks you can skip them and start here, or go back in our archives and get the patterns to catch up. Not many rules for this project. Just have fun. Here’s the next pattern: lucy goosey #3-solstice
June 30, 2012
Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Had my annual checkup this week, and got my annual advice about getting more exercise. As I decide annually, I will try to do more. (yah, right!) But to be honest I do notice that more than in my younger years, I feel tired and sometimes sore after a long session of stitching. Does that mean quilting is a workout? No, more likely pieces and parts are either suffering a bit from repetitive motion, or stiffening up from not enough motion. Recently on the Quilty video series (with Mary Fons, daughter of Marianne Fons of Fons and Porter fame) there was a video about stretching out before and after sewing. The nurse who was the guest gave several good ideas for quilters, many of which could easily be done right in your sewing chair. It would be good for all of us to take care […]