seminar – Amherst Quilters Guild

Our annual fall seminar where we host national and local teachers, learning new things and having a great time with other quilters.

March 4, 2016

Put it in neutral

Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Went to the car wash the other day. Can’t tell it from the looks of the car now. I’m always a bit nervous about getting the wheels of the car lined up with those tracks that pull the car through the “washing machine”. When “he” says to put it in neutral, that’s my signal that I’ve done it correctly. What else do neutrals have to do with anything? Well for us quilters they usually mean “lights” or “backgrounds”. Each year I set myself a quilting goal. Last year it was to use more orange in my projects. I think I succeeded pretty well on that, and was generally happy with the spark the orange gave to my projects. This year’s goal is to be more adventurous in my choices of backgrounds…to stay away from the whites, ecrus, and very pale fabrics. My first full size […]

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 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 […]

March 10, 2015

Getting to know you…

Hello all, Mary Ellen here. I hope that most of you know our guild has decided to offer our fall seminars in alternate years, instead of annually as had been the tradition for 40+ years. Costs of sponsoring a national teacher continue to climb, and it seems interest from our members continues to decline. To give us some breathing space to raise some funds to offset cost increases and to work with our membership to reformat seminar to better fit current wants and schedules, we’ve decided to hold seminar in the same years as our quilt show. We’ll use the show as a publicity opportunity to both our own members and non-member visitors to the show. That all said, I want to start making you aware of all that our next national teacher, Nancy Mahoney, is doing in the quilting world. Nancy has two quilts in the March/April 2015 issue […]

October 16, 2014

seminar 2016

Hello all, Mary Ellen here. It’s now official. Nancy Mahoney will be our national teacher for the 2016 quilt seminar. She is in all the quilt publications, so I’m sure that even if you’re not familiar with her name you have certainly seen some of her work. Here’s a link to her blog. Go explore and get to know a bit about her. Please be thinking about what you’d like to see in the open years in between our seminars, instead of a seminar. I’ll be asking for ideas in the months ahead.

October 3, 2014

Wicked Quilts

Hello all, Mary Ellen here. How do you find inspiration for your next quilt project? Here’s a link to quilts made for a challenge from Cherrywood hand dyed fabrics was to use 3 “wicked” greens from their 2014 line and make a quilt inspired by “Wicked”. It’s the 11th anniversary of the show “Wicked” in NYC, so many chose their inspiration from there, but other worked from the meaning of the word itself. Good theme for Halloween season, isn’t it? click here (if you dare!) How are your seminar projects coming? I hope you enjoyed yourself and learned a least one new thing. Those are the goals of seminar. We’re working on getting our national teacher lined up for 2016, and hope to announce the name at the next guild meeting. Bring those completed (tongue in cheek) projects for show and tell in October.

September 16, 2014

furoshiki wrapping and a nice surprise

Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Got any spare fabric around? (LOL!) It could be used for gift wrapping instead of paper. In this video the demonstrator also suggests silk scarves. I don’t know about you, but I have many of those just sitting in a drawer from my working days. I often wore a basic T or light weight sweater and put a scarf on to jazz it up, or to make it match a particular skirt or slacks. Although scarves are coming back, they aren’t the same style as the ones in my drawer (of course not, that would be too easy). I think this fabric wrapping would be particularly nice on gifts for your fabric loving friends. Much better than paper that ends up discarded. See what you think. It looks quite easy to me. Click here. Here’s another gift wrap idea for using up smaller pieces from […]

September 12, 2014

Bonnie in Ketchickan

Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Spent some time at the BNHV yesterday getting folders stuffed for our seminar attendees. I spoke on the phone with Bonnie Hunter while I was there. We thought we had a book order missing, but it was found after we heard from Bonnie who had signed for it. It had gotten tucked away into an unused office for safe keeping. Bonnie’s in Alaska right now, doing her schtick for the guild in Ketchikan. As she always does, pictures are posted on her daily blog. (Make sure you do your hair and put on lipstick if you’re coming to our seminar. You may get a moment of fame on her blog if you’re in a class of hers) Yesterday Bonnie explored the town and spent time in a brand new library. Check out the cool art work in the library and be sure to go all […]

September 9, 2014

quilting in the fall

Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Busily getting the last of seminar preparations completed. Fielding lots of e-mails from those quilters coming from a distance. Where to stay? Where to eat? Are there quilt shops near by? Where else can we shop? Those are the FAQ’s for this week I think! As I’ve gone through my own e-mail each day, I’ve just copied and pasted a few links that I think might be of interest to you. No time to do much more than that these days. I hope I’ll see you at seminar! funky stuffed pumpkins click here found this via a Facebook friend, I have heard several of these comments after demos I have given. Yikes. And BTW what are quilting chakras? Every comment on every quilt blog ever: click here. beautiful star quilt, perfect for featuring a collection of fat quarters or for using up scraps: click here.

July 24, 2014

Guild meeting Show and Tell

Hi everyone, I took me a while but finally getting around to post photos of our July’s meeting Show and tell! I don’t know about you, but I really LOVE meetings like we had in July – with fun demos! As much as I loved doing a demo, I would have loved to see the others too, but I hope you all had fun? If anyone needs any help with that Quick Curve Ruler or the pattern I showed – just let me know! Thinking of it now…I might do a quick “pictures tutorial” here, so you all have a “refresher” ?? What do you think – yes or no? Anyone already made a few Christmas projects after that? 🙂 He… he… I always, always say that I will start early but so far that didn’t happen much… Maybe this year? Well I will finish those Poinsettia pillows, so that […]