First quilt guild meeting of 2015!!!

Co-presidents, Nayna and Ilene, started the new year with a fun guild meeting with lots of information, a fun game with m&m's, tips and tools, mystery quilter, birthday presents for everyone and topped it off with donuts. Everyone had a good time and enjoyed visiting with each other.

 Ilene showed her quilt which is the Shoo-fly pattern. She introduced the four variations of the Disappearing Pinwheel with the shoo-fly being #1.

 Ilene and Nayna then showed us the remaining three variations. The Churn Dash is #2

The Illinois Road is variation #4

The Whirlygig is variation #3

 They demonstrated how you take one basic pinwheel block and cut it into thirds. You can then make four different blocks depending on how you arrange your pieces.

So much fun to see what you can do with a little shuffling of pieces.

Ilene started show and tell with a very pretty quilt that she finished to give a friend for her retirement.

 Micky told about a paper piecing class that she took. She loved the class and made several very pretty blocks.

 Mac picked out this fabric so it was extra meaningful for Micky.

 Pam made this quilt for her daughter and used the technique that Kris taught last year. She said it took awhile to make so many blocks but that it was lots of fun.

 She even put a label on the back!!

 Alana showed several beautiful quilts today...

 This is an English Hexagon quilt.

 This one is called Hanky Panky.

 Jeanette showed this quilt as you go quilt. She said that she wouldn't want to do a big quilt this way but that she really liked this one.

 She also finished this quilt that she bought as a kit from Superior Threads.

 The back of the quilt using batik from The Mayor's House. Marla quilted this one and did a beautiful job.

 Jeanette has been very busy and finished this quilt too.

 Joan showed this quilt that was left to her by a dear friend that passed away last summer. She thinks that it was made close to a 100 years ago and is very precious to her.

 She showed the back of the quilt which shows off the beautiful hand quilting.

Alana was the mystery quilter this month and we learned some fun things about her. Demolition Derby Alana????

We were treated to a trunk show of her gorgeous quilts

This was a kit from JoAnn's.

Alana traced coloring book pages for some of the blocks for this quilt and then embroidered them.

This is a Buggy Barn quilt

 Alana's Mother made the blocks for this quilt and Alana finished the quilt.

 This is Alana's very favorite quilt that she has made. It is a log cabin with applique and is hand quilted.

This will be a table runner but it shows some blocks like the double wedding ring quilts that Alana made.

Ilene then showed some tools and tricks to make our quilting easier. This is a pad to put under your machine foot pedal to keep it from slipping around.

 This is a revolving cutting mat to make cutting those pinwheel blocks simple.

This is a board with slots to hold all of those rulers. You can either hang it up or put it on the counter.

It surprised us all to see that Marla has some new cutting tools and rulers. She demonstrated how new and improved items just keep coming out. All to make our quilting a breeze.

Thanks Marla

Everyone had a great time and look forward to trying the disappearing Pinwheel blocks and all the new tools. We also look forward to our meeting in February which will be an auction.