Saline County Quilters Guild: Daytime Stitchers

Daytime Stitchers met Monday, June 24 at the Herzfeld Memorial Library in Benton.

Judy gave us the long-awaited tutorial on her Friendship Circle Quilt.

The background for the block is created by making a
4-patch from 4 1/2" squares. Using 5" squares, make
4 half-square triangle blocks and sew these together to
make another 4-patch. Press all seams open. Then
use a cardboard template to cut out the circles. (Is
this plain as mud?)

Judy cut her circles
using an Olfa rotary circle
cutter and a rotating mat. If
using this product, be sure to
cut the outer circle first. Then
cut out the inner circle of the
block and set this aside or <gasp>
throw it away as you will not
be using it on this project. Be sure
to leave enough seam allowance
if you are using the needle-turn
applique method. Otherwise you
can machine applique it to the
4-patch block.

Here is a finished block next to the
set of half-square triangles and
some inner circle cut-outs. If
you have more questions, ask
Judy. For an excellent tutorial
on making one large block
using freezer paper, go to the
Modern Quilt Guild site. The
block on that site is called
Target Practice and is appliqued
to a plain background instead of
a pieced background.

* * *

After the tutorial there was show-and-tell. We always love to see what everyone is

working on. Sue has made more progress on her Woodland Creatures quilt.

Ida is working on her pumpkin quilt. She also showed her "ten-minute" table runner which she said actually takes longer than ten minutes!

Jo is working on a stitchery "Promises and Borders" from Jenny of Elefantz . You can go to her website and look under the tab that says "freebies," and find this lovely stitchery. Jo says that when she transfers a pattern she uses the corresponding color of Pigma pens on each element of the design. That way she doesn't have to keep referring back to the pattern to see which color she needs to use.

Henrietta was putting the binding on a charity quilt.

Another block has been turned in for the 2014 "donation quilt."

Cely has assembled her "quilty paper dolls" blocks into this lovely quilt. We exchanged blocks last year and each participant signed the block they made. ( My blocks are languishing under a pile of other unfinished projects. Where are yours??)

More "quilty" blocks:

This is the front and back of a quilt Sondra just finished.

Sylvia brought several quilts to show us. She had made these for families of servicemen who were going to be honored in her church on Sunday. What a lovely tribute! Two of the quilts feature a photo of the serviceman.