Beth Ferrier of Applewood Farms was our guest speaker.

 Her lecture was about:  Pieces of a Quilter’s Life.  

 She was inspiring about life, very positive about making quilts that we want to make, not being afraid to learn new quilting techniques and not being too critical about our own projects   We laughed at her funny stories about life and family.  

When she showed us her quilts  from the beginning of her quilting to today, were amazed with the progression of style and creativity. 

Each quilt helped her learn or deloped a new technique. 

She has an amazing eye for putting colors together and her quilts make you feel like you’re standing in her garden!  

Beth machine appliques her quilts and has helped develop a technique using  Wash Away Applique Sheets.
Her machine quilting looks like it was done on a long arm!  When asked if she quilts her own quilts she replied “Yes and I quilt the snot out of it!”.

Read the stuff Beth thinks about while quilting at:  Beth Ferriers Blog

I highly recommend Beth Ferrier as a quilt teacher and lecturer!

does it again!  The PALS Quilt Guild meeting was last night and look at the cute cookies the “Cookie Lady” made for us.  These are so cute I couldn’t eat mine!

Abbi Mays Fabric Shop

This quilt group did a wonderful thing to help out their community. 

You can read about this here: http://quilttherapy.com/?p=2012

Belonging to a quilt guild, bee or group can be very rewarding and do so if you can!

At our monthly quilt guild meeting (PALS), the board members taught mini classes called “Give-Aways & Gotta-Haves” for gifts to give away or keep for ourselves!  These fabric based gifts were quick to make and have on hand as Christmas, birthday, hostess, etc. gifts.  Not only was this a fun group activity, but also great ways to way to use up the stash of fabric and notions we all have.

Pals members rotated in small groups from table to table every 10 - 15 minutes to learn each new gift project idea.

It was so much fun! 

 Here are some photos from that night:

Look at the cookies we had at our quilt guild meeting this week! The “hospitality committee” brings in cookies for us to eat during our break. Thank you gals for this treat, not only were they clever and beautiful - but tasty too! 

PALS member Sue made two really cute baby charitable quilts using this pattern from Quiltalicious
HUG & MOOCH BABY QUILT 

On the first quilt she used only the X’s and added and extra row.

On the second quilt, she used the four O’s blocks and the scraps from the X’s to make a strip quilt!

If you want to make these two quilts you’ll need to add 1 1/2 yards of white to set the blocks.

Purchase your quilt kits here: Hugs & Mooches

At my quilt guild (PALS) meeting last night, a special award was given to three of the members for their donation of charitable baby quilts.  Karen, Jan and Brenda made 212 quilts between them.  This was a mother – daughter – aunt team who worked all year in competition with each other to see how many quilts they could make. Brenda worked especially hard and brought 80 quilts to our last meeting! Give these gals a great big hug!

THANK YOU! Your kindness is greatly appreciated!

Also, our quilt guild gives out a special pin to any member that makes two or more baby quilts during the year and this year we gave out 45 pins! We also have collected 342 quilts this year and these will be given out in March to different charitable organizations in our area.  Everyone who makes charitable quilts deserves a great big hug and a very grateful: Thank You!

Have you ever wanted to try making a rag quilt? 

I’m one of the 3 co-chairs (my two sister-in-laws are the others) for our quilt guild. We chair the “Baby Quilts” function of our quilt guild.   Members donate their unwanted baby fabrics & batting for the use in these baby quilts.  We also have free patterns they can use if they choose to make their own quilt.  Each quilt gets a very pretty label on the back:

All year long our quilt guild collects baby quilts to give out to our local charitable agencies.  Once a year we invite local charitable agencies to come to our quilt guild meeting and accept our quilts.

Last year we handed out at least 200 quilts, all made by the members of our guild, to 8 local charities. It’s very rewarding to see their faces as they take these quilts!

This year we had a ”quilt bee” at our meeting and “Baby Quilts” had volunteers cutting kits, labeling quilts, and sewing quilts. Our quilt guild is so big (150ish members)! It was fun to sit and talk with these helpful members.

Last month I introduced a new line of quilt patterns  from Quiltalicious for baby quilts.

The designer, Tammy Harrision, had been (im)patiently waiting to get them back from her quilter because photographs are better visuals than the image of a quilt pattern cover.  Here is her finished quilt isn’t it pretty?!

These patterns are available for sale here.  Kits are available here for your quilt guild or charity and the kit will include 6 @ 1/2 yards of fabric at a special price and are for BOYS & GIRLS with a FREE PATTERN.