Guilded

I went to the Garland Quilt Guild's August meeting last night with Ellen and Abby. Ellen joined last month and invited Abby and me to come with her this month. The guild ladies were all so nice to us -- I met Cheryl and Marie and Hope and some other sweet ladies whose names I can't remember.

It seemed like everyone was working on some hand-sewing project or other during the meeting; Abby was embroidering these labels, Ellen was embroidering a cute quilt block, Hope was sewing paper-pieced Grandmother's flower garden blocks, and a lady at the next table was knitting. I definitely need to bring something to do with my hands next time! I've never embroidered before but now I want to learn!

Ellen was lucky enough to win a door prize -- a gift certificate to a local quilt store. Ellen was also brave enough to share her happy quilt during the show-and-tell portion of the meeting. The guild does a block of the month each month, too. You make the block (see the instructions for September's block here) and bring it to the meeting, and one lucky person wins all the blocks for that month! One of the show-and-tell quilts was a block of the month quilt that one of the girls had put together after winning the blocks. It was beautiful! I probably won't do the block for next month, but you never know.. I might! I do happen to have plenty of 30s fabric, which is what we're supposed to use for September's block...

The main part of meeting was a presentation on applique by Pebble Rehm. She had brought several absolutely gorgeous quilts to show a variety of different styles and techniques, including a Baltimore album quilt, a Hawaiian quilt, and a Jacobean-style applique quilt. I'm just barely starting to learn applique for my sampler quilt (I'm nearly done with the first applique block -- pictures coming soon, I hope!), and I was really inspired by Pebble's work. All in all, a fun evening!