It’s
mad, I tell you, mad!
March Madness got the Cactus Kilter Quilter antsy. Snow and cold one day,
sniffles and sneezing the pollen the next day.
Allergy season is poking its head up through the ground and CKQ wondered
how can she contain all this snot?
Got scraps?
Turn them into fancy hankies. Or handkerchiefs if you have big scraps. Oh man, the CKQ is turning green! Eco-green! Sheesh! What were you thinking?
Snow day equates to Quilt Day.
Sniffles and Sneezing Day equates to Quilt Day with the new fancy
hankies.
After all that snow, wind, and sneezing, the Cactus Kilter Quilter needs
down time. What better time than to be one with her quilts? Whether you’re
making them or snuggling under them, quilts provide wrap-around hugs whenever
you need a hug.
March’s
BOM is the Windmill Block.
Imagine that! A windmill pattern
for a windy month. It took CKQ a couple weeks to figure out that pun by Alta
Swaine. She’s so clever. Here’s the website Alta discovered for us but notice
she altered the dimensions for easier cutting and alignments:
Change the dimensions:
Color 1 (small flower print):
4”x16” strip => into four 4”x4” squares.
Color 2 (pastel solid/tone-on-tone):
4”x16” strip => into four 4”x4” squares.
Trim to 12.5” x 12.5” unfinished blocks.
It’s
mad, I tell you, mad!
Speaking about mad, how’s your Mystery
Challenge Quilt coming? Have you selected your fabric palette and cut out
your pieces? Are you vomiting over your selections yet? The Cactus Kilter
Quilter shook her head at my selections but I’m sticking to my palette. I know it’ll work. Trust me. (CKQ is
breathing into a brown paper bag. I wonder if she’s ok…)
Becky Panariso stopped by to calm the March Madness. Several quilters
brought their fabric selections for advice and the rest of us got Ah-Ha
moments.
Mystery
Challenge Quilt’s Second Step:
Take the 6”x6” small contrast squares and stitch the perimeter with a
quarter inch seam allowance. Cut both diagonals (Do not move the square when cutting.) and press the seam allowance
toward the darker fabric. Be careful when pressing since the edges are biased.
No, they don’t express their opinions or are they prejudice. They just like to
stretch, wiggle and warp so if you have spray starch available, it’ll keep
those edges aligned and in formation. (It is March after all.)
Ah Ha! Detective Cactus Kilter Quilter figured out the Mystery Quilt
Challenge is using triangles. Now if she can only figure out how the seven inch
squares will fit with the three and six inch pieces…
Reversed Stitching comes to those whose
mistakes will show …
Patty Dunnington ripped up a storm at the meeting with her quilting tip.
She must be a quilting/sewing gadget collector because she had a lot of seam rippers. Cactus Kilter
Quilter tried to sneak into her tin of rippers to obtain the favorite one, a
battery-operated ….
Dirty minds, go get another cup of
coffee.
Anywhoooo, Patty demonstrated using a mustache trimmer to reverse stitch.
Several CKQs salivated over that device.
BIG,
big news…
Jean McDonald is the featured quilter at the Pride City Quilt Show held
in conjunction with Quilt & Stitch
Expo of Pueblo on April 4th and 5th. Pop over to the
Pueblo Heritage Museum to see her quilts as well as quilts from southern
Colorado. It’s always inspiring and motivating. But leave your hands in your
pockets. The urge to touch is great. Resist.
And if you see a Cactus Kilter Quilter touching any of the quilts, contact a
docent because if fifty people scold CKQ, she might get angry and pull a quilt
off the wall to seek comfort. And if CKQ doesn’t have one of those new-fangled
items – the scrappy hanky – she might get snot all over the quilt and well,
let’s just avoid all that emotion by keeping our hands in our pockets. Okay?
Fusion
Quilt Blocks Program
Cyndi McChesney gave a program on Fusion Quilt Blocks. Cactus Kilter
Quilter thought she was going to demo using fusible webbing to create the
blocks. All right! No sewing!!! It pays to read
and listen because fusion is different than fusible.
Will the real fusion quilt block please stand up?
Fusion is when two quilt blocks collide at a very high speed and join to
form a new block. It’s a block within a block, beside a block, or overlapping a
block. The samples Cyndi showed are awe-inspiring. She broke down the quilts
into bite-size pieces and explained it’s all about the blank space and
balancing it with another pattern or partial pattern.
Community
Sharing
A couple community gifting projects to showcase your talents are coming
up. The annual Community Baby Shower hosted by the CSU-Pueblo Nursing Program
will be held in May. Quilts, baby items, and pamper-the-Mom items will be
collected at the May meeting to help Moms-to-be bring comfort for their little
ones.
The Alzheimer’s Association Art
Auction will be held the end of May. This year, if you want, an offer to
display the quilt that depicts the painting an Alzheimer Artist painted at the Quilt & Stitch Expo of Pueblo. This
would give the Memories in the Making event
more public exposure. Alzheimer’s is more than memory-forgetting, it’s a
debilitating disease that destroys a person from the inside out.
Both of these community projects as well as PWQ’s on-going LUV quilts and
pillowcase projects are a small way PWQ wraps the community in their quilts of
love. If you have time, please contribute, this year and in future years.
The winds have kept the quilters cabin-bound by having the tumbleweeds
blockade us in our homes. Only the brave ventures out in desperation for more
fabric and threads. Let’s face it, our stashes are rapidly decreasing because
of the snows, winds, and tumbleweeds.
Alert!
Alert! Breaking News just in…
CKQ received
information that the tumbleweeds are heading your way. Again! So stock up on
your essentials and don’t forget to batten down the hatches. What do you mean,
prepare for trouble?!!
Sorry, typo. CKQ meant get stock up on batting so you can finish your
quilts.
It’s
mad, I tell you, mad!
Quilting under the Attacking Tumbleweeds,
The Scratched Cactus Kilter Quilter
