November 2016 meeting

Ho, ho, ho and a bottle of rum! Well, not quite. How about some tasty homemade kombucha tea? At November’s meeting, we fêted 2016 with a splash. Great turnout, awesome eats, and loads of fun. In case you missed it, read on and just imagine being there.

Holiday Potluck

Thanks to Sabrina and our Social Committee peeps for organizing such a fabulously yummy spread and to all who contributed. It was sweet, savoury, and oh-so-good. And in case you missed them, Andrea’s scrummy Caramel Twix Cookies were sen-sa-tional. I’ve since added them to my holiday baking roster.

Mean, Bad Santa, Yankee Swap Holiday Gift Exchange

Whatever you want to call it, it was a bloodbath of an exchange this year. We were all calm and gracious like until some highly coveted items were revealed and subsequently getting yanked away at every round. For next year’s exchange, I will need to work on a David Copperfield stealth-like cloak to hide my gift. I miss you hard Toasty! <sniff>

Show & Share

Christine shared a gradiently bright HST block quilt using charm packs by Denyse Schmidt. She got her inspiration from the Triangle Madness quilt by Cari K. at There’s a Thread blogpost. The back of the quilt was just as lovely as the front.

Xandra’s Victoria’s Argyle quilt was hot-off-the-press – well, hot-off-The-Workroom’s longarm machine that is. She was quilting it minutes before the party started. The lucky recipient of this lovely quilt will be cozy under this beauty.

Becky’s version of the curvy Robbing Peter to Pay Paul quilt is an analogous study using sunny orange, hot pink, deep purple, and pomegranate red (just for you Laura!).

On the opposite side of intense is her subtle but engaging Something Doesn't Add Up quilt inspired by Matthew Korbel-Bowers’s Coastal 2. We can’t reveal either quilt just yet but you can get updates on both by following Becky at @duzzabear on Instagram.

Thoroughly inspired by last meeting’s colour theory talk, Gwen put that learning into good use and started cutting up some unloved green fabric in her stash. In short order, she whipped up two – yes two! – log cabin inspired quilts. Such a great study of colour!

Here’s a sneak peak of Sheila’s adorable Nine Patches baby quilt using Uppercase Fabric. She’s currently working on the pattern and will be publishing it soon. Until then, you can follow #ninepatchesquilt progress on Instagram.

HST Tournament

Ok. Let me start off by saying that I’m not proud of being knocked out at the first round of this game. You’d think this would’ve been in my wheelhouse. Not so it seems.

Karen calling on the HST gods.

With Karen as our line judge, the challenge was to replicate a block pattern using a set of tiny HSTs. First person to finish the block had to grab a chicken and run around the table three times — no, wait … they had to grab a binder clip and yell “mocha choca latta ya ya!”

Anyhoo, three rounds later, the final was between guild president Adrienne and treasurer Karen. Tough call. Both were equally measured and cool as cukes. I had my money on the chicken but in the end, Karen won the game. Winners of each round got to pick from a great selection of donated prizes. Thanks go to Steff for getting us an awesome haul of goodies!

Housekeeping

• Remember, there’s no December meeting so see you on January 29!
• Our 2017 dues are due at the January meeting. Please note, they’ve gone up so don’t forget to bring your $40. We’re planning to have PayPal as a payment option in the very near future. Until then, cash or cheque please!
• Days for Girls update: Becky collected 36 drawstring bags from our guild members. Way to go ladies! We’re just 14 bags shy of our guild goal of 50. I’m sure that’ll be a “cinch” to have at our next January meeting. Becky will let us know then what our next deliverable will be.
• Our first ever fund-raising event will be a Garage Crafty Sale at our January meeting. Raising funds helps our guild programming by organizing events, booking locations and speakers, etc. Steff is leading the charge so head on over to our Upcoming Events page for more info.

Have a safe, quilty holiday and be kind to yourself. Stay cozy and warm and get in on some decadent sewing over the hols. I’m always game for getting together for an impromptu sew day so shoot me a line if you need a sewlmate.

Here’s to a better new year.

- Debi “Is it 2017 yet?”