Tompkins County Quilters’ Guild
March 2017
Newsletter
President’s Message
Happy almost Spring everyone! I am very ready. These last few days of warm weather have
been lovely.
The last two meetings have been tons of fun! Lots of work was completed during the
“sweatshop” with ABC quilts and Demo night was full of helpful hints and tips. I want to try out
some of them.’’
Our Casowasco retreat is coming up next weekend. If you have never been, we will
have another retreat at the end of October. Perhaps you would like to join those of us who have
been several times. We will be glad to tell you about the fun we have. The retreat center is
located in Moravia, on Owasco Lake. We will be looking for snow geese this time – we have seen
them in the spring for several years now.
Next meeting, March 14th should be interesting. The Modern Quilt Guild will be doing a trunk
show. I can’t wait to see what they will bring.
Cozy up to your sewing machines through the next few weeks. Spring will be here before we
know it and then we will all be out gardening!
Kathy
How To determine if you have enough Bias Binding
This information comes from Borders, Bindings& Edges, by Sally Collins C&T
Publishing 2004 pp. 87, 90
If you want to know if that perfect fabric in your stash will give you enough bias binding
for a quilt do the following steps:
1. Determine how many inches of binding you will need - measure the perimeter of the
quilt plus 12”
2. Determine the largest square that can be made from the fabric
3. Find the area of that square (length x width), then divide that number by the width
of bias strip. The result will tell you how many inches of bias strips can be made from
that square.
ex: Your quilt needs 302” of binding.
You have 3/4 yd of fabric, so you can make a 27” x 27 “ square.
The area of that square equals 729”. Divide by 2 1/4” the desired width of your
bias strip. This gives a total of 324” of
bias binding.
You have enough!
Cutting the Bias Strips
Work on your cutting mat so you do not have to move the fabric.
Fold the square in half. You now have a triangle.
Starting at the folded edge, make one or two even folds toward the point. The width of
the folds is not specific , but must be even.
Align the edge of the ruler from the point to the fold, aligning a horizontal line of the
ruler on the fold. Cut the square into two pieces.
Cut strips the desired width from one of the halves. Turn the cutting mat and cut the
remaining strips.
Join the bias strips end to end with a 1/4” seam.
UPDATE from TCQG Legacy Seat Representative, Andrea C. Gibbs
Here are the City Federation of Women Organizations 2016-17 Women Building
Community Grants recipients. The grants were presented at a ceremony held on
December 6, 2016.
1. A Place to Stay: Guest House for Homeless Women (Catholic Charities of
Tompkins/Tioga Catholic Charities continues to serve the urgent community
need for safe, clean and affordable housing for women. A WBC Grant in 2015-16
helped fund its successful pilot program renting and supporting a downtown
women’s guest house
2. 2. Compost Toilet Build (Youth Farm Project) Middle and high school girls will
participate in a Hammerstone: Carpentry for Women workshop that will help
them build various skills including for construction of a needed enhancement for
the Youth Farm.
3. 3. Educating Mother and Child (Tompkins Cortland Community College Faculty
Student Association) Tompkins Cortland Community College Child Care Center
provides scholarship support for female students with children in the center’s safe
and nurturing environment.
4. 4. Exploring the Arc of Women’s Suffrage and its Relevance to Current Issues
(History Center in Tompkins County)The centennial commemoration of women’s
suffrage in New York State is an opportunity for education, conversation and
discussion locally as well as statewide and nationally.
5. 5. Girls Night In (Groton Junior-Senior High School) Groton Central School will
build on its first-ever program to empower its female students to make smarter
and healthier decisions.
6. . Pieces of Clay (Southside Community Center)Designed to help develop poise
and good character in girls through classroom instruction, workshops and
opportunities to meet others and develop new relationships in a fun atmosphere.
7. 7. Strength in Girls (Beverly J. Martin Elementary School Enrichment Program
A+)The afterschool program’s newer emphasis on the expansion of programming
to enhance children’s health and well-being includes mindfulness and yoga for
elementary school girls
8. 8. Survivors Circle (Advocacy Center)A new support group for survivors of
domestic violence will provide peer support and information on coping strategies
and accessing of community resources for women not currently being served
9. 9.TechSavvy 2017 (American Association of University Women, AAUW Ithaca
Branch) Girls and female parents/caregivers from Tompkins County will have
increased access to the day-long hands on STEM (science technology engineering
mathematics) activities as well as ones focused on college and career preparation.
I will be not continue as the legacy seat representative at the end of my term, May 2017.
It has been very interesting and a pleasure to have worked with the dedicated women of
the CFWO Board. Please thank Cora Yao, as I do, for volunteering to serve as the TCQG
Legacy Seat Representative to the City Federation of Women Organizations Board for
the term 2017-2020.
Service Projects and more from Aafke
March 28 Guild Meeting:
National Quilting Day is Saturday March 18. If you started or worked on a quilt on the 18th,
bring it to Guild and show us! Also, if you have a green quilt to show, please share it with us any
size is fine, I'll bring one that is about 10" x 10". We'll stack the quilts one table for National
quilting Day and another for the green quilts. You can tell us about your quilt(s).
Any questions, contact Aafke: [email protected]
DaysforGirls
DaysforGirls is not until May 5-6, more about it in next month's newsletter. Andra Benson would
like to share with you that she took 60 kits to Guatemala. These are the kits we worked on the
last time we sewed in Lansing. She also took a sewing machine, the PUL liner and other fabric
along so the women in the village in Guatemala can start making their own feminine supplies.
Aafke Steenhuis
Bags for Chemo Patients.
Thanks to everyone sewing bags for the folks that have to go to chemo. This is an ongoing
project and more bags need to be made regularly. When I drop of the bags at the Cancer
Resource Center, the staff is always so impressed and appreciative when they see what I bring
in. The pattern for the bag is on the Guild website. Next time we meet, I'll have bag kits to
distribute, I promise!
Aafke Steenhuis
CALLING ALL QUILTERS -- SMALL QUILT SILENT AUCTION
Hoping to have many of the small quilts by April - for advertising the show!
It's time to start the small quilt you are making for the
Silent Auction that we will hold at our show in October 2017. We are hoping
to receive one from almost everyone in the guild. Make it fancy or make
it simple. Make it yourself or do it with a friend. The quilts will be auctioned off
to raise the money that we will use for the next two years for Guild programs and service
projects.
****This year we need many small quilts turned in by April to display them to
advertise the show***The guidelines are quite simple:
1) Any technique, shape or size as long as no dimension exceeds 40 inches.
2) Small quilts, wall hangings, bags, doll quilts, baby quilts, dolls, clothing
are all acceptable.
3) Give it a title and sign the back. Put on a sleeve.
4) Turn it in to any Small Quilt Committee member, at any guild meeting,
or call Casey at 607-257-3431 and she can arrange to get it from you.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Casey Carr and The Small Quilt Silent Auction Committee (Karen Baum, Cheryl Moore,
Lori Benjamin and ???)
Show Quilt
Last month you got glimpses of the Show Quilt. Here’s a narrative about it.
Raffle Quilt
In June 2016, the Raffle Quilt Committee began working with the African Adinkra symbol for
Secured House, proposed by Andrea Gibbs as the basis for the next Show Quilt. Throughout the
summer the Committee developed the quilt design with a lot of effort by Andrea Gibbs, Ruth
White, Karen Kindle and the Committee. Tracy McLellan researched and drew the designs for
the applique based on flowers found in West Africa. In addition, Tracy dyed the fabric for the
quilt back which had been donated by Kathy Carmen. Many of our Guild members sewed the
blocks together, doing a beautiful job on both the paper piecing and the applique. Andrea Gibbs,
Kathy Carmen, Marion Tobey, Cathy Miller, Nancy Ostman, and Sue Romanczuk completed the
final arrangement and sewed the quilt top together. At the Holiday Party the completed quilt
top was shared with the guild members and the name “Garden Sanctuary” was chosen. In
January, Lori Benjamin created the quilting designs and quilted the quilt. The close- up pictures
sent by Lori show the exquisite quilting that she has done on our quilt. And, finally, Lucy Cross
sewed on the binding and the sleeve. The Raffle Quilt Committee would like to thank everyone
who has contributed in the creation of our “Garden Sanctuary”. Postcards with a professional
photograph of the quilt will be available shortly which means that the process of showing the
quilt at venues and selling raffle tickets begins…..
Guild and Show news
1. The proposed 2017 Guild Budget is now on-line. It was too big to present in the
newsletter format.
2. Vendor applications for Traditions and Beyond are available on the guild website.
There is no deadline. Booths are 1st come, 1st served until full.
http://www.tcqg.org/vendors.html
Upcoming Programs
March 14
Modern Quilt Guild Trunk Show
April 8 and 9 Workshop with Sujata Shah "Organized Chaos"
April 10
Workshop with Sujata Shah "Cultural Fusions"
April 11
Sujata Shah lecture "The Root Connection"
May 9
Tina Somerset Lecture, demo, and trunk show:“Color Palettes for Wow
Quilts”.
May 23
“April Showers Bring May Flowers” Show and Tell
June 13
Stephanie Baker Trunk show and Demo “Quiltworx Seminar”, featuring paper
piecing methods