Crazy Quilters' Quilt Guild

NQA Chapter #PA 497

No. 252 www.crazyquilters.org March 2012

The Crazy Quilters’ Quilt Guild Meets the first Tuesday of every month* at The Lutheran Church of the Holy Spirit 3461 Cedar Crest Boulevard Emmaus, PA 18049 7:00pm www.crazyquilters.org Email: info@crazyquilters.org *except November Only a few people stepped up to help out. We are still in need of people to fill 16 hours (8 two hour shifts) at the ticket sale table. I don’t know how else to put this. We really all need to work together to keep our guild as good as it can be. As you have heard before good raffle quilt sales equals good programs equals a great guild! To end this note…I am looking for a few members to act as a nominating committee. Fortunately we only need to nominate a team of Vice Presidents to coordinate programs and workshops. As stated at the meeting it would be great to fill these shoes soon so the new VPs can begin working on planning next year. If you are interested in the positions please contact Jackie or Val. They will be glad to help you out with planning the first couple of months… Happy Sewing Julie Challenge	Jane Grove janegrove@hotmail.com Stay tuned! The 2010 Challenge will be presented at the December meeting, and then subsequently printed on the web-site and in the newsletter. _________________________ Web News Allen Bernstein	Almax626@msn.com Hi again from the web, What a great meeting we had in August. Some faces old, some faces new. It matters not as our web site www.crazyquilters.org is for everyone. Take a look at new pictures, our newsletter and a picture of our raffle quilt. AND shortly after our meeting in September there will be some exciting changes. Stay tuned! From the President
Julie Borden
Greetings fellow quilters,	I hope you all enjoyed the largest Girls Night Out at our February meeting. For those of you who missed it, we all enjoyed viewing a great, inspirational quilting movie, Stitched. It was very interesting to learn all about the other quilting worlds - the competitions, art quilts versus traditional quilts, and all the hype that leads up to Houston. For whatever reasons you chose to be a quilter the movie was inspirational. It inspired me to go home and sew! My journey to finish things that I have started is moving along. I finished my daughters t-shirt quilt, and now I will move on to my batik blocks from Kindred Quilts. Today I finished 7 small baby quilts for a program I do to promote literacy in center city Allentown. Thanks to many of you my school was able to stuff 240 bears. The children really love this project and every year we have a child that is able to connect to this project some-how. I really appreciate your help in making this project a success. As you all know we are gearing up for another opportunity to display our beautiful raffle quilt at the Quilt Fest of New Jersey, March 1-4. We all need to come together and support the raffle quilt committee in doing our part. During the meeting a request was made for help with white gloving and ticket sales at the show. Community Service Lorraine Bujnowski
20th Anniversary block of the month quilt: April will be the month when we will show our completed block of the month 20th anniversary quilts. Community Service: A big thank you to everyone who participated in the teddy bear project. I understand that Julie’s students and parents completed 240 bears. They will be delivered to hospital emergency rooms for ambulance corps. Thank you to all of you who have been sewing preemie quilts. We have collected quite a few and they will be delivered to the NICU at Lehigh Valley Hospital. Pillowcases, “bitty” bears, preemie quilts continue to be collected and are much appreciated. The “friendship star” blocks will be collected in March so that we may complete our quilt for the Veterans’ Sanctuary. Camp Erin quilts are needed for the bereavement camp for children in May. The quilts need to measure 50x70” and must be quilted or tied. They will be collected at our May meeting. You may put a personal label on your quilt but the guild will be placing a Crazy Quilt Guild label on them as well.	_______________________________ Hospitality	Diana DeFanti Many thanks to our hospitality volunteers for our Valentine, February meeting. Coordinating the evening was Julie McDonell. Her helpers were Kim Orndorf, Pam Bonina, Kathy Laposata, Kathy Flickinger, Sandy O’Connor and Linda Herman. Volunteers who signed up for March are Nancy Skok, Patricia Miller, Emily Schneider, Nancy Horning, Joyce Haeflinger, Jackie Leipert, and Jane Grove. You will receive a reminder the weekend prior to the meeting. Please contact me if you have any concerns. Bee News	Diana Campbell The Honey Bees, our daytime bee, will gather at the home of Joyce Haeflinger on March 14th at 9:00 a.m. If you are planning to attend, please R.S.V.P. to Joyce, and bring some hand work and a bag lunch.	See you there. ______________________________ Workshops Jackie Leipert/Val Johnson We are currently taking sign-ups for the “Learning Curve” workshop. The workshop isn’t until June 6th but it’s not too early to get your name on the list. It’s a half-day workshop and it’s only $20. We will begin to advertise to nearby guilds soon. The enrollment will be capped at 20 so if you are interested in learning more about Linda Warren’s unique method for doing curved piecing let Val or Jackie know ASAP. You can check out her website www.lindawarrendesigns.com . Also, if you are interested in taking advantage of the workshop scholarship fund, just ask. We have funding available to cover workshop fees for up to four Crazy Quilters for this workshop. The “Piping Hot Binding” workshop with Susan Cleveland on May 2nd is currently full. We will be happy to put your name on the waiting list. Just let us know you are interested. _____________________________ Challenge	Jane Grove Have you thought about making trees from green or autumn-colored checked fabric? Stripes could be the trunks, and your large print could be the forest floor. Thanks to all who brought stamps for Veterans to the February meeting. Keep 'em coming. ____________________________ Library	Maxine Bernstein Thank you to Janet Yandrisevits for the February raffle gift and to Allen B. for selling tickets. The gift for March will be contributed by Jackie Leipert. Mini-Class Before Meeting Carole Whaling
walingcj@aol.com There will be a mini-class at the June meeting. Topic to be advised. __________________________ Raffle Quilt Nancy Skok nancys@wfmc.com Our raffle quilt is now on display at ASMO. We still need some people to fill-in on Saturday afternoon at the Hershey Quilt show, July 24th. Thanks! . Hospitality	Diana DeFanti	defantid@gmail.com Thank you to the following members for their donations and assistance for our dessert table at the April meeting: Val Johnson, Irene Oehmke, Nancy Thomas, Lynn Gilbert, Nancy Horning, Ruth Hoffman and Diana Campbell. Members who signed up to bring a dessert for the May meeting are: Carole Whaling, Angela Assorgi, Tami Jones, Deb Veshinfsky, Mary Collins, Sandra Mugridge and Liz Dimmich.
Hospitality	Jackie Leipert	djleipert@verizon.net	Thank you the Julie Mc Donell and her committee, Karen Landis, Diane Pesola, Diana Campbell, Linda Herman and Jackie Leipert for the delicious refreshments at our July meeting.
I will be the coordinator for August's volunteers who will be Irene Oehmke, Pat Haberle, Kathryn Heffrich, Karen Hartzell and Becky Marx.
Our September meeting with its Anniversary Potluck Supper is fast approaching. Everyone is asked to bring a food item (protein, pasta, fruit, vegetable, dessert, or drink). Plugging in pots is discouraged for safety reasons. We have tablecloths but our tradition has been to bring our own place settings and to make individual tables more festive, flower arrangements for the table. Put on your thinking caps as to what you will prepare and sign up to bring your specialty at our next month's meeting. Thanks. be Irene Oehmke, Pat Haberle, Kathryn Heffrich, Karen Hartzell and Becky Marx.

Tips and Ideas	from the Crazy Quilter

Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

by the Crazy Quilter

How about the price of fabric these days?! I was in a favorite quilt shop last week and saw some bolts of cotton that were over $11.00 per yard! And I thought they were high at $8.00. I guess I’m spoiled from living too close to those Lancaster area shops, but the prices are climbing there, too. What’s a quilter to do? Well, let me share 2 of my favorite “on the cheap” products or tools. Maybe if we can save on some of our gadgets and notions we can justify replenishment of the stash.

One of my favorite tools is a mini telescope that I got in a Captain Crunch cereal box about 15 years ago. I didn’t buy it deliberately for quilting, my son wanted to try the cereal. So, since he wasn’t too bad about eating a lot of junk food I bought a box. Like many sugary cereals designed to appeal to children the box contained a free toy inside, a mini telescope. He played with it for all of 5 minutes, and days later as I was picking up I found it and automatically held it up to have a look. Because it was designed like some kind of spy equipment I couldn’t tell which end was which, so without knowing I held it up the wrong way, and rather than magnifying objects within view, it made everything appear smaller – farther away. It was a perfect reducing glass! I actually went back to the grocery store and bought another box of the cereal (which we didn’t like, by the way) so that I could have my own Captain Crunch reducing glass! I thought I was so clever! Obviously you can’t get the same FGWP in a box of Captain Crunch these days, but I’m telling you this story so that you start to think about looking for tools in some not so obvious places.

My very most favorite tool that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg is freezer paper. This stuff I would use even if it wasn’t cheap. And why is it called freezer paper? Does anyone really use it in the freezer somehow? I think one is supposed to wrap meat in it, but I’m not sure. Never have I used it for freezing meat! Would you iron it to keep it closed or what?! I do use it in my sewing room, though. I like to use freezer paper for foundation piecing, I make nearly all of my applique templates with it, and I iron it to the wrong side of my fabric as a stabilizer for writing labels or for writing inscriptions on the right side of my fabric. There are dozens of other uses for freezer paper in the quilt making process. You can use it for applique templates on the right side of your fabric or on the wrong side of your fabric, for English paper piecing templates, for stabilizing your fabric to go through a printer in order to make labels, to transfer photos onto fabric or to photocopy fabric in case you are about to run out and need just a bit more! Check out the web for lots of innovative ideas using freezer paper. I can’t believe they didn’t raise the price of this product when they found out quilters use it – it’s actually recommended for quilting on the box! Of course, if you have a need to spend more in order to support your local economy freezer paper does come in precut 8 ½ x 11 inch sheets for feeding into your printer or whatever. I admit I have bought these sheets, too, but I use the stuff on a roll far more frequently because I hate to waste the more expensive sheets!

I’m sure you all have your ways of robbing Peter to pay Paul, but these are 2 of my frugal ideas that help me justify purchasing more fabric. Even though I’m cheap about some things I do support the local ecomony in my own way. After all, Wegman’s is happy when I buy the roll of freezer paper or the box of cereal, and my local quilt shops are happy when I buy more fabric.

No More Sugar Coating	Quilt Raffle Committee

These are the clear cut facts from the Raffle Committee:

There is a committee of six people working on marketing the quilt. Their job is to find venues to display the quilt. Their job is not to provide all of the woman (and man) power to staff the ticket table at these venues.

Each and every member who comes to our monthly meetings should plan to make some sort of contribution toward this effort. Selling tickets to family and friends or selling tickets at one of the quilt shows.

To date we have raised $2800.

Our goal in the budget is $4000.

The money we raise from the raffle quilt raises funds for two years of operations for our guild. This year our budget for program and workshop costs alone was $4550. For two years that’s over $9000. In order to continue having quality programming we need to maintain this level or more realistically add to it.

We do not have too much money in our treasury.

There will be additional opportunities to sign up to sell tickets in the coming months. Please sign up to

help.

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Programs	Val Johnson/Jackie Leipert

As the March winds arrive to clear out winter and welcome spring, please join us on March 6 to hear Susan Ball Faeder as she shares with us her interest in Japanese Traditional Textiles. She will show us her beautiful quilts and her line of Japanese fabric while giving us an insight into the Japanese culture through their quilts.

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Membership	Sharon Schaffer

In the next few months I will be starting a new part of our newsletter. It will be profiling some of our members. We have a great variety of people in our Guild that are very talented and it is nice to find out a bit about them. I will be taking a few minutes before our meeting starts to interview them. Nothing extreme or painful. I hope is I ask you to be interviewed you will accept. Look for this new section in upcoming issues.

March Birthdays

Sandy O’Connor	3/2	Sharon Pieller	3/3

Nancy Boccadoro	3/8	Patricia Karo	3/9

Irene Madalena	3/12	Diana DeFanti	3/15

Kathy Schuessler	3/23	Patricia Miller	3/25

Barb Kissell	3/30

Guild Calendar from the editor March 6, Crazy Quilters’ Guild Meeting; 6:45pm refreshments, 7pm meeting, LCHS Calendar of Events from the editor “Quilt Fest of New Jersey” a Mancuso show, 3/1-3/4, 10am to 6pm (5pm Sunday), Garden State Exhibit Center, 50 Atrium Dr., Somerset, NJ, $12 admission, www.quiltfest.com “Garden of Quilts” by Susquehanna Valley Quilters, 3/2-3/4, 6 to 9pm Friday, 10 to 6 Saturday, 12 to 4 Sunday, Hughesville Fire Hall, Railroad & Water Sts., Hughesville, PA, $5 fee, www.susqvalleyquilters.org AQS Quilt Show, 3/14-3/17, Lancaster Convention Center, 3 E. Vine St., Lancaster, PA, 9am to 6pm (5pm on Friday), $9 members, $11 non-members, www.americanquilter.com/shows “Celebrate 25” by County Line Quilters, 3/24-3/25, 10am to 5pm, Archbishop Wood High School, 655 N. York Rd., Warminster, PA, Admission $5 (seniors $4), www.countylinequilters.org “The Rhythm of Quilting” by Friendship Star Quilters, 4/27-4/29, 12 to 8 Friday, 10 to 6 Saturday, 10 to 4 Sunday, Montgomery County Fairgrounds, Home Arts Bldg., Gaithersburg, MD, $8 fee, (seniors $5), www.fridndshipstar.org “Quiltfest 2012” by Colonial Quilters Guild, 5/5-5/6, 10 to 5 (10 to 4 Sunday), Charles Chrin Community Center of Palmer Township, 4100 Green Pond Rd., Palmer, PA, Admission $7, www.colonialquilters.org “39th Annual Quilt Show” by Quilters Unlimited, 6/1-6/3, Dulles Expo & Conference Center, Chantilly, VA, www.quiltersunlimited.org “Pennsylvania Quilts ll: Patterns and Variations” at Packwood House Museum, 6/12-10/13, Lewisburg, PA, www.packwoodhousemuseum.com “Celebration of Quilts” by York Quilters’ Guild, 6/23-6/24, 10 to 5, Old Main Bldg., York Expo Center, York, PA, Admission $10 (seniors $8), www.celebrationofquilts.com “Quilt Odyssey 2012” - 7/26 to 7/29, Hershey Lodge and Convention Center, Hershey, PA, www.quiltodyssey.com Guild Officers President: Julie Borden First Vice-Presidents: Val Johnson/Jackie Leipert Second Vice-President: Sharon Schaffer Secretary: Jane Grove Treasurer: Anita Hertzog Committees Challenge: Jane Grove Community Service: Lorraine Bujnowski, Kathy Flickenger, Lois Drendel, Sally Waggoner, Ann Lineberger Historical: Nancy Skok Hospitality: Diana DeFanti Library: Maxine Bernstein/Michele McLaughlin Membership: Sharon Schaffer NQA Liaison: Irene Oehmke Newsletter: Allen Bernstein Phone Chain: Julie McDonell Programs: Val Johnson/Jackie Leipert Publicity: Alison Bessesdotter Raffle Quilt Marketing: Kathy Schuessler, Roberta Whitcomb, Sharon Yurkanin, Marsha Heimann, Jackie Leipert, Anita Hertzog Show and Tell: Maria Hance Sunshine and Shadow: Sandra Mugridge Website: Allen Bernstein Workshops: Val Johnson/Jackie Leipert