Memories of Past Quilting!

Hi Quilters,

Happy New Year 2009! I am hoping to start posting on the blog. Here are some pics I want to add to reflect upon our abundant and rich experiences in Minerva Circle. The quilts and quilters are a tapestry of diverse and magnificent talent! Enjoy!

Christmas ornaments workshop

Another successful workshop. Good friends, fun, and beautiful outcomes! Thanks Claudia! More than one is addicted to making stars and Christmas trees now!

Friends

I have been meaning to write this post for a while, and now that we received a very nice comment from one of our members who is now overseas, I decided it's about time.
Sometimes it is hard to keep this group going, we are so many members, and from different places, different villages or apartments, and we have different responsibilities in our lives, that it is hard to keep committing to this group, since this is just a hobby or a social meeting in a weekly basis. But someone has to be on top of things to make sure we don't let it go, we don't let it disappear. I try to do that, keep up with emailing, with the commons room, organizing workshops, etc, because I am not a student and I am not working either. I do have many personal responsibilities but I try to work around them. I think this group is important, it is for me, and I know it is for so many others.
I love the feeling of sharing knowledge without expecting anything back. And this is going on here a lot. There are so many woman that have so many things to share, that otherwise maybe one would never get a chance to learn that it makes an amazing opportunity for all of us to be "touched" by someone special. I also think that it s a nice and warm support group for many. I have seen so many people coming by, like Clarita, that didn't expect to have any social activity during her stay in Gainesville, but in turn, she ended up making some nice connections with a lot of people. The gratitude that she showed in her comment in the "Random" post shows it all. It was a privilege to get to meet her. A humble and friendly woman who had lots to share, not only crafts, but also affection. Those friendships stay and will remain in our memories, like many others that came and left before her. Thank you for participating in this group, it is wonderful to be a part of it.

Random

This Sunday was a bit of random activities. I continue to do my thing, tatting.
Gladys a bit of everything.

A new member! Kathy is learning how to knit for her little son. She brought him with her, he is so cute...

This is him, Edrian.

And Luca of course, getting dirty, troublemaker..

Pattern making

Last week, we had Clarita show us how o read a pattern and how to make it! It was very interested and as you can see from our faces, we were very concentrated! We didn't finish it so we will be continuing this coming Sunday.

But that wasn't all! Little John, Teri's son, was working in his quilt! Yes! Unbelievably this little boy is hand quilting a beautiful quilt that he has been working on since he was 7. You see! Not only a child but also a male can do this!

There was also a little bit of tatting. You can see the little pieces flowing out of my hands, still as addictive as 2 weeks ago. Today I got black thread to make my imagination go crazy with all this tatting :) Thanks Clarita for sharing such precious knowledge!

Tatting

Tatting...what a difficult and challenging this to learn! but once ge got it! it is so simple! Just one type of knot and two steps to it. You just have to have all your fingers working with you synchronized and once in a while you need to take a deep breath.

It was so much fun, and I am addicted to it! I do it every single minute that I am waiting on something since it's so little and I can carry it in my purse!

Clarita was a great teacher! And she left pattern reading and making for next week, which is good because it is too much information all at once and I would really like to learn both.
Thank you so much! We will proudly pass this tradition along to more people who might enjoy it!
Thank you so much Clarita!!

Zippered pouch workshop!

After a long time holding my promises up in the air, finally I got to teach my "students" how to make something with a zipper. Yes! We finally had a zippered pouch workshop and I was overwhelmed by the large number of hard working and crafty students!
It was so much fun and the bet thing was that we finished our projects! Our pouches were finished by the end of the afternoon and everyone went home with their little trophy...YES!
The best thing is the students, the companionship, the friendship and the surprise visits!
Thank you all for coming and I hope you can make many more in the future!!!

Here are some shots of our busy afternoon. Enjoy!

Front:

Back:

Amisha (surprise visit all the way from NY)!

Our youngest crafty member, Maria Emilia:

New members: Alina and he daughter:

Ivonne working hard:

Claudia 1:

Pilar and Cata:

Claudia 2 and Galdys (it was so nice to see you two back!)

MMMM soap!

I never thought I would be interested in making soap, but Carolina gain made it so easy for us that we had a great time creating a piece of soap and on top of that, a nice little present.
The soap making wasn't from scratch like some our friends do! It came from a kit, but allowed us to create nice designs with colors and shapes of our own taste.
We first cut pieces or colored soap that she had previously made at home.

Then we mounted it in a mold and prepared the embedding soap that was going to surround it. We added aroma and color to our taste and then we let it cool off.

In the meantime, we learn how to wrap presents with fabric. This is a very Japanese thing. When I lived in Japan this is one of the first things I learned. People don't use lunch boxes but rather, take a beautiful fabric and wrap it up leaving a handle so it is easy to carry. It is an art! I loved doing it for this project. We also stamped the fabric, the paper that we put on top of the plastic wrapping and the little bags of bath salts that were part of this present.

We were happy with our creations. Thanks again Carolina for teaching us a fun project!

Paper cube

Last Sunday, we had our second workshop. It was something new to a lot of us and it was a lot of fun.
Carolina was our teacher. She is really good at doing things with paper and she taught us how to make a paper cube, which looks like origami, to put pictures around it. Kind of like picture frames in a cube.
We had some new guests and it was a lot of fun creating something so new and simple! Thank you so much Carolina! It feels good to create new things :)

And as always, there was some quilting going on!