The September meeting was held at the home of Cynthia Luedtke and we had a pretty good number of members and future members present, as well as others via Zoom. The meeting was very interesting because it was not just cut and dried, but included a business meeting, a presentation by Carolyn Zaleski about Quilts of Valor which also covered her desire to form a local group of sewers/quilters and some of her endeavors to find a place to actually meet to sew, a very good demonstration by Cynthia Luedtke with both the manual and electric versions of AccuQuilt. Cynthia offered to let anyone who would like to use the machines to do so, using her machines and her fabrics. The demonstration was held in Cynthia’s sewing room and the iPad video camera was held by Kathy Wickham. Loretta Twiford brought and showed two projects she had made using her AccuQuilt machine.

Prior to the demonstration, Cathy Henderson showed 2 Foster Care quilts she had made.

Cynthia Luedtke demonstrated her AccuQuilt machines (one manual and one electric). She showed what a Die is, how to load it with fabric, and how to feed it through the machine to get accurately cut quilt shapes.

After the demonstration at Show & Tell, future new member Dawn Watson showed a wholecloth quilt she had made. She said it was a piece of fabric with the blue lines printed on it for following with free motion quilting, which she did on her Bernina with the Bernina Stitch Regulator. It was really a work of beauty.

Cynthia showed a QOV block, Floating Star, a quilt made from a kit, and a spool quilt.

Kitty Yates showed baby quilt she had made, a snowball quilt and a picture block quilt.

Member Loni Bier was present on Zoom and had sent an article she copied from Facebook entitled “Missouri Inmates Sew Custom Quilts For Foster Children: ‘It kind of breaks your heart.’” The article had been published on July 12, 2021 by Shahla Farzan, St. Louis Public Radio. It is an excellent article about inmates at South Central Correctional Center in Missouri. A pdf copy will be attached to the October newsletter cover email.

We met on a wondermous afternoon at Walrond Park for a program on “Scrappy” quilts. After a short business meeting, the floor (well, the picnic arbor floor) was given to Program Chair Kathy Wickham where she spoke about scrappy quilts and showed several samples of just what scrappy can be.

After showing these great samples of how we might choose to use some of our scraps to make a quilt, it was time to open the floor to Show and Tell.

In order of appearance – Betty Fralin, Carpenter Star; Carolyn Zaleski, Comfort Quilt, flag quilt from donated center; David Yeatts, Disappearing 4-patch, he also showed his mom’s Oopsy Daisy; Donna Bohon, Scrappy denim, Scrappy blocks; Gisela O’Connor, Scrappy denim, bordered scrappy, Sampler Quilt, Table Runner; Janice Taylor, bag with embroidered name and embroidered dominoes; Kitty Yates, Scrappy Scramble back, Scrappy Scramble, Candle Mat, Scrappy Aprons, Scrappy On-Point, Scrappy Pineapple back, Scrappy Pineapple front, Scrappy Stars, Scrappy Table Runner; Laura Perry – Just Get It Done, Just Get It Done back; Loretta Twiford, BRQG scrappy project.

There was a table just filled up with Ways & Means “stuff” like fabrics which might be used to create a Scrappy project, light refreshments including cookies and all manner of yummy nibbles, and the other tables were pretty well populated with members and guests.

The September meeting will be held at the home of a member but will also be available to members via Zoom. The program will be a demonstration of the AccuQuilt Cutting System. If you are a member, you should have received an email on Sunday from President Carol Dillon with the Zoom instructions. I know I am looking forward to the program.