Last Sunday I posted that I really don’t enjoy making masks. Early on I tried a bunch of different kinds. I can’t tell you what they were called but some had 4 different templates to cut out and took forever just to make 1 mask. I don’t have a lot of crafting time and I was very against using my little bit of precious time doing something I didn’t enjoy doing. Later on I saw this mask tutorial on Facebook and while not perfect was much quicker to make than others. And my daughter likes this mask than any of the other masks I made. My husband will use what I make him as long as he could find them. But he really likes the ones that we got for free from various places. My son doesn’t like the ones I make and that’s why I don’t make him much of anything. He doesn’t mean to be mean. He’s a teenage boy. Enough said.

My daughter is leaving for Boston in a few days so I spent the last few days making masks for her. It’s been several months since I made the last set and I had forgotten some of the tips and tricks that I knew when I was making masks more regularly. I decided to make this post so I had a place to look and remind myself when next I make masks.

I bought some of these fabrics for my nieces and nephews and my daughter will get to enjoy some of them even though she’s 19! But her mask recipe is… 11″ x 6.3″ rectangles. If you looked at the tutorial you would know what these mean. The diagonal she prefers, and actually fits me and my son is 2″ down and 2.75″ at the top (from right to left). Here’s where I have to be careful, the crease in the middle, needs to be .5-.75″ from the center. The tutorial is .75″ but I feel that makes too big of a crease. The .5 might be a bit small so somewhere between would be just right. For my daughter, if I do a quarter inch seam for the top and the bottom, it’s a perfect fit. But I feel like it’s too bulky with all the fabric. I like to sew an eighth inch seam as that helps reduce the bulk inside. But the problem is that the end result makes a slightly bigger mask. It tends to cover her eyes. So, I need to do the quarter inch seam despite the bulk. If I am making it for me I want to do something between the quarter and the 8th inch. If I am making it for my son, the 8th inch seam seems to be fine.

The next issue is the elastic. My daughter likes the elastic at 6.5″ for each ear. This works for me too. This is too small for my son and I really need to figure out how long it needs to be for him. I will get a chance to figure it out since I will need to make my son some plain black ones at some point. He keeps misplacing the free ones he gets from various places.

Happy mask masking, if you are still making masks.

~Melanie

2020 was a difficult year but there is a lot to be grateful for.

1. I spent a lot of time with my family. I have 2 kids, my daughter is 19 and in her second year of college. My son is 15 and in his second year of high school. They are both practically grown and while my son still lives at home, he’s in his own world. My daughter lives in Boston during the school year. I am grateful for this little bit of time together. I know as they get older, these moments will be very rare.
2. We bought a house. We never thought we’d do so. In fact, we were adamant about being renters forever. But several circumstances came together and we did this. There are still a lot of times where I question the rights and wrongs of this thing but, I do love starting a garden, fixing things the way I want things fixed, and buying things on a permanent level rather than a temporary one.
3. I’m an introvert and I love staying home. I loved not having to make excuses or find reasons to stay home. It just was.
4. My little community came together to help each other. My closest friends cooked, went shopping for, and helped wherever we could (from a distance). We did drop offs, we zoomed every chance we got.
5. My quilt guild created an online community. First, my Sunday minigroup moved to zoom. Then we invited the guild. We went from 2-4 people in person to 12- 15 people online. And then we started having our meetings on Zoom and then, we went crazy and started inviting national and international quilt stars to speak and teach. That has been great and I hope we continue our online portion even when we are able to meet in person. Some of our members have moved away and it’s nice to see them on zoom.

It’s easy to point to the crazy stuff of 2020 and be glad that it’s over. But without the crazy stuff, the things I’m grateful for would not have come to existence. I’m grateful for my family, my friends, my community and everything we did to stick together to make it through. We’ve lost some of our members and we will always remember them.

Hugs,

Melanie

I’m writing this in advance because I know the week of Thanksgiving is going to be busy and I want to continue posting on a weekly basis. Knowing that and if everything goes as planned, here’s what I imagine posting on Tuesday before Thanksgiving.

BFSI stands for Black Friday Sew In. Back in the day, we used to do #BFSI on Twitter. I’m wondering if anyone plans on doing anything this year… I’m not on Twitter as much but once in a while I’ll jump on and see all the missed notifications and comments. My blog links to my twitter page so any blog posts get tweeted automatically but I don’t get notified of any comments or likes until I log in, which I don’t do much. It’s always fun to see who comments and such. There are usually 2 or 3 of the folks still on and I try to respond when I see it.

The Quilter Twitter community became the Twilters and then a group was created on Facebook. I jump in once in awhile to see what’s going on and sometimes I even comment. A few months ago I tried cutting back on my Facebook/Instagram addiction and it worked until the week of the elections. I was on there so much that week. I’m slowly weaning myself off again.

For Thanksgiving this year, the hubby, baby boy, and I drove up last Friday evening. My mom’s birthday was 11/22 (Sunday) and all she wanted was help to clean her garage. So we trekked up North despite Covid and all the risks (I know!). Baby girl joined us later via direct flight from Boston to SFO. She’ll be staying with us until the start of next semester taking her remaining classes online. And we got the garage cleaned. Yay! We decided not to stay through Thanksgiving to avoid the traffic. Who knows if there will be traffic this year but we didn’t want to risk it.

Truthfully, we I wanted to be with my sewing machine and my stash on Friday – #BFSI. As always, I look forward to Bonnie Hunter’s mystery quilt each year. I don’t always get them done or even started, but I am excited to work on this one. Here are her links…

Bonnie’s Blog

Bonnie’s Website

Grassy Creek Tab

You can see all the details of the mystery quilt under the Grassy Creek link. But the Blog and Website will provide more info on her, what she does and her shop. I can’t imagine not knowing about Bonnie, especially if you read blogs and have been online for years. But I run into quilters in my day to day life who don’t know her so, check her links out if this is the first time you’ve heard of her.

I recently looked at the first mystery quilt I did and it was Easy Street from 2012. I heard of Bonnie through Katie’s Quilting Corner which was one of my favorite podcasts. She no longer podcasts but maybe she still has the old episodes up. I haven’t looked. I’m doing the mystery this year because I enjoy the community around this mystery quilt. This year, most especially, I miss the community around quilting and such. My quilt guild and my quilty friends have helped a lot with our Sunday Zoom days and our mini group meetings twice a month (on Zoom, of course).

Anyway, apparently it’s not enough and I need the online quilting community too. For blogs, we post a picture on Mondays and link to her linky. On Facebook, there’s a friendly group that shares all they are doing on the mystery quilt. For Instagram, we find each other with different hashtags. Usually something like #bonniehuntermysteryquilt2020 or #grassycreekmysteryquilt. This is what I plan to be doing on Black Friday! 🙂

~ Keep on Quilting

Melanie

Before the end of Apple Picking season, a couple of friends and I went off to Oak Glen, CA to pick some apples. It’s one of my favorite things to do.

We got Winesap, Arkansas Black, Pippens, Granny Smith, and Red Delicious. I found that of these, I really enjoyed the Winesap. Arkansas Black was also very good but Winesap was the best.

Are you a fan of Alex Anderson? The Alex from the Quilt Show?

My guild is lucky enough to host her via zoom this coming 11/9/2020 (next week!) at 7pm Pacific. For non guild members registration is $10. You can register here. But I’ve got a secret. Over the next several months (excluding December) we will be hosting several renowned speakers. I can’t say who yet… The meetings are free for guild members. The annual membership dues is $60 (which includes $20 raffle tickets for the opportunity quilt). Really the dues are $40 and $20 for raffle tickets. I know it’s a little up in the air because I can’t spill the beans on the speakers and you might be able to attend the other speakers as a non member. But, non members might not be allowed for other speakers. Our speaker in October was Jan Krentz (another great speaker) but she limited attendees to our guild and two other local guilds. That is her right to do. I’m just letting you – my friends and readers know- that that is always a possibility. Anyway, if you have the ability and you want to take part in our special series by becoming a member email me at melaniesquilting@gmail.com. If that is not your cup of tea feel free to register for Alex’ event. Here’s the link again. I’m super excited!

We’ve all been sheltering in place for months and while we’ve been able to meet monthly as a guild, and zoom every Sunday, we’re just starting to explore the opportunities of having national and international speakers. I’m proud to say, we have a handful of master quilters in our membership and they have friends who are open to speaking and possibly doing a workshop.

Workshops are definitely first come first serve to members only and we cap it at a certain number (that number changes according to the speaker) so the workshops may or may not be available to non-members. I can’t say whether or not Alex will be doing a workshop… TBH I can’t remember. But, I can tell you Alex does not really speak at guilds anymore and this is a special treat that she is doing for us because she is friends with one of our special members. We are so lucky! and I’m sharing this with you.

If you want to know other perks to join the guild, here you are:

• Sunday virtual quilt bee
• zoom sessions with Mini groups
• Tickets to win the Opportunity Quilt
• We have a quilt show in odd years for members to display their quilts but that’s been cancelled for 2021. And is probably not doable unless you were a bit local to the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles.
• get to know my winning personality more so than this blog. 🙂 (maybe this is not the official perk but something you may enjoy nonetheless)

We are working on updating our website so if you look us up, you’ll get an outdated site – sfvqa.net – This site will be updated soon as the committee in charge of that is finishing up the final details.

Hope you can join us! If you do join, comment below so I can say hi!

~ Melanie

Last week, we were able to spend a couple of hours at Descanso Gardens walking the grounds. I didn’t take nearly enough pictures but that’s okay. It was my first time going. When I moved to LA 25 years ago, Descanso Gardens was one of those places that was on my bucket list. It’s not a tourist spot, I don’t think, so it wasn’t high on my list but it was one of those things. Kind of like Huntington Beach Library. Where I want to go, but for whatever reason, I never go because I could always go anytime. So, I just never went.

With the Pandemic, it seemed the perfect opportunity to check this place out. It’s outside, masks are mandatory, limited capacity. We went on a weekday to ensure even smaller crowds. I enjoyed myself. It was about a 20 minute drive from my house and they have nice paths to walk through. We didn’t see everything so now I want to go back. It’s a $15/visit entrance fee. To become a member, it’s $75/year, which means I would need to go at least 5 times a year to make it worth the membership fee. I don’t know if I’ll actually go 5 times. I know I want to go… but want to do and actually do are two different things that do not always happen. Oh well, this is how I get stuck. I want to do the annual membership because then I’ll be encouraged to go BUT it’s $75 and I don’t want to spend that right now. So then I’ll waffle back and forth and never end up going back. I’m taking control of this now and I’m deciding NOT to do the annual membership. But I will plan a day next month to go and I’ll put something on the schedule for the next 6 months. If I go, then I’ll become a member. 🙂

I’ll tell you how it goes.

Melanie