Slow Stitching With the Frankfort Girls

For several years now I have been sewing every-other-Friday morning with a group of ladies I've come to call the Frankfort Girls. Within months of my retirement in June of 2009, Terry saw me at the nail salon and invited me to join them. I am so happy I said yes. They have become great friends and such wonderful sewing companions.

At these Friday morning gatherings, we sit around the hostess' kitchen table with hand-stitching to work on. No bulky sewing machines or cutting mats. It's so relaxing to be able to enjoy the company on hand, to encourage one another in our sewing endeavors and to be a sounding board when needed.

This past Friday morning we met at Terry's. She served a delicious coffee cake; the entire group was present and we had a few things to share. Not only do we work on whatever hand-stitching we've got, but we also frequently do a show-and-tell, if anyone has any new finishes.

Sheryll had several quilt tops for show-and-tell. She has been busy! I just love this simple star and stepping stone design. My grandmother was always fond of using the stepping stone block; seeing this makes me think I ought to make one, too.

And Sheryll had a second quilt using the same pattern! She was cleaning out old fabrics, can you tell? Those sunflowers were all the rage back in the early '90s. I had some similar yardage myself.

This next quilt is much more impressive than the picture shows. For one thing, it is quite large and the colors are so much more vivid than this photograph indicates. The stars are machine-appliqued; the rest is machine-pieced. Here's a close up.

We were stumped trying to figure out the method used to make this interesting secondary design. The blocks on the upper right and lower left are 9-patches; the ones on the opposite corners are 4-patches. Very, very appealing.

So let's see what the others worked on. Sharon O. was putting the finishing touches on binding her windows wall hanging. I have shown it here in several earlier posts as she's worked on it.

Jan was making  more EPP flowers. She works in such an orderly, streamlined manner. I would like to have her assembly-line sense sometimes!

Terry was binding a soft and sweet flannel quilt which will go to her granddaughter. Cuddling up in this would take a little one to dreamland in no time.

And I hand quilted on my paper-pieced UFO that I've had in the hoop since the beginning of October. It's spent more time being ignored than being worked on, but that was largely due to Christmas. Now that we've entered the new year, I can see it becoming a finish relatively soon - even if I only work on it with the Frankfort Girls every other Friday.

Hopefully before the day is out, I will pick this up and stitch on it for awhile here at home - maybe during a football game?? The coming week looks relatively slow compared to last week, so it will be nice to have a Slow Sunday Stitching-kind of day.

Happy Quilting, Friends!