Quilting show in St. Mary's

This past Saturday, my quilting friend and I went to St. Mary's for the Piecemakers Quilt show at the local community centre. We spent quite a while looking at all of the quilts, followed by a one hour talk by a quilt historian and appraiser about dating and preserving old quilts. We had lunch in the tea room and then did a little stash building at the vendors stalls. We had to vote for our favourite full size and small quilts. Here are pictures of our favourites:


This was my favourite small quilt. It was made with scraps from a full sized quilt that was also on display.
This one was my quilting friend's favourite full sized quilt. She hopes to make a log cabin quilt sometime soon.

This was my favourite full sized quilt. Very eye catching!

I ran out of memory on my camera to take a picture of the small quilt she liked the best.

An update on my guild challenge project. I finished quilting it last night and will put the binding on tonight. I will be glad to take this off my UFO list! Next, I will be making a Pentecost banner for my church and then a gift for my MIL for her birthday at the end of the month. After that, I need to make some quilts with some of the beautiful fabric that I have purchased over the past few months. I have been looking through my quilting patterns and have picked one that uses mostly fat quarters...

Working full time means a lot less time for hobbies!

Quilt show in Shedden

This past weekend, a friend and I went to the quilt show in Shedden. Lots of quilts, all sizes, all levels of difficulty, both hand and machine quilted. Many of the quilts were made by members of the London Friendship Quilters Guild. I saw lots of people that I knew. There were some vendors there and of course, I could not resist purchasing some fabric for my stash. Here is a peak a some of my favourites... I had seen the blue and brown fabrics at a store in the winter time and have been kicking myself ever since for not purchasing them at that time. I was quite happy to add them to my collection. I am not sure what I will make yet, but I am quite sure that I will be suitably inspired to make something someday!!! I started a new job this week so I won't be doing as much quilting. I will continue to post updates on my projects when I can.

Guild Challenge

I spent the entire day yesterday working on my guild challenge quilt. Here is the fabric that we were given in December which I used in my challenge quilt. I have finished the quilt top and have the backing ready. I hope to do the machine quilting today. I really challenged myself with this project and tried some much more complicated piecing than I have done before. I will post a picture of my finished project after the May Quilt Guild meeting when all of the members' projects are to be brought in. I spoke to another guild member yesterday and she made 3 different projects with her fat quarter!!! I'm really looking forward to seeing what everyone else has made for their challenge projects. There are many very creative people at the guild and I'm quite sure that the quilts will be interesting and inspiring.


My quilting friend spent the day at my house and worked on a new table runner with a paper pieced crossed canoe pattern. Here is the result of her efforts. She will be piecing a border to put on it next.

My First Charity Quilt Top

At last week's London Friendship Quilters Guild meeting, all of the charity quilts that were recently finished were on display. In the Summer of 2007, I pieced a quilt top "Warm Wishes" for the charity quilt project. This quilt had recently been quilted and bound and was on display at the meeting. I had another quilter who had a camera take a picture of it for me. She e-mailed the picture to me and here it is! (What did we all do before digital cameras???)


At last week's guild meeting, we had a speaker, Kay Hannah, talking about "No More UFO's". She confessed to having over 100 UFO's on her list! I feel fine now about having about 15 items on my UFO list!

I worked on my guild challenge quilt a bit yesterday afternoon. It is to be done by our next guild meeting. The guild is holding a quilt show in the fall and hopes to have a display of projects done for the challenge.

Time to go and sew now...

I completed yesterday's "To Do" List!

Yesterday's "To Do" list included 1. Finish Binding table runner which I made last week. 2. Add border to Yellow Brick Road Quilt. 3. Finish sewing BOM blocks together (April--Claudia's quilts sampler). 4. Add border to charity quilt. I am happy to announce that all were accomplished. See below for pictures. The table runner is a gift for a relative. I will post a picture of the Yellow Brick Road quilt with the border later.






I still have lots of UFO's in my pile of "Things to do" but I was very pleased to get all of these projects done yesterday!

Charity Quilt Top

Today, my quilting friend and I put together a quilt top for the Children's Aid Society-- a project of my quilt guild. She laid out the blocks, ironed and cut dog ears. I sewed and sewed... We were both very pleased with how the quilt top turned out. I just have to add the border and it will be ready for someone else in the quilt guild to quilt it. I will be bringing it to Thursday's guild meeting.

I have quite a few items for show and tell for this meeting. I have been unemployed for the last couple of months and have been taking advantage of the extra time to do lots of quilting projects. Here are a few of my recent projects.


This quilt will be getting borders shortly and will be going in our guest room once it is quilted and bound. The pattern is called "Yellow Brick Road" and it has 30 different fabrics in it. I spent over a year collecting the fabrics from several different quilting stores. I carried a zip lock bag in my purse for ages with one fabric in it that I wanted to co-ordinate with all the others. I am thrilled with this quilt. It is really out on a limb for me as I do not usually sew anything that is purple.

I also had a chance to take a paper piecing class--something that I had always wanted to do. Here is the sampler that I made at the class and a birdhouse banner that I made as well.



I purchased a kit to make a flannel lap quilt in the summer of 2006 and finally finished it as well. It has been used many times when my daughter and I are watching TV together.



I have made a couple of table runners from charm packs. I purchased patterns for charm pack table runners last fall at a shop hop in the Niagara Falls area. I keep some for myself and some I give away as gifts. I quilt these on my sewing machine. I usually hire a quilter with a large quilting machine to do my bed sized quilts. Here is one table runner and I will post the picture of the other one I made recently after I put the binding on it.