Another glorious snow day

Too much snow to get to work today so I had a day at home, much of which was spent in my sewing room working on a new UFO. (It is now officially a UFO because it is started, but not done yet!) I purchased this material at Suttles and Seawinds in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia two summers ago. I have had this pattern in mind for the material for quite a while but just never got around to starting it. The pattern is called "Island Star". I'm getting a little tired of winter and all the snow so the colours of this material brightened things up for
me today

I cut out all the pieces a few nights ago so I was all ready to get down to sewing today.
Here are a four patches and the short star points.

The blocks are coming together...

And here they are, not sewn together yet, but at least you get the idea. I just love these colours.
The pattern is from a book by M'liss Rae Hawley called "More Fat Quarter Quilts".

I will post more pictures as I make more progress on this quilt.

"I Spy" a baby gift...

This is what I started with this morning. I spent an evening earlier in the week cutting out 6" squares for two "I Spy" quilts for my cousins' babies. I went through all of my fabric looking for interesting squares for these quilts. I wanted 48 squares for each quilt. After going through all my fabrics, I came up a few short for each quilt. On Thursday night at guild, I asked if anyone had some 6" squares to trade. Nancy most generously offered me some of her (without trading!). I went and got them last night and got busy today sewing them together. I decided that they needed some framing so I used some black fabric I had leftover from another project. Here is a picture of the completed top #1. The second top is not quite done yet. I will post a picture of it later.

Cobbletones progress

I have all the blocks together for my cobblestones quilt. I took it to my Elgin Piecemakers guild on Thursday night and they all agreed that it needs a narrow cream border next before I add my fall leaves border. I must go to a quilt store to purchase the cream border--I don't have the right colour in my stash...

Two more baby gifts to make--my cousins (sisters) both had baby girls last Sunday! Their gifts are today's project...

I may have more pictures to post later.

Cobblestones progress...

I finally put up a "design wall" on one wall of my sewing room today and tried out several layouts for the cobblestones blocks I made in the fall at a workshop with Heather Stewart. I had already posted some possibilities but here are a few more.
I decided to use one of these layouts. Check back later this week to see the finished top. I sewed all the blocks together this afternoon and will put the borders on later.

Machine Quilting Workshop

Today, Jill (aka The Quilt Rat), did a workshop for 20 members of our Quilt Guild on machine quilting. I was at the church shortly after 9 am and set up my friend's sewing machine--My machine does not have a switch to put the feed-dogs down so I borrowed hers. I had to make a quick run to a local sewing machine repair shop to purchase a darning foot for her machine as she did not have one.
At the end of the day, I returned the sewing machine and gave her the foot as a thank you gift for letting me use her machine.

Here are a few pictures of Jill demonstrating her machine quilting for us.
She showed us how to meander and stipple as well as this bubble pattern:
I was not very good at meandering but I did not do too badly at the bubbles. I still need to practice (a lot!!). I had not done any free motion machine quilting before today.
She also showed us how to do feathers. Jill had experimented with variations on feathers to show us in her samples that she made before the workshop.Again, I will have to do a lot of practicing before I get good enough to use free motion quilting on a "real" quilt.

As payment for taking the workshop, each participant was given a kids charity quilt to machine quilt. Our guild makes quilts for the local Family and Childrens services for children who are in foster care in London. I have ordered a couple of new pieces for my machine to try to machine quilt on it.

Thanks Jill, for an interesting workshop!

Another Mystery Border

The January installment of the Bedazzled Mystery project at Claudia's quilts website was posted today. Here are a couple of pictures of my project as this month's borders are added. I have decided not to follow the colour instructions anymore as I am using FQ's and I am trying to make this project work without purchasing more fabric...

The first part was a simple green border...
I used brown for the next part...

I may just add one or two more borders and then finish this project off. I would like to hang it on the wall and it may get too big if I add all of the borders in the mystery.

Bye for now.

The Last Christmas gift

I made this table runner for a fellow quilter at the Elgin Piecemakers Guild. The group got together for dinner earlier this week to celebrate Christmas. I was not able to go but sent this gift along with a friend. I have not heard from the recipient yet--I hope she liked it. I am working on a border of the month mystery quilt but the Jan 09 clue is not up yet. I will keep checking and will post a picture of my expanding project when I am done the next step.