6 Quilter QNIC!

Six quilters came to QNIC tonight at my house! This is a record. For our snack tonight, we had tea and raspberry/blueberry shortcakes. Very yummy! They were eaten so fast, I did not get a picture!

You are probably wondering what everyone was working on...

Sandra, a recent convert to quilting, was putting the binding on her first quilt which is the 7 shirts quilt designed by Nancy at Life is a Stitch

It is her first quilt and looks great. Sandra is taking some quilting lessons from Jacqui who was working on putting the binding on a quilt that will be a wedding gift. The wedding is on Saturday and the quilt should be done on time! This quilt is a curved log cabin quilt and she found some wonderful cut logs fabric for the backing.

Nancy was cutting up some striped shirts she bought at one of the local thrift stores in preparation for another shirt quilt. You can check her blog for pictures which I am sure she will post as she is working on this quilt.
Karen started a new project and working on cutting out the pieces. She is making a table runner. Her focus fabric is the Canadian postcards fabric from Thimbleberries.

Roxene sewed the binding on a quilt that she made from leftovers from a previous project. There was much discussion around the table about how to sew the binding on it--all of us used slightly different methods.

I worked on a project started in the wintertime. I stopped working on it to make a bunch of gifts and my daughter's university quilt. This is one of those quilts that is made by sewing strips around a large square and then cutting them up and sewing them back together again. I am still on the sewing the strips on stage of this project.
Roxene brought over a new tool to show us. It is a needle threader made by Clover. Nancy has one at home --her husband bought it for her but she has never used it. She will be getting it out now! The needle threader got passed around the table several times and now everyone has "tool envy"... Santa--if you are reading this, we have all been very good and would like one of these in our Christmas stockings this year!
We laughed lots and did a little sewing as well. We are all looking forward to the next QNIC. We may even go on a field trip for some SEX...(Stash Enhancement eXercise).

Fabric Postcards

I have not made any fabric postcards for ages so on the weekend, I decided to make a few from some leftover fabric from my "In My Garden" quilt. One of these postcards will be winging its way to Mel, the winner of my Post #100 give-away. One is for my aunt and one is for friends who will soon be celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary --they got married on the same day, same year as my husband and I. (We did not know them then!) I have another couple of postcards in progress. Also, there is going to be a QNIC (Quilting Night in Canada) later this week so there will be another post or two soon. Stay tuned...

Just in case you are interested, here is what is blooming in my garden today...

University Quilt: Ready to take to the Quilting Man!

It is finally done and ready to be quilted. I cut out the borders this morning and sewed them on. My daughter picked a narrow 2" pink border with a white 4" border for her quilt. I think the pink frames her quilt nicely. I have been reading some other blogs and noticed some other moms were making their daughters quilts for their university dorm rooms too. My daughter picked out some light blue flannel for the back of her quilt which will make it nice and cozy. The university she has chosen is in a city which is famous for its cold winters. The label is made from a leftover quilt block. I will post another picture after it is quilted and bound.

And the Winner Is.....

Ten people commented on my 100th blog post. Thanks everyone for your kind words! I put all the names in a hat (The hat belongs to my daughter--she always looks good wearing a hat!) :
My daughter was recruited to pull a slip of paper out of the hat:
And the winner is....(drumroll please!!!)
MEL!!! I will contact you shortly to get your snail mail address so I can send you your prizes!

I'm off to clean up my sewing room (again!). It has deteriorated lately and needs an hour of my time to get it back into shape!

Sunday Sewing

I have been sewing since early this morning, all in an effort to complete the July Challenge for the Quilted Table Yahoo group. This is the first time I have done one of the monthly challenges, even though I have printed the patterns for most of them. It is not quilted yet, but I have a few flimsies in my collection now and will be taking them to the long arm quilter shortly to get them all done at once. At 55"x55", this one is too big for me to do on my home sewing machine! It is a little bigger than the average table topper!At first, I was not sure of the yellow fabric, so I consulted with a quilting friend. She liked the yellow, especially when I showed her the sashing and borders.

There is an outer piano key border...

And red sashing...

As well as a wider border using the focus fabric...



When I put everything together, I took my husband and my new quilt outside to the backyard where I took a picture of my gardening quilt in my garden! I think I am going to call it "In My Garden".

Post #100

This is my 100 th post on my blog! I can't believe I have done that many. See the bottom of this post for a give-away to celebrate this momentous occasion!

I have been working on my Gardening quilt over the last couple of days. Last night, I added these green pieces to the red ones to make some triangles.







Next, I added these triangles to the units I showed you in my last post.








Remember the 4-patches? They got sewn to the red sides of the above sections.



The centre of the blocks is a "snowball" block, made with my Debbie Mumm focus fabric.

The next pictures show how the blocks were put together. There are 8 blocks like this in the quilt. Now, you can see how all of the fabrics go together. There is still one more fabric that you have not seen yet. Keep watching my blog for the next stage of this quilt's assembly.

Now, the give-away... All you have to do is comment on this 100th blog by Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 at 6pm (Eastern Standard Time) and I will pick one name to receive a quilted postcard and a loyalty card wallet made from the fabrics I am using to make this quilt. Make sure I can access your e-mail address so that I can get your mailing address to send the parcel to the winner.

Cutting and sewing...

I spent some time this evening sewing some of the pieces together to make the blocks for my gardening quilt. The pattern is actually called Chloe's Christmas, but I am not using Christmas fabrics. (Samples of the fabrics are in the previous post) I got the pattern from the Quilted Table Yahoo Group page. This quilt is the July challenge project. Here are the 4-patches that I made today.




The next step was to add these blue triangles to the light yellow pieces to form a triangle.











Then, I added some red pieces to the triangles. It is hard to tell what it will look like yet, but I will continue to post my progress.

A Little Shopping Trip

Today, we were in Goderich and stopped by "Quilters by the Square". I brought my daughter's university quilt with me to find some borders and some backing. My daughter chose some light blue flannel for the back and a soft pink for a narrow border for the quilt. I have some white fabric left which will be used for a wider outside border and then the whole thing will be bound with light blue. I think it will look great!!!






I also bought some blue fabric for binding for my yellow and blue star quilt and the pinwheel wall hanging that I made last week. It is the same as one of the blue fabrics that is in the quilt so I will not bore you with a picture of fabric you have already seen!




I started cutting out a new project last night--This will be a lap quilt using a pattern I found on the internet--the pattern is called "Chloe's Christmas" but I am using a Debbie Mumm gardening fabric as my focus and several co-ordinating fabrics. I needed one more light yellow fabric to use for background for the stars in the quilt so I found that today in Goderich as well.

A UFO ...done!

My quilting friend and I started this charity quilt months ago and then seemed to lose our momentum... Tonight, we got together at our our private QNIC (no one else was free to come!) and finished it. This quilt will be donated to the local Family and Children's services to be given to a child in foster care. It was one of those patterns that you make a block, cut it up and then sew it back together again, cut it up again and then sew it back together again. I think we may have made a mistake in the 2nd sewing it back together again --I did not notice until I took the picture tonight. Can you see it?

I don't think it is a major flaw and we won't be taking it apart to fix it!

Christmas Lights

Tonight, I finished the first step of the Bonnie Hunter Christmas Lights mystery. I tried to finish it last night, but my sewing machine decided to try to eat the thread instead of sewing smoothly so I stopped. I had to clean out the fluff from the machine and rethread it. It is working well once again. I will put this project away for a while until the next set of instructions are published in the Sept-Oct. issue of Quiltmaker. There is another QNIC tomorrow night so I will likely have some more pictures to share after that.

Another QNIC!

Tonight was QNIC (Quilting Night in Canada)--this time we met at Jacqui's house. There were 5 quilters there this time for about 4 hours of quilting, chatting and, of course, eating. Jacqui made us a wonderful fruit crisp from the Looneyspoons cookbook.

I spent all evening working on my table topper/wall hanging made of leftovers from a quilt I made earlier this year. (See previous post) My quilting friends helped me to come up with the ideas for the setting and borders of this project. This is the first time I have made something without a pattern. I have not decided how to quilt it yet. It is about 19" square. I just love it!

I cut out the black pieces for the Bonnie Hunter Christmas lights project last night and started sewing a few of the blocks together tonight. I will have to finish them and post a picture later in the weekend.

I would like to do a Celtic knot project that I found on line as well...I will have to dig into my stash to see what colours of fabric I can use...

Happy Canada Day!

I have had a very happy Canada Day! The weather has been unsettled, rainy one moment, sunny the next, cloudy and then sunny again all day long. I have spent the entire day sewing blissfully!

My quilty friend, Karen, came over for most of the day. She finished cutting out the pieces for her latest project using the Dusky Meadows pattern from the most recent Quiltmaker magazine. She had fun laying out all of the blocks for her quilt and now will spend some time sewing them together, perhaps at the next QNIC on Friday night.

After packing up all of the pieces for her quilt, she helped me to lay out some small HST's that I made using the corners I cut off when making this quilt a few months ago...
Each HST measured 1 1/2 inches square.


We tried out several types of blocks but settled on the pinwheel blocks. I made 24 pinwheel blocks.
Here are the pinwheels, some sewn together and some not sewn.
After playing around with several layout ideas, I decided to go down to my sewing room to see if there was any more fabric leftover from the original quilt. I found some of the two dark blue fabrics as well as a good chunk of the yellow background fabric. Visions of a table topper with this 10 x10" block in the middle are swirling around in my head. If any of you have any ideas to share, let me know. I have not decided how to do the next part yet.


Oh, I just about forgot...I also finished sewing my daughter's university quilt together...

This was a very productive day! Happy Canada Day!