Quilt 'til You Wilt!

Today was the London Friendship Quilters' Guild "Quilt 'til You Wilt". Karen and I were keeners and arrived just before 8am to set up our sewing machines. Karen worked on Indian Orange Peel arcs all day and managed to make a lot of progress finishing 30 arcs bringing her total to 80! She has started another 20 so soon will be at the 100 mark!

I worked on my Blue Ridge Beauty blocks and got quite a few done. I think I will make this quilt queen size so I still have more blocks to make. The pattern is by Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville.com.



I have bits and pieces of every blue fabric I have ever owned in this quilt!

I decided to start a new project this afternoon. I have been intrigued by Tonya Ricucci's free pieced letters so I tried out a few from some food fabric that I have in my stash.

My husband gave me Gwen Marston's Liberated Quilts II book for Christmas so I made some liberated baskets to go with my FRESH letters.  I think there needs to be some borders between the FRESH part and the baskets so I will have to see what I can come up with.

This project made me hungry! Luckily, we were well fed all day!  (and we did not have to do the dishes!)

I also pieced my block for the next Elgin Piecemakers' guild Chemo Quilt. 

Today was a great day!

You can see more pictures of our QTYW day on the London Friendship Quilters' Guild Blog soon.

Elgin Piecemakers Guild Report

If you have been reading my blog, you know that I belong to a small guild called the Elgin Piecemakers. We make quilts for chemo patients at our local hospital as an outreach project. Each month, we make a block for a chemo quilt--the picture above shows the red and white blocks made into a quilt top.  The picture below shows our blue and white blocks--Both of these tops have been delivered to the machine quilter and they will soon be ready to deliver to the chemo unit.

This month, we all made Tennessee blocks and 13 blocks were brought to our meeting.

Two of our members brought these home to make into a top. They will likely make 3 more blocks and then make it 4X4 so that the star pattern shows up. (See the bottom right 4 blocks)

Chris and I are going to put the black, red and white blocks together. We might have to make a couple more to have a 3X5 layout.

Pat gave us each a bag with the pieces already cut for our next blocks. She has really raised the bar for the next person to pick a pattern!

We had a show and tell of arcs last night. Here are Heather's 4 patches and arcs.

And here are Beth's:

Jacqui has all 120 done!

Yvonne has lots done too!

Check out the hot chili peppers in this one!

Keep an eye on Pat's blog for what she does with her sewing garbage.

I plan on doing some sewing tomorrow so stay tuned for another update...

Chemo Quilt Block

This month, the Elgin Piecemakers are all making the same block in Spring colours for our charity quilt. I found the pattern on Quilter's Cache. This block is called "Tennessee". I used some leftover charm squares to make my block. The blocks will be given to two members of the guild to put together into a top which will then be quilted and donated to our local hospital for adult chemo patients. Pat is hosting the meeting this month and just sent out a reminder e-mail for everyone to make their blocks...it is a good thing she did this or it might have slipped my mind...

100

I have been working away on 15 arcs most evenings this week and today, I finally finished them off! I now have 100 arcs done which means I have all of the homework done for the next class. There are still 20 more arcs in the border of the quilt. I may try to get them done too but now I feel like I can give myself permission to work on something else for a change of pace.

This is going to be a very colourful quilt!

Happy Valentine's Day!

I made this pillow case for my husband for Valentine's Day. Way back (27 years ago...) when we started dating, I gave him some Hershey's kisses. I saw this fabric in January at The Quilt Rack in Ancaster and immediately decided that it would make a perfect Valentine's gift!  I gave him the pillow case today so he could use it tonight. He is sure to have sweet dreams now!

More arcs...85 done now!

I started these 15 arcs at Jacqui's last weekend. I started to work on them one evening this week, but my iron died (Yikes!) so I could not finish them off until today. I had a spare iron in the basement--it was in hiding so I had to find it before I could sew again. My husband found it, thankfully, so I was able to finish these arcs off today.

My piles of arcs are looking quite impressive. This represents a lot of sewing!!

You can see that there are two types of arcs in this quilt-half have "warm" coloured teeth and the other half have "cool" coloured teeth. Personally, I prefer white teeth...

I have started another 15 arcs--100 arcs must be done in time for the second Indian Orange Peel workshop in March. There are another 20 arcs like this in the border so I am going to try to get them done before the class as well. I would like to spend my time at my guild's "Quilt 'til You Wilt" day working on anything but arcs!--Perhaps my Blue Ridge Beauty quilt...

I Gotta GO!

I celebrated yet another birthday earlier this week. My daughter is home for a week from university later this month so we will do the big family dinner/celebration when she is home but my husband did give me my birthday gift on the actual day of my birthday (and he took me out for supper too!). He bought me a GO!

I have been looking at the Accuquilt GO in stores and on the internet for quite a while and decided that I would like one. He has also seen the GO in the quilt stores when we were doing a shop hop together. Last night, my friend Karen and I tried it out and I made this little block.

I also made a post card for our guild postcard exchange this month. I have not made a postcard in quite a while!

The heart blocks that I made for the Quilted Table Yahoo group swap arrived safely to the swap queen's house and have been sorted out and mailed out to all the participants in the swap. I wonder where my new heart blocks will come from???  I will post a picture when they arrive.

This weekend, I plan on working on more arcs... 

I may dream a bit about what dies I would like to have for my GO as well...

If you have a GO and you have some favourite dies, let me know!

Arc Support Retreat at Jacqui's

Earlier this week, Christine and I got together one evening to work on arcs for our Indian Orange Peel Quilts. I started working on 10 more arcs and Christine got started on a few as well.

Last night, 7 of us got together to work on arcs at Jacqui's house. We sewed and sewed and then stopped for a delicious supper of pad thai, salad and dessert. After supper, I finished off the 10 arcs that I started earlier in the week and started 12 more before heading home for bed.

I got up early this morning to make some "Bananaberry Bombs"--Banana Blueberry muffins (The recipe is from Looneyspoons by Janet and Greta Podleski) so that I could take them to Jacqui's when they were still warm. We were well fed all day again--muffins, fruit, tea and coffee for morning snack; homemade turkey soup, fresh bread and buns, fruit and vegies and some sweet stuff for lunch and then cheese and crackers, more fruit, tea and coffee as well as leftover desserts in the afternoon.

Lots of sewing and chatting took place all day as the 8 of us sewed and ironed and trimmed our arcs. Everyone's arcs are a bit different depending on colour and fabric choices. It will be fun to see how all of the quilts turn out!

I finished off the 12 arcs that I started the night before for a total of 22 completed arcs.

I started another batch of 15 arcs which I will try to finish this week. I have 80 arcs completely done. I am well on my way to finishing off the 120 I need to have done before mid March for the second workshop. At this workshop, we will learn how to do the curved piecing to put our blocks together and how to lay out our blocks for the best visual effect. We will also get started on paper piecing the units for the border. This is a very labour intensive quilt but it is nice to know that we are there to support and encourage each other as we work on this project!

Here is a bag of my trimmings from doing my arcs. I have a project in mind for these.

I will try to finish off my other arcs later this week. I am hoping to have them done shortly so that I can do some other projects before the 2nd class for this quilt in mid-March.