I Have "Sewing Deficiency"

I have had a really busy week and have not done so much as glance at my sewing machine all week! Today, my husband is away for the day so I have been happily mucking around with fabric most of the day.

I bought a kit to make a dresden plate pillow a couple of weeks ago at Mad About Patchwork and it called out to me this morning when I did a survey of potential projects to work on today. I used red thread and a machine blanket stitch to sew the dresden plate to the background fabric.

 The pieces for the dresden plate were already cut out so this pillow came together quickly. I quilted in the ditch around the red border and around the "plate".

Now, back to the machine--I have a couple more little projects I would like to work on today. 

Another Finished Quilt

I finished hand sewing the binding on this quilt today while we were on the way to visit a friend out of town. It was a beautiful sunny and warm day.

After supper tonight, I asked my favourite quilt holders (my Husband and my Dad) to hold my latest completed quilt:

Here is a close up which shows the fabrics and quilting.

The pattern is called "Capriccio" by Pie in the Sky Quilts.  The fabric is "Basic Gray" by Moda.

I still have two more quilts at the long-armer quilters'. (The apostrophe is in the right spot--one quilt at each of two long arm quilters.)  In the meantime, I have lots of other projects underway to work on!

Tomorrow night, I am doing my first trunk show ever!  I have to get my quilts together tonight. I will also be teaching them how to make a pillow case so I have to get my demo pillow case cut out.

Quilts of Valour Workshop

My friend, Christine, organized a Quilts of Valour workshop for the London Friendship Quilters Guild today. I was her "assistant" at the workshop. 12 ladies arrived to help make the quilt tops. We divided them into 3 groups with each group being given a kit that Christine and I had prepared earlier in the week.

Christine did a brief lesson on how to put the blocks together and then everyone "put the pedal to the metal" and sewed!

Actually, some people sewed...

Some people pressed...

And others cut...

In the end, we had 3 completed tops:

#1 had black borders and triangles:

#2 had green borders and triangles:

#3 had brown borders and triangles:

 You can see that the borders still need to be added to the brown quilt! These quilts, when done, will be given to wounded Canadian soldiers.

Did you see all of the bonus HST's in the "Pressing" picture?  We have another charity project in mind for those!

Today was a very productive day!

I am off to sit on the couch and hand sew some binding...

Pictures to be posted soon.

A Finish and some Stash Enhancement

My husband and I went to visit my daughter this past weekend. On the way there, I hand sewed the binding on my hexagon quilt. This quilt is done! done! done!  It even has a label already.

 The quilting was done by Cathy at Eagles Wings Quilts. This is the first time that I have had Cathy quilt one of my quilts and she did a great job!

There are feathers in the border and an all over pattern in the hexagons.

We have been having record breaking warm temperatures here this past week. My daffodils have been tricked into thinking it is Spring, even though it is only the last day of Winter!

The crocuses have bloomed already and are starting to fade already! This picture was taken last week.

On our way home yesterday, we stopped in to see Pam at Mad About Patchwork. Pam came and did a trunk show at the London Friendship Quilters Guild last October and brought along her fabric to our meeting. She has a delicious array of wonderful bright prints and most of the Kona Cotton colours in her online store. I did some "basement shopping" to enhance my stash... It was hard to resist all of these wonderful fabrics...

My purchases:  Lush

Delighted:

A dresden plate pillow kit:

A book:

Another Fat Quarter bundle of animal prints and some co-ordinating solids:

And a kit to make a baby quilt: (the brown is for the diamonds and the yellow is for the binding)

I also purchased several yards of Kona White just to have in my stash. You can never have enough white on hand!

Pam would love to have you come and visit her virtual store!  She has signed up to be a vendor at our "Harvest of Quilts" quilt show this October so if you would like to shop in person, come to the show. (October 23-24, 2012 at Rowntree United Church in London--save the date!)

I am adding the binding to another quilt tonight and will post a picture of the finished quilt once I have it done.

I received a fabric postcard in the mail last week from our postcard exchange at the LFQG:

The strips of fabric are woven and cut out in the shape of the Easter Egg!  What a cute idea!

I am off to machine sew that binding...

Happy Sewing!

Spring Flowers

I was outside in the backyard today while my husband was cooking dinner on the BBQ and noticed some spring flowers in bloom.  Of course, I had to run inside to grab my camera!

Witch hazel

Primroses

Crocuses

Moss in the sidewalk

More Witch Hazel

I also picked up my fractured squares quilt from the longarm quilter's house. I am hoping to get the binding on this weekend.

Here is a close up of the loopy quilting.



I am off to watch Rick Mercer now.

Lynda's Garbage

This afternoon, I finished quilting and binding my mini quilt top that I made on Friday. It even has a label.  This is the smallest quilt that I have ever made!

The backing and binding are abrown civil war fabric with small paisleys on it that I had in my stash. I used a 1 1/8th strip of fabric for the binding. The name of this quilt is "Lynda's Garbage"--it is named for the quilter who gave me her scraps instead of throwing them out!

I also finished of the baskets I started earlier this week. Here is my entire basket collection...

I have 51 baskets finished (two are not in the picture above) and I think I will make more than one project with these little blocks. I have a few more baskets cut out and ready to piece so I will likely finish those before I start to put them together.

Now, I am off to have a cup of tea and start cutting out the next step of the "Stars for my Friends" mystery quilt. We received our clue on Thursday night at the guild meeting. We receive the final clue in April and then will have until September to finish off the project for Show and Tell. Our guild has a quilt show in late October so I am hoping to put my mystery quilt in the show. Over 30 members of the guild have participated in the mystery--it will be interesting to see the fabrics that everyone is using!

Have a good week!

Miniature Workshop Today!

I took a vacation day today so that I could go to a miniature workshop taught by Kathy W. of Kathy's Quilts fame. Kathy brought along many of her own mini quilts and taught us many different ways of making our own quilts.

We all started by making two colour 9 patches which Kathy put together to make a mini quilt which she will donate to our guild for the raffle table at our quilt show in the fall.

I brought along some HST's that I made from LW's garbage at our recent Quilt Til You Wilt day.

 I had sewn them into HST's already and spent much of the morning ironing, trimming and arranging these 1 1/4" HST's into two mini quilts:

I sewed the first one together before lunch. It finishes at about 6" square.

I hope LW will not want her garbage back!

The second one came home with me to finish here.

I spent much of the afternoon trying out Kathy's "Fishfood" quilt.  It is done with a mile-a-minute method.

This came home unfinished but I will try to finish it up soon so I can bring it to the next meeting for show and tell. You may recognize the scraps from my hexagon quilt. Kathy is all about using up scraps from projects to make mini quilts!

Two other quilters spent all day making tiny tulip blocks.  I don't know that I will ever try to make something this small!

I had a great day!  Thanks Kathy!

I have a few projects on deck for this weekend. I have to finish off the baskets I started earlier this week when Christine came over to sew. I have the next clue for the "Stars for my Friends" mystery quilt to work on and I would like to finish off my second and third mini quilts...  There are just not enough hours in the day!

Happy sewing!

The results are in...

and it has been concluded that I am not in need of the type of intervention that my SIL thinks I need! Thanks for your support of my decision to buy batting by the roll!

Tonight, I made a couple of post cards--one for the London Friendship Quilters' Guild postcard exchange and  one for my aunt and uncle.

I also worked on adding some borders to these diamonds.

I will have a four quilts completed soon--one is at the quilter's already, two are going tomorrow night and RRCB will be ready to go shortly. I have purchased the backing and just need to add the label and cut the batting before it goes off to the quilter.



Do I need an Intervention???

We celebrated Family Day at our house with a family dinner with extended family--My daughter was home from university and her grandparents, cousins, aunt and uncle were all here for the afternoon and dinner. As usual, I showed everyone my most recent quilting projects. Most oohed and ahhed appropriately, and some groaned!  After supper, my sister-in-law spied my roll of batting.

 I purchase batting by the 40 yard roll--I can get it for a better price this way and I don't often run out of batting. Just before Christmas, I had to buy my second roll so that I could have her Christmas gift (a spinning 4 patch quilt) quilted. I sold 5 yards of batting to my friend and I have used some of it for 3 quilts which have recently been sent out for quilting.  All of this is to explain that my sister-in-law did not even see the whole roll of batting!  She grabbed the roll of batting and carried it upstairs where everyone else was sitting and chatting over a cup of tea or coffee. "Don't you think Gail needs an intervention?" she asked. 

So, I ask you...Do I need an intervention?

Karen Griska at the Selvage Blog thinks I need an extra roll of batting so that I don't run out of batting in case there is a blizzard!

I spent a couple of evenings sewing this week. I trimmed the 96 units I made for my "Stars for My Friends" mystery quilt. Sorry, I can't show any pictures!  I also made 7 more baskets and now have 39 made.

I have 25 more baskets cut out and ready to sew.