Catching up

This quilt came home with me from our last London Friendship Quilters' guild meeting. It needed to have the binding sewn on...which I have now finished. This quilt will be donated to Quilts of Valour--quilts for injured soldiers. Our guild has made several quilts for QOV over the last couple of years. We each signed the lighter blocks to show our appreciation to the soldier who will receive this quilt.

 

The Elgin Piecemakers continue to work on quilts for adult chemo patients at our local hospital. The colours for October were brown, beige and green. Here are our blocks:

 



Two more quilts were on display too:

The binding is not quite finished on this one!

I am working away on the borders for Bonnie Hunter's Lazy Sunday Mystery.  There is some progress on Christmas gifts too.

On Thanksgiving weekend, our extended family had a chance to go for a hike in the woods on a beautiful sunny day.

It was a perfect day for pictures!

I spent a few days in St. John's, Newfoundland in mid October for a conference for work. I had an afternoon to walk around and take a few pictures on the day I arrived. ---Another glorious sunny day!

I walked around old St. John's and admired the colourful Jelly Bean houses.

I see some quilt inspiration in these houses...

BIQR 2013: Gwen's Show and Tell

One of the highlights of BIQR for me is Gwen's lecture/show and tell on Wednesday morning. This year, our theme was "Looking Forward" and Gwen picked some of her favourite quilts to show us.

Someone once told her that the borders should be in scale with the piecing. She obviously disagreed!

Simple piecing with a few rogue blocks.

Lots of baskets...love the handles!

Red baskets with dancing handles.

More applique, completed while travelling. The quadrants are not all the same.

 

Another wonderful two colour quilt.

 

 

Gwen's first liberated star quilt.

 

 

A more recent liberated star quilt. I love how the on point setting pops the starts out into the border.

 

 

Gwen's favourite quilt showcasing of the people, animals and things that bring meaning to her life.

 

 

Gwen is a big fan of string quilts.

 

 

Gwen gave us a mini lesson on how she makes string blocks without foundations.

 

 

 

Creative hands

 

 

Amazing hand quilting. She did a mini lesson on hand quilting too.

 

 

 

A look at Gwen's quilting frame posts.

 

 

 

These hands have done a lot of this!

 

 

Gwen always leaves the quilts out for us to look at them more closely. 

So much inspiration!











Before and After

Before I went to Michigan for the Beaver Island Quilt Retreat, I thoroughly cleaned my sewing machine. I used my paint brush to get rid of all of the fuzzies that were in the bobbin mechanism and in the upper part of the machine. I oiled the bobbin winder, as it was making a terrible screeching sound like it was being tortured every time I wound a bobbin. It was much quieter after oiling!  I also oiled the other moving parts of the machine and ran the machine to get all the oil worked it. I changed the needle and wound several bobbins in preparation for my sewing extravaganza.

Christine and I got together for our weekly sewing night earlier this week and before she arrived, I decided to clean my sewing machine ... I think it was overdue!  Yuck!  You can tell I did lots of sewing at BIQR!

It is all cleaned out now, and humming along happily once again.

I tried a new block when Christine was here...it is a disappearing 4 patch.

This one is destined for an Elgin Piecemakers charity quilt. The colours for our November meeting are lime green, black and white.  The instructions on how to make this block can be found here. (http://round22.blogspot.ca/2012/07/disappearing-4-patch-with-twist.html) It looks complicated but is really quite simple to make. The only tricky part...there are lots of bias edges to sew together. I also worked on a Christmas gift.

Christine is making a Scrappy Trips Halloween quilt for her family to snuggle while watching Halloween movies together.   She hopes to have it done by this Halloween.

Looking good, Christine!

My next post will be about Gwen's quilts that she showed us at BIQR.

Stash Enhancement!

As you know, Carol, Christine and I were recently away in Michigan for a week for the Beaver Island Quilt Retreat. We visited 6 quilt stores in 7 days and I did some serious damage to my stash report...

On our way to Elk Rapids, we stopped at Linda's Country Quilts in Davison and an Amish Quilt store near Clare. I bought a few things in both stores, focusing on enhancing my drawer full of lights and neutrals which has faced some serious depletion in recent months.

The next day, we went to Renee's where we saw this barn quilt on display outside.

A close up...

I don't think I would want to sew this quilt block!  More neutrals/lights were added here.

Next up was Now and Then in Elk Rapids where "Gwen's People" were given a 30% discount on everything in the store!  Again, I stayed focussed on purchasing more neutrals, even though there was lots of other fabric to tempt me!

On Thursday, we took a field trip to Cousins Quilt store in Belair:

 

 

 

 

 

 and Hearts to Holly in Charlevoix:

 

 

 It was at these two stores that I decimated my stash report...

I also purchased two cloth book panels, 6.75 yards for backing for the Lazy Sunday mystery (on the sale shelf for 40% off!) and some flannel for PJ's for my nieces' birthday later this month. (The flannel is not included in my stash numbers because it is for clothing, not quilts!)

Fabric used in the last 3 weeks: .75 yards
Total fabric used this year: 132.91  yards
Fabric added to the stash in the last week: 20 yards YIKES!

Total fabric added this year: 140.91 yards
Net fabric added this year: 8.0 yards

I took this picture at a farm where we purchased some apples.

 

 

Today, I did a little hand stitching and finished off my wonky house block that I started at the Becky Goldsmith workshop in early September. I hope to make this into a small wall hanging by adding some borders.

By now, you are probably wondering what I worked on at the retreat. I will not be able to show any pictures for a while since I worked on some gifts for Christmas. Have a good week.

The Fashions of BIQR

 

 

 

At each Beaver Island Quilt Retreat, there are shirts available for sale and this year was no exception. Here is this year's shirt, modelled by Gwen!

 

Here is Gwen again, wearing last year's liberated medallion shirt while she looks through the quilt blocks given to her by all of the quilters at this year's retreat for her birthday. The block I made her is on the right.   Here is a picture of all of the blocks.

 

 

 

 

One of Gwen's grandsons embellished her crocs with long grass he found at the beach. You can see from the design that he is already liberated, just like his grandmother!

 



Here is the BIQR 2010 shirt.

 

 

This is Gwen sitting in front of one quilter's design wall...we call this picture: 

Gwen...the Statue of Liberated!

 

Barb recently celebrated her 65th birthday with a liberated tattoo!

 

This shirt says it all!

 

This one even includes the English translation...

 

Some quilter's jewellery!

 

Deb's sketch

(Her jewellery matched her quilt...)

 

 

The shirt below belongs to me...more than one person at the retreat wondered if I had ever tried to snap some of the snaps!

 

A fun jacket...

 

and another one.

 

All quilters need comfy shoes!

 

 

How about these ones? (ignore the photographer's finger in the lower right corner....)

 

Here is a picture of Gwen's Birthday cake:

 

 Enjoyed by all!