Guild Sewing Day

This morning, I set off with a suitcase full of fabric and supplies for a full day of sewing with other members of the London Friendship Quilters' Guild. I am happy to tell you that I have finished off almost all of my Christmas sewing!  I have one more small gift to make which should take about 1 hour to do.  Since most of the things I made today are gifts, I cannot show very many pictures.

I can show you the placemats I made for Meals on Wheels. This is an annual project for local seniors who have a meal delivered to them on Christmas day. Last year, members of our guild made about 200 placemats for this charity. I made two placemats today and handed them in to the community outreach committee chair person.

The backs are the same snowman fabric as on the fronts.

This picture was taken before the binding was added. I did the organic quilting.

I had a small accident this morning while working on one of the gifts I made.  I tried to quilt my finger into the quilt. I now have a hole in my nail, right through the other side of my finger. I spent the rest of the day with a sore finger covered in a bandaid...but don't worry, I did not get any blood on my project!  My sore finger made hand stitching the binding an interesting experience...

After Christmas, I will have to do a blogpost about all of the gifts I have made this year.

Building a House

This month, each member of the Elgin Piecemakers will be making a house block for our charity chemo quilt. I built my house tonight using a liberated method--no pattern. I looked over some ideas from Gwen Marston's Liberated Quiltmaking book and then made my block. I would love to just sit and make a bunch of these house blocks.  This one is 12.5" square.  I had so much fun making the house block that I decided to make a tree to go beside it...

I may make an evergreen tree too sometime...

I can't wait to see everyone else's house blocks at our meeting later this week!

I have been doing some big stitch quilting on the snowman runner...

I think it is coming along nicely!

Until next time...

Slow stitching on a Sunday

I have two hand stitching projects underway this weekend.  I am doing the hand stitching on the binding for Abby's t-shirt quilt. Cathy at Eagles Wings quilts quilted this quilt on her long arm machine and I got it from her on Friday. I love the angel pantograph...

Saturday, my husband and I were out doing some Christmas shopping and I did some binding in the car on the way to and from our destination. I am over half way around the quilt now and hope to finish it off later Sunday.

While out on Saturday, we dropped into Cherished Pieces and I bought some threads to use for quilting my snowman runner.  I did not have the runner with me but I think the thread colours I purchased will work out just fine for this runner.

I have a charity quilt block to make for the Elgin Piecemakers this week so there should be another blogpost later this week.

Have a great day!

Snowmen Runner Progress

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned that I needed to find some snaps in my sewing room to use for face parts for my snowmen runner.  I remembered that I had been given an old sewing box that used to belong to my husband's great aunt so I decided to look in there for some snaps.  I found a full card of snaps, never used, purchased many years ago for 29 cents! 

Today, I added the rest of the eyes and mouth parts to the remaining snowmen on my table runner.

Buttons for the eyes and snaps for the mouth!

Snappy eyes...

 



 



Two smiley faces...

Three more happy snowmen...

Those snowflake buttons will be added to the two black strips.  I have decided to do the quilting first and then add the snowflakes.  I have pin basted this little runner and will be hand quilting it. I still hope to have it done in time for Christmas decorating in a couple of weeks.

This afternoon, my MIL, my SIL and I went on a Christmas tour of homes.  One of the older homes on the tour had a carriage house out back. I loved the greenery decorating the carriage house.

We were not allowed to take any pictures inside the houses, but I did take a couple of pictures outside.

 This puts me in the mood to get my urn put together and onto my front porch...  This will be a job for this week.  We stopped at the garden centre on the way home and I purchased some greenery. I will take a picture and post it next time.

Quilt Show Awards

Almost a month ago, the London Friendship Quilters Guild held their biannual quilt show. I was asked by the organizing committee to make the awards for the winning quilts in each of 5 categories for the show. The design was up to me and I took my inspiration from the advertising shown above.  Earlier in the year, each member of the guild was asked to make a 9" London Roads block for a quilt which would be raffled off to raise money for our Outreach Projects.

I decided that I would make a smaller version of this block for the awards.

I made these during a Saturday sewing day with some friends but was not allowed to show them as the prize design was to be kept a secret...  I used a different red fabric in each of the blocks.  I found the fabric in my stash.

At the time, I could not remember if there were 5 or 6 categories, so I made 6 blocks to be on the safe side.  Another member of the guild with an embroidery machine was asked to do the next part of the awards.

 

 

This past Thursday night, at our November meeting, the awards were presented. I took some pictures of the awards before they were given out at the meeting.  The guild blogger will be posting pictures of the quilts that won in each category on the LFQG blog. You can get to the blog on my sidebar.

Here are the quilts that I entered into the show:

My pinwheel table runner is on the bottom left.  (The quilted pumpkin won in the other quilted item category)

My wonky house was in the miniature category.

The liberated squirrel quilt was in the wall-hanging category.

Another wall hanging--the red and white round robin quilt.

I had a few quilts in the bed-sized quilt category including the Lazy Sunday Mystery,

 

Swoon,

 

 

The 9 patch mystery,

 

 and Great Granny's Stash.

 

My "Sewing Baskets" selvage quilt was also in the wall hanging group.

 

 

I did a demo on the Saturday Morning of the quilt show on making quilts with selvages. I had over 20 quilters watching the demo and asking lots of questions. They were shocked at the size of my selvage collection...I need to make another selvage quilt, obviously.

 

I am in full Christmas gift making mode now so I won't be able to show the things I am currently making until after December 25th.  I have two gifts made and 3 more to make. I hope to have some time this weekend to work on my snowman runner too.

 

Until next time, happy sewing!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Elgin Piecemakers Sewing Day

The Elgin Piecemakers Guild met at a local church hall for a day of sewing today. Everyone was busy all day with various projects and, of course, coffee, tea and snacks were available as well. A few people worked on putting blocks together for two charity quilts.

The sashing on this quilt is actually a lovely light brown, not green as it appears in this picture!

We hope someone will feel warm wrapped up in this gray and red quilt.

 

 Heather found this UFO in her cupboard and hopes to have it done in time for Christmas.

 

 

Donna worked on a new Christmas tree skirt for her tree.

 

 

Ann busied herself with making a cute lift the flap baby quilt.

 

 

Jacqui made more blocks for a Tula Pink sampler quilt.

 

 

Chris is making a table topper with lots of pieces. 

She had it all put together by the time she went home.

 

 

Nice civil war fabrics were being made in to a quilt by Carolyn.

 

 

Barb's project was a stitch and flip project from a workshop by Jacquie Gering earlier this year.

 

 

Yvonne and Debbie worked on the Gray and Red charity quilt.

 

 

Donna did some organic quilting.

 

 

I made this table topper. It is a Christmas gift for someone who does not read my blog. I also worked on a second Christmas gift but you will have to wait until after Christmas to see it.  ;-)

The binding on this topper will have to count as this week's slow stitching project. I had hoped to get some more done on the snowman runner, but that will have to wait until next week.

 

I have not done a stash report in ages....

 

Fabric used since my last stash report: 13.7 yards
Total fabric used this year: 87.35 yards
Fabric added to the stash since my last report: 6.5 yards
Total fabric added this year: 72.9 yards
Net fabric used this year: 14.45 yards

 

(Note that the background, border and backing fabric for Abby's quilt are not included in the numbers above.  This fabric was purchased and all used in this quilt so it did not come into my stash and it did not go out!  Abby's quilt will be going to the quilter's house this week. Here are a couple of pictures of the borders and the backing)

 

 

 

I can't wait to show you the finished quilt!

 

I am linking up to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching.

 

 

Snowmen

Back in September, when Barb, Cathy, Kathy and Christine and I had a sewing day, I was given a kit to make a little snowman table runner as a gift for hosting the day.  Shortly after that, I put the runner together and then it got put aside as I was busy with other projects. This week, I got it out again to work on the hand stitching part.

The carrot noses are orange wool. I pinned each in place and found some embroidery floss to blanket stitch them to each snowman face.

I watched a youtube video on doing blanket stitches as a refresher. I was soon on my way!

I added some button eyes. I would like to use some snaps for the eyes on a couple of the faces--that means I will have to go searching in my sewing room for those...that could be a scary thought...

I am hoping to work on this project tomorrow for my Slow Sunday Stitching with Kathy. I have decided that I will be hand quilting this little table runner.  I have been missing my slow stitching lately!