Sewing Day with Friends

My birthday was this past week so I decided to invite a few friends over today to sew.  I have not hosted a sewing day at my house in many months so this was a great way to celebrate.  We had a great time drinking tea and coffee, chatting and working on our projects.

Christine discovered that her cat had sent a little gift to keep us entertained...

Christine worked on some elephant blocks for her Elephants on Parade quilt.

She only has two more to make!

Christine also made and machine sewed the binging on a quilt that we made together for a refugee child. 

Jacqui worked on her grand-daughter's flower garden quilt.

This quilt was designed at Jacqui's request by Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts. 

Pat was given a kit to make a snowman wall hanging by her sister so she brought it along and spent her time tracing the shapes onto freezer paper.  

Carol brought a suitcase full of UFO's and managed to finish off a few projects that had been lingering in her sewing room.  

She made a slab for the Canadian Quilt bee first to get warmed up.  

Next, she quilted a pillow cover and put the backing on it.  The fabrics in the pillow are leftovers from a quilt she made for a friend from his Hawaiian shirt collection. I did a demo for her and Christine about how to put a zipper in the backing of a pillow.  Carol also brought along a quilt top she made at the Beaver Island Quilt retreat a few years ago and we all came up with some ideas for quilting it.  She left inspired to get it quilted and bound! 

I worked on the purple four patches for Bonnie Hunter's En Provence mystery quilt.  I have done the neutral four patches and now, about  half of the purple ones.  

I don't have a lot of variety in my purple stash...

I made turkey vegetable soup and rhubarb crisp for lunch.  

At the end of the day, I made another pincushion with leftovers from a yellow one I made earlier this week. 

These pincushions are a great way to try out new quilting designs,  I used matchstick quilting on this one.

The yellow one was from one of the patterns I won from Crazy Mom Quilts. 

Jacqui gave me this nifty organizer for my small rulers.  She bought it at the office supply store.  Isn't it cute???

I need to organize another sewing day sometime soon!