Camp Kintail Retreat--Part 2

If you read my previous blogpost, you will know that Christine and I spent the weekend at Camp Kintail at a crafter's retreat.  I worked on 4 projects..placemats for Meals on Wheels, a table topper (both of which were in the previous post) and a wall hanging.   In August 2017, I took a workshop with Jacquie Gering in St. Mary's Ontario about making house blocks.   You can see my post about this workshop here.   My houses have been hanging around on my design wall for over a year and this retreat was the perfect time to get them made in to a quilt top.

I brought along a flannel design wall and laid it out on the floor.  I added a painter's tape grid to help plan my quilt layout and then put a building in each space on the grid.  

The background is Moda Grunge in Ocean blue.  I added pieces of the background in each "block" on the grid and then sewed the blocks together.  It is a bit like putting a puzzle together and is one of my favourite ways to build a quilt!

Only one more piece of background to add!

I added borders to each side (not all the same size) to make the house blocks float on the background. I think I would like to live in this neighbourhood!

The trees outside were beautiful, even in the rain.

I liked the festive decorations on the tables in the dining hall at the camp.

As you can see, there were lots of people crafting at the camp on the weekend!  I am on the far right of the picture holding up my table topper.

I bet you are wondering about my 4th project...

We are into the season of secret sewing so I can't show it to you right now.  It will be revealed in due time. Suffice it to say that progress was made at the retreat...

Camp Kintail Crafters' Retreat: Part 1

Christine and I went to Camp Kintail this past weekend to sew for a couple of days.  There were over 70 crafters at the retreat--knitters, crocheters, painters, quilters, scrapbookers, etc.  Christine and I had a corner to ourselves at the retreat and both of us were very productive!  It rained most of the weekend --great weather for staying inside to work on our projects.  Of course, we both brought more  projects than we could possibly get done in a weekend but it was good to have choices.

I started out on Friday night working on two placemats for Meals on Wheels, an annual project of the London Friendship Quilter's Guild.  Each member makes two placemats which are given on Christmas Day to Meals on Wheels recipients.  The staff and volunteers at MOW are always happy to receive the placemats.  I used some orphan blocks and some stash fabric to make my placemats.

Here are my finished placemats.

Saturday morning, I worked on a large table topper...I made the flimsy years ago and found it in my quilting room this week as I was looking for supplies for the retreat.  I decided to get it quilted and bound and get it off my UFO list.

I did some orange peel quilting in the centre section and a wavy line in the narrow border.  The outer border has some straight line quilting and there are X's in the corners.

"Flame" (her camp name!) and I holding my finished quilt.  When my family went to Camp Kintail Family camp many moons ago, Flame was our camp counsellor.  It was so nice to connect with her again.  I have donated this quilt to the camp for a silent auction fundraiser that they are having in a few weeks to raise money for a new building "The Nest" that was built this past year.  In fact, Christine and I stayed in one of the rooms in the Nest and we sewed in a large room in the basement.  It is a beautiful building with many multipurpose spaces as well as rooms to stay in while at camp.

It was too wet to sit outside this weekend but wouldn't this be a great spot to sit and do some hand stitching when it's warmer and dryer?

The food was delicious all weekend.  Saturday morning, we were treated to pumpkin scones...

We met these ladies at the retreat...  They came out of the henhouse to greet us as we headed to the dining hall for lunch on Saturday. 

I'm glad we brought our raincoats!

I will do another post about the rest of the retreat later this week.

The News from Here

I have been stitching away on the silver outlining on my Frank Lloyd Wright Fountain Glass project this week.  I sometimes have a bit of time in the morning before I go to work and take 15 or 20 minutes to add a few more stitches.  Every little bit gets me closer to finishing. I like how the outlining makes it look more like a stained glass window, which was the inspiration for the pattern. 

There is a lot of outlining in the top half of this picture.  The bottom half is not quite so intense. 

Last night was the monthly meeting of the Elgin Piecemakers and we all handed in our yellow, grey and white blocks for this month's comfort quilt for a cancer patient at the hospital. 16 of these blocks will be made into a quilt and the extra blocks will be put aside for a scrappy comfort quilt.  We usually have a block or two leftover each month.  I made the plus sign block. 

Last month's blue and green blocks got made into a quilt top with orange sashing!  My block is in the second row, far right.

Today, Christine and I are off to a Crafter's Retreat at Camp Kintail north of Goderich. I have several projects packed in zip loc bags, ready to go.  I always seem to pack more than what I can possibly make for a retreat but it's nice to have something to work on if I get bored with one project.  I am also bringing my FLW CCS project so I can work on it too. I am accumulating a pile of projects and sewing equipment in the front hall and will load the car up later today and be on my way.  I will do a blog post about the retreat early next week.  I am looking forward to a productive and fun weekend!

I will be linking up to Kathy's slow Sunday Stitching link up on Sunday morning. 

A Little Quilt Done

I had an evening with Christine last night in my sewing room.  I spent my time quilting my little quilt that I showed in my last blogpost. I used green Aurifil thread about the colour of the green square at the right side of the picture above to do straight line quilting with my walking foot.  The bobbin thread was white to match the backing.

I found the white with black polka dots in my stash.  I started the hand stitching on the binding last night and finished it tonight.  I tried out a few bright colours for the binding but decided that the black looked the best, although I do hate sewing with black thread on black fabric!

The finished quilt measures 45 X 52 cm.  I just used the new measurement app on my cell phone to measure my quilt...how cool is that?

All ready for show at tell at the next Elgin Piecemaker's Guild meeting later this week!  I will add a label later tonight.

Quilt Show Report

I spent most of the day yesterday at the London Friendship Quilter's Guild show.  I had four of my quilts on display including "Elephants on Parade", shown below.  There were three elephant quilts on display, all started at a workshop with the designer, Lorna McMahon.   

My "Fancy Forest Friends" was on display beside the elephants.

There were 8 animal quilts on display together.  It was fun to see all of them--each one was unique with the different fabric choices.

"Flannel Vortex" showed off my flannel scraps, leftover from PJ's I have made for my daughter and nieces over the years. 

My Christmas sampler quilt was one of several seasonal quilts.  I managed to get all of the hanging sleeves attached on time for the quilts to be delivered to the show, despite some assistance from Finn, our grand-dog.  This was all the slow stitching that got accomplished this week.  Next week, I will be back to my hand quilting and cross stitching. 

Christine and I got together to sew one night this week and I put this mini quilt together.  I had the coloured squares sashed already and finished off all of the sewing.  The coloured squares were a little package of 2.5" charms that I received at the modern quilt guild retreat a couple of years ago.   I will be quilting this little quilt next week. 

Finn supervised our activities in the sewing room from this spot....

I will be linking up with the other slow stitchers on Sunday morning.

Prepping for the Quilt Show!

Next weekend, the London Friendship Quilter's Guild will be hosting their biennial quilt show.  I will be entering four quilts in the show this year so over the next few days, I will be furiously sewing on hanging sleeves to my quilts.   I recycle my hanging sleeves from show to show so I just need to find them (I think I know where they are???) and sew them on.  I am submitting three smaller quilts and one larger quilt so I am hoping this does not take too much time.  Here is some information about our show.  If you live nearby, you are invited to come to see our show!  Oakridge Presbyterian Church is on the south side of Oxford Street between Wonderland Rd and Hyde Park Road.  As a side note,  I attended church at Oakridge when I was a student at the University of Western Ontario and met my future husband there, 34 years ago...

I have had a sewing "helper" this week. Sometimes he just lays beside me in a supervisory capacity but he can be a bit attention seeking much of the time which impedes my sewing productivity, if you know what I mean!

Despite Finn's "assistance", I managed to do a bit of hand quilting on the wool appliqué squirrel piece.  I finished the outlining and started some vertical line quilting in the background.  The plan is to make a 1" square grid in the background and then figure out some sort of quilting for the brown border and the outer border.

I use painter's tape to keep my lines straight.

If you look closely, you can see my two lines of quilting so far...

I also did some more outlining on my Fountain Glass Window counted cross stitch picture this week.

I have been using Thread Heaven on the metallic outlining thread but it is still tangling a bit, so this is a slower process than outlining with embroidery floss. 

As you can see, I have a ways to go before this is done!

Finn will be staying with us for another week.  There are lots of walks going on here as well as playtime each day. Yesterday, we sat out on the front porch in the sunshine for 30 minutes just watching the world go by.  One of the neighbours was outside decorating for halloween with his daughter and someone else was cutting the grass.  Birds were singing. Finn was quite enthralled by it all.

I will be linking up with Kathy and her crew of Slow Sunday Stitchers this morning.  Have a wonderful day!

Time to get it Done...

Sometimes, when you are tidying up, you find things, unfinished things...  This wool appliqué project has been in hiding for at least a couple of years, but it has seen the light of day now and will not be going away again! It needs to be finished and out on display THIS Fall. The wool appliqué is done.  I have hand quilted around everything.  I just need to quilt the background and have decided just to do a crosshatch design there.  It should not take too long and I hope to get at it this weekend sometime.  

My daughter and Finn arrived last night for a few days.  I worked on FLW while I was waiting for them... It is hard to show you progress on this project as I am just working on the silver outlining.  I love the way the outlining makes the details pop out of a cross stitch picture.

Finn has gotten a lot bigger over the last few weeks since we last saw him.  He has all of his adult teeth now and is heavier when we pick him up. 

I am hosting the family Thanksgiving dinner today.  I cooked the turkey and stuffing yesterday and made a cauliflower/broccoli casserole.  Today, we will make salad, roasted brussel  sprouts and Panko encrusted delicata squash rings (that's a new recipe---hopefully everyone will like it!).  My SIL is bringing potatoes, apple pie and cider.  Finn will be very excited to see his extended family members!  

I did some decorating this week--added a few pumpkins here and there inside and out.  Last night, as we left the house, I noticed a grasshopper resting on one of the outside pumpkins...

He/she had his eyes on me!

I will be linking up with Kathy and the other Slow Stitchers today.  If you want to see my completed Foothills Quilt top, you can see it here. Happy Thanksgiving to all of my Canadian readers!  I am thankful for my family, friends and hobbies which I enjoy.

Foothills Quilt Flimsy DONE!

I have been working on this quilt for several months now as part of a quilt-along with Mary Elizabeth Kinch. The block pattern came from an antique quilt that she showed on her blog last December and so many people liked it, Mary Elizabeth decided to offer a quilt-along so others could make the quilt. I started making blocks back in February and gradually, the design wall filled up with 25 blocks.  The original quilt had 5 rows of 5 blocks which resulted in a square quilt.  At the last minute, I decided to make my blocks into a single bed sized quilt with a 4 X 6 layout and a piano key border.

It was not quite big enough for a single bed without the extra borders.   The fabrics for this quilt all came from shirts that my husband was not going to wear anymore after he lost some weight (on purpose).  The sashing is navy blue, although it is hard to tell in the picture above.

I made hourglass blocks for the corners.  Believe it or not, I still have two bins full of shirt fabric.  I have cut out the backs of several shirts to piece the back of the quilt.

I added a final 2.5" navy border this afternoon and my husband held up the quilt for the first picture in this post when he got home from work. His arms were not quite long enough to hold it from corner to corner. I'm very happy to have this flimsy done!  This is the first bed sized quilt I have made in a few years and it will look great in our guest room.  I'm aiming to have it quilted, bound and on the bed by Christmas.