My Arcs are DONE!

I have been sewing a little bit most evenings this week as well as this afternoon and I am happy to say that my Indian Orange Peel Arcs are done!---All 120 of them!

I hope sewing up the last of these arcs gives me some momentum to keep working on the paper pieced border sections...still lots of sewing to do. I will have to lay out my blocks on my design floor to see where these arcs fit in.

I also did some mending today--my most un-favourite kind of sewing. At least it is done and not cluttering up my sewing area.

I found a pattern for a cute table runner this week...It is made with a charm pack and I happen to have a Moda charm pack in Spring colours that would work for this pattern.   Maybe that will be my next project as I keep working on the paper piecing for the IOP.

Blue Ridge Beauty progress and a Postcard Give-away!

I had this morning to myself so I did some sewing!  I put 5 rows together for my Blue Ridge Beauty--there are 12 rows in total so I am almost 1/2 way there...

I am still hoping to finish putting this together by the end of the weekend.

When I finished sewing on the 5th row, my bag of scraps from my Indian Orange Peel started calling out to me. 

 I had been thinking about making some postcards out of these scraps. I sorted the scraps into warm and cool colours and ironed them onto a piece of timtex. I put some netting over top of the scraps and did some free motion quilting over top to hold everything together. 

Three of these postcards have destinations already, but if you would like to win the 4th one, please leave a comment on this post by Monday evening at 7pm EST and I will pick a winner. 

To close, here are a few pictures of my garden. It is a beautiful sunny day here today so we are going out to do some yard work this afternoon.

The columbines are coming to life. I love how the leaves unfurl.

Crocuses in my front garden.

The bees were buzzing around these crocuses in the backyard.

Don't forget to leave a comment to win one of the postcards!

Indian Orange Peel Class: Part 2

Today was the big day--we had our second and final Indian Orange Peel class all day.(Here is the post on the first class back in November.) Heather Stewart, our teacher, used one student's 4 patches and arcs to show an example of how to lay the blocks out.

Then, we paired off to help each other with our layouts and distribution of our arcs.

Heather made the rounds and gave everyone advice after looking through her peek hole to make sure we had the colours arranged to encourage the eye to move around each quilt.

It took all morning for each pair to figure out where to put the pieces and then label them all and pin them down to a sheet so we would not forget where they were supposed to be.The first picture below is my quilt.

Each quilt was different from all the rest and really reflected each quilter's personality and preferences.

There was so much eye candy, it was hard to stay focused on my own quilt--I kept wandering around the room to see everyone's progress.

Barb is a real keener and decided to make her quilt 5X7 blocks--she even had her layout figured out before she arrived today!!!

After lunch, Heather taught us how to do curved piecing so we could attach the arcs to each 4 patch.

This proved to be quite challenging and I think everyone had a chance to use their stitch ripper at some point!

Here is my finished block.

We also started making the "kites" and "u's" for the outer border. I finished one kite.

There was lots of sewing going on all afternoon.

Come on back again to check on our progress!

8 more done, 12 to go

I finished off these 8 arcs tonight and have 12 more started. I will finish the last 12 before Saturday. There is a lot more paper piecing to do before this Indian Orange Peel quilt will be done. We will have to organize some more Arc Support Group Sewing Sessions in the near future!

Elgin Piecemakers Guild Report

If you have been reading my blog, you know that I belong to a small guild called the Elgin Piecemakers. We make quilts for chemo patients at our local hospital as an outreach project. Each month, we make a block for a chemo quilt--the picture above shows the red and white blocks made into a quilt top.  The picture below shows our blue and white blocks--Both of these tops have been delivered to the machine quilter and they will soon be ready to deliver to the chemo unit.

This month, we all made Tennessee blocks and 13 blocks were brought to our meeting.

Two of our members brought these home to make into a top. They will likely make 3 more blocks and then make it 4X4 so that the star pattern shows up. (See the bottom right 4 blocks)

Chris and I are going to put the black, red and white blocks together. We might have to make a couple more to have a 3X5 layout.

Pat gave us each a bag with the pieces already cut for our next blocks. She has really raised the bar for the next person to pick a pattern!

We had a show and tell of arcs last night. Here are Heather's 4 patches and arcs.

And here are Beth's:

Jacqui has all 120 done!

Yvonne has lots done too!

Check out the hot chili peppers in this one!

Keep an eye on Pat's blog for what she does with her sewing garbage.

I plan on doing some sewing tomorrow so stay tuned for another update...

100

I have been working away on 15 arcs most evenings this week and today, I finally finished them off! I now have 100 arcs done which means I have all of the homework done for the next class. There are still 20 more arcs in the border of the quilt. I may try to get them done too but now I feel like I can give myself permission to work on something else for a change of pace.

This is going to be a very colourful quilt!

More arcs...85 done now!

I started these 15 arcs at Jacqui's last weekend. I started to work on them one evening this week, but my iron died (Yikes!) so I could not finish them off until today. I had a spare iron in the basement--it was in hiding so I had to find it before I could sew again. My husband found it, thankfully, so I was able to finish these arcs off today.

My piles of arcs are looking quite impressive. This represents a lot of sewing!!

You can see that there are two types of arcs in this quilt-half have "warm" coloured teeth and the other half have "cool" coloured teeth. Personally, I prefer white teeth...

I have started another 15 arcs--100 arcs must be done in time for the second Indian Orange Peel workshop in March. There are another 20 arcs like this in the border so I am going to try to get them done before the class as well. I would like to spend my time at my guild's "Quilt 'til You Wilt" day working on anything but arcs!--Perhaps my Blue Ridge Beauty quilt...

Arc Support Retreat at Jacqui's

Earlier this week, Christine and I got together one evening to work on arcs for our Indian Orange Peel Quilts. I started working on 10 more arcs and Christine got started on a few as well.

Last night, 7 of us got together to work on arcs at Jacqui's house. We sewed and sewed and then stopped for a delicious supper of pad thai, salad and dessert. After supper, I finished off the 10 arcs that I started earlier in the week and started 12 more before heading home for bed.

I got up early this morning to make some "Bananaberry Bombs"--Banana Blueberry muffins (The recipe is from Looneyspoons by Janet and Greta Podleski) so that I could take them to Jacqui's when they were still warm. We were well fed all day again--muffins, fruit, tea and coffee for morning snack; homemade turkey soup, fresh bread and buns, fruit and vegies and some sweet stuff for lunch and then cheese and crackers, more fruit, tea and coffee as well as leftover desserts in the afternoon.

Lots of sewing and chatting took place all day as the 8 of us sewed and ironed and trimmed our arcs. Everyone's arcs are a bit different depending on colour and fabric choices. It will be fun to see how all of the quilts turn out!

I finished off the 12 arcs that I started the night before for a total of 22 completed arcs.

I started another batch of 15 arcs which I will try to finish this week. I have 80 arcs completely done. I am well on my way to finishing off the 120 I need to have done before mid March for the second workshop. At this workshop, we will learn how to do the curved piecing to put our blocks together and how to lay out our blocks for the best visual effect. We will also get started on paper piecing the units for the border. This is a very labour intensive quilt but it is nice to know that we are there to support and encourage each other as we work on this project!

Here is a bag of my trimmings from doing my arcs. I have a project in mind for these.

I will try to finish off my other arcs later this week. I am hoping to have them done shortly so that I can do some other projects before the 2nd class for this quilt in mid-March.