The Big Reveal: RRCB is done!

I finally finished hand sewing the binding last night before I went to bed.  I LOVE THIS QUILT!  I love the colours!

 I love the fabrics!  I love how I can play "I Spy" with the neutral strings! (Can you find a violin?)

I love the pieced border too.

And, I love the quilting!  Karen C in Dorchester, Ontario did a beautiful job!  Her quilting really compliments the piecing. She used Antique Red thread and it really pops!

Did I tell you I love this quilt???? 

I can't wait to start another scrappy quilt with lots of pieces...but I have a few other projects to finish first.

Thanks, Bonnie Hunter, for a great pattern!

Roll Roll Cotton Boll--just about done!

The binding is on.  I just have to do the hand stitching now. This will be my weekend project.

Finally, some sewing time!

I have been doing lots and lots of yard work and gardening recently so my sewing machine and quilting projects have been ignored and gathering dust. Sunday night, I finally sat down at the machine and made some pillowcases which will be gifts for some upcoming birthdays and other occasions. 

I am hoping the people who will be receiving these pillowcases do not read my blog!

Christine and I got together tonight and trimmed a couple of quilts. She put the binding on hers and I prepped the binding for mine. I picked up my Roll Roll Cotton Boll from the quilter's last week and will do the final reveal once I have the binding on. In the meantime, here is a sneak peak:

It is quilted with antique red thread!

I also finished up the last few blocks for the last border on my Stars for My Friends mystery quilt...I can hardly wait to show you this quilt!  I have to wait until after our guild meeting in September when everyone will reveal their projects. I have seen a few of these quilts in progress and I am amazed at how different they all look, depending on the fabric choices.

In the meantime, it has finally rained here a few times after a long dry spell so there is lots of growing action in the gardens. My vegetable garden is looking good!  I did not even have anything planted at this time last year!  That's my shadow at the entrance to the garden. The fence keeps the rabbits out!

I have several types of clematis in bloom and here is one of my favourites...

This flower is called Scabiosa or Pincushion flower--appropriate for the garden of a quilter...

My tomato plants are growing like crazy!  I grow them in pots on the patio because there is a black walnut tree near my vegetable garden. Black walnut roots emit some chemical which kills tomato plants.

We planted a new tree in our yard this year to replace a tulip tree that died. This is a dogwood tree and it has 12 flowers this year.

That's all the news from here for now.

Happy sewing!

Yesterday was Quilt Til You Wilt...

I arrived at 8am and had my sewing machine up and running by 8:10am. I brought 6 projects with me and finished 3. There were 17 members of the London Friendship Quilters' Guild there sewing and talking and sharing their projects. The food, as usual, was fresh, plentiful and delicious!  Best of all, we did not have to clean up afterwards!  Supper was a Greek Buffet:

First, I finished off the next step in my flannel "Stars for My Friends" mystery quilt. I had to make 96 units which finished at 3 1/2 inches. This took longer than I expected since I already had done the cutting before I arrived! 

Sorry I can't post a picture of the finished units--you will just have to take my word for it that they are done.

By lunch time, I was putting them away and moving on to the next project. I have been putting off adding the final border to my Roll Roll Cotton Boll but decided that yesterday was the day I was going to finish it!  I seem to have an aversion to adding borders to a quilt top--I think it has a lot to do with how awkward it is to work with such a large chunk of fabric.

Ta Da!  Here is my Roll Roll Cotton Boll flimsy, all done!

The borders really finish it off nicely. I have to go and purchase some material for the back and then it will be off to the long armer's house for quilting!

My 3rd project for the day was my hexagon quilt. I spent an evening with Jacqui this past week and we figured out a final layout for the hexagons. I purchased the navy blue border fabric on Thursday after work and washed and dried it on Friday night so it would be ready for Saturday. This quilt top is now done too!

I love the pink streak across this quilt! 

I left for home around 9pm, 13 hours after my arrival. It was a very productive day! I can't wait for the next Quilt Til You Wilt day in November!

What will I work on next???  You will have to check back and see.

Roll, Roll, Cotton Boll--Getting closer to being done!

Christine and I continue to get together most weeks to spend an evening sewing. This past week, I had 3 goals for our evening together. The first goal was to complete the center of my quilt--I just had one more row of blocks to put together and add to the rest of the quilt top. As you can see, I finished this goal!

My second goal was to complete the 12 triangle sections for the corners of the quilt borders... Ta Da! I got that one done too!

My 3rd goal for the evening was to finish sewing the binding on my "Creamsicles By the Sea" (aka "Carolina Christmas"--another mystery quilt designed by Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville) so that I could take it to the London Friendship Quilters' Guild Meeting the next evening for show and tell.  I finished that goal off too!

You can see some of the beautiful quilting by Karen Cole in these pictures.

I put this quilt on my bed!

Christine made great progress on her RRCB quilt too. She got the top trimmed up and the green borders added.

The borders really frame the centre of this quilt nicely. I can hardly wait to get the borders on my quilt and get it to Karen to have it quilted!

I spent another evening at Jacqui's last week when 5 of us got together to make another 27 pillowcases for our local Christmas Hamper program. I hope the children who receive these pillowcases have sweet dreams!

The pillowcases were delivered by one of the sewers to the Inn Out of the Cold and Christmas Care last week.

I am making slow but steady progress getting ready for Christmas. The tree is up and decorated and I made this planter for my front porch.

Still lots to do including more gifts to make. Less than two weeks until the big day. I need to get a move on!

Quilt 'til You Wilt Report

I left home this morning at 7:45am--my husband thought I was nuts to get out of bed so early on a Saturday morning!  There was a good reason for my early rising--Today was Quilt 'til You Wilt! It started at 8am and I arrived a bit early to find that there were already 5 people there ahead of me!  This annual event is held at a local hotel. We moved the tables around to make sure everyone had access to electrical outlets, set up our machines and started to sew.

Around 9am, breakfast was served, so we all stopped for a bite to eat before getting back to our machines. I had a bagel and some fresh fruit.

My first project--borders for Roll Roll Cotton Boll.  I had brought 4-5 projects with me but this one consumed most of my day.  I sewed the strips I showed you in the last post together and then cut them into 172 of these units:

Then, I cut the brown triangles out and sewed them on to each of these threesies.

It took a long time to iron these and trim the dog ears!

After a delicious supper--a Greek buffet--I started sewing them together to make the borders. (Lunch was very good too--broccoli soup, salad and sandwiches)

First I sewed twosies, then foursies, ...you get the picture...

At the end of the day, I had one side sewn together--39 units. I have some other smaller sections made as well.

I walked around the room every so often to look at other people's projects and to take pictures for the London Friendship Quilters' Guild blog. Our blog editor will do a post soon using the pictures.

I also added a border to a block that I made yesterday for a table topper. This topper will be put into a gift exchange at a Christmas party which is coming up soon.  I quilted it and added the binding at QTYW but did the hand sewing tonight when I got home.  The block is called Puss in the Corner.

I wilted about 8pm tonight--it was a great day!

Come back again soon as I have an exciting give-away coming up this week!  I will try to do the post about it tomorrow and will make the draw later this week. You will not want to miss out on a chance to win!

Weekly Sewing Report

These blogposts are becoming a weekly report of my sewing activities. There are just not enough hours in the day to blog any more often than once a week!  The fabric postcard above was made this past week for the London Friendship Quilters' Guild fabric postcard exchange. I made another one as well which is in the mail to a friend that I have not seen in a while. The fabric is leftover from the pillowcase I made myself recently. I quilted it on the diagonal, but you can't really see it in the picture.

I also made two placemats this week for Meals on Wheels--they will be put into giftbags for shut in seniors in London at Christmas. The two blocks are orphan blocks leftover from another project.

Christine and I got together on Wednesday night to work on our RRCB quilts. I put some of my blocks together and cut the strips for the pieced border. I hope to get some more blocks together this week and work on the pieced border at the annual Quilt 'til You Wilt day next Saturday.

Christine worked on her daughter's quilt. She has all her RRCB blocks together already!

Today, Pam from Mad About Patchwork did a workshop for our guild where we learned how to do not one but two quilts!

In the morning, we worked on "Through the Trees"--

And "Quartered Squares" in the afternoon.


(Those are both Pam's versions of these quilts!)

I used some flower fabric that I purchased years ago with some co-ordinating brights  for my Through the Trees quilt.

We had to cut all of our fabrics the same size, stack them up in a certain order and then slice in a wonky way.  We then reordered the strips so that each block would be different...

It did not take long to sew the 8 blocks together. We talked about various ways of putting the blocks together...I decided to make a wonky coins quilt with bright green (Kona Sour Apple) sashing and border. I even managed to finish this top before the end of the day, although it still needs a little trimming at the top and bottom...

I have picked out some pink fabric for the binding--I will have to search though my stash to see if I have any suitable fabric for the backing.

I decided to use solids for my Quartered Squares quilt and got one block done.  There is a lot of cutting for this quilt and I did not get all of it done. I decided that I needed to have one block completed as an example of what to make at home!  There are at least a dozen different solids in this quilt.

Another project to work on at Quilt 'til You Wilt....

This week, I hope to get some more RRCB blocks together and get my fabrics cut for the QS quilt. I have to get everything ready for QTYW too...

Until next time... Happy sewing!