My Weekend Sewing

That's me in the photo above. I am hemming the drapes in my daughter's apartment in the city where she is going to university. We moved her into her apartment this weekend and I brought my sewing machine along. She groaned when she saw that I had it with me!-- I think she thought I was going to do some quilting!
We purchased the drapes at Ikea -they come with some iron on tape to shorten them but I think the sewing method works better. My husband hung the drapes and then I pinned them and used my sewing machine to hem them. The sewing machine is on her coffee table and I just moved it from panel to panel to sew the hems. My back did not like sewing in this position! She is all settled into her apartment now and even has her University Quilt on her bed to remind her that we love her.

Tonight, I sewed another sleeve on one of my quilts for the quilt show. Only 2 more sleeves and 5 more labels to go...

This week, I am volunteering in the quilt tent at the International Plowing Match just outside St. Thomas, Ontario. There's lots there to see and do so if you want an interesting outing, come on by!

Liberated Wedding Rings from the Edge

I picked up my quilt from the longarmer's on Monday and put the binding on it. Today, I sewed the sleeve onto the back while I was at Jacqui's so it is all ready for the quilt show. Karen C did a great job on the quilting--lots of feathers in the wide border and in the blocks. Here are some close ups of the quilting. You can see the design she quilted in the blue border in this picture as well as the feathers in each block.
This picture shows the feathers in the outer border

The backing material is called "Crazy for Dots and Stripes"--very appropriate for my quilt, I think! I wanted a random polka dot fabric for the back. There are lots of fabrics with rows of dots--it was harder to find random dots. I think the ladies in the quilt stores thought I was nuts!
The red binding is perfect!

And, here is the whole quilt--all done!
If you want to see my quilt in person, it will be on display at the "Harvest of Quilts" quilt show at Rowntree United Church on Oct 1st (10 am to 8 pm) and 2nd (10 to 5pm). There are many talented quilters in our guild and there will be lots of wonderful quilts to see. There is also the toonie table-raffle table with donated items to raise money for our charity quilt projects, a tea room and several vendors. The quiltaholics among you might want to make a quilty weekend of it and also visit the nearby quilt show in Ingersol, hosted by the Oxford Quilt Guild. Their show is Sept 30 to Oct 2nd.

Finally working on the borders!

Christine and I got together today and spent a few hours cutting out the pieces for the borders of our Carolina Christmas quilts. Neither one of us have our blocks sewn to each other yet so that will be our homework this week. I have started to sew some of my blocks together and will post a picture when I get it done.

Here are my pieces:
And here are Christine's:


I made another selvage sewing stool--this time in fall colours. I ran out of staples before finishing off the corners so they will look better when the corners are pulled tight and stapled.
Erin at My Patchwork Life asked for a sneak peak at my Gee's Bend Challenge quilt. I have finished hand piecing the flimsy--it is just a small wall hanging. Now, I am working on the hand quilting. I must tell you that it is very difficult to hand quilt corduroy and denim!
Bye for now!

A Mini Finish

Funny as it may seem, considering the size of this mini quilt, I had this quilted by a long arm quilter. Each block has a different quilted "medallion" on it and there are double loops in the outside border. The quilting was done with orange thread and I added the orange binding this afternoon. It is all ready for the quilt show now! I even have the label on! I love the bright colours and how they contrast against the navy sashing and border. (Thanks to my husband for being my quilt holder. He does a great job and is quite experienced!) This quilt was made from leftover HST units from my Carolina Christmas quilt which is still in the piecing stage...

I took this picture this afternoon of a hibiscus flower in my garden. My MIL gave me this bush a few years ago and it never fails to provide a lovely show of these dinner plate sized pink flowers late in the summer.

First Meeting of the Season!

Our first London Friendship Quilter's guild meeting for this year is tomorrow night. I have been busy gathering up my show and tell items, my items for the toonie raffle table at the guild show, my charity quilt for a foster child and a post card for the quilted postcard exchange. I made two cards today. One will go out to a family member and one will go in the mailbox tomorrow night.
Last night, Karen came over for QNIC (Quilting Night in Canada) and I put the borders on this top which I made last year. It is now ready for quilting. Tonight, I will do some hand sewing--sleeves for the quilts I am putting in the show.

More Homework...

I hope everyone had a good long weekend! My husband and I got our daughter off to university on Friday and then spent the weekend doing odd jobs (gardening, grass cutting, caulking windows, etc) here and at his parents' house (trimming trees and bushes, installing a small decorative fence, installing a small patio for their garden bench, replacing electrical outlets and switches, fixing a leaky faucet, installing a new light fixture (partly, anyway!), etc.) Much was accomplished and my in-laws were pleased to have all those tasks off of their list of things to do.
It's warm and windy here today. I went outside with my camera to check on what's in bloom. I noticed lots of beans, broccoli and peppers ready in the garden. I will have to go back out in a few minutes to do some harvesting! Anyway, our Sedum is out in bloom and this bee is enjoying the pink flowers.

This orange Mum plant is just about in bloom.
Our Rose of Sharon is also looking good!

Today, I worked on some more of my Carolina Christmas homework. I have the Fox and Geese blocks done. Now, I should get back out to the garden to do some harvesting before it starts to rain.

By the way, I did a little work on my Gee's Bend Challenge quilt on the weekend. It is all hand sewn and cut with scissors rather than a rotary cutter. So far, so good! I can't reveal my project until the group gets together to show their projects in October.

Doing my Homework.

This morning, I did some of my Carolina Christmas homework. I put 12 of these 16 inch blocks together and pressed them. This quilt also has 13 of the Fox and Geese X4 blocks in it so they are next in line to be sewn into the 16 inch blocks. That may have to wait a few days as I am helping my daughter to get ready to leave for her 2nd year at university for the next couple of days.

I registered 9 quilts and quilted items for the London Friendship Quilters' Guild "Harvest of Quilts" show yesterday afternoon. This took a while as I had to measure everything to make sure it was in the correct category and then fill out the forms (online) , save them and e-mail them to the person in charge of making the labels for the quilts in the show. Some of the quilts did not have names yet so I had to get the creative part of my brain in gear to come up with those. I noted that I have to do sleeves and labels on some of the quilts. I put one sleeve on a large quilt today while waiting for my daughter at the dentist's office. I didn't take a picture of the sleeve! I am reusing sleeves from other quilts that are now on beds instead of making new sleeves for the big quilts.

I am off to make supper now. We are eating fresh veggies out of the garden everyday now--tonight it is broccoli. Last night, we had green beans. They taste soooo good when they are just picked!