Hand Quilting in Dutton

This past Sunday, Donna and I went to Dutton where the West Elgin Dramatic Society put on a play called "Quilting Pieces".  The play consisted of 10 vignettes about various aspects of quilting and how it has affected the quilters and their families over time. Several dozen community members were involved --the oldest was a woman in her late 70's and the youngest was 7 years old. It was wonderful to see all of the members of the cast and crew working together and having such a good time putting on this play!

 

Before and after the play, as well as during the intermission, Donna and I demonstrated hand quilting for the people who attended the play.  Other members of the Elgin Piecemakers and some other quilters from the area have signed up in pairs to do this at each performance of the play. If you have read my blog for a while, you will know that I do not do a lot of hand quilting, if any. I work full time so I choose to spend my sewing time machine piecing and I have my quilts machine quilted by a long arm quilter, but I do know how to hand quilt. I am hoping to hand quilt my liberated squirrel quilt this summer.

 

 

 

Donna and I had quite a few people come over to watch us quilt and ask us questions.  We were working on a quilt which will be given to an adult chemo patient at our hospital. This quilt was pieced by Nancy who used to belong to the Elgin Piecemakers. She recently donated several quilt tops to our guild to finish as charity quilts.

 

 

 

 

This quilt will be a bright spot in someone's days during their cancer treatments.

 

 

 

If you live near London, Ontario, you may want to take a drive to Dutton this weekend to see "Quilting Pieces".  Say "hello" to the hand quilters during the intermission!

 

This weekend, there is a quilt show in Shedden at the local community centre. I have two quilts and the table runner above in the show this weekend.  There will be lots of quilts, several vendors and a great tea room as well.

 

Last night, Christine came over to sew and I put my charity quilt blocks together so now the top is done. This will also be donated to the chemo unit at the hospital after I get the quilting done.

 

I finished cutting fabric for a new project tonight--a gift. That's all I can say about this project for now until it is gifted!

 

I will do a stash report next time.

 

Here is a picture that I took when my husband and I were out for a walk last week.

 

 

 







Road Trip!

Today was our long awaited fabric acquisition road trip...Cathy, Karen, Christine and I set off early this morning for Guelph and Elmira.

Christine was our driver with tea in hand!

Cathy is not a morning person and needs lots of coffee to get her going.

 Our first stop was Greenwood Quiltery in Guelph.

 

This wonderful shop has a whole room full of knitting yarn and this made Cathy very happy!  She even brought her knitting needles along so that she could knit with her new yarn in the car. She is making herself some socks.

Greenwood Quiltery also has lots and lots of great fabric!  We fanned out and went searching for what tickled our fancy.

Here are my fabrics, and some basting pins that I have wanted for quite a while.

Christine purchased some fabric for a wedding gift. Cathy also bought some border fabric for a UFO she plans on finishing soon. Karen and I with our purchases...

By that time, we were getting hungry!  Lucky for us, there is a wonderful little café called With the Grain just across the road from Greenwood Quiltery. We had to wait a bit for a table, but it was worth the delay.

They bake their own bread, scones and desserts. We all had sandwiches on fresh baked bread and I even bought a loaf of flax bread to bring home!

My sandwich--olive hummus and a cup of Moroccan soup.

Cathy chose egg salad...

Karen had grilled cheese...

And Christine had Chicken salad..

I will definitely go back to this little café again!

After lunch, we all purchased some baked goods to share with our families at home...

 

 

 

Everyone will need extra exercise this week to wear these off!

Next, we did a side trip to see a model train layout where my husband is a member of a club that had an open house today.

Soon, we were on the road again and on our way to Quilter's Nine Patch near Elmira.

Karen and Christine both found what they were looking for at this store.  Karen needed some civil war fabrics she needed to finish off a quilt for her bed. Christine was looking for some border fabric for her 9 patch mystery quilt. Success!

Here are my purchases...

 My favourite fabric is the bicycle fabric!

All this shopping makes a quilter hungry and thirsty (again). We stopped in at the Crossroads restaurant for tea and pie. (Sorry no pictures, but the pie was excellent!) 

We arrived home in time for dinner after a quick stop at Len's Mills store in Woodstock where Christine was able to find some background fabric for a wedding gift quilt.

It was a great day!  We will need to do this again sometime!

Another New Project



When I was in Ottawa in February, I did some shopping at Mad About Patchwork--an online store owned by my friend, Pam. As I was leaving, she gave me two bins full of bolt ends of various colours of Kona Cottons as her donation to charity quilts made by the Elgin Piecemakers. Last night, I sorted all of the pieces into piles by colour and pulled out all of the grays, reds, oranges, yellows and one  blue strip. I decided to make a man's chemo quilt. 

 

 

I cut out some 10" squares of the grays and then some 1.5" strips of the coloured fabrics.  I used the slash and insert method to make these blocks.

I have more gray squares cut out as well as more strips to make more blocks. I am hoping to make this into a lap sized quilt. So far, so good!

I have also been working on my liberated squirrel quilt...the top is done...

I will show a picture later.  The back is also done. I am in the process of figuring out how to quilt this one.  I may even hand quilt this one.... Yikes!

It is still really cold here but the snow is slowly disappearing. These brave daffodils have even made an appearance.

This chunk of ice was hanging off the roof of my house last week and has since fallen off and broken on the patio. I like the bubbles!

This picture was taken about 10 days ago. The sun was setting on a very frozen Lake Huron. Someday, it will melt and people will swim here!

Happy Spring, everyone!

Liberated Charity Quilt Blocks

I made a couple more charity quilt blocks for the Elgin Piecemakers charity projects this week.  This red and grey block will be handed in at our June meeting,. The cardinal and the light gray fabric were purchased last month at Mad About Patchwork. I decided at the beginning of this year that I was going to make more projects without patterns this year and these blocks are part of meeting this goal.

I love the cardinal in the middle of this block!

For May's block, we are to use blue fabrics only.  I decided to make a liberated wedding ring block from one of Gwen Marston's liberated quilt making books.  You may remember that I made a liberated wedding ring quilt from selvages a few years ago.

I like to have a few of these charity blocks made ahead of time so that I don't have the pressure of having to make one in a hurry before a meeting. Other members of the guild have been known to make their blocks after supper on the night of our meeting...

Yesterday was a beautiful day, sunny and with a hint of Spring in the air.  Today, a blizzard blew in and dumped over 20 cm of snow on us and blew it around!  Tonight, there is a cold weather alert. I can't wait for Spring to come and stay!

Saturday Afternoon Sewing

Cathy, Christine, Pat and I got together this afternoon to do some sewing---actually, Pat was knitting some socks, but the rest of us were sewing! We had homemade cookies and Chocolate Orange Tea part way through the afternoon. Cathy worked on some binding and some scrappy teal blocks and Christine worked on a civil war block of the month project and the final blocks for a quilt for her sister.

I finished off a quilted pillow that I started last week. Nice Spring colours!

The back is some Kaffe Fasset fabric.

Jacqui gave me a kit to make this pillow for my 50th birthday over a year ago so I figured I should get it made!

Here is a close up of the quilting:

I also made this London Roads block for a fundraiser quilt. It is a 9" finished block.

Then, I made two pillowcases--wedding shower gifts for the bride and the groom.

All in all, a successful and productive sewing day!

Here is my stash report for this week:

 Fabric used since my last stash report: 3.0 yards
Total fabric used this year: 42.35 yards
Fabric added to the stash since my last report: 2 yards (for the pillowcases)
Total fabric added this year: 24.65 yards
Net fabric used this year: 17.7 yards
Have a good week!

Black, Red and White Basket block

Our colours for our April charity quilt blocks at the Elgin Piecemaker's guild are red, black and white. I pulled out some fabrics tonight. I was too lazy to go down to my sewing room and dig out a pattern for a 12.5" block so I just made a liberated basket block. Here is my block.

A group of friends and I are doing a round robin project together. Each of us is making a centre for our own quilt and then putting some fabrics and our block in a bag to pass on to the next person in the group. I made my block the other night but I am not allowed to show it to you...everything is top secret until the quilts are revealed in June!

Here is my stash report:

Fabric used since my last stash report:  27.5 yards (includes a recent donation to our guild yard sale)
Total fabric used this year: 39.35 yards
Fabric added to the stash since my last report: 0 yards
Total fabric added this year: 22.65 yards
Net fabric used this year: 16.7 yards

I am off to iron some new fabric now.

Charity Quilts and How I Found Spring

We had our February meeting of the Elgin Piecemaker's guild at my house last week. 15 of us gathered in my living room and shared our projects. This strippy quilt top was made by Pam and I and is now ready to donate to the hospital chemo unit for an adult chemo patient. All of our charity projects are quilted by Heather's husband.

Our green and black blocks have been assembled into a quilt top. Each month, we each make a block using prescribed colours and we make sampler quilts from the blocks.  My block is the second from the right in the bottom row.

This orange and blue quilt is ready to be donated to the hospital.

The blue and yellow quilt just needs some binding and it is ready to go as well.

This quilt was donated by a friend of a guild member for us to donate to the hospital.  I love the border!

This month's colours were green, white and pink. There are still a few more blocks to come in for this quilt.

This quilt was made by Diane--it is not a charity project but a quilt she made for herself.  I am in love with the border strip!

On Sunday afternoon, we took a trip to the Stratford Garden show. It was a good place to forget about all of the snow and ice and bask in the warmth of the flowers and gardening supplies.  I liked this little fairy garden with two chairs in a pot.

I really hope Spring makes an appearance soon in my yard!