Puttering in the Sewing Room

I have spent a few evenings in the sewing room during the last couple of weeks.  I made another house for my 30's prints neighbourhood--this is house #3.

I put together the 9th liberated basket quilt for my basket sampler quilt from the workshop I taught in January.  I used selvages for this basket.  If you look closely, you can see that the handle fabric also has scissors on it. I have some machine applique to do on one more block before I can assemble this quilt top.

 

Last week, I celebrated my birthday and my husband gave me a couple of quilting books..."Free Range Triangle Quilts" by Gwen Marston and Cathy Jones, and "Quilt Lovely" by Jen Kingwell.  There are lots of inspiring quilts in both books.  I was drawn to a quilted pillow in Jen's book and decided to make one for myself.  I need 16 paper pieced arcs for this pillow.  These are the first two arcs.

 

 

I have been working on more arcs and have 10 done now.  I need to go digging through my scraps before I make the last 6. They are not very big and will measure 2" in the finished blocks.  There is quite a bit of curved piecing in this pillow...I will get to that when I finish the arcs.

 

 

I have figured out the final layout for the modern wedge quilt.  I took the lighter wedges off the wall and will use them in another project.  I will be hand appliqueing the curvey parts onto the background, perhaps as my slow Sunday stitching project this weekend.

 

 

 

It was cold and frosty on my way to work this morning so I just had to stop the car at the side of a country road and take a few pictures.  Everything looked so sparkly!

 



Liberated Baskets Workshop

Today, I taught a liberated baskets workshop for a group of 8 quilters from the London Friendship Quilters' Guild. My friend, Christine, was there to help out as well. We started with a short discussion about Liberated Quilting and Christine and I talked about attending the Beaver Island Quilt Retreats where we were converted to liberated quilt making by Gwen Marston. (This is a quilt that Christine, Carol and I made for Gwen and gave to her at the final BIQR in 2013.--note the centre of the quilt is a liberated string basket!)

 

 

We started by learning how to make a simple liberated basket with a machine appliqued bias handle. 

 

Here is Maureen with her basket:

 

 

You can't tell from the picture, but Anne made all of her baskets mini sized. 

 

 

This is Lynsey's basket:

 

 

Striped fabrics are fun for the handles.

 

 

 

After everyone had made one basket, we got back together to talk about the endless possibilities for liberated basket blocks.  I showed lots of pictures of quilts from Gwen Marston's books of Gwen's and other quilters' basket quilts. Then, the magic happened.  Everyone got it!  Dozens of interesting and creative baskets emerged from the sewing machines around the room.

 

A flower pot basket by Anne:

 

 

 

A two handled purse by Pam:

 

 

Mary's Oriental Fabric purse:

 

 

Anne's double handled basket:

 

 

Lorraine's aqua basket on a wild background:

 

At the end of the day, we talked about how to put the blocks together--the blocks were not made all the same size. Each quilter had a chance to show off their blocks.

 

Anne's mini baskets--note that one fell over! She also made a pile of three baskets.

 

 

Lynsey's baskets (she is thinking of embroidering some flowers on the middle white piece.): 

 

Pam's baskets (the top left one is a clutch with a little bow on the top edge.):

 

Christine's blue Civil War fabric baskets:

 

 

Edith's Easter Baskets:

 

 

Susan's baskets (I love the orange handle on the blue basket!):

 

Lorraine's baskets (Love the stripes!)

 

 

Mary's Oriental Purses with fun handles:

 

 

 

Maureen used Wonder Under and machine blanket stitch for her handles. 

 

 

These are my baskets.  I am making a liberated basket sampler. 

 

 

I have another block started but not done yet.  This one will have flowers of some sort on the ends of the stems and I will likely add some leaves as well.

 

 

It was a great day. I was pleased that everyone went outside their usual style and embraced liberated quilt making for the day.

 

 



Lynda's Garbage

This afternoon, I finished quilting and binding my mini quilt top that I made on Friday. It even has a label.  This is the smallest quilt that I have ever made!

The backing and binding are abrown civil war fabric with small paisleys on it that I had in my stash. I used a 1 1/8th strip of fabric for the binding. The name of this quilt is "Lynda's Garbage"--it is named for the quilter who gave me her scraps instead of throwing them out!

I also finished of the baskets I started earlier this week. Here is my entire basket collection...

I have 51 baskets finished (two are not in the picture above) and I think I will make more than one project with these little blocks. I have a few more baskets cut out and ready to piece so I will likely finish those before I start to put them together.

Now, I am off to have a cup of tea and start cutting out the next step of the "Stars for my Friends" mystery quilt. We received our clue on Thursday night at the guild meeting. We receive the final clue in April and then will have until September to finish off the project for Show and Tell. Our guild has a quilt show in late October so I am hoping to put my mystery quilt in the show. Over 30 members of the guild have participated in the mystery--it will be interesting to see the fabrics that everyone is using!

Have a good week!

Do I need an Intervention???

We celebrated Family Day at our house with a family dinner with extended family--My daughter was home from university and her grandparents, cousins, aunt and uncle were all here for the afternoon and dinner. As usual, I showed everyone my most recent quilting projects. Most oohed and ahhed appropriately, and some groaned!  After supper, my sister-in-law spied my roll of batting.

 I purchase batting by the 40 yard roll--I can get it for a better price this way and I don't often run out of batting. Just before Christmas, I had to buy my second roll so that I could have her Christmas gift (a spinning 4 patch quilt) quilted. I sold 5 yards of batting to my friend and I have used some of it for 3 quilts which have recently been sent out for quilting.  All of this is to explain that my sister-in-law did not even see the whole roll of batting!  She grabbed the roll of batting and carried it upstairs where everyone else was sitting and chatting over a cup of tea or coffee. "Don't you think Gail needs an intervention?" she asked. 

So, I ask you...Do I need an intervention?

Karen Griska at the Selvage Blog thinks I need an extra roll of batting so that I don't run out of batting in case there is a blizzard!

I spent a couple of evenings sewing this week. I trimmed the 96 units I made for my "Stars for My Friends" mystery quilt. Sorry, I can't show any pictures!  I also made 7 more baskets and now have 39 made.

I have 25 more baskets cut out and ready to sew.



More Baskets...and a new project!

I made 7 more baskets yesterday in between doing some jobs around the house.

As you can see, I have lots of the white parts cut out for the next baskets. The pile of fabric in the upper left corner of the photo will be used for the baskets. I still don't have a plan set in stone for these baskets, but I do plan on making more!

I opened up another Bali Pops jelly roll yesterday and started sewing some of them together and cutting them up again. I need another project like I need a hole in my head...

Stay tuned for progress on this new quilt top.

Have a good week!

Basket Cases

Christine and I got together to sew some basket blocks tonight. Christine is using 30's prints for her baskets and I am using some brights. I made 20 baskets at the Beaver Island Quilt Retreat in September 2011 and none since then. Tonight, I made 5 more baskets. They measure 4 1/2" square. (Tonight, I made 1 pale yellow, 2 pink and 2 blue baskets.)

Christine made some baskets to add to her collection.

Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville recently made a quilt from these same blocks--her quilt had 180 basket blocks in it!  I wonder if I will make that many? 

I anticipate having some time to sew this weekend so I will try to make some more baskets.

Sewing for Charity and some more Baskets

Last Spring, Chris and I got together to put together these blocks into a quilt top. Each member of the Elgin Piecemakers made a block for this quilt. It was quilted over the summer by Al and Chris came over to my house a couple of weeks ago to work on the binding. If you click on the picture, you can see that the sashing is made from white fabric with black dots on it. Later that week, Chris and another guild member delivered several quilts to our local hospital where they will be given to adult chemo patients as a reminder that there are people in the community rooting for them as they undergo cancer treatments. The guild has received a few thank you notes from some of the recipients and it just "warms the cockles of my heart" to know that they are appreciated and being used.

This year, we have been given a list of colour themes for each month and we are to complete a block each month using the colours on the list. We have been divided into groups of two to put each top together.  September's colours are blue and yellow (I missed the September meeting because I was away at the Beaver Island Quilt Retreat) so I leafed through Volume 3 of Quiltmakers 100 Blocks magazine to find a pattern to use for my block. I decided on "Vintage Spools" -Block #281.

 I like the way the centre of this block looks like a windmill.

The colours for October are purple and green. I decided to get ahead of the game and make this block too. I picked Block #285 from the same magazine "Magic Squares".

The darker purple fabric in the squares in the center was from Erin at My Patchwork Life--I won it in a give-away on her block a year or so ago.  I have more plans for this fabric but that will have to wait for a little while.
I also made 4 more little basket blocks yesterday. I have some more fabric picked out for more baskets and will keep working away on these as time allows.

Each block is 4.5" square.  I have 20 little baskets so far.

Christine and I plan on getting together later this week to work on our Roll Roll Cotton Boll quilts. We had to take a bit of a break from this project because life got in the way.  The blocks will start to come together this week so stay tuned.

My brother's birthday is this week and I made him a pillowcase with boats on it. He is into bathtub boat racing in a big way--I could not find any bathtub fabric so these boats will have to do.

Take care eveyone and happy sewing.