Two Quilts Quilted

Early this week, I spent some time quilting two quilts using my walking foot.  I made this plus sign flimsy using my stash of 30's prints and it has been pin basted waiting for quilting inspiration to hit for a few months now...  I finally decided on straight lines about an inch apart across the width of the quilt and two vertical lines through each column of plus signs.  It took a couple of sessions at the sewing machine to get the quilting done and tonight, I pieced the binding with 30's prints used in the plus signs and sewed it by machine to the quilt.  Tomorrow, I will sew it down to the back of the quilt by hand for my Slow Sunday Stitching project. 

I have had a London Friendship Guild charity quilt at my house for several months, waiting to be quilted and bound so I could hand it in for distribution.  I used a simple cross hatch with straight lines with my walking foot to quilt this quilt.  Someone else made the quilt top--it was my job to quilt it and finish it off with the binding.

I added the binding by machine and then did the hand stitching.  I'm glad to have this quilt by the door and ready for donation!

My husband and I started working on a puzzle this week...

This one looks like fun!

I will be linking up with Kathy in the morning. 

The Five Year Project

2014.  That's when I took a stitch and flip class with Jacquie Gering.  

It was my first Jacquie class and thankfully, there have been several other classes with Jacquie since then.  At the end of the class, I asked Jacquie to sign a piece of fabric for the label for my quilt, and somehow, I managed to keep track of it for 5 years until I finished off the quilt this week. 

My biggest hold up in getting this quilt done was deciding how to quilt it.  I finally decided to take it to Cathy at Eagles Wings Quilts to see what we could do to get this project to the finish line in time for the London Modern Guild Quilt show this September. I brought along Jacquie's book, WALK, for inspiration.

I took the top, batting and backing out of the bag and we laid it out to look at it and discuss quilting possibilities.  When I took the book out, it fell open to this page...

Perfect!

Cathy was able to have my quilt done in a couple of days and I went to pick it up.  On Thursday night, I put the binding on and Cathy came over for some slow stitching time in the gazebo after supper.

Cathy worked on an EPP star,

while I hand stitched the binding.

I finished off the rest of the hand stitching this afternoon in the comfort of my air conditioned house.  It is stinking hot here and I was much more comfortable sewing inside today.

I took some pictures of the finished quilt outside in the backyard.

You can see the leaf quilting design well in these pictures.

The binding is a green Kona solid from my stash.

There are lots of fun fabrics in this quilt. The background is Essex Linen.

The quilting adds great texture.

The backing fabric is fun too.

 Now, just the hanging sleeve to go...

I will be linking up with Kathy and the other slow stitchers on Sunday Morning.

Frank Lloyd Wright and Prague

My daughter has started another counted cross stitch city---this time it is Prague.  She visited Prague earlier this year with a group of friends when they toured Eastern Europe.  She has decided to stitch only cities where she has been to visit.  This time, she is doing one colour at a time so it doesn't have any recognizable buildings yet.  

I continue to work on the silver metallic thread outlining on Frank...I spent some time in the car today and did some stitching.  There is more car time scheduled for tomorrow and I should be able to finish this project during the drive.

Just a bit more outlining to do in this corner...

I have been working on some Christmas gifts this week so I can't show anything on those projects yet.  Stay tuned.  There was some hand stitching on the binding involved...

I went to visit my daughter and Finn last weekend.  This is one of Finn's favourite toys, Mr. Carrot.  He has a squeaker and during playtime, he lost one of his green sprouts.  Grandma to the rescue!  I sewed the sprout back on and Mr. Carrot was as good as new.  

Finn was happy to have Mr. Carrot back.

Finn likes to nap with his head on a quilt...he's a dog after my own heart!

The London Friendship Quilter's guild had their December meeting this past week...We celebrated the season with a proper Tea Party with china cups and saucers, scones with clotted cream and jam, crustless sandwiches and other goodies.

It was a fun and delicious meeting with lots of visiting and games to play. 

We all wore fascinators, made by the organizers. 

I even won a prize for the "What's in your purse?" game.  There were points given out if you had certain items in your purse...I had mittens, a zip-loc bag, and earplugs, to name a few of the items that  earned points.  The prize? A Christmas cup and saucer!

I will be linking up with Kathy and the other Slow Sunday Stitchers in the morning.

Half Way There

I managed to find a few minutes each day this week to add some more stitches to the outlining of my Frank Lloyd Wright Fountain Glass picture and I am pleased to announce that the top half of the picture is done!  The bottom half does not have as much detail so it should not take as long to complete the outlining there.  I have been doing most of my stitching in the mornings with a cup of tea before breakfast.  It's cozy to sit by the fireplace and add a few more stitches as I think about the day ahead.

I have a bit more outlining to add to the left of the brown and yellow chevrons...that will be done today.

I have had a very Quilty week...Monday night, Christine and I got together to sew for a couple of hours.  I made some blocks for comfort quilts for the London Friendship Guild...

and some pincushions (one one is complete because I ran out of the beads I use to stuff them):

I dug into my bins of solid scraps for these.

Wednesday night, my friend Pat and I attended the Oxford Quilt Guild's meeting in Ingersol.  The speaker for the evening was Sandra --her blog is "Quilting at the Cro's Nest" .  (The house quilt in the background is the raffle quilt for the Oxford quilt guild at their Spring quilt show.)

I met Sandra online through her blog when we both linked up to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching Group each Sunday.   We met in person back in May when my husband and I attended her Guild quilt show in Simcoe.  Sandra is a long arm quilter and also makes amazing, colourful appliqué quilts which she often quilts by hand. It was inspiring to see her quilts up close at the trunk show.

Thursday night was the monthly London Friendship Quilter's guild meeting where Cathy and Charlene did a trunk show about their amazing English Paper Piecing quilts.  Cathy blogs at Eagle's Wings Quilts and also has a business by the same name selling EPP supplies.  Here is a picture from her blog of her most recent finish--Friendship Chain which she showed at the meeting :

Yesterday, I spent the day with members of the Elgin Piecemaker's Guild for a sewing day.  The original plan was to work on some UFO's, but no, I started two new projects instead...Yikes!  I will do another blogpost about the sewing day later this week. 

I will be linking up with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers at her blog this morning.  Take a look at all of the beautiful hand stitching everyone is working on and leave an encouraging comment or two. Have a wonderful day!

Quilt Show Report

I spent most of the day yesterday at the London Friendship Quilter's Guild show.  I had four of my quilts on display including "Elephants on Parade", shown below.  There were three elephant quilts on display, all started at a workshop with the designer, Lorna McMahon.   

My "Fancy Forest Friends" was on display beside the elephants.

There were 8 animal quilts on display together.  It was fun to see all of them--each one was unique with the different fabric choices.

"Flannel Vortex" showed off my flannel scraps, leftover from PJ's I have made for my daughter and nieces over the years. 

My Christmas sampler quilt was one of several seasonal quilts.  I managed to get all of the hanging sleeves attached on time for the quilts to be delivered to the show, despite some assistance from Finn, our grand-dog.  This was all the slow stitching that got accomplished this week.  Next week, I will be back to my hand quilting and cross stitching. 

Christine and I got together to sew one night this week and I put this mini quilt together.  I had the coloured squares sashed already and finished off all of the sewing.  The coloured squares were a little package of 2.5" charms that I received at the modern quilt guild retreat a couple of years ago.   I will be quilting this little quilt next week. 

Finn supervised our activities in the sewing room from this spot....

I will be linking up with the other slow stitchers on Sunday morning.

Quilt 'til You Wilt

Yesterday was our annual Quilt 'til You Wilt day with the London Friendship Quilters Guild.  I packed up my sewing machine, supplies and projects on Friday night and my husband helped me to load the car at 8am on Saturday morning.  I was among the first to arrive and got a table for four near the ironing station. By the time I set up my machine, Cathy arrived, coffee in hand. A little while later, Christine and Karen showed up. We all had a great day, chatting and sewing and admiring all of the sewing going on in the room.

Christine finished up the last few blocks for a quilt she is making for her daughter and by the end of the day, the quilt top was finished, except for the final border! She used her 1951 featherweight.

Karen stayed up late the night before pin basting a pile of table runners that she had pieced and spent the day quilting them and adding binding. I see lots of hand stitching in her near future!

Cathy was working on an I Spy quilt for her grand-daughter and had the entire middle of the quilt done by the time she went home late afternoon.  She will add the borders and get it quilted in the next week or so.

I worked on a comfort quilt block for the Elgin Piecemakers to get me warmed up. February's colours are lime green and yellow with white--I needed to make a star block.  I found this pattern on the internet.  There was some math involved as the pattern was for a 6.5" block and my block is 12.5"

Next, I worked on a project I have been wanting to do for years...A new Christmas tree skirt.  My old one is over 30 years old and looks like it was made in the 80's, which it was.  I saw some pictures on the internet of a tree skirt made with 60 degree 8" triangles that I liked.  Most of the fabrics that I had been collecting for this project were fat quarters so I decided I would use 4" triangles instead.  What I did not realize at the time was I would need 360 triangles to make my skirt.  I spent one evening cutting triangles this past week when Christine was over to sew.

I used my table to lay out all of the triangles for each section before I started to sew.

You can see the piles of triangles for each section at the top of the picture above.  I divided up all of the fabrics evenly so the whole thing will look balanced in the end.

Here is the first section, all sewn together.  The skirt will be a large hexagon and the long side on the right being the outer edge.  The narrow part on the left will be near the tree.  I am making a large hole in the middle to accommodate the tree stand.

Here are sections 1 and 2, sewn together.

By the end of the day, I had three sections done. --Half of the tree skirt.

I will work away on sewing more sections this week as time allows.  I would like to have it done by two weeks from now when we put up our tree.  I will be using the same red and white striped binding as I used on my Christmas quilt.

Just before I went home for the day, I made three string blocks for January's comfort quilt for the Elgin Piecemakers.  This fabric was donated to our guild and two of our members cut it into strips and gave us muslin foundations to use.  The only instructions were to put the yellow strip down the middle diagonally for each block.

Today, it is time to slow down and do some counted cross stitch with the other Slow Sunday Stitchers at Kathy's blog.    I am adding outline stitches to this snowman's hat and scarf today and would like to  finish him off including the birds and sticks as well.