Happy Canada Day!

I have had a very happy Canada Day! The weather has been unsettled, rainy one moment, sunny the next, cloudy and then sunny again all day long. I have spent the entire day sewing blissfully!

My quilty friend, Karen, came over for most of the day. She finished cutting out the pieces for her latest project using the Dusky Meadows pattern from the most recent Quiltmaker magazine. She had fun laying out all of the blocks for her quilt and now will spend some time sewing them together, perhaps at the next QNIC on Friday night.

After packing up all of the pieces for her quilt, she helped me to lay out some small HST's that I made using the corners I cut off when making this quilt a few months ago...
Each HST measured 1 1/2 inches square.


We tried out several types of blocks but settled on the pinwheel blocks. I made 24 pinwheel blocks.
Here are the pinwheels, some sewn together and some not sewn.
After playing around with several layout ideas, I decided to go down to my sewing room to see if there was any more fabric leftover from the original quilt. I found some of the two dark blue fabrics as well as a good chunk of the yellow background fabric. Visions of a table topper with this 10 x10" block in the middle are swirling around in my head. If any of you have any ideas to share, let me know. I have not decided how to do the next part yet.


Oh, I just about forgot...I also finished sewing my daughter's university quilt together...

This was a very productive day! Happy Canada Day!

QNIC (Quilting Night In Canada)

Tonight was QNIC at my house. Nancy and Karen came over to quilt the night away with me. We had iced tea and cookies while we worked away on our projects. Nancy continued to hand quilt her large quilt and Karen started to cut out a new project --a lap quilt. She has been collecting fabric for this project for a while and has been searching through my patterns for the right project. Tonight, she was looking in my recent edition of Quiltmaker and found a pattern that was perfect for the material she had collected. I will take a picture at the next QNIC so you can see her fabric. I worked on sewing the blocks together on my daughter's university quilt, shown above. I did not get it all done but made good progress. I should have it done and up off the floor by the end of the week.

I also worked on the 4 patches for the Bonnie Hunter Christmas mystery. So far, I have the gold and white blocks done and the 4 patches. I have quite a bit of the cutting done as well. I had to purchase some black fabric on the weekend so it will need to be washed before I cut it out. I put all of the pieces in zip loc bags and labelled them with their "part numbers" so I won't get mixed up later...







I still have more cutting out to do on the red pieces as well. I will continue to post pictures of my progress.

Another Layout of the University Quilt

After taking all comments on the first layout into account and some ideas that others had, here is the revised version of the university quilt:I think the wild colours are tamed a bit by putting a framed block in between each larger square. My daughter likes this layout better. We still need to tweak the squares to distribute the colours more evenly.

I also cut out the rest of the lights and all of the golds for the Bonnie Hunter Christmas lights mystery quilt tonight. No photos yet. I will take some when I get some sewing done.

University Quilt...STALLED!

I moved the trunk I use as a coffee table out of the middle of the great room yesterday so that I could lay out the blocks for my daughter's university quilt. I tried this layout first and asked her to come up and see it. She's a bit worried that there are too many fabrics in the quilt and wondered about using only some of the fabrics and making something less "busy". She wants me to try using the larger squares of fabric with white sashing and blue cornerstones. I told her I would post a picture of the blocks we have and then ask for any ideas other people might come up with. So, here's your assignment: any ideas on how to "tame" this down a bit and come up with something my daughter might like. I told her I would do something different so she would love the quilt. My daughter is worried we "wasted" money and time on the blocks I already made--I told her I would just make them into something else!!! If you have any ideas, please let me know!

Quilted Table Swap and University Quilt Progress

Yesterday, my Quilted Table Yahoo group swap table runner arrived in the mail. It was made by a quilter from Eclectic, Alabama. Chris made me a beautiful Italian Pasta themed runner and matching tea towel (the tea towel is way too nice to use!). Here is a picture of the runner and the tea towel. Chris has an embroidery machine and the chef blocks and the herb blocks were done on it. What a lovely gift!!!

I have been working on my daughter's university quilt and have made some progress on some more pieced blocks. I had a couple of friends over for a very small Quilter's (and Knitters!) Night in Canada on Wednesday and I worked on the university quilt while Karen sewed binding on a table runner that she made and Pat started to knit a pair of socks for herself. (I did not take any pictures that night--I will try to remember to do that at the next QNIC.) Here are a few of the blocks completed and some of the blocks that are just about done.

45 minutes of sewing tonight

I made a bit of progress on the University quilt tonight. This quilt is made up of 7 1/2 inch blocks, alternating between pieced blocks and a square of fabric. Some of the pieced blocks are framed in blue and some will be framed in white. I finished doing all the frames on the blue blocks tonight and ironed them. Next, I will be working on the blocks framed in white... My daughter will be arranging the blocks to her liking and then I will sew everything together.

University Quilt

My 17 year old daughter decided at the last minute to apply for university in the fall instead of taking an extra year of courses at high school. Lo and behold, 4 days later she received an acceptance from the university that was her first choice, followed closely by an acceptance from the second choice. We are in the midst of finding out as much information as possible about both institutions so that she can decide where she is going to go. I had thought I had another year to work on a quilt for her residence room but now these plans have had to be accelerated. While on our recent vacation, she picked out some Amy Butler FQ's for her quilt. We were at the Greenwood Quiltery in Guelph, Ontario yesterday and she picked out a pattern and the rest of the FQ's we need for the quilt. I love the fabrics she chose! We also saw a quilt at the store yesterday that she liked so I am going to do my own variation on it for her. Keep checking my blog for posts on progress on the University quilt.