A Few Odds and Ends (and a quilt show!)

Just because I have not posted much lately does not mean I have not been sewing. Today was the Shedden Quilt show and I put 5 quilts into the show. I have spent much of my sewing time in the last couple of weeks putting sleeves onto the quilts that were in the show. Hanging sleeves do not make for very interesting pictures or blogposts! Here are the 5 quilts that I had in the show:

This one is my version of Bonnie Hunter's "Blue Ridge Beauty"--I called my quilt "Feeling Blue".

"This Makes Me Dizzy"--my hexagon quilt.

My recently finished "Fractured Squares".

I gave this quilt to my in-laws--"Country Spin".

Me and my "Creamsicles by the Sea" quilt.

This was one of my favourite quilts in the show--it was made from 30's prints and was hand quilted. The colours are fresh and bright on the white background!

This one was made by a fellow member of the Elgin Piecemakers as a memory quilt. The blue fabrics are recycled jeans.

Christine and I got together on Wednesday last week and while I worked on my sleeves and my mystery quilt, Christine made this table topper flimsy from leftovers from a quilt she made for her son--a very nice use of her extra bits!

I picked up a small quilt from the long arm quilters this week and hope to get the binding on it tonight. Pictures to follow.

Happy sewing!

Roll, Roll, Cotton Boll--Getting closer to being done!

Christine and I continue to get together most weeks to spend an evening sewing. This past week, I had 3 goals for our evening together. The first goal was to complete the center of my quilt--I just had one more row of blocks to put together and add to the rest of the quilt top. As you can see, I finished this goal!

My second goal was to complete the 12 triangle sections for the corners of the quilt borders... Ta Da! I got that one done too!

My 3rd goal for the evening was to finish sewing the binding on my "Creamsicles By the Sea" (aka "Carolina Christmas"--another mystery quilt designed by Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville) so that I could take it to the London Friendship Quilters' Guild Meeting the next evening for show and tell.  I finished that goal off too!

You can see some of the beautiful quilting by Karen Cole in these pictures.

I put this quilt on my bed!

Christine made great progress on her RRCB quilt too. She got the top trimmed up and the green borders added.

The borders really frame the centre of this quilt nicely. I can hardly wait to get the borders on my quilt and get it to Karen to have it quilted!

I spent another evening at Jacqui's last week when 5 of us got together to make another 27 pillowcases for our local Christmas Hamper program. I hope the children who receive these pillowcases have sweet dreams!

The pillowcases were delivered by one of the sewers to the Inn Out of the Cold and Christmas Care last week.

I am making slow but steady progress getting ready for Christmas. The tree is up and decorated and I made this planter for my front porch.

Still lots to do including more gifts to make. Less than two weeks until the big day. I need to get a move on!

Back to Blogging...

Some of you may have thought I had dropped off the face of the earth, but I didn't!  Life has been busy with a trip to Ottawa to visit my daughter, a family member with health issues (resolved now, thankfully!), work in the garden, and, of course, some quilting!

Christine and I got together a couple of evenings since the last time I blogged to work on our Roll Roll Cotton Boll quilts. Both of us are now done our string blocks. I even have mine cut in half, ready for putting the blocks together later this week when we get together to sew again. There are a lot of strings in these blocks, but never fear, I had some strings leftover to make some more, should the mood hit!

Here is another view:

Here is everything we have sewn so far:

 I made a pillow case for my brother for his birthday this week. He is into bathtub boat racing so I used some boat fabric for his pillowcase. I could not find bathtub boat fabric! ;-)

Today, I spent most of the day getting two quilts ready to take to the long arm quilters. I added labels to the backs before they are quilted. I even had to piece the batting because it was not wide enough for these huge quilt tops! They are all ready to go now...I will show pictures when they are done.

One is my "Blue Ridge Beauty" and the other is my "Creamsicles By the Sea", both designed by Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville fame.

I went to Jacqui's this week for a QNIC with her and Chris. I made the pillowcase, trimmed and sliced my string blocks, and added borders to my SIL's quilt. I still need to purchase a back for this quilt.

I am just about out of batting now--I purchased a whole roll of batting a couple of years ago and I have used it all up. I have one 4' piece left--not even enough for my SIL's quilt. I will have to buy another roll!

Here I am piecing batting for my quilts today.

I have a big bag of batting scraps in my sewing room for just this purpose!

I promise to try to blog a little more often now!  I have to get my sewing room tidied up next--my daughter is coming home to visit and her room is full of fabric and quilts. I will not be a popular Mom if it is not put away before she gets home... 

The End of the Story (Almost!)

There once were two friends, Gail and Christine, who decided to each make Bonnie Hunter's Carolina Christmas quilts together.  This quilt looked quite daunting to both of them and neither one of them thought they would ever complete this quilt without a support group!  So, Gail and Christine gathered up the fabrics that they would use to make these scrappy quilts. Christine decided to use green, gold, red and neutrals for her quilt and Gail picked out orange, brown, blue and neutral scraps from her stash. They decided to try to get together once a week to work on their quilts. 

Their first sewing night was in April 2010 when they started to cut the pieces needed for step one of this seven step mystery. Every week, they gave each other homework to complete before they got together to sew again. Sometimes, life and work and stuff got in the way of their weekly get togethers but they persevered and continued to meet most weeks. Sometimes, they sewed at Gail's house and sometimes they stitched at Christine's. Slowly, but surely, progress was made and the small pieces became sub-units and the sub-units became blocks and the blocks became larger blocks and the larger blocks became the center of the quilt and then the borders were added...

Fast forward to today!  November 8, 2010! Today, Christine and Gail got together at  Gail's house and finished putting their final pieced borders onto their quilts!  Christine was finished hers first. She tried

and tried

and tried to hold it up for Gail to take a picture but she was just too small and the quilt was just too big!

Gail finished her borders as well and they tried laying the quilts out on the sofa and love seat in Gail's living room but only part of the quilts showed--they were too big for the furniture in Gail's living room too!

Then Gail had a great idea!  She got on the phone and called her neighbour, Mary. Mary was available to come over and help hold the quilts for the official photographs!  It was a beautiful sunny day so they did the pictures outside. Here is Christine's quilt:

And here is Gail's Quilt, which she is calling  "Creamsicles by the Sea":

Gail chose to do her pieced borders in a slightly different way than the pattern suggested so she could have an orange frame around her quilt.

This is not really the end of the story for these quilts--Now Gail and Christine have to get fabric for the backs and have them quilted by a long arm quilter... Stay tuned for the happy and final end to the story...

If you want to see pictures of the whole story of this quilt, click here!

Sewing Report

I have made progress on several project in the last few days so this will be a long post with lots of pictures!

1.  This morning, another member of the Elgin Piecemakers and I delivered 7 comfort quilts to the chemo unit at our local hospital. If you have been reading my blog for a while, you know that this is an ongoing project of our guild. This was our third quilt delivery. Here are a few pictures of our quilts.

Jacqui and I made these two quilts from one jelly roll. Jacqui divided the jelly roll into two colourways and we chose different background fabrics and sashing/borders.

Here are all of the quilts, except for the black, red and white one--it went home with the quilter to have the binding sewn down!

2.  Here is one of my nieces' Christmas gift--it is a disappearing 9 patch quilt made with leftover fabric from pj's I have made for my daughter, and my twin nieces over the years. It is back from the quilters and I put the binding on the other night. The back, as you can see is pieced. The binding is made from this year's pj's leftover fabric.

 3.  Christine and I got together to work on our Carolina Christmas quilts (Mine is now called Creamsicles by the Sea, as suggested by Christine!) I put the 2 1/2 inch borders on my quilt and put the pieced units together when we met at Christine's house this week. She is at the same stage as well. We will be getting together at my house one day next week and think we will be able to finish our quilts off then!  This is so exciting!  We are both looking forward to starting another project when these are done.

4.  I finished sewing the blocks for my in-laws' Christmas gift --a lap quilt called Country Spin.  I purchased fabric for the borders today and hope to find some suitable flannel for the back shortly. I want to take this quilt in to the long arm quilters next week so it will be done in time for me to put the binding on for Christmas.










5. My next big project will be Indian Orange Peel--a Karen Stone pattern. I am organizing a class for a group of quilting friends at the end of November. This quilt will definately be a challenge!