Coming Home House Border

My goal for last week was to finish piecing the house borders of my Coming Home quilt...not quite achieved last week, but tonight, I finished off the last border.  I fussy cut the centres of my star blocks and used liberated piecing for the star points.

I like to think the little house above is the town library, or the home of avid readers.

A gardening gnome lives in this green and yellow house.

Here is a picture of all 4 borders around the centre medallion.

Some of the houses will be getting appliquéd windows and doors but I have yet to decide which ones.   The next instructions came out at the end of May so I will be doing quite a bit of applique next--stars and suns, moons, clouds, kites and birds as well as at the doors and windows.  I hope to have some progress to show by Sunday for Slow Sunday Stitching with Kathy.

Make a Mini, Make a Friend!

I am just home from QuiltCon 2019 in Nashville, TN!  This is my first of several blogposts about my experiences at the conference...there is so much to share!  

When I signed up for QuiltCon, I also signed up the for the Make a Mini, Make a Friend Swap.  They had over 600 people participating in the swap with some people mailing their mini quilts to each other if they were not attending the conference and others exchanging their quilts at a pre-arranged time at the conference.  I was given the name and preferences of my swap partner last fall --Evie lives in Maine, USA and likes curves and bright colours.  I decided to use my new Drunkard's Path rulers to make her quilt. 

Two years ago, I took a design class from Jacquie Gering.  She often uses fun foam shapes to design her quilt before cutting the fabrics for her project.  I took out the fun foam, cut out several quarter circle shapes and started to play.  I did not take pictures of all of the designs that I tried out but the picture below shows my final arrangement of the shapes. 

I found a fat quarter in my stash with brightly coloured maple keys on it...perfect for a mini quilt from Canada. 

Next, I had to choose a background fabric...  I tried several options from my stash including solids in various colours, greys, etc.

 This Essex linen in navy was the perfect background!

I sewed all 12 units together and then added sashing to separate them from each other, working from the centre out.

At the last minute, I decided to spin my design by 45 degrees...

I looked over all my quilting thread options and decided on orange, my favourite colour!  I found some backing fabric in my stash with spools of thread on it.

I used my walking foot to add curved and straight lines to the quilt.

Then, I added some orange binding to frame my design.  I called it "Maple Keys from Canada".

Evie and I met up at the swap fairly easily as we had sent pictures of ourselves to each other ahead of time.  Evie's picture included a quilt in her favourite colour...orange!  I had already finished her quilt by then so I was thrilled that she also loves orange.  Evie loved her quilt and I loved mine!  She made my mini quilt with liberated stars and faced the quilt rather than binding it.  I will hang it in my sewing room.

Here is a picture of a small group of us with our mini quilts.

Here is a picture of my mini quilt showing off the spiral quilting.

I will definitely be signing up for the mini quilt swap again.  It was fun to make something for another quilter and to make a new friend!  

Modern Quilt Guild Retreat Wrap-Up.

The South Western Ontario Modern Quilters' retreat was a couple of weeks ago.  I have not had time to do a second blogpost about it until now...  Before the retreat, we were each paired with another person who would be attending so we could make and exchange lanyards.  My swap partner was Kathleen from Toronto.  She made me the beautiful lanyard in the picture above from a piece of Liberty fabric--the colours reminded her of Spring.  She also sent me a wonderful bar of chocolate which I shared with my husband.

I made her lanyard out of some black and white fabrics and a few solids that are in the London Modern Quilt Guild Logo.  We all wore our lanyards at the retreat with our nametags attached to the clasp.

 The weather was rather chilly the weekend of the retreat and the water in the bubbling rock fountain at the Elmhurst Inn was partly frozen in little balls of ice around the perimeter of the fountain.

I had to take the opportunity to take a few pictures. I managed to do this without falling on the slippery rocks around the fountain.

I showed the first project I worked on at the retreat in this blogpost...the pillow that became a wall hanging.

Next, I worked on some liberated stars which I will use to make some placemats for the winter season next year.   I have always wanted to make new placemats but just never seem to get around to working on them.  This year, I purchased some red patterned fabric at one of our guild meetings and I have been collecting some gray and white prints to go with it to make the placemats.

This one finishes at 3" square.  I made several star blocks in various sizes.

(oops--the picture is upside-down!)

This one is under construction.

Here is a picture of all of the stars that I made at the retreat. 

I need to make at least a dozen placemats to have enough for family gatherings so I still have more stars to make.   Each placemat will be different but will have the same red and white striped binding.  This past week, I finished off the 2nd half of my daughter's quilt so I hope to get back to making more stars soon. (after sewing the two halves together!)

We had lots of door prizes donated by various quilt stores and manufacturers and I won this bag which included batting, a magazine, some fabric, sewing machine needles and a gift certificate as well as a new seam ripper.  We all had a great weekend of sewing, eating and making new friends and I look forward to next year's retreat!