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.

Quilt 'til You Wilt

Yesterday was a glorious day of sewing, chatting with friends, and being inspired by the projects of others. The London Friendship Quilters Guild hosts a Quilt 'til You Wilt day every November. It all starts at 9am although some people arrived earlier than that.  By 8pm, most had wilted and headed home but during those 11 hours, the machines were humming, the irons were hot and the rotary cutters were slicing! 

I brought three projects with me. A couple of weeks ago, my MIL mentioned that she would like a new Christmas table runner for her dining room table.  It just so happened that I had some fabric in my stash that I could use for the runner...LOL.  I spent most of the day working on the runner. I used a couple of blocks from a pattern for a full sized quilt that Christine had printed out from the Moda Bake shop.

I made one block like this...the pattern called for a four patch in the middle but I changed it.

Here is the first star block of two. The star points are supposed to be wonky.

I quilted it organically with cream coloured thread. Several others were doing organic quilting yesterday too.

I used the green fabric for the binding.

Do you remember the Quilt of Valour that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago?  I had brought it home from our last LFQG meeting and my job was to sew the binding on and finish off the quilt.  Somehow, the binding was lost between the meeting and home. Another member of the guild found it and called me to see if it belonged to the quilt I had brought home. Her husband dropped it off at my workplace and yesterday, I sewed it onto the quilt.  This was project number two for the day.

This will be today's slow Sunday stitching project.

Project number three was a stitch and flip UFO that I started in the Spring of 2014 at a workshop with Jacquie Gering. I did some cutting and made some parts but did not take any pictures.  My phone was almost dead by the end of the day and I wanted to save some power for the trip home in case of emergencies.

It was a fun and productive day!  I have not had very much time to sew this year and enjoyed every minute of my day yesterday!  I am linking to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching.

Quilt 'Til You Wilt and a Spring Topper

 

 

Last Saturday was Quilt 'til You Wilt day, organized by the program committee of the London Friendship Quilters' Guild. There were about 20 people in attendance and the sewing machines were humming.  I worked on completing the borders of my Lazy Sunday mystery (pattern by Bonnie Hunter). First, I assembled and added the green and white HST border...

 

 

and then the purple and white border:

 

I am thinking of adding another 2" border around the entire quilt so that the points of the purple wedges do not get cut off when I add the binding.  I am just not sure of the colour yet...perhaps white.  I will think about this a bit before completing this quilt.

Next, I started a new project. I, like many others, am getting a bit winter weary, so I decided to make a Spring table topper. I had a charm pack in my stash so I pulled it out and found some co-ordinating fabrics and brought it along to QTYW. I finished the flimsy and took it home at the end of the day to find some backing to quilt it.

 

 

Last night, Jacqui hosted a QNIC (Quilting Night in Canada) and I brought my table topper along with me to quilt and add the binding.

 





I did an organic cross-hatch quilting design.  Here is a picture of the backing which I found in my stash.

Tonight, I did the hand sewing on the binding.

Tomorrow night, I am hosting the Elgin Piecemakers meeting at my house so I will be able to show this table topper at Show and Tell.  I hope that Spring is not too far off so I can put it out on my table!

Until next time...

I Quilted til I Wilted...

Saturday was QTYW day for the London Friendship Quilters' guild. Christine, Cathy and I sat together and sewed and sewed...

Christine was working on a Christmas quilt and hopes to get it done before this Christmas...

Cathy is making I spy quilts for her grandchildren for Christmas. She finished piecing one quilt and started the blocks for the next quilt. Cathy had a very productive day!

 

There are lots of fun fabrics in this quilt!

 

The second quilt started out with stars with an I Spy novelty print in the centres.

 

 

The star blocks have an interesting secondary pattern going on!

 

Cathy likes to sew in her sock feet--there is a downside to this...

 

 

I worked on an old UFO--I bought the kit to make a snowman wall hanging many years ago and about 5 years ago, started to make the wall hanging at a QTYW day. I had not touched this project again until Saturday when I finished machine appliquing the pieces on the quilt, quilting it at the same time. I also quilted a cross hatch design on the background. By the time supper was served, I had this project completed to this point.

I hope to get the button eyes and mouth done on this week along with the binding. I will be hanging this wall hanging in my family room this winter.

After supper, I added the final borders to my Swoon quilt top so it is ready to be quilted now--I just have to piece the backing.

I will post a picture of the completed snowman quilt as soon as it is done.

All in all, Saturday was a great day--sewing, time with friends and lots of inspiration to be had as I wandered around the room to look at everyone else's projects.