Swooning over my finished quilt!

I finally had two quilt holders here on the weekend to take some pictures of my completed Swoon quilt!  I will be taking this quilt to the London Friendship Quilter's Guild meeting later this week for show and tell.  Then, it will be put on our guest room bed for a while so we can admire it as we walk by the room!

Cathy at Eagle's Wings Quilts did a feather meander on this quilt. Great job, Cathy!  I love it!

You may remember that I made a table runner from some of the leftovers from this quilt. Ironically, the leftovers project was finished before the quilt.

Have a great day!

Fabric Party at My House!

Tonight, I hosted the 2nd annual Mad About Patchwork fabric party at my house. I invited the members of the Elgin Piecemakers and several other quilting friends to come and share some show and tell, purchase some fabric and then enjoy a treat or two.

There was lots of eye candy on my dining room table and lots of discussion around what colours would look good together for future quilting projects.

Pam's baskets of solids are hard to resist!

It was hard to tear everyone away from the fabric feeding frenzy to share some show and tell!

A fall spinning four patch by Karen.

Cathy's Dresden Plate, recently finished.

Shirley's charity quilt finish.

Joanne's latest project--a quilt for her own bed!

A close up of the quilting.

Pam's latest project made from blocks she put together at a workshop in Houston, TX.

Jacqui's squares ...we all loved it even if she did not!

Heather's paper pieced baby rattles.

Heather's civil war stars for her grandson.

Christine's yummy Apple Crisp quilt.

My Swoon quilt with the binding just finished last night.

 

This is the table runner I made with leftovers from Swoon.

 

 

This is my latest selvage project...a sewing stool for Pam.  Thanks for making the trip to visit us and for bringing your fabric, Pam! 

Pam generously donated a percentage of the proceeds from the party which we used to buy flannel backing for the Elgin Piecemakers' charity quilts.

There were lots of homemade goodies and some fruit to eat after finishing our shopping.  Thanks Joanne, Jacqui and Karen for the cookies and squares (I did not get a picture of your delicious treats, but judging from the reviews I heard, they were well received!)

A couple more show and tell projects--this is Jacqui's strippy wall hanging.

This summery table runner had 3D bow ties.

Thanks everyone, for coming to the party and sharing your projects and for shopping 'til you dropped!

Progress

Progress was made on a few projects this past week. Sometimes, it feels like it takes me an eternity to get from start to finish on a quilting project (and other projects around the house too!). I seem to have lots of things on my list which I would like to accomplish but time and energy run out before the item is crossed off the list. I will just have to keep plugging along and hopefully, finish a few projects along the way.

I finished adding the borders to my 9 patch mystery this weekend. I just have to piece the back now so that I can get it to the quilter's house this week.

She assures me that she will have it done before our guild meeting in September. I think the borders finish it off quite nicely, don't you?

Christine, Carol and I got together this afternoon to work on our collaborative project. Between holidays, family commitments and working, it takes a bit of juggling for all three of us to be free to work on this quilt at the same time!  Today, great progress was made with the addition of a floating leaf border...

The good news...we have a plan to finish off this project with the addition of some flying geese and a final border of the flower fabric. We all have some geese to make before our next meeting to complete this quilt top.

I did some had stitching today on the binding for my swoon quilt. I am hoping to finish it off in the next day or two so that I can show it at a gathering of quilting friends later this week. Only 1 1/2 more sides to go!

Now is the time to fess up to how much fabric came home with me from Quiltology in Chicago....

It is all washed now and most of it is ironed and ready to use in future quilts and a new pillowcase for me.

Fabric used in the last week: 2.85 yards
Total fabric used this year: 114.35  yards
Fabric added to the stash in the last 3 weeks: 12.0 yards
Total fabric added this year: 107.16 yards
Net fabric used this year: 7.19 yards

This will look better after I get that backing pieced this week!  Maybe, I will even get my pillowcase made too...

I will finish off this post with a couple of pictures from my vacation. While in Springfield, we walked down a street that had recently been streetscaped with planters, new sidewalks and pillars with sayings of famous people.  This one caught my quilter's eye...

 

Happy Sewing!

More slabs and I am in a bind again...

I received two squishy envelopes this week. These two slabs came all the way from Pokey in California for the Slabs for Alberta project that I have been working on.  I love seeing other people's scraps. Pokey included some polka-dots in both of her slabs!  Thanks, Pokey!

Kathy sent me these two teal slabs in the mail. Nice scraps, Kathy!  Thanks for contributing to this project!  I hope to get the quilt top made shortly and off in the mail to Cheryl in Calgary to be quilted and bound and given to someone who was affected by the flood.

Cathy (a different one) and Karen came over one evening this week for some sewing. We got so engrossed in our sewing that we did not even stop for a snack or a drink! Karen put some borders on a quilt top that she finished a while ago and Cathy did a block for a fall leaf quilt.  I put bindings on two quilts. I did not even take any pictures, except this one:

I put the roll of binding on the leg of my acrylic sewing table to keep it from falling all over the floor. This worked very well!

I have finished hand sewing the binding on the Trip Around the World quilt that my nieces and I started piecing two years ago. Here they are holding it up for me to take a picture:

Here's the back...

I like the striped binding!

I am still doing the hand sewing part on the binding of Swoon. I am a little more than a quarter of the way around this quilt.

There is still some stash sorting and organizing going on as well.

I am going to link up to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching post tomorrow. 

Not much change in the stash this week. I bought some backing for Christine's pillow and two fat quarters with birds on them.

Fabric used in the last week: .5 yards
Total fabric used this year: 111.5  yards
Fabric added to the stash in the last week: 1.33 yards
Total fabric added this year: 95.16 yards
Net fabric used this year: 16.34 yards

Have a wonderful weekend! (What's left of it!)

Moving Right Along...

I have been absent from my blog lately but I have been working away on a few sewing projects in between gardening.

 

My Swoon quilt has been languishing in UFO land for months now because I did not have any batting for it. Finally, this week, I purchased my 3rd roll of warm and natural batting in 3 years...40 yards to the roll. I have already cut a chunk off for Swoon and delivered it to Cathy at Eagle's Wings Quilts for long-arming this morning. We picked thread but I am not sure what design I want quilted on it...I will continue to look at pictures and ideas on the internet and will let Cathy know what I choose.

 

My nieces and I cut this out and sewed most of it together a couple of summers ago and then it languished with some other UFO's until this week when I took it out and finished sewing the last few rows together and completed the top. I found some fabric in my stash for the backing and it also went to Cathy's house today. This one will be donated to Family and Children's services through the London Friendship Quilter's Guild at our September meeting. I have a kit that I purchased last summer for another charity quilt...maybe I will tackle it sometime this summer.

 

Christine and I got together a couple of times since I last blogged and I managed to finish off Step 3 of the Lazy Sunday Mystery by Bonnie Hunter in Quiltmaker magazine. I love to make scrappy quilts--there is always so much to look at with all of the different fabrics. Each piece brings back memories of where it was purchased, or someone who gave it to me.

 

Speaking of purchasing fabric, I have had a couple of shopping trips to quilt stores recently. I try hard to restrain myself but the fabric just calls out to me to be added to my stash!  Here is my stash report for the last couple of weeks:

 



Fabric used in the last 2 weeks: 5.5 yards
Total fabric used this year: 102  yards
Fabric added to the stash in the last 2 weeks: 12.15 yards
Total fabric added this year: 93.23 yards
Net fabric used this year: 8.77 yards

 

A large chunk of the fabric purchased is the backing for my 9 patch mystery so once I finish putting it together, the numbers will look much better!  (I hope!)

 

What is a blog post without a few garden pictures?

 

 

This mini rose was given to me when I was in the hospital for some surgery 12 years ago. I planted it in my garden and it keeps coming back with lots of flowers every year!

 

 

My alliums are in bloom right now. I love the way they sway in the breeze in my front garden.

 

 

I have several clumps of Coreopsis in my front and back gardens and all are in bloom right now.

 

 

This one is called Globe Flower.

 

I have some binding to do this week on my BIQR 2012 quilt--Sewing Baskets. I picked this up from Karen C this week. She did a great job and captured the whimsy that I wanted in the quilting. I will post more pictures once it is bound.

That's it for now. This week, I hope to do some more Boxy Stars soon and get the 9 patch mystery top done so it can be quilted as well. It may take me a week or two to finish off these goals--I have a busy week ahead.

 

Happy Sewing!



Swoon Backing finally done!

A few years ago, I bought this nifty Olfa circle cutter. I had never used it before cracking open the package one evening last night to make these circles for my Swoon quilt label.  I was pleased with how easy it was to use--the circles are perfect!

Here they are, fused and machine blanket stitched to my label.

I used some black and white fabric which I purchased from Pam at Mad About Patchwork for the backing. I am using the same fabric for the backing of my pinwheels table runner which I showed a couple of posts ago. 

Here is this week's stash report.  I bought some fabric for the borders and backing of my Bricks and Stepping Stones quilt which is now washed but not cut for this project so it is not counted in the "out" list yet...  this week I plan on getting this done.

Fabric used in the last week: 6.85 yards
Total fabric used this year: 84.2 yards
Fabric added to the stash in the last week: 8 yards
Total fabric added this year: 73.33 yards
Net fabric used this year: 10.87 yards

Christine and I plan on working on step 2 of the Lazy Sunday mystery by Bonnie Hunter this week.

Sewing Night with Christine

Christine and I got together tonight to do a bit of sewing. I used the cut-offs from my Swoon blocks to make these pinwheels earlier this week...a good use for the bonus HST's!

Tonight, I trimmed 4 of the black ones to 4.5" and used them as cornerblocks for the white sashing on the Swoon blocks.

The London Friendship Quilters' Guild is having a Quilt 'til You Wilt day on Saturday so I will be adding the final white borders to this quilt top then. I have purchased some backing fabric but it will need to be pieced before I can take this quilt to the long armer's house for quilting. This quilt will be put to use on our guest room bed in the summer months. I have quite a few projects that are nearly done so I hope to have lots of projects done by the end of the day Saturday.

Christine worked on some blocks for an "Apple Crisp" quilt that she had cut out over a year ago and is now putting together.

I love the colours.  My stash has many fabrics in these colours.

Christine also made two blocks to send to Erin at My Patchwork Life for her Hurricane Sandy quilts.

I should have more to share after Saturday!