RRCB sewing

After a bit of a break, Christine and I got together for a couple of hours tonight to work on our RRCB quilts. I put some "fivesies" together using some of the 600 red and neutral HST units I have been making.

Christine was trimming and ironing her HST's while I sewed.

I got quite a few of these done. I was all excited to see what a completed block would look like so after Christine left to go home, I put one block together...

We can't get together to sew next week so we are both going to keep putting the 5 HST units into strips and also cut out the pieces we need for our borders. We would both like to have the flimsies of these quilts done before our next London Friendship Quilter's Guild meeting in November (only 23 days from now!). We are having Pam from Mad About Patchwork at our next meeting and both of us have signed up for her workshop where we will learn how to make two different modern quilt blocks. That means two more UFO's to add to the pile! 

Look what I got in the mail yesterday! 

This post card was made by Beth at the LFQG for the monthly postcard exchange. Thanks Beth for the postcard!

I also a package with this inside...

It's my ribbon for coming in second in the 2011 International Plowing Match block challenge! You can look at my block here.

It is that time of year here--the leaves are turning beautiful shades of yellow, orange and red and they are falling to the ground.  This picture was taken at BIQR at the Birch Lake Lodge beach a couple of weeks ago.

Sewing for Charity and some more Baskets

Last Spring, Chris and I got together to put together these blocks into a quilt top. Each member of the Elgin Piecemakers made a block for this quilt. It was quilted over the summer by Al and Chris came over to my house a couple of weeks ago to work on the binding. If you click on the picture, you can see that the sashing is made from white fabric with black dots on it. Later that week, Chris and another guild member delivered several quilts to our local hospital where they will be given to adult chemo patients as a reminder that there are people in the community rooting for them as they undergo cancer treatments. The guild has received a few thank you notes from some of the recipients and it just "warms the cockles of my heart" to know that they are appreciated and being used.

This year, we have been given a list of colour themes for each month and we are to complete a block each month using the colours on the list. We have been divided into groups of two to put each top together.  September's colours are blue and yellow (I missed the September meeting because I was away at the Beaver Island Quilt Retreat) so I leafed through Volume 3 of Quiltmakers 100 Blocks magazine to find a pattern to use for my block. I decided on "Vintage Spools" -Block #281.

 I like the way the centre of this block looks like a windmill.

The colours for October are purple and green. I decided to get ahead of the game and make this block too. I picked Block #285 from the same magazine "Magic Squares".

The darker purple fabric in the squares in the center was from Erin at My Patchwork Life--I won it in a give-away on her block a year or so ago.  I have more plans for this fabric but that will have to wait for a little while.
I also made 4 more little basket blocks yesterday. I have some more fabric picked out for more baskets and will keep working away on these as time allows.

Each block is 4.5" square.  I have 20 little baskets so far.

Christine and I plan on getting together later this week to work on our Roll Roll Cotton Boll quilts. We had to take a bit of a break from this project because life got in the way.  The blocks will start to come together this week so stay tuned.

My brother's birthday is this week and I made him a pillowcase with boats on it. He is into bathtub boat racing in a big way--I could not find any bathtub fabric so these boats will have to do.

Take care eveyone and happy sewing.

Show and Tell at BIQR

Wednesday night, after feasting on pizza, each of the quilters at the Beaver Island Quilt Retreat showed off one or two of their recently completed quilts.

This quilt was hand pieced and hand quilted--it took several years to complete and each star was a different fabric.

This applique quilt was made as a gift.

Gwen quipped that the border on this quilt was a bit "muted" (!!???) It was a wild and fun quilt!

This quilter also knits and made this doll for a new baby. The skirt and hair are made from purchased black gloves.

This quilt looked like stained glass.

Amazing applique and a wonderful pieced sashing!

This quilt was inspired by a photograph of the quilter's son and grandson. WOW!

Christine showed her Carolina Christmas quilt. (mine is at the quilter's right now). Beautiful!

Carol showed her recently finished "Test Pattern"quilt. She hand quilted this a little bit each day over the summer.

I loved this Frank Lloyd Wright inspired table runner.

Gwen was very interested in everyone's quilts! 

I showed my "Liberated Selvage Wedding Ring" Quilt that I made last summer from one of Gwen's patterns. I don't have a picture of me showing my quilt. Perhaps Carol or Christine could send me their picture and I could post it!  (Hint! Hint!)  I was very pleased that Gwen liked my quilt. She told us that Karen Griska of the Selvage Blog had attended one of the BIQR events.

This past weekend, my husband, my in-laws and I went to Ottawa to visit my daughter. On our way home, there were lots of Fall colours to admire and I shot this picture out of the car window. I was wishing I could get out of the car to take some close ups of the milkweed fluff in the foreground.

In my last BIQR post, I will show pictures of some of the sketches made by other quilters at the retreat.

Tonight, I made three liberated basket postcards --one for Pokey who correctly guessed that the picture in a previous post was of wagon wheel hubs, one for the London Friendship Quilter's Guild monthly postcard exchange and one for Gwen Marston.

BIQR: What I Made...

As I mentioned in the previous post, Gwen did several demos on how to make the various elements in her "37 Sketches".  Above, she is showing us how to insert a curved line into a piece of fabric. Gwen does all her sewing on a Featherweight.

You can see my version of the curved line in this picture. It was not that hard! Most of the strips for the parts of this sketch were cut at 3/4" wide so that only a 1/4 inch showed when the peices were all sewn together. I have never used such skinny strips before!  On most of Gwen's sketches, she added at least one print fabric--you can see my green and yellow print fabric above. I considered my first "sketch" to be my chance to make at least one of each of the elements she taught us. It is not exactly "artistic" but I learned a lot making this first little quilt.

At the lower right, you can see my (mostly successful) attempts to insert pointy bits into the stripey element.

Gwen did several demos on how to do this ...

This is Christine's first sketch--She used some neat owl fabric in one of the trees--click on the picture to see their little faces!

My second sketch used some new birch tree fabric that I purchased at one of the local quilt stores. Once the other quilters saw this fabric, there was a mad dash to the quilt store and it was soon sold out! There is a black binding on this sketch--the gallery wall for all of the completed projects was black so the binding did not show up in my picture.

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you might remember these little liberated fruit and vegetable baskets and "FRESH" letters that I made at Quilt Til You Wilt in February. I had put them away after that day, not really knowing what to do with them. I brought them along to the BIQR and with some guidance and ideas from Gwen, I put them together, added some more words "U-Pick" and a liberated churn dash block and voila, a completed wall hanging flimsy!

Now, I will have to decide if I want to add a border or just quilt and bind it... What do you think?

This black and white sketch with some green and red touches was made for my husband. In this one, I made some liberated log cabin blocks and some liberated 9-patches.

For my last project, I made some 4" basket blocks from these fabrics purchased at one of the local quilt stores.

I made 16 baskets and hope to make lots more!

We sewed all day from about 9am to midnight most days, except for our field trips into town to go to the quilt stores and the orchard for apples.

Christine worked on a quilt for her daughter, made one more sketch with more owls in it, and finished sewing her 30's spin blocks together.

Here's an Elk Lake sunset to close off this post.  In my next post, I will show some of the sketches made by the other quilters at the retreat.

Back from BIQR!

WOW!  What a wonderful week I just had at the Beaver Island Quilt Retreat at the White Birch Lodge in Elk Rapids, MI with Gwen Marston!  I went with veteran BIQRers, Carol and Christine--it was their 4th retreat with Gwen and my first. I took 519 pictures in 6 days and it will take me a while to share everything I did at the retreat with you so this post will just be a brief introduction...

We arrived on a beautiful sunny day...

This is the main building where we sewed each day. It was just a short walk from the townhouse where we slept (for a short time) each night.

The lodge faced Elk Lake and, of course, there were lots of birch trees around!  This table top design would make a great quilt...

When we arrived, we dropped off our machines and bins of fabrics and sewing tools in the sewing room where we were greeted by this inspirational gallery of Gwen's "37 Sketches".  That evening, Gwen met briefly with us before supper so we could all introduce ourselves and tell everyone where we were from--there were 4 people from Canada, and the rest were from the USA including North Carolina, Ohio, Michigan, Washington State, Oregon, Minnesota... etc. The previous week, there had been some quilters there from Australia and next week, there will be two from the Netherlands!
Most of us sewed that evening but Gwen did not present her sketches to us officially until the next morning.

She showed us her new book "37 Sketches" (I bought a copy!) and explained her journey as she created these little works of art. She used her sweater as her "design wall" to show us the various elements she included in her quilts.

Gwen was a totally delightful teacher--she has a wonderful sense of humour and had all of us laughing often!  After her introduction to the quilts, she did several demos on how to create these elements in our own quilts. The hardest part of making one of these little quilts is getting started--her advice was to just jump in, pick some fabrics to use in our piece and then just start making an element. This was much harder than it sounds!

Here is a picture of Gwen with her new book. I have already read it twice and studied the pictures several times. It is available now on her website for $29.95 and I would highly recommend this book to any quilter--liberated or "wanna be" liberated, or just interested in getting into the mind of the "Queen of Liberated Quilts!" Gwen even signed my copy.

Gwen and I in front of her display of her "37 Sketches".
Keep coming back for more posts about the retreat. We had a wonderful show and tell and we all did lots of sewing...

A little give-away contest for you...

The first person to correctly tell me what these are will be the recipient of a liberated basket fabric postcard made by me!  Just leave a comment with your guess.

By the way, Gwen sews with her shoe off...