This Week's Sewing Adventures

It's been a busy week in the sewing room at my house!  The log blocks really did nothing to enhance my Oxford Quilter's Guild VP day challenge quilt so I removed them and made a few more HST's. I rearranged the HST's to my liking and then started sewing the rows together.  Most of the rows are sewn and the top two are sewn to each other.  I will likely finish this top this week. I love the Shweshwe fabrics I have used for this project!

I finished the embroidery on my Lupine quilt label this week and now just have to piece the back and get it off to the long arm quilter's house.  I like to have my label quilted into the quilt--it won't fall off that way!

On Wednesday, I attended a Traditional Variations class with Cheryl Arkison on Zoom.  We made variations of four different traditional blocks.  Cheryl encouraged us to play and have fun trying new things.  I decided ahead of time to use some batik fabrics that were in my stash, picking out some red, orange, green and blue pieces.  I will be using my blocks to make a Quilt for a Residential School survivor--a project that has been taken on by members of the Toronto Modern Guild.  

I made a 6" church dash block in the traditional way and then made a 12" block with "curved triangles" in the corners. 

My 6" pinwheel was made in the traditional way and the bigger block was made with half rectangle triangles.

I also made one liberated wonky star block and a couple of log cabin variations.  I used the leftover curved  bits from the churn dash to make a curved pinwheel block.  I still have lots of ideas and fabric left so more blocks will be put together over the next while until I have enough for a lap sized quilt.  I decided to stick with 6" and 12" blocks so it goes together easily.  

I finished hand stitching the binding on this quilt--the top was made by Maureen H. and she gave it to me to donate to a worthy cause.  Julie from the Elgin Piecemakers quilted it and it will go to the local women's shelter.  

When I showed all of my comfort quilt blocks a couple of weeks ago, someone asked me to show all the blocks that were made by members of the Elgin Piecemakers for each month.  Here are all the red and gray blocks for February.  One of our members will make a quilt top with sashing and cornerstones, and then one of our long armers will quilt it.  Another member will do the binding and then it will be ready to donate. 

Finn took my daughter's mitten outside this week while he did his business and then brought it back inside when he was done.  Silly boy!

I wound a ball of wool earlier today during a zoom meeting.  I am going to make myself a hat!  I have made hats for many others but have never made one for myself.  I hope to start knitting tomorrow for my Slow Sunday Stitching project.  I will link up with Kathy in the morning. 

Until next time, enjoy your stitching!

Kitchen Scraps Challenge and Another UFO Done.

 Each year, the Elgin Piecemakers Guild issues a challenge to their members.  This past year, we were given a piece of insulbrite thermal batting and asked to make something for our kitchens using scraps.  On Thursday night, we met in person for the first time in ages and revealed our projects.  There were oven mitts, hot pads, a casserole carrier, tea cosies, etc.  Many in the group used selvages in their projects.  I decided to raid my denim stash (from old jeans) for my lasagna pan hot pad.  I have a large orange lasagna pan and always have to use more than one hot pad under it, but not anymore! It was fun to use improv piecing for the top and I found a fun fat quarter in my stash for the backing. 

The perfect size for the orange dish! I used 28wt orange thread for the quilting. 

I finished the quilting and binding on my Down on the Farm charm square quilt this week.  It even has a label!   I used the extra backing fabric for the binding. Another baby quilt ready for gifting!

Since I have finished 3 UFO's in the last month, I decided to give myself permission to start a new quilt!  Last Spring, I made a Modern Handcraft Snowflake quilt for a friend.  I used red and white prints for the background and made the snowflake with Kona White.  I have wanted to make myself a snowflake quilt too and since the Modern Handcraft Blog is holding another "Snowalong" this year, I joined in! This year, Nicole Daksiewicz has added instructions on how to make a Buffalo Plaid Snowflake quilt.  After looking at all of the possibilities in my stash, I picked these fabrics for my quilt and got all my cutting done.  The gray fabric is Essex Linen and the red and black fabric is Kona.  The white with the light gray dots will be used for the snowflake. 

I have made two blocks so far and have started a third one. 

I made a new hat this week too.  I received this variegated wool for Christmas last year and found a pattern that I thought would work.  I made a swatch and it was the right size so I started knitting.   

I had to switch to double pointed needles for the top of the hat. 

This is where the hat went off the rails---I tried it on at this point and it was so big, it went over my face!  I ended up tearing it all out and now I have to start over with fewer stitches on the needles!  Good thing that it is a chunky yarn and knits up quickly!

My daughter did a bit more stitching this week.  

Finn had a friend over to play today.  He was not so sure about having to share my daughter with another dog!  My daughter looked after Brick while his "Mom" was moving. 

Late Breaking News!!! Dubrovnik is done!  While Finn was napping, worn out from his company, 

my daughter put in the last few stitches!  

I will link up with the Slow Sunday Stitchers at Kathy's blog in the morning.  I hope to start knitting my hat, again!

Challenge Quilt Done

I have never used more than one or two colours of thread to quilt one of my projects before this week.  Last year, the Oxford Quilt Guild issues a challenge to make a quilt using blocks with 15 2.5" squares and 5 flying geese.  I proceeded to make 16 blocks, each a different colour, without repeating any of the fabrics in the blocks. Each block contains 25 unique fabrics.  The blocks have been sitting in a bin in my sewing room for a couple of months while I thought about how I might set them to make my quilt. I put them out on the floor this week and tried various fabrics that I had in my stash for sashing.  First, I tried a few different prints but they fought with the blocks so I ended up using black. I cut the sashing 1.5" wide.  The black block blended too much with the black sashing so I decided to sash it in orange instead, to match the little lady bug in one of the black fabrics. 

I pin basted the quilt earlier this week and then hung it over the railing to look at it and decide on how to quilt it.  I am a walking foot quilter and wanted to emphasize the motion created by the flying geese in my blocks.  The geese in the middle of the quilt fly clockwise and the geese on the outside fly counter clockwise. 

I wanted to just use one colour of thread for the entire quilt but could not find one colour in my thread stash that looked good with every block. The quilt kept telling me to use matching thread for each block and I finally listened and plunged in. 

I only had one colour of pink thread in my stash, so the pink and magenta blocks are both quilted with the same colour.  In total, I used 15 colours of thread, which are shown in the first picture of this post. 

I used black binding, despite the fact that I hate sewing black fabric with black thread--so hard to see, even with good lighting!  

The backing is some black and white gingham, printed on the diagonal with an orange stripe inserted to make it wide enough.

This challenge was to be done for our meeting later this week.  It will be interesting to see all of the different versions that people have made. 

I finished off my December Modern BOM block this week as well. 

I have finished 5/12 blocks.  The February block pattern will be released in mid-February. 

More stitches were added to Love Birds again this week--I finished the leaves in this section and have the cream coloured flower about 3/4 done.  

My daughter received the Ecru thread I sent to her in the mail and there was enough to finish her embroidery picture. It's so pretty!

The bicycle embroidery is just about done now.  I am in love with the stitches on the basket!

It's been very cold where Finn and my daughter live this past week so Finn had to wear his coat and boots when he went out for a walk.  He has an LED collar to make him visible at night.  Finn is not very excited to put on his boots but the salt on the sidewalk hurts his paws so he must wear them. 

We had a little bit of snow here this past week--light and fluffy. 

I will link up with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge today and Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching group tomorrow.  

20th Anniversary Challenge for the Elgin Piecemakers

 I belong to a small quilt guild--the Elgin Piecemakers--that recently celebrated 20 years of getting together to share our love of all things quilting.  We have 20 members and we meet in each others homes. There is always a wonderful social/snack time at every meeting.  In late 2019, we decided that we should celebrate our 20 years as a guild in a significant way.  Someone proposed an anniversary quilt challenge--we would each make our own centre block and then each month for several months, we would be given instructions on what to add to the centre block to make a medallion quilt. Somewhere in our quilt, we had to add something to indicate 20--and I chose to make my centre block XX--20 in Roman numerals. 

I chose to use fabric I had in my stash.  I found a half yard of yellow paperweight Kaffe Fassett fabric and a fat quarter of the same fabric in green. The background is leftover from another project and I had about a yard of it. Then, I got out my green and yellow Kona solid scraps and added those to the mix. I also made the decision to make my blocks in a liberated fashion, like I had learned at the Beaver Island Quilt retreats with Gwen Marston several years ago. 

For the first border, we were told to add stars. I made 4 liberated/wonky stars and decided to just add them to two sides of the centre block. 

Next up was appliqué borders on two sides of the quilt.  I cut some of each of the two Kaffe fabrics on the bias and hand appliquéd them to the background fabric. 

For paper piecing, I made some string borders using various widths of my scraps and Kaffe fabrics.  You can see the string borders above. 

Curved piecing was the next prompt.  I stacked a solid with a Kaffe fabric and sliced through them on a curve before sewing them together again to make my units. 

The second to last border was to be made with HST's. By this time, I was running short of the background fabric so I figured this might be my last border.  I made some string pieced squares and cut them in half on the diagonal to make my HST's. 

The final border could be whatever we wanted it to be.  I chose to use the binding as my final border.  I had just enough of the yellow paperweight fabric to bind my quilt. 

I found a piece of bright green solid which I used for the backing.  I quilted my quilt on my domestic sewing machine with my walking foot using yellow thread. 

My husband took a picture of me with my completed quilt out in our backyard earlier this week. 

This was a great challenge for the members of our guild.  

I wonder what we will do for our next challenge.  I will just have to wait and see.  I will link up with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge crew on Saturday since this month's colour was yellow.