From Yardage to Sandwich in 6 hours

Hi everyone!


This week has just flown by!

 My quilting group has a member who had surgery and now has to have chemo. What a rotten deal. We decided to make her a surprise quilt to take along for her appointments. She's coming to our regular Thursday meetings, so we arranged a special sewing day on Friday.

We had already decided on the quilt pattern, and on some of the fabrics. It was a tough job choosing 12 fabrics that everone agreed on.

We started with the cutting

Here we all are, ready to go! We don't look tired yet.

Now we're sewing the fabric into 9 " squares, each square is different.

We laid out the squares, there's lots of discussion about the best layout!

And here's what we decided on. Sandy and Melanie are looking a bit tired!  We did have coffee breaks and a pot luck , it wasn't all sewing!

I'm cutting the backing:

And here's the quilt top with its borders:

It looks great! We sandwiched the quilt, and everyone was ready for home. In a moment of madness I offered to quilt it. Believe me, I'm not very experienced, and I've spent some nervous time since then worrying about spoiling everyone's work.

Here's how our project looks after quilting:

Now it just needs the binding, Melanie is doing that, and it can go to its new home. I think it will brighten up chemo treatments!

Thanks to Lee at Freshly Pieced; why not check out all the other Wednesday WIPs. There are some wonderful projects!

Until next time,

Sue

I Spy more blocks!

There are several quilts lurking in the back of my mind waiting for fabric and/or time . I'm working out the form for my I Spy quilt to take. Shall it be formal (diamonds. or disappearing nine patch) or shall it be a mystery even to me? I'm waiting for the squares from two exchanges which brings me up to about 500 squares, give or take.  While waiting I bought a few more fabrics at my LQS- and favourite QS- and I'll take a square out of each one. There's sure to be another exchange in my future for the rest of each piece.

Just look at this fabric! Isn't it great?!!! It's called Parrots of the Caribbean, and it makes me laugh every time I look at it! Those parrots are modelling themselves on Johnny Depp!! I bought a piece of two of the fabrics in the line. To do it justice the square has to be larger than the 4" that many of the other fabrics are cut into. Well, I'll just work it out. Maybe the by-the-seat-of-my-pants format for this quilt will be best after all!

On another subject, don't you just love Kate Spain's designs?  She's so original! One of my WIPs is using Central Park. She has a Christmas line of fabrics called Flurry that I really like. Sometimes I'm not sure about Christmas fabrics, they can so easily look either overdone or old fashioned. Do you feel that? No such problem with Flurry. Melissa is having a giveaway of Flurry, 28 fat quarters and a panel, unbelievable! Check it out on her blog at Happy Quilting

Till next time

Sue

WIP - one finish, one start and one in between!

Hi everyone!

I can't believe it's Wednesday again. Selling a house and buying another (but not in that order) is exhausting.
And we've hardly done any packing yet!

So I was very happy to sit down and hand stitch the back of the binding on the Flower Fairyland quilt. I know there are methods to do it all by machine, but I find it soothing to do that bit by hand. Well, more than just a bit - it's a long way around all my quilts, since they all turn out large!!

Now the quilt is completely finished and can take up a whole suitcase or carryon when I have time to fly to see my family on Vancouver Island, BC.

Here's a closeup of some of the quilting

and my little joke of a signature, to be found hiding somewhere on every quilt back:

I love skulls, humorous more than sinister! I know, I know, my daughter says "you're just wierd Mom"!

Here's another finish, and a start at the same time. This square is left over from Elizabeth's Red and White Challenge. I ran out of red , so decided to add this dot, left over from the binding of Flower Fairyland. I think it looks good. It's more than red and white though, it's red and white and blue and green and brown and gold now :)  I'm thinking I'll take my orphan squares and put them together, with nothing more in common than that. Wonder how it'll look. I'd like this square set on point.

I needed a project for a day's quilting on Saturday, so I picked up my Laurel Burch project, called Sunshine Daydream, and tried to decide how to finish the quilting. Luckily the ladies at the quilting retreat are all very experienced, and I got some good advice. Which I didn't take, (typical), but it got me moving again. All the squares were already stitched in the ditch, so I've got the centers of the blocks started. They are all different, so the outline quilting is all different too. There are still the setting squares and the border to finish after that. Quite a few more hours to go. I'm happy with how it's going now, I won't be unpicking this quilting!

It's hard to see the quilting in this square, but it goes around the flower and the moon, the sun, and quite a few of the sun's rays.

Here's the quilt back, pale blue batik. You can see the quilting that goes round the squares, and on the left is some of the outline quilting I'm doing.






The new project I'm thinking about will be in my next post. This one is pretty long already.


Take a look at all the great WIPs people are working on. There's so much creativity to be seen.

 Here's the link , thanks Lee!!

  

Until next time

Sue

Stampede, yeee haw!!

Hi everyone,

This week is the Calgary Stampede, and wherever you go in the city, there is some effect from the event, whether it is the many pancake breakfasts, activities everywhere or just the increase in traffic.

Friday was a big day, so we took a backpack and went downtown on the C-train for the parade. We were there at 8:30 in time for the Will and Kate drive past. Sadly, my camera blinked at that moment, but I did see a Royal arm waving and a cowboy hat!

I've been to other big parades, ours has an emphasis on beautiful horses and on heritage with stage coaches, old fashioned clothes and the like. I love all those kind of things, so I watched with a lump in my throat.


                                                         Here's our flag going by:



The nice young girls with a welcome banner, and a gorgeous Mountie!

My all time favourite, a pipe band. This is the Calgary Police:

I have Scottish heritage, and we lived in Scotland for years. I can tell you, men in kilts make me swoon! Sooo masculine!!

Here's a brave man!!

RCMP, don't they look amazing?

                                                    and not forgetting the Flames:

 After a couple of hours we had to rush home, we're selling our house, and we had a viewing. What terrible timing, but we have to be practical! A very enjoyable parade I must say!

It's also noticeable to me now that most of my pictures feature bright red, my colour!
Back to the quilting!!!


Until next time,

Sue



WIP Wednesday

Hi everyone!

It's a beautiful sunny morning, and my two bouncy live WIPs

Ronan

and Sammy

will be wanting to go out for runs.

When they leave me in peace I'm still working on Elizabeth's Red and White Challenge

Now I have two squares done, and I'll do two more today so that I can send Elizabeth the best ones.

It's nervewracking working on a challenge, I want it to be as near to perfect as my quilting can manage!. There's no fudging these points, with such a contrast it shows if it's not just exactly right!

                       The hand stitching on the binding on Flower Fairyland is more than half done.



Then this quilt can be taken to its new home.

That's it for my WIPs today, thanks Lee!

Here's the link to all these other great WIPs

Until next time,

Sue

Red and White

Hi Everyone!

Happy holiday, whether it was today or July 1st!

Today my fabric came for Elizabeth's Red and White Challenge. The red is such a vibrant scarlet, I was reminded of the lines from a favourite song:

                                               Red and white, blue suede shoes
                                               I'm Uncle Sam, how do you do?

and the song kept playing in my head while I cut and sewed. Does this happen to you?

Here's a picture of my square.

The red is deeper than it seems in this picure.

               I've got another cut and ready to go, and then I'm going to start adding other fabrics.

              I've got a dot sitting nearby that is the same perfect red, it is just meant to be!

I thought I'd put the dot in the rectangular side pieces so as not to overwhelm the square.

As I mentioned before in my blogging, red is my favourite colour to quilt. Here's a picture of my first two colour red and cream quilt with Everest in the limelight!

                                             Then I made this quilt with leftover HSTs

And now I'm thinking of getting out all my reds again to do something different.

 Any suggestions?



Until next time

Sue