Quilt Bee meeting

I am writing this message to let you know that I won't be able to write a message today.  If that make any sense.  Just a short message.  The girls have called an emergency quilt bee meeting.  I cannot refuse.  I am desperately needing the break.  With all the overtime at work and joining the gym I need some me time.  Unfortunately tomorrow I will also be working 12 hours, so may not get a chance to write.

Sorry.

Reversable quilts

Reversible quilts. There are many that can be made.  I am going to show you two simple patterns.  The first one is a crazy quilt block that comes from the book "More Quilts from the Quiltmaker's Gift".  The quilt book is based on a children's book from Jeff Brumbeau and Gail de Marcken call "The Quiltmaker's Gift".  The reverse side of the quilt are a solid blocks, some from the Bob the Builder collection.  Basically on a reversible quilt you construct the block with batting and backing all at once.  

As you sew your pieces on you are creating the quilting pattern for the reverse side.  Once your blocks are done you sew them together into a quilt, however because you will not put another backing on it you need to hide your seams while you sew the blocks together. You do this in a way like you do binding, but a little different.  It is difficult to explain in words, but the process is not that difficult.

One side turns out different from the other.  It's like having two quilts in one.  I must have lost track on the rows, as I was sewing these together, as there is an oops in the middle with two red blocks side by side.  Oh well, no one is perfect.  This next quilt was different.  I friend at work was cleaning out her cupboards and came across this pre-quilted fabric.  Maybe you know the kind I am referring to.  The fabric is manufactured with one design on one side and a coordinating design on the other.  Most people would use them for crafty stuff like a Christmas tree skirt or place mats.  So I had to be creative to use the fabrics that would co-ordinate on both sides at the same time and with the limited amount of fabric. Some fabrics I had very little of like the green in the middle two bars.  Absolutely nothing left of that one.

When I was done I only had a little fabric left of the others too.  This quilt is called a bar quilt, for obvious reasons.  This is definitely an easy quilt to make.  I've made a few other reversible quilts since these two, all in different patterns.  I especially like them for using up scrap fabric in anything goes blocks.  I am working on one of them now.  I'll post a picture when I get it done.

An easy rail fence quilt

The rail fence quilt is an easy beginners quilt or a quilt that you make when you don't have enough brain power to tackle anything complicated.  You can do this pattern in a fast strip method where you will sew three 40" long strips together and sub cut the units, as was done in the first and third quilt shown below. Or if you have various scraps you can just sew three or four sets together to make a unit.  The second quilt was done using this method in sets of three.  For the unity I sewed on the additional cream fabric to form the zig zag across the quilt.  

It just so happens that all three of these quilts are using flannel.  I don't usually buy flannel, but my daughter wanted to make a quilt of her own.  She wanted an alternating four patch rag quilt. This is where you sew the blocks together with batting between each block and the seams that are made are slit every half inch. So when you wash it the material in the seams get shaggy.  Once she was done her quilt I cut up all the fabric into strips to make this quilt.  The quilt measures 42" x 60".

This next quilt was various flannel scraps that a friend was done with, from various quilts she had made and the cream fabric was also what was left.  I had just enough to make the zig zag strips in a cream and the border in another cream.  These strips are 1" each and measures 42" x 58".

And this last one was made about a year after the first one when my son decided that he should also make a quilt like his sister.  Again after he had finished I cut up the fabric into strips to make this one.  Three quilts all made using the same pattern and even the same layout, but all individual with their own feel to them.  I've seen these in almost every colour combination you could think of.  As I said earlier this is the type of quilt that beginners usually start with.

One binding down, three more to go

Finished culling through the magazines this morning.  Kept a hand full of magazines with patterns I liked.  It got busy with sealing the bathroom shower grout.  Moved on to varnishing the oak step I put in last year at the back sliding door.  Lastly filling the holes on the facing and baseboard for the closet in the guest bedroom. I am done for the day.  While I was doing the varnishing of the steps, or should I say between coats, I was binding this quilt.  I had to do four coats with two hour drying time between, so was able to get the whole quilt bound.

This quilt is a little smaller than lap size.  I made it with various fabrics that were given to me.  The fabrics are I bit heavier than the 100% cotton that I like to use.  They are an assortment of men and ladies dress pant or skirt type materials.  Because of the thickness I had to keep the pattern simple.  This is called a square-in-a-square block.  I was going to make this quilt larger to use up more fabric, but it is quite difficult to sew with these fabrics.  Some of the fabric are thicker than canvas and some are very slippery.  My patients ran out.  Before I ended up abandoning the quilt all together I decided that finished would be better than not.  It still measures about 45" x 60".  For the quilting I did in the ditch for the centre and a version of a feather in the border.  Turned out ok.

Cleaning/purging quilt magazines

This weekend is the last one to get the taxes done before the deadly, so when I woke at 6:30 am thought I should take care of it right away.  Cleaned up the filing as well.  Later, hubby and I with Dylan and his friend went to a Blue Jay's game.  I'm not much of a sports fan, but it was a nice afternoon spent with family.  When we got back I thought I would go through the magazines that a friend from my quilting bee group was purging.  This picture was only about half of what I needed to go through.

So far there are a few articles that I am keeping to read and some to add to the "quilt want to be" jar.  One of them is this cute pattern for placemats.  Perfect for a small table.  You could make a lot of them in different season themed fabrics to change out with the seasons.

Tomorrow is another day.  Hoping to take some time out for me.  To get some quilting time in.  We shall see.

A quilt for the community involvement badge from Sparks girls a group within the Girl Guides

I hope you don't mind my showing you a quilt from the past, again.  I did some more overtime today so didn't get any quilty stuff done.  This quilt is from many years ago.  One of my own designs.  My niece Michelle was a leader for a group of sparks girls through the Girl Guides.  She was looking for some suggestions on what to do to get the girls involves with the community and doing something for someone else.  I made the suggestion to do some fabric painting and how she could get all the girls to design a block of their own to be incorporated into a quilt to be given to someone special and in need of a hug.  She organized it for her group and brought me the blocks to work with.  This quilt I believe was to go to someone to cheer them up, I think someone in hospital, but I am not 100% sure.  Anyways I thought the some bright colours were needed to compete with the bright colours of the painted blocks. This is how the quilt turned out.  The quilt was just under a twin size.

Below is a close up of one of the blocks that I think was done by one of the leaders.  Note how the blocks on the outer edge of the quilt are smaller than the centre blocks.  This was because some of the children only painted a small picture.  With these ones I made a frame around them to make them the same size as the centre blocks, to make it easier to design and construct the quilt. This design was the first time that I also made a quilt where the blocks come out into the border.

I am sure some little girl was happy to get this quilt.  The sparks girls took a picture of their group with the quilt. A good memory for all of them.  They did a good job and deserve to feel proud of themselves.

Various scrap quilts

It has been difficult these last couple if days to do much quilting with doing overtime at work and various things going on.  I thought I would share with you some scrap quilts that I made for various groups in the past.  The first photo is a jean quilt.  Measures about 55" x 78".  This type of quilt is made when I accumulate sufficient blocks. The jeans come from family that know I make these quilts for others.  When a pair of jeans has a hole in it or an ink stain or the like, people don't want to wear them any more so they give them to me.  The rest of the jeans has good fabric that I cut up in 6 1/2" squares.  Like this one sometimes I will vary it up by adding some canvas material to add colour.  The pattern is Trip Around The World.

This next photo is called a Bargello.  This one measures approximately 62" x 84".  This pattern I got from Bonnie Hunter's site.  Nice bright colours.  This pattern uses up a lot of my 2 1/2" strips and goes together very quickly.  This quilt looks good in any colour way, from soft to bright, one colour scheme or many colours.

This next one was made out of a bunch of left over squares from various quilts.  The jumping off point was the border fabric.  You may not see it too well, but the blue fabric has little white rocking horses with touches of red and green.  So, I grabbed my scrap box that contains my pre-cut squares and selected colours to go with the border fabric.  I think it turned out ok.  Makes for a nice boys quilt.

This next quilt, the heart quilt was also made with miscellaneous left over fabric.  These blocks where from all the HSTs that I made for my nickel quilt I showed in another post. It actually worked out that I didn't need to make any blocks for this quilt.  Not even the red and pink ones.

This next one is truly a scrap quilt.  By this time I had made many quilts.  I would say that this one is to the extent of my comfort level when it coms to scrap quilts.  I am not too particular about this one as I find that there is a bit too much chaos.  Though I love scrap quilts, I still have a need for some order.

This one is a form of a spider web quilt, but with eight sides.  This quilt was made with bright leftover stripes that my daughter used to make a reversible quilt.  I thought to tame it down with the alternating black and white corners. The verdict is still not out on whether I succeeded or not.  A bit bright for my liking, but some child is going to like it.   

All of the above quilts were made in my experimental stage of understanding colour and how it works as well as trying to learn how to do the quilting.  They all went to a good cause.

Pine tree quilt

I thought I would share with you a quilt a friend of mine made that I quilted.  I call this the pine tree quilt. Pretty fall colours. Very cozy feel to it.

This next photo is the view of the border.  I quilted it in a triple cable design.  I don't have a close up of the trees, but they were quilted with a line going around the perimeter 1/4" inside the trees.  

The  next two photos are of the corners.  I designed a feather design to fit the space.  On the bottom photo you can just see the outer border with it's singe chain/diamond variation and on the left of that same photo you can see the edge of a star, quilted 1/4" from the edge.

I really like how the quilting turned out on this one.  My friend did too.  I trimmed up her quilt and I think she had the binding on within the week.

More quilting

I was at a good part of an audio book that I was listening to on the way home from work today and wanted to continue listening, so I went to do some stitches on my sewing machine appliqué wall hanging. I have the ribbon parts pinned in place and started sewing it down. Just getting started.

Yesturday before heading over to mom's for dinner I was able to finish all the in the ditch quilting on the log cabin quilt.  Still trying to commit to the main quilting design.  Had something in mind, but I hesitate on starting.  I am thinking that I have not committed to the design 100% yet, so until I do the quilt will sit for a bit.  It's easier to delay the quilting than to start taking it all out if I realize that I don't like it.  The one thing for sure is that I want a diagonal quilting design, hence the diagonal in the ditch quilting.  I also want a different design for the dark side than on the light side.

Hope everyone passed a good Easter.

In the mood for quilting

Yesturday later in the day I was able to get two blocks done from the Framer's Wife blocks and while doing  them I also got some more red points as my leaders/enders done.  Today I was in the mood for quilting.  Started quilting my log cabin quilt.  So far I have about half of the in-the-ditch quilted.  This is one of my favourite patterns.  The settings are endless. The log cabin block is strips that are sewn to a square in the middle and you attach the stripes in a continuous circle until you finish the block.  I am not going to spoil the surprise.  You will have to wait until the whole quilt is quilted to see the quilt and the layout that I chose.

Not much else to show you right now as I was again busy around the house.  As the weather was beautiful I spent some time outside cleaning up the gardens.

Pinwheel quilt made by Mom

Isn't it pretty?  This is a quilt that mom made for one of her granddaughters as a birthday gift.

It all came about when I invited mom over one day to go through some of my quilt books for inspiration.  She wanted to make something not too complicated.  As we went through the books I caught my eye on the pinwheel quilt.  I continued to show mom different samples of pinwheels in different colours.  She was taken by one particular pinwheel quilt.  We dissected the pattern and colour placement to determine what exactly she liked about the quilt.  

Later there was a trip to the quilt store (Sister's Choice) to select the fabric.  When you are making a quilt for someone in specific you need to keep in mind who they are and what their character is.  This quilt was made for Allison. She is an energetic, vibrant young lady who enjoys motion, bright colours and her favorite is lime green.  We kept this in mind when choosing the fabrics.  Every part of the quilt to me represents Allison. The energetic and motion are represented by the pinwheels themselves that look like they are spinning.  Vibrant is represented by the bright colours and the young lady is the playful design that was chosen.  There is lime green in there too. 

Here is a close-up of the quilting.  The plain blocks have a two layer design, that from this angle looks like a flower.  The first white border has a wave pattern quilted on it.  The next photo shows the large border, also done in a wave and the second small border as well.  

We lucked out with the large border.  Initially at the first quilt store we found all the fabrics for the middle of the quilt, but could not find anything suitable for the borders.  Over the next week or so Mom put together the centre of the quilt.  We visited another quilt store(Hobby Horse).  There we tried out all different fabrics, to no avail.  Later just as we were packing up to go this blue caught my eye from under a stack of bolts, just a sliver of the blue. We gave it a try and just knew it was the one.  It managed to make all the centre colours pop. The backing fabric was chosen from the main flower in the large border and some of the pinwheels (seen in the top photo if the whole quilt, bottom right hand corner).

I hope she likes it.  Her grandmother did a great job. Definitely something special. 

Piecing time

Today I was able to get a couple of hours to do some piecing.  I was all over the place with part of this quilt and part of that one.  I just couldn't concentrate.  Too much running around today with issues to take care of, but I needed some me time desperately.  This week I am on vacation to catch up on home renovations, but I feel like I am not really accomplishing anything.  I know this is not true as I am working on the house, but all the stuff I am doing takes time and does not show.  Who is going to see that I repainted the ceiling white, repaired and repainted the walls, or sealed the grout of the shower tiles?  No one but me.  But it needs to be done.

In the picture above, at the top are the remaining spider web wedges, to the right below them are a couple more spools and below them are different pieces of Bonnie's Celtic mystery quilt that I am doing in Christmas fabrics.  I can now put the spider web quilt top together, the spools are starting to add up and the mystery quilt parts as well.  Do you see the little tiny HSTs (half square triangles) at the bottom right hand corner?  Those are from the chevrons just above the HSTs.  They measure only 1 1/4" square, which will finish at 3/4" square.  Yes, I think it is crazy to keep these.  With the amount of chevrons I have to do though I would end up with a lot of these HSTs.  I like to do mini quilts from time to time.  Maybe I could use them there.

People already think I am insane with all the quilts that I am working on, why not give them more to talk about?  Only people who are not quilters, actually think I am insane, because in comparisons to some quilters I am very tame.  I felt much more relaxed and at ease by the time I quit for the day.  Tomorrow is to be another busy day.  Being Good Friday the kids will be home. I need to paint the walls, baseboards and doors.  I will see what time I can allow for some me time piecing some more.

The buzz word for 2014

Yesterday I was able to get some quilting done.  Was able to finish quilting the horizontal in the ditch lines on the faux applique quilt. Fixed any sections that I didn't like and decided to put the quilt away for a bit.  Took out the remaining nine wedges for the spider web quilt that I need to do.  I am so, so close with finishing this quilt top that I am motivated to continue with it.

I was listening to one of Bonnie's quilt cams the other day and caught a phrase.  She was talking about something that she had either heard or read that day.  It was regarding some other blogger group or her face book group that was talking about the buzz word for 2014.  These days at work and elsewhere, there are goals, statements, words or a play on words to represent what the focus for the year will be.  This year in quilting, apparently the buzz word for 2014 is "Finish".  It could mean a lot of things to different people, but in the quilt world the obvious is to "Finish" the quilt.  I have been aiming for this goal for the past few years.  My practical side of my brain agrees and strives to finish quilts from my list without starting anything new.......the imaginative side of my brain does everything it can do to put up road blocks so that I cannot achieve this goal.  As is my nature, I lean toward the imaginative side of my brain more often.  For the past few years I may have gotten 10-15 quilts done per year, however I would have started just as many.  Some were finishes of existing quilts and others were quilts I managed to start and finish within a short amount of time.

Did I tell you yet, that I consider a quilt done when I have only the binding to put on. So, that means that according to my list I have 23 quilts left to finish (we call these UFOs, Un-Finished Objects).  Plus I have another 4 quilts that only need the binding tacked down by hand.  I don't know why that is, that I don't wait until the binding is on fully to consider it done, but that is how it is.

More to come about the UFOs some other day. For today, I did "finish" the last of the spider web wedges.  Now I can get this top to the "finished" stage very soon.  Every step I do gives me more motivation to keep going.

Do you remember the drawer of scraps I started with.  Didn't even make a dent.  Look!!!  I'd swear the scraps breed at night in the dark.

Pineapple Blossom Takes Flight quilt

This morning I have been trying again to access the pictures to embed a slideshow, with no success.  But I came across this photo and thought I would share it with you.  This is the quilt that I entered in the quilt show and won a 2nd prize ribbon.  It was the first and so far the only quilt show I entered into.  The show was 2009 Off the Wall and Under the Covers with the Mississauga Quilters' Guild (Ontario, Canada) and the 2nd prize was in the category of Best First Time Entry.

This was the attached caption:

Pineapple Blossoms Take Flight

I love scrappy quilts.  When I kept seeing quilts done using the block 'pineapple blossom', I decided I needed to make one,  however I did not want a plain border as the others.  I got my inspiration from the block on how to design the border.  A gift for my step-son, as a Christmas gift.

Owned by Brett Jenkins

I remember making this quilt and all the different fabrics. Another great way to use up your scraps.  As I think back to that time, I envision Brett on the coach at my parent's house where we all got together on Christmas day to open presents.  His fiancée Jeanette sitting beside him and the shocked look on his face.  His face looked even more shocked with bewilderment when I asked for the quilt back.  He didn't know what to say, until he laughed after I told him that I wanted it back just for a little bit so that I could put the quilt into the show.  Can you imagine the surprise for Brett and Jeanette when I told them that their quilt won a ribbon.

The second scene that ran through my head from during this time was Christmas Eve sewing into the night and through to the morning trying to finish the quilt in time to gift it on Christmas day.  It became a family affair when hubby and the kids woke up and realized I was still trying to finish the quilt. Someone got the box and wrapping paper ready someone else started inspecting the quilt to remove any loose threads or dog hair. Everyone doing what they could. I sewed the binding on by machine, and while everyone was opening presents at our own home I was finishing the binding by hand.  Later while I went for a shower my daughter wrapped the present.  We made it to my parent's house just in time.

Nothing like last minute rushing around to get the blood rushing.  It's not like I left it to the last minute, but more a matter of under estimating the amount of time it takes to make a quilt from start to finish.  I find that I do it often, under estimate time.

This quilt and the next quilt were the first two quilts I actually gave away to family.  Up until this point, all the quilts that I made went to charities through the guild or through Project Linus.  It gave me pleasure to give these quilts away to family.  This next quilt was a Guild Mystery quilt.  More about this quilt another day.

Pictures of the 2014 Orillia quilt show

Couldn't do the slide show due to compatibility with my computer where the pictures are and blogger, so I decided to add a bunch more pictures of what was at the show. Today again didn't get any quilting time in. Had to deal with the kitchen counter situation.  Took the whole day with still more to be done. When the kids got home, it was taking care of homework and dinner.  Tomorrow have some work to try and finish in the bathroom, but I do intend to get some quilting time in, hopefully after lunch.  Enjoy the pictures.