Annual Quilt Bee

Today was the annual quilt bee for our Guild.  There were over 40 women there this afternoon.  I found out also that they call it a quilt bee because of all the B's in quilting.  There are borders, binding, backing, batting and that makes a lot of B's.

This was part of one room.

There was a second room where some of the ladies were quilting tops that had been made at a previous bee. 

Shirley quilts all her quilts on a regular machine so she was showing us how it was done.

This was the design she was making.

There were a lot of different quilt tops made today.

These Jelly Roll quilts were all made from strips cut from yardage.

One of the gals did all the cutting and put the colours together for these quilts.

She did a fantastic job.

Wonky Stars were made in Cindys group.

Rail fence was made in Karen's group.

Pat uses fleece as backing with no batting in the sandwich.

Maria also put fleece on the back of her quilt.

These quilts are very soft and pliable.

I was making windmills at night.

There were also lots of other quilts finished today.

It was a fabulous day with lots of quilts made to be donated to the Local Hospital and Homes for the Aged.

Peggy

The Exploding Block

Every day I get an email from Missouri Star Quilt Company with their deal of the day and every now and then they send an email with a new tutorial.  Last week the new one was 'the exploding block'.  When I went to Neebing Needlers last Wednesday Linda G had made a few and was showing the rest of the gals how to make them.  It is a great block and I knew that I just had to try to make one.  

I made mine explode 5 times and then wondered what I was going to do with this block.

I always find that it is easier to make several blocks rather

than just one at a time so I made 4 of them.

I added the green borders and made them into placemats.

These will go to Meals on Wheels.  I hope someone else

enjoys them as much I do.

Peggy

More Quilt Finishes

I have been making quilts for my nephew and his wife.  He wanted me to make a king size Hawaiian quilt but that was too great of an undertaking for me.  I thought I would make them each a lap quilt which they could use on cool days or nights.

Read All About It Quilt

I have made this quilt before.  It is from the book Strip-Smart Quilts by Kathy Brown.  There is one big problem with this quilt and that is that there is a lot of left over squares.  So what do you do with these left over squares?  I made another quilt.

My Version of Read All About It

I used all the left over squares and put the quilt together in almost the same pattern.  I had to take a few squares apart so that the squares in the quilt went together in a pattern.  I call these my twin quilts.

These quilts are not for alcoholics; they are for a couple who live in the Napa Valley in California so I thought the fabric was just the thing.  The light brown fabric is corks and the border and backing are tossed wine bottles and glasses.  I thought it was very fitting for wine country folks.  To top it off I picked these fabrics up when a local shop was going out of business so I go a real good deal on the fabric.  I bought the rest of the bolt of the tossed bottles, so I used it for the backing as well as the border.

Peggy.

The H Quilt and More Twister

I am having fun using up my scraps from my stash.  I have a lot for someone who has been quilting for only 5 and a half years.  I try to keep them sorted by colour but lately I have been sorting them by size also.  I have a small bucket with 2 1/2 inch squares and one with 2 inch squares.  If the piece of fabric won't make at least a 2 inch square then it goes in the pile for the dog beds, which are made by a group from our Guild.

The H Quilt.

This will be a donation quilt.

This quilt was suppose to be a puzzle quilt, but I thought that it would be too complicated adding the pieces for the puzzle.  I would have to lay out each piece individually and then add the extra colour, plus I didn't have enough of all of the colours to add the puzzle pieces.  It was easy to just add white to make an H.  Because the H's are turned there was very little matching to do, just the corners had to be matched.

Twister Illusions

I friend of mine created a monster when she taught me how to do the twister block.  This is a block that looks so complicated but is easy to do and it looks like you spent hours piecing small pieces together.

One of our local quilt shops was going out of business and I found the pattern one day while looking for bargains.  Most of the fabrics were in my stash but I had to purchase the blues and the black.  I have chosen a very special friend to get this quilt.

Twister Illusions

The pattern made a crib, twin or queen size quilt so I made this one a size between the crib and twin, by starting with the crib size and adding borders that were meant for the twin size.  I really like the corner detail.  Only 2 corners were suppose to have coloured squares but I added some to all four corners.  I really love this quilt.

YKW had just finished shovelling the latest snowfall off the deck so it was the perfect place to take the picture.  I prefer to take the pictures outside in the natural light if at all possible.

Peggy

Quilt Therapy last Thursday

Thursdays have been fun days these past few years.  Lots of quilting gets done as well as lots of visiting.  These past few weeks it has only been Joyce and me.  Pierina is still away and Maria has been working. 

 Joyce has been working on a quilt that we found last year when we all went to Duluth for some R and R.  The shop had made the quilt without a pattern so I made a pattern for her and then we were lucky enough to find the same fabric in the shop.

All finished.

She had left over fabric because I always tell her to buy more than what you need.  This beautiful quilt will be in her plant room which has a round table for lunches or snacks so she decided to make placemats to match the quilt.

She able to make 6 placemats and added

the green for some contrast and

also for binding and

backing.  

I have been working on a donation quilt that I call my H quilt.  

This is all made from scraps.

I made H blocks and then turned them so that

I only had the corners to match

and not all the posts and white squares.

It is ready to be quilted.

Peggy.

The Dandy Workshop

I have been making bags since I started quilting 6 years ago.  I have made tote bags, grocery bags, travel bags, and purses.  One of the bags that I really like is the Dandy Bag.  I found it on the Internet in 2010 and have made somewhere between 6 and 10 of these bags.  I have re sized them to make them larger and in many different colourways.  This is a fun bag to make.  This is the bag that Lynda and I took when we travelled to Europe a few years ago, and called it our day bag.  We carried our water bottle, hat, umbrella, Kleenex, and anything else that wasn't valuable.

Because I have made so many bags the Guild asked me to put on a workshop and I chose the Dandy Bag from Dandelion Quilts.  I added pockets and a zipper because that is what the participants asked for.  We had a great time and as you can see everyone chose beautiful fabrics for their bag.  Five of the 8 gals finished their bag on Saturday.

I forgot to ask if they minded having

their faces out on the Internet so I cropped

the picture to display the beautiful bags.

Peggy.

  

Pieced but not Quilted

I have been working on a twister quilt.  I bought the pattern and some of the fabric from a local shop that was going out of business.  I really like the Twister pattern.  I have to look for a backing for this quilt that is why I haven't quilted it yet.  Hopefully I will find some soon.

Twister Illusions.

I made the baby or wall hanging size 

but added the borders for

the twin size because

I wanted it to be a size that was

in between them both.

It is 46 x 56 inches.

Peggy.

Not Bearly There

I found a really neat pattern in Fons and Porter's Easy Quilts Spring 2011 magazine called Bearly There.  The pattern used bear fabric therefore the name for the quilt.  I had some neat Snowman fabric that I thought would be great with this pattern.  I fussy cut the snowmen for the center squares of the blocks and used beige and blue for the rest of the squares.  

The fabric is Snow Flurries from Clothworks.

I used the same fabric for the outer border.

This quilt is for a friend who still plays hockey

and he is in his 70's.

Some of the snowmen are skating so I 

thought it was quite appropriate for him.

I also finished another donation quilt.  This is made from scraps from a layer cake twister quilt that I made a few years ago for my grandson.

I got this pattern from Missouri Star Quilt Company.

On the video she doesn't use sashing and cornerstones but I learned a new technique 

from The Gourmet Quilter

about adding sashing strips and now I am loving 

making them.

Peggy

Magic Stack-n-Whack

One of the groups I go to decided before Christmas that it would be fun to try a Magic Stack-n-Whack Quilt.  I have never done one and had to go and buy fabric for the quilt.  There were about 5-6 of us that thought we would try this technique.  Today 3 of the gals and myself bought our completed squares to share with the group.

These are Sharon's squares.  

She chose fabric with

birds and fruit.  I love the way the

squares seem to spin.

Deb's square.  

She thought her fabric was too

busy, but it looks just great.

These are Leila's squares.  

She chose fabric with flowers

and also different background fabrics.

This is my square and you can see what happens when

you buy fabric that isn't busy enough and there

was too much background in the main

fabric.  I think that my 8 squares will

become 2 donation quilts. 

I have to go and buy some black fabric now

to use for sashing and borders.

I will post the quilts when they are finished.

Peggy.

Quilts for Twins

This years marks 50 years since I graduated from Nursing School and I hope to go to my reunion in June.  Our renunions are usually held every 5 years and I have been lucky enough to go to the last few.  This will be a big celebration because the Alumni also gets involved when it is the 50th reunion.  There will be an Alumni dinner on the Friday night and then a dinner with just our classmates on Saturday night and a final Brunch on Sunday morning before we say good-bye for another 5 years.

I usually stay with one of my classemates and this year will be no different.  I am going to visit with Joanne and her husband Tom for a few days at their home and then we will book into the hotel in downtown Toronto to be with the rest of our classmates.

Joanne and Tom have twin grandsons so I thought I would make them something as a thank you.  I bought the fabric a few years ago when I was in Southern Ontario.

I bought the cute Riley Blake fabric with the cars

and some of the fabric from the 4 patches

and thought I would make them placemats

but thought that they might like a quilt instead.

The fabric with the children is also Riley Blake fabric

that I picked up here in town for something

else but decided that it would be

better in this cute quilt.

I made two of these quilts identical but the backing will tell them apart.  One is blue and the other light green. I took the idea for this quilt from Quilts by Jen.  She made hers with leftover layer cake squares but I was using fat quarters so I made my squares 9 inches to get more squares from what I had.

Peggy.

Quilt Therapy Time Again

Our Thursday group was very interesting this week.  We had a visitor.  Pierina was in town for a funeral so she spent the day with us.  

Since her machine was in Toronto she couldn't

quilt, so she did some Swedish embroidery instead.

Maria was working on her trees.  This will be a table runner for one of  her daughters.  It is all paper pieced and taking a lot of time because she wants to make them all different.  It means sorting fabric for each one.

She has a lot of Black and White and White and Black

fabric to choose from.  She is doing a 

really nice job of them,  All her sorting and choosing

is paying off.

Joyce is using up some of her left over "Cabin by the Lake" fabric and making placemats.

Adding binding.

All the fabrics in the quilt and table runner.

I am working on a donation quilt.  I added 2 1/4 inch squares to two corners of 4 1/2 inch squares and then I am sewing them together just hap hazard to make it a scrappy looking quilt.

I may put sashing between the blocks, I haven't quite

decided yet.  I like using my scraps

to make quilts.  Everyone is different.

Peggy.

Possibilities Group

Our guild has a group call "The Possibilities".  A group of us get together once a month and talk about what we are doing in quilting and what we are working on.  It is always a learning experience for me.  This month there were 8 of us and lots of information was shared.

One of the more experienced quilters brought a flower block that she was working on.  It turns out that I have the book that she took the pattern out of.  I bought the book for $5 at the guild library sale.  It is called Fantastic Fabric Folding by Rebecca Wat.  I just had to try my hand at fabric folding.

I also made an orange one.

Isn't it cute.

There are quilts and wall hangings in the book and a lot of different flowers folded from fabric. 

Peggy.

Two More Finishes

I made a small donation quilt over Christmas.  It is called "Our Neighbourhood".  The quilt is made up of squares that look like little houses.  I found it on Moda Bake Shop.

Our Neighbourhood Charm Quilt

The second quilt I finished was "A Charlie Brown Christmas".  My daughter bought me the kit from Nancy's Notions for last Christmas and I hated to cut into it because I had to cut up the panel and make the squares 5 1/2 inches when they started out to be 5 x 7  rectangles.  I struggles on and finished it.

A Charlie Brown Christmas

It is 49 x 57

The backing for this quilt was very special.  Lynda went to Portugal last year and I wasn't able to go because of a medical problem and I couldn't get insurance so I asked her to bring me back some fabric. 

Portuguese fabric.

It was 60 inches wide so I didn't have to piece it.

Peggy

Quilt Therapy Thursday 2014

It's been quite a while since we got together for Quilt Therapy and it was good to get back together again.  We took most of the month of December off and then other things just kept creeping up on us in January so today was the day to start our weekly get-to-gethers.

Joyce has been working on her Cabin by the Lake Quilt and she made pillows and a table runner to match, so now she is ready to make placemats to go with the rest of the ensemble.

We laid out all the colours and came up with this order.

She finished one but no picture yet.

Maria is doing paper piecing and making

trees.  These will be made into a 

table runner.

I was sewing small white squares to 5 inch coloured

squares to make an 

X's and O's quilt.

I still have a lot more to do, see the stack there beside the other mess.

A great therapy day.

Peggy.

A New Baby Quilt for 2014

One of our great nieces is expecting a baby January 14 so I have been working on this quilt for her and her new little one.  They know it is a boy so that was the easy part of picking out the fabric.  I found this pattern out there somewhere on the internet but I forgot to copy the website so I can't give the designer credit.  I am really trying hard to do that when I see a pattern but sometimes I forget.  

I had to hang it on my design wall because there is far too much snow

outside to take a picture on my deck and it is

too cold to stand out there anyway.

This morning it was -35 C with a windchill of -45 C.  

I also made a bag to go with it.

I chose the dark blue for the bag

since the baby is a boy and I thought

it would co-ordinate nicely with

the quilt.

Peggy.

A Homemade Christmas

Christmas is over and the new year will be here soon.  It was a topsy-turvy Christmas this year.  There were some very sad days before Christmas, my sister-in-law passed away very suddenly in Florida where she lives and my niece in Kenora had her house burn down and her 13 year old son was flown to Winnipeg with severe burns.  When these kinds of things happen at Christmas time it is impossible to be with the people who need you most.  So I sent lots of good wishes and prayers their way.

Now that Christmas is over and things are starting to get back to normal (I said starting) I can post all the gifts I made and gave.

An Iron Caddy

Placemat with wine leaves and wine sayings.

A bag for Christine.

A table runner and placemats for both my

children.  I made 8 placemats and 2

table runners.

Mug Rugs, Oven Mitts, and a Hot Pad for 

Lynda who loves anything rooster.

A couple of Mug Rugs for 2 young

ladies who came for Christmas dinner.

I also made lots of Kleenex holders.

All in all it turned out to be a very nice Christmas.  I had 11 people for dinner and was lucky this year that I was prepared and had made 12 new placemats.

Peggy.

Baby It's Cold Outside

I had to take the words from an old song because when I woke up today it was -27 C and the windchill was -37 C and for all you Fahrenheit people that is -15 F and the windchill is -35 F.  No matter what system you use it is just plain cold.

I was able to get some of my quilted items finished for Christmas.  These are for me so I can post them now since I don't want to give away any presents that I am making.

I made 12 placemats so that I wouldn't be caught

short like I was last Christmas when there

were 12 people at our Christmas dinner

table and I only had 11 placemats.

I also made a table runner to match.  This pattern

was in the December/January 2014 

McCall's Quick Quilts.

It is still a few weeks till Christmas and I didn't want to put my best Table topper on our table to I quickly sewed binding on a piece of quilted fabric that I purchased a few years ago.  It does the job and I will put a better one on when I have cleaned the house and decorated it for Christmas.

I picked this piece of fabric up in Newfoundland

when we visited there a few years ago.

Jinny Beyer has lots of free pattern on her website and this placemat is one of them made from border fabric.  

This will be given to Meals on Wheels.  

I made 2 of them and have cut out 2 more.

If this cold weather keeps up they will be made

very soon.

Peggy.