The Double Wedding Ring is Off the Frames

Our quilters are doing a little bit of a happy dance because on Friday, the Double Wedding Ring quilt came off the frames. It is beautiful. 

So many quilts are machine quilted these days for speed and convenience but there's still nothing like the look and feel of a traditional hand-quilted quilt. 

When we started working on this one at the end of last year we thought that it could take us until March/April, but we thrilled to have surprised ourselves. It's ready to bind!

I made the binding when I marked the quilting pattern so it's all ready to go, but first I have to trim the edges, which are all large scallops. Then I need to figure out how to attach the binding so that things don't bunch up at the corners, but I've found a good instructional video to follow. Having relatively large and shallow arcs will help.

We've noticed a couple of small stains on the front of the quilt that will need to be looked at and today I found another small one when I was examining the back. I don't think that it will be the end of the world if they don't come out, given the sentimentality of this project.

With so many different quilters working on it sometimes we wondered what the quilting would look like when it was all finished but it has turned out beautifully. It's such a treat to look at....M

The Cowboy Quilt Has a Border

Well, Jan's Cowboy Quilt is now finished. 

After inserting a 1" light grey border, I took all of the 10" strips left from the extra blocks and laid them end to end to create two rounds to make the final border and I think it works.

There are lots of busy prints in this one so the solid calms everything down a bit, creating a break for the eye.

I was sort of making it up as I went and wasn't convinced that I would have enough strips left to make a second border so the grey corners are sort of catch as catch can. To try and make things consistent, I ended up sub cutting two of the horseshoe strips into corner squares so that they would all be the same.

I wasn't wrong in my concern about not having a enough strips to make the outer border - I was definitely short. So. I dug into my stash and found one more sand print to add to the mix - the little brown stars in the bottom right - and added five of them to make it all work. 

Now it's ready to be quilted. As I was packing it up to take back to the church I remembered that I had also set aside this red 'hanky' print from Jan's remnants to make a binding with. It works with the cowboy theme and will make for a cheery finish to the quilt.....M

The Closer

One of our quilters at the church - Jan - is in the process of moving to southern Ontario in the coming weeks so she has been doing a major purge of her sewing room in order that she's not paying to move fabrics and WIPs that she no longer loves/needs. As a result, our quilters have been one of the beneficiaries of lots of goodies. 

After sorting several bags into colour groups, I brought home four, maybe five, projects to get to the finish line for Quilts for Survivors. I feel like a closing pitcher in a baseball game put in for the win 😊.

This cowboy-themed flimsy seemed like a good place to start. It's an interesting, fairly straight forward design with six oversized batik Cathedral Window pieces added throughout, which I haven't seen before.

It's not quite large enough so the question was how to make it larger without any of the original fabrics. I had also brought a piece of light grey home so I'm wondering about inserting a border of it.

And, there is this pile of 8 or 9 surplus blocks. After a little noodling I decided to take them apart (a job easily finished while watching TV one evening) and then playing with the 2.5" x 10" strips to see what I might create in terms of another border. Time to play on the design wall for a bit....M

Sweet Hearts

It's Valentine's Day, the perfect opportunity to share a pretty little heart-themed quilt in the making.

This is one of my sister Betty's creations, begun about six months ago for one of her two nieces and steadily worked from concept to quilt.

Each hand-pieced block is 4.5" in size and separated from it's neighbours by a narrow white sashing, which, like the pinks, are very scrappy. The hearts in each row are staggered against the adjoining rows. LUV.

She's made about 400 blocks in total but will likely use only 330.

The extra blocks were going to be worked into a border pattern I believe, but she's reimagining that idea so we'll wait and see what the final design becomes. So sweet.

Happy Valentine's Day!....M