Scrappy Stars for QFS

From January thru June on the last Sunday of each month, the church quilters put up a small display during Coffee Hour to encourage donations to help offset the cost of shipping quilts to residential school survivors - a flimsy or quilt and several blocks. It's a nice let everyone see what we are working on throughout the year and a good way to engage the congregation in this group effort. This coming Sunday is one of those days so I have been busy putting together a collection of 16-inch Scrappy Star blocks.

Quite some time ago, I cut a variety of 4.5" blocks in blues, aquas and yellows trying to have enough variety so that there isn't too much duplication of a print in a block, and then occasionally I sew one or two together.

The stars are the stitch-and-flip variety - easy peasy. I just lay out 15 coloured squares and one white, set two 2.5" blocks on the four coloured squares that will have star points, and off I go.

I think that there's only one yellow block, the rest are blue and aqua. And I think it's getting close to the point of there being enough for a quilt top but I'm undecided yet as to whether I will assemble them all or send them off as they are.

In my book, you just can't beat scrappy....M

Snowballs Are Flying!

Mother Nature seems intent on giving us one or two good blasts of snow before letting spring through the door so, rather than fight her I've decided to join her and make a few Snowballs of my own!

I'm going to blame Jan for this one. Included in the scrap bundles that she donated to the church quilters recently were a few nice pinks and peaches, which got me to thinking about a lovely, soft Snowball and Nine-Patch quilt I'd seen recently.

And, I had a few small pieces in that colour range just dying to be used up, so I started cutting. It's a Quilts for Survivors project so it will be lap sized, which means that it should move along nicely.

The year before last, I made a pink and orange QFS quilt and loved the combination, so it wasn't a huge stretch to jump in feet first.

Just to make things interesting, I've included the large floral in the upper right. This was one of Jan's scraps and there wasn't very much of it, but it adds a lovely bit of interest. Doesn't take much.

There's also a wee bit of mauve added to the mix. It's coming together very nicely, despite the pinky tinge that my sewing room lighting is casting....M

Another One Off the Frames

Taking the Double Wedding Ring quilt off the frames reminded me that I haven't shared another quilt that our small group quilted last fall. It's this gorgeous Zig Zag that Jane hand pieced which she has called Water's Edge.

She had made it for a Christmas gift and was keen to have it hand quilted; we were very happy to oblige.

It's amazing the impact that a simple HST and a fabulous colour palette can make. The quilting is very straight forward, with simple 1/4" lines bordering the dark teal and dark grey zig zags. 

All of the quilters were quite fond of this one and because it was lap-sized we were able to get it quilted up in short order. We love seeing what quilters outside of our circle are working on.

Where we struggled a little bit was in trying to decide if they should just run right across the quilt or do something else in the dark border. We considered a cross hatch, but because of the hatched pattern in the print, opted for two parallel lines so as not to complete with the print, and it was a good decision.

It was ready in good time to be bound for Christmas, and by all accounts is being enjoyed by it's new owner....M

It's Ready To Wrap!

The beautiful Double Wedding Ring quilt that our church group has been quilting is now a fait accompli and it couldn't be prettier.

Since I had the binding, I drew the short straw on being the binder, which meant attempting to figure out dealing with a scalloped border. I looked at several videos but could not find the one that I had come across a few weeks ago so I had to wing it a bit.

It was a little nerve wracking making that first cut to trim the edges but once I got started it went as smoothly as I could have wanted.

Attaching the binding to the quilt went quite well too given that we had hand basted the entire edge before we started quilting. It was just wrestling with a quilt this large that took a bit of time.

When it came to hand stitching the binding down it was the interior points that proved to be time consuming - it took me about eight hours to bind it, if not more. In the end, I created a very narrow pleat at the corner (approximately 7/8"!) to make everything work. Then I put in a few small stitches front and back to hold it all in place, keeping the very edge open to allow for a little movement.

A little midnight oil was burned to finish it this week as Jan, who is moving on Wednesday, had volunteered to connect with its owner en route to her new home to drop it off. I have to say, that's probably the last thing I would have entertained if it was me, but she is game.

I shared it with the quilters this morning and everyone agreed that the soft green binding was a perfect choice. And, as much as I like the front of it, the quilting shows up so beautifully on the white backing. We put in about 165 hours of work to finish it up so I can only imagine the total number of hours put in by the maker.

So, now it can be wrapped and gifted. We're hoping that the mother-of-the-bride is able to share a photo or two with us later this spring. It was such a gift to all of us who were able to work on this quilt to see it completed and ready for its new home....M

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

Pawsitively Lovely

Big, Big Paws is pretty much made up of four very large nine-patch blocks so assembly went really well.

Because I had those 16 large HSTs to make, and lots of the grey remnants, it was just as easy to make two HSTs at the same time so I decided to make two flimsies. No point having a pile of remnant 6.5" HSTs lying around wondering what else I could do with them. It also gave me a helpful visual reference so that I didn't mess up the order that the blocks were to be sewn together.

My borders are slightly bigger than those on the inspiration quilt because I wanted to get the quilts to be 48" x 64" to meet the size that Quilts for Survivors prefers. The edges are 6" finished and I believe that the top and bottom borders are about 12" wide.

It took a little doing because I discovered several random marks/stains on the sheets that I wasn't able to discern what they were - wax? oil? Regardless, it meant figuring out how best to cut so that I got the most out of the fabric while still avoiding the stains, but I did it.

The little blossom at the centre of the paws was a fun addition.

These are happy quilts and I hope that whoever they are gifted to enjoys them as much as I enjoyed making them....M

Big Bear's Closeup

The longest part of the giant Bear Paw process was finding the right combination of fabrics for each quadrant, but I finally got there. Because the lighting downstairs is hit and miss, I thought I'd share closeups of each 'paw' so that you can get a better sense of just how diverse the fabric selection is. You can get even better closeups if you click on each image.

Nice bright spring greens on this cold, cold winter's day.

Orange and yellow, heading towards tan at times.

This one is still showing up a little muddy but they are all actually quite bright. I love the combo.

And last but not least, teal and blue, with a little red surprise. That's an idea that I totally stole from the designer Giuseppe Ribaudo, AKA Giucy Giuce, and I love it. That little bit of quirkiness keeps everything interesting. I've tried to find a name for the pattern but haven't had any luck so I'm sticking with Big, Big Paws....M