Lots of Ooohs and Ahhhhs

When I visited with Sandy recently she gave me a lovely bundle of goodies to include in our Quilts for Survivors shipment this fall, the main one being this fantastic Postage Stamp quilt.

It's made from tiny 3" Nine Patches made with 1.5" squares. 

If you do the math, she's got 9 Nine-Patches per block (81 tiny squares) and there are 20 blocks - all hand pieced - so that makes for 1,620 squares!

Apparently she was channeling me and trying to use up as many of her tiny scraps as she could in this one. I'd say mission accomplished! It sounds like there were several times when there was a fair bit of blue smoke as she worked her way through this, but finish it she did, and it's just gorgeous.

And she didn't stop there. It's machine quilted and bound and, after they add a label, ready to be shipped to a survivor.

Yesterday I shared it with our circle of quilters at the church and they were completely gob smacked, not only that she put all of that work into this beauty, but that she was prepared to give it away. That butter yellow border was a huge hit. Several doubted that they could be quite this generous.

Thank you so much Sandy; someone will receive and enjoy a real treasure to help them along on their healing journey....M

My Nine-Patches Take a Getaway

Wanting some hand stitching to do during a short getaway, I got busy and threw the scrappy Nine-Patches that I've been working on lately for another QFS quilt up on the design wall. I wanted to lay everything out and then pin the rows/columns so that I could easily stitch in the car or as we sat and gabbed. 

Not sure just how many I had made, I discovered that I needed a few more. I also decided that I wanted it one row longer (you know my aversion to square quilts!) so I whipped up a few on the machine in order to meet my deadline. The blocks weren't in any particular order and I made very few tweaks to the final layout, which I really like. Those 3 1/2" border blocks make me happy. I snapped a photo for insurance so that I had a reference in case I got myself messed up.

I made a rough sketch of how everything would go together, numbered and pinned each row/column, and everything was tucked into a bin with thread and scissors. Time to hit the road!...M

I Spy Flimsy

It didn't take very long for our quilters at the church to get the I Spy flimsy for Poppy's new little brother-to-be together (see my last post for details).

Once we landed on the pattern everyone just made up a bundle of blocks using whatever fabrics they had and there were lots to choose from. We used 42 in this one and there are 30 leftovers, so I suspect that we'll make a few more blocks and then have ourselves a second flimsy to quilt.

The blocks are all so different, and SO cute!

Some really adorable prints for little ones out there, aren't there?

Here's a little behind-the-scenes snippet for you...the kitchen island in the church hall is ideal for cutting our batting/trimming up quilts and also proved to be ideal for testing a layout. After this photo was taken, we received two more bundles of blocks so a few changes were made to integrate something from every quilter. All of the extras have become the start of the next one....M

Delicate Snowballs

I've got another pinkish quilt top to share with you today - Snowballs and Nine Patches is now a flimsy, and a very delicate looking one at that.

This is another Quilts for Survivors project and started with me on a mission to use up several peach and pink remnants from Jan and one or two of my own that I'd like to see the end of. Adding the large pink floral and a bit of mauve makes it just a little more interesting. Like many of my squirrel projects, it started on a whim, but I didn't expect it to turn out quite so pretty!

I'd love to have one like this on one of my beds, albeit a larger version.

The snowballs and nine patches are 6" blocks and work really nicely together. I tried desperately to ensure that the same print didn't touch itself but inevitably there were a couple of spots where that happened. Such is the life of a scrappy quilter.

And I'm still loving that wonderfully scrappy & pink Flying Geese border.

We don't quilt all of the flimsies that we make to send north but I am going to suggest that we quilt this one, just so I can spend more time with it. I'm thinking a cross hatch that runs through the snowballs and on the diagonal through the nine patches would work nicely....M

The 8,000 Orphan Block Challenge

For the fourth year in a row now, the sewing machines of Holy Trinity’s quilters and our friends continue to hum as we sew quilt blocks and tops to send to Quilts for Survivors for residential school survivors. Several of the quilt tops we make are also hand quilted throughout the year and delivered with our fall shipment (last year we shipped 41 quilts and flimsies and 34 16-inch blocks). These quilts are a symbol of support, respect and love for those who have undergone the trauma of attending a residential school.

This year, we’re also joining in on a fun new challenge. Quilts for Survivors are asking for donations of orphan blocks – you know, those projects that somehow never made it to the finish line and are now tucked into bags and boxes around the house. 8,000 in total! They will be transformed into quilts of comfort, healing and love.

Any and all sizes of blocks are welcome as long as they are made of 100% cotton. As usual, we are asked to avoid fabric with religious symbols, school-related imagery, travel motifs or graphic content as they may be triggering or inappropriate for survivors.

The bulk of the blocks will be accepted in June at Quilt Canada in Winnipeg but they have already started accepting them by mail and have received over 2,000 to date, a terrific start! (These little guys are less than 6".)

Our current orphan block count at Holy Trinity is 64 and we would love to see it grow. The blocks you see are a combo of mine and donations from some of the gals at the church. I'm hoping to collect a few additional hidden treasures from my quilting peeps to add to the total so that we can include them in our fall shipment. If you have orphans that you would like to send to a good home, check out this Facebook post.

I keep my orphans in a little basket and have dug most of them out to send, but, of course felt that this might be a chance to make blocks smaller than the 16" size that they usually request. You know, just to get them out of my system. 

I've been wanting to try a spool block for ages, so I gave it a shot and made two. They are 12" and came together quickly. Not sure that I would ever make a spool quilt but it was fun to have a reason to try out the block. I suspect that there will be a few more sample blocks made before our shipment is packed up in the fall 😉....M

Spring Geese

Well, it's April 21 and you would expect to see lots of signs of spring and some nice warm weather to help us say goodbye to winter, but that seems to be a big ask from Mother Nature right now. Spring is, for the most part, still quite chilly and we actually saw flurries this morning, so we aren't out of the woods yet. Despite that, I've been working on decidedly spring-themed Flying Geese.

They will border my Snowballs & Nine Patch quilt, an idea that I got from Then Came June. Actually, the inspiration for this entire quilt has come from her Barret quilt pattern.

Originally, it was just the colour palette and blocks that appealed to me but as my sewing progressed and I started to think about border/no border, I took a second look at what she had done and realized that the picot border was a collection of Flying Geese blocks. Brilliant!

One of my favourite quilts - and the first that I completely pieced by hand - has a picot border and I really love it, the only difference being that it's constructed with HSTs. It always makes me smile. I did the math and realized that if I used the four-at-a-time method to make the geese they'd come together quite quickly. 

Making them scrappy really worked with the rest of the quilt layout.

I'm well on my way and looking forward to starting to sew the rows together....M

The Last of My Quadrangle Blocks

Since January, my hand stitching project has been sewing scrappy Quadrangle blocks for a Quilts for Survivors quilt top. As you can see, Minnie is doing double duty as my side table until I return to quilting her...

The colours are quite cheery and spring-like and have been fun to pull together.

The fact that the word 'LOVE' showed up in gold alongside these orange squares made me smile.

Slow but steady progress means that I now have the last of the required 20 blocks at the finish line - I saved these pretty blues for the last.

There are about half a dozen blocks still to press and then it's time to cut a variety of 9.5" low volume squares to alternate with the pieced blocks. I think when it's time to assemble everything I might use the machine....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 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

Big, Big Paws

I've been working on a quilt that is sort of counter intuitive for me, but I have to say that I'm really enjoying it. No itty, bitty 1" strips or squares in this one. This time it's 6" squares and HSTs. And...more grey.

Just after I mentioned that I tend not to use grey that often, I ran across a photo of a Bear Paw quilt that's been on my radar for quite some time - grey with a terrific collections of brights that often read as solids and the odd funky large print.

It was a little scant on details initially...

but as more colours filled in you could see it starting to build.

Eventually, despite the not so great lighting in the sewing cave, you can see that it has started to really come together....M

Template Time

It's been forever since I've made a quilting template but we needed one to mark the quilting pattern for the Double Wedding Ring. I'm thinking that a purchased stencil may have been used for the portion that is already quilted but there was no sign of one when the quilt was dropped off for us, so I brought it home to try and figure out a way to do it.

As a reminder, my mission was to create a template for this pattern. After a little pondering I decided to just make an oval for each quadrant rather than attempting a stencil for the entire pattern, so I rescued a cereal box from the recycling bin and proceeded to draft one. It went quicker that I had imagined.

I just measured one of the ovals from the existing pattern from end and then determined it's overall width at the mid point. Once I had that cut I made it 1/4" wide and cut the centre out.

The maker had pressed the centre panel of each block so as to mark it's centre, so I just positioned one end of the petal point at the centre of the block and the other end pointing towards a corner. For the circle that encased the petals I was lucky enough to find a plastic container the same size as the outer ring and then marked an echo line 1/4" inside of that. Easy peasy.

It took several hours to mark the remaining 32 blocks that need quilting but I was determined to do it all in one day. For whatever reason, it was tricky getting a light pencil line to show up well on the fabric but I eventually got to the point that things moved along. I don't like a heavy quilting line but also wanted to ensure that the quilters could see the pattern.

It's been up on the frame at the church since early January and we are seeing good progress. Because the edges of the quilt are scalloped, we first hand basted all of those outer circles so that everything was stabilized, which took a fair bit of time. Eventually we were able to begin quilting and this past Friday we finished the first column of eight blocks and were thrilled to roll it for the first time. Woohoo! Only 24 more to go!....M