Weekend Retreat

Things have been pretty busy the past couple of weeks. Embroidery, knitting, quilting...all of these things have been taking place. And the more I do, the more I want to do. April 9th weekend, our embroidery guild, The Texada Island Needlework Guild, also know as TING, had Helen McCrindle come up and teach a weekend workshop on stumpwork embroidery. It was a great workshop, full of new techniques and learning. Guess what, I finished the project during the class, so... NO UFO!!! Here is a photo of our class project:

Dogwood Flower Roundlet - Stumpwork Embroidery

On Monday, I went to visit my friend Lynda in Gibsons. We relaxed, went shopping, listened to music, etc. We visited Carola's Quilt Shop and Unwind yarn shop while we were out and about. I am ashamed to say that I bought stuff for a beaded scarf at Unwind and was busy stringing beads onto shiny rayon cord about 30 min after getting back to Lynda's house. The lace gloves were forgotten, cast aside as I succumbed to the glittery lure of the scarf.

I restrained myself at the quilt shop. I only bought a "layer cake" of reproduction fabrics for 30% off. I have plans for it; Angel, Cheri and I are going to do a block exchange of the "Whimsical Quilt Garden" pattern, using reproduction fabrics.  http://www.pieceocake.com/Books/whimsicalquiltgarden.html
Angel and Cheri have gone shopping for background fabrics, I have some on hand. Now we just have to get started. We are going to make one block a month.

Of course, first we should finish the other quilt we started a couple years ago. Rosewood Cottage by Nancy Odom. http://nancyodom.biz/shop.html  Angel is clearly in the lead. She finished all the blocks and has only the border to work on. I made three blocks and stopped there. I am not sure what Cheri accomplished. We sent her block kits when she was in Alberta for the first four blocks. I don't know if she went any further with it. Barb McCormack started making the blocks for her version of this quilt at the retreat. She decided to fuse them instead of hand appliqueing them. After seeing her fused blocks up on the wall, all ready for machine stitching, I am starting to rethink my original plan to hand applique mine. Maybe invisible machine applique is the way to go. Hmm.

Barb's version

The Texada Retreat, a weekend filled with friends, food, quilting, more food, and, for many, UFO's. My weekend projects consisted of:
1. Finishing a quilted bag for my co-worker Roxanna's accordion.

2. Making two long-awaited T-shirt quilts for my former co-worker, Maureen. I am ashamed to say that I accepted the T-shirts in 2006, with the promise that I would construct two quilts, one for each child, from their collection of T-shirts from the North West Territories. I believe I looked at the shirts, whose logos were unfortunately already cut out, making uniform sizing of the t-shirt fabric blocks impossible. I stabilized a few, ran out of interfacing and stuck them in a bag to deal with in the near future, once I obtained more interfacing. There they sat for way too long. I did not have a clear idea of how to lay them out due to the inconsistent sizing of patches, so I decided to deal with them by ignoring them. However, in recent weeks, their thin piping wails began to get on my nerves, so I decided to knuckle down and figure out how to make a T-shirt quilt. The internet was invaluable in this endeavor. I looked at a few websites with tips and tricks, rolled up my sleeves, borrowed fabric from Barb McCormack, which saved me a trip to Powell River, and voila!...

3. The group project, a purse and wallet to match.

So this was my weekend, quilting and too much chocolate!!! Here are a few photos of the projects the other quilters were involved with:

Suzanne's Eagle Quilt

Sharon's Funky Chickens

Jessie's Mexican Star. I too have one of these quilts as a UFO

Doriana's Mayflies Quilt

How much is that doggie in the window?

Angel's Star Quilt

Jessie's Scrappy Quilt

Timberlane Quilt Show

Well, the Timberlane Quilt Show is finished for 2011. It was a great show with lots of outstanding quilts entered. There are so many talented people in Powell River and Texada Island! It is a lot of work, though, and the members of the Timberlane Quilt Guild devote a lot of time and energy to hosting this event. Here are just a few of my favorite quilts from the show. I am afraid I don't have the names of all the quilts. There were many other outstanding entries. If you wish to see photos of the show, click on this link: http://www.timberlanequiltersguild.ca/ .Pictures are not posted yet, but they should be up in the next few days.

Savannah by Donna Haake

Sadie by Jennie Read

Color My World by Georgeann Brewer

Another masterpiece by Georgeann Brewer



Eleanor Sinclair's Fiddlehead Ferns



Lone Fisherman by Darlene Sinclair



Georgeanne Brewer's amazing quilt


 

Here I am with my Gillies Bay Garden Quilt

To my surprise, it won Best in Show.

Made It, With Hours to Spare!

The quilt is finished, done, completed at 2PM this afternoon, thanks to my good friends Sandra and Virginia, who dropped by and helped me sew the rod pocket on while I worked on the last of the binding. This quilt is bigger than I thought--about 88 x 110 inches. No wonder it took so long to quilt. Here is a photo, though it does not do it justice.

And finished at 2PM, what a luxury of time I had left! I am ashamed to say that I started casting around for a (new) project to work on right away. I started going through drawers, then reminded myself that I have gloves to finish knitting, a sampler to finish embroidering etc and I have no business looking at the Nordic Needle canvaswork ornament of the month club. http://www.nordicneedle.com/PROD/clubs/CLUB03.html

After all, one UFO down means you get to start another project to replace it, right? Hmm. maybe I am missing the point of this blog.

With A Little Help From My Friends

It is the day before the quilt show, less than 24 hours before I have to be in Powell River with my Gillies Bay Garden Quilt! I think I will make it! I have the binding 3/4 sewed on. That leaves one edge, a seam down the middle and a rod pocket to handsew down. Oh, and a quilt label to attach as well. My friend Sandra is coming by at eleven to help me out. I also had a little help yesterday from this friend too...

My mother's cat, Sarah

.

The minute I brought the quilt out she snuggled in. She does not normally sleep anywhere except her bed, but she seemed to love this new blankie. I told her she could not stay there indefinitely though! Now, back to stitching!!

Deadline Looming

I am feverishly working on the Grandmother's Garden Quilt. I have the week off, except for short visits to work to troubleshoot, thank goodness. I just about pulled an all-nighter last night. I decided my goal for the day was to have borders, backing and batting on the border attached and ready for quilting. I worked from noon until 3:30 AM with few breaks, but accomplished my goal! Now I am busy quilting today. My friend Sandra came over and worked on her quilt for a couple hours and kept me company.

Sandra, working on her first quilt

Snowflake block from Sandra's Quilt

I am supposed to be making the same quilt along with her and teaching her as we go. I am teaching, but my quilt is sidelined for now due to quilt show. Today's Goal: to quilt the border, and, if possible, attach binding. Tomorrow and Thursday: hand-sew binding and rod pocket to back. I think I will have to watch a lot of movies while I stitch. It will likely take several hours. I have two sides of the inner border quilted so far. Hopefully today will not require a marathon like yesterday. Wish me luck!

If It Were Not For The Last Minute, Nothing Would Get Done

My, it has been a long time since I made an entry. Excuses: No Internet access at home. I did have dial-up, but after being unable to connect for 3 months due to server problems I cancelled it. I am awaiting high speed availability through our local community association, but there have been many delays in getting the system up and running. More excuses: I have been so busy since November, I think I need a vacation from my life. Work, personal committments, professional upgrading and basic home maintenance seem to fill all my days. Also, my other half had to have surgery in January and was off work recuperating for seven weeks. Somehow, I did not get any sewing done with my husband hanging around full time. I have hardly had any time to work on any UFO's or anything else for that matter.

However, with the upcoming Timberlane Quilt Show, a deadline is looming. And you know how I rise to the challenge when there is a deadline involved. For the past two weeks it has been all about my Gillies Bay Garden quilt. This is a UFO with a past. I first saw this quilt hanging in Rose Garden Quilts, and it was the reason I took up quilting about 10 years ago. They were teaching a class on the quilt, but I was unable to attend due to work schedule conflicts. I bought the book, and was gifted with the accompanying videos a couple years later. It is an Eleanor Burns pattern from the book "Grandmother's Garden Quilt.", and is based on a pattern from 1928's that was published as a serial in a newspaper. See the link to her pattern: http://www.eleanorburns.com/shoponline/books_display.asp?book=Grandmothers_Garden_Quilt&i=17900&pg=2

There are two options when doing this quilt: a machine appliqued flat version of the flower blocks or a dimensional applique done by hand. I opted to do the dimensional applique, which is a lot more work, but also a lot more fun. The techniques for the applique are perfectly brilliant. There are so many fun things about this quilt. Each flower basket, and there are 21 of them, contains different flowers with leaves and petals that stand out from the quilt. There are hand embroidery details on many of the blocks as well.

Canterbury Bells Block

Pansy Block

Fuschia Block

This quilt has had many stops and starts, due to me changing my mind about layout options, running out of background fabric, buying alternate block background fabric that I didn't like once I had cut it out, etc. The bulk of the flower blocks were sewed during my convalescence from gallbladder surgery three years ago. I originally bought a pansy print that I was going to use for sashing fabric between the blocks, but once they were done, I decided it looked too busy. So I decided to use layout option #2, which was to have alternate blocks of cream fabric in between the flower blocks. This was all very well and good, except the original cream background, bought 4 years earlier, was no longer around. So I went in search of something that would co-ordinate. This is not as easy as it might seem. There are way too many shades of cream or off white, and the one I first picked was a rarely found shade, it seems.  I purchased one fabric, did not like it once I cut it out, and am now using it for a pieced background on the quilt. I had a fat quarter of the perfect fabric in my stash, but did not know where or when I had acquired it. By some lucky happenstance, my good friend Angel found yardage one day at Fabricland. So now I could proceed with my quilt.

I decided that the lovely flower blocks needed Trapunto quilted alternate blocks to compliment them, and after watching the Reversible Quilts video by Sharon Pederson, decided on a Quilt-as-you-go method with tiny sashing between the blocks. Each alternate trapunto block took about and hour and a half to quilt. The flower blocks take about 45 min to an hour each to quilt with fine stippling. This fine quilting would have been very difficult to accomplish on a queen sized quilt fully assembled. I finished quilting the main body of the quilt this weekend and started joining them together with the 1/2 inch sashing. The only downside to this method is that you have to sew all the sashing on the back of the quilt down by hand on one edge. I forsee a week of nonstop hand sewing. I decided to use the original pansy fabric for the sashing on the back and the final quilt binding. The yardage I currently have on hand will hopefully be sufficient. I think this will be a close one. Oh, for another third of a metre.

Trapunto Block



Partially Assembled Quilt



The quilt is currently assembled in two halves, and now I have to tackle the borders. The original quilt pattern has a sawtooth border made up of a couple hundred 2 1/2 inch half-square triangles. I think I will do this. I only have 10 days to finish this quilt, but what the heck! I am always up for a challenge. Alas, I seem to have cut up some of the yardage for the half square triangles for sashing. I will have to scramble to cut the remaining squares out of the few scraps I have left. Wish me luck.

Scraps, border strips & bits

Fibre Friday

A Friday to myself.....what to do, what to do...The possibilities are endless. There are the things I should be doing:

And then there are the things I want to do: Such as:

1. Work on my Grandmother's Garden quilt. This is a photo from our November retreat. I worked on this UFO for 2 days, and have not sewed a stitch on anything since.
2. Work on my baby quilt, also pictured above. I brought it to retreat, pinned the blocks up and never sewed a stitch on it. My ambitions are always larger than my time frame.
3. Start my Christmas gifts. Hmm. I am doing it again. Every year, I swear I will not fall victim to what has laughingly become known as "Susan and Cheri's Annual Christmas Panic", and every year I do. Hi, Cheri! Are you panicking yet? In November, it suddenly occurs to me that Christmas is coming, and that I have to make a gift for each of my friends and loved ones, because bought gifts just aren't the same. Then I end up sewing gifts til 1AM Christmas Eve, and wrapping unfinished ones for those closest to me, with promises to finish them by Jan 1st. Every year, my New Year's Resolutions, to finish my UFO's and make a Christmas Present a month, are dusted off with great intentions. Once the memory of sewing quilt binding on until 15 min before I am due at my Mother's for Christmas dinner fades, I go back to my old ways. Will I ever learn? 
4. Spin wool rovings, dyed at my friend Lynda's last month, while watching season one of Glee. Alas, I am a sucker for musicals.

5. Tidy up all the silk embroidery ribbon and thread I dyed this month. I will not need to dye anything more this century. They are just lying around in a glorious tangle, and I need to sort them out desperately.

6. Sit back and admire the yarn I spun and plied yesterday evening:

7. Have all my friends over for tea this afternoon and work on my embroidery. Speaking of embroidery, I finished another project. Oh, I should have deadlines for everything. Retirement gift for Maureen, finished at noon the day of her retirement party, following a last-minute scramble looking for bellpull hardware. I thought I had some but they were too big. Thank goodness Lorrie was in Nanaimo and able to stop by The Stitcher's Muse.

8. Bake cookies for the craft sale tomorrow. Our embroidery group is hosting the luncheon, and I need to provide goodies.

9. Start a new project. I just got a pattern in the mail and it is calling my name. As an added bonus, it could be a Christmas gift as well.  http://abbeylanequilts.com/winterwonderland.html

I suspect my day will be filled with a combo of all of the above. I am so fickle.