Braid quilt

Gail and I got together tonight for QNIC (Quilting Night in Canada) to work on our quilts which will be donated to the chemo unit at our local hospital. The Elgin Piecemakers guild pairs up two members to work together on a quilt so we get to know one another while olanning and sewing a fun and worthwhile project. Gail had a jelly roll that she donated to the cause and I contributed the backgrounds. We split the jelly roll into two colourways and Gail is working with this pale green background:

My half of the jelly roll is paired with a burgundy background and has the blue and beige strips:


I am sewing my braids on my trusty Singer 15-88 treadle:


The beginnings of the braids:


We will choose sashings/borders after the braids are finished. The pattern is from the book, "Open a Can of Worms" by Debbie Caffrey

Ode to Aging (or Menopause!) Quilt finished!!

I got my Menopause quilt finished just in time to get it into the local Plowing Match quilt show which will be held at the end of May in Shedden, ON. The quilts will be displayed at the actual International Plowing Match in St. Thomas, ON in September. The details of the Shedden quilt show are also on the IPM website under the Lifestyles tab.

Here is the finished quilt. Sorry I couldn't get a really good picture of it as my cutting table is in the way :-). You can read the original story behind this quilt, and why it's called "Menopause" on this blog post.

This is the backing I used..it's a navy blue toile depicting a winter scene with sleigh rides and skating. I thought this would be appropriate to 'cool' off the colours on the other side!

The blocks in the quilt:

Susan in Texas suggested that I add a border of pinwheels to provide 'cooling breezes' for the quilt :-). Thanks so much for that suggestion Susan...it was perfect way to use up a lot of scraps from the blocks. Pinwheel production:


I added an orange button in the middle of each pinwheel block. Besides looking cute, it also covers up any unmatched centers :-).


Not sure if you can see the funky flowers quilted in the borders. Click on the photo to enlarge it for a better view:

I quilted leaves in the top and bottom striped borders:


The quilting on one of the blocks is shown here. The center blocks had straight line quilting on it and I added some buttons in the center of some of the blocks to match the pinwheel squares.

Here are the individual blocks and the names of each one....#1 Bad Hair Day:

Block #2 Wacky Mood Swings:

Block #3 Crow's Feet

Block #4 Squeaky Joints:

Block #5 Arm Flags

Block #6 Chocolate Cravings

Block #7 PMS

Block #8 Empty Nest Syndrome:

Block #9 Senior Moments:

Block #10 The Pull of Gravity:

Block #11 Can't Remember Nothin':

Block #12 Hot flashes:

Now to decide which of my many UFO's gets a turn next. But, my new Kaffe Fasset fabrics are calling out to me to play! Maybe I'll squeeze in a little new project :-)

Yumm!!!

Aren't these yummy colours?

Picked them up at one of my favourite quilts shops today. I listened to Pat Sloan's radio program yesterday and she interviewed Kaffe Fasset and Liza Prior Lucy. I've always been drawn to his wonderful colours, and haven't actually bought any of his fabrics yet because I didn't know what to do with them. But, listening to the interview, he just has fun playing with colour! So, I picked these up today at the Marsh Store and added the lime and turquoise solids. I got a fun quilt book from my daughter in law on Sunday for Mother's Day. Methinks I'm going to play with these fabrics and the book and see what I come up with :-).

Check out these colours!

Here are the blocks all finished by my friend Yellie who also took the Not Your Grandmother's Log Cabin class last Saturday:

My other friend, Amy's top...Amy added another border around the whole thing:


My blocks all sewn together:

I will add my friend Lynn's blocks to the blog post when she has it together :-). Awesome the way the colours look so different!!

Not Your Grandmother's Log Cabin

I took a class with Marci Baker at Country Concession in Cookstown on Saturday with several friends. We had a great time. Marci is a very down to earth teacher and we learned a lot. I finished putting the triangles and diamonds together today and put them up on my design wall. I need to sew them together yet and will post some more pictures later when it is totally finished. I'm thinking of making this into a table topper for my round coffee table in my livingroom. There are no inset seams in this project. The outer diamonds are actually two triangles.


The diamonds:


All the blocks on the design wall: