Curved Flying Geese Workshop

Another UFO finished!

This is how far I got at the workshop.  There were two more flying geese rows to attach.

 In November of 2014, I took a workshop at the London Friendship Quilt Guild taught by Susan Clark.  We were instructed to take some leftover quilt blocks along, some background fabric and scraps. The quilt blocks were leftover from this row quilt from 2011.   I took along some hand dyed fabrics that I bought at a quilt shop on Salt Spring Island while visiting my sister and some KF scraps.  This was a really fun workshop with a unique method of inserting these strips.  Of course, I didn't get to finishing it right away and then it became a daunting task.  During the pandemic, I joined the London Friendship Quilt Guild UFO group and got it finished.  Then I got to blogging it and never finished the blog post!  Summer hit and we were outside!  I just found this half started post in my drafts.  Better late than never ☺!

The finished wallhanging

I found a lovely Kaffe print in my stash for the backing

a great memory of my visit to Salt Spring Island and a lovely quilt workshop

 

40th Anniversary challenge for the LFQG

 This year was the 40th anniversary of the London Friendship Quilt Guild and of course, due to covid, none of the usual celebrations could take place.  However, this does not stop a bunch of quilters from having fun! 😁

The guild put out a round robin challenge, but we would be making our own quilts.  The first task was to make a center block and put 40 on there somewhere.  I dug through my stash and found a couple of charm packs of Mama Sews fabrics as well as the leftovers of a scrap bag I bought and some miscellaneous yardage from the same line.  It had a sewing theme which was appropriate for a guild challenge.  I also found solid red and black and grey in the stash that could be used.

Each month, we met on zoom, showed our progress and drew the next border instruction.   The borders were:  houses, flowers, diamonds, four patches, paper piecing and rail fence.  There were some real challenges along the way, but I combined the diamond with the flower border (making the corner stones diamonds) and used the paper piecing for corner stones on the four patch blocks.  My original idea was to use the rail fence block to make a picket fence, but it just would not work colour wise.  You just have to listen to what these quilts tell you!

I did some extensive quilting on it and had fun with it.  And, we really got to know some of the members of the LFQG.  At the regular meetings, the group is so large and we tend to sit in the same spots and there are a lot of faces, but zoom has really helped us to connect with other members during this challenging time.  Quilters know how to take lemons and make lemonade.  My thanks to the program committee and board of the LFQG for all the wonderful ways we were able to stay connected this year.  Here's to the next 40 years for the guild. (Click on the photos to enlarge the picture.)

The finished quilt

The center block is from an embroidery pattern by Shelly Burge for Country Cabin Craft Patterns.  I added beads spelling forty on the sewing machine.

The diamonds quilted in the corners continued the diamond theme in the next row

These fun watering can blocks are from a wonderful book "The Paper-Pieced Home" by Penny Layman.  I resized the block to fit my borders.

Swirly quilting in the border

The back was pieced with bits and pieces of leftover charm squares, yardage and leftovers from my grandson's quilt backing.

The quilting from the back

 

Be my Neighbour!

 In May, the London Friendship Quilter's Guild offered its members a sew along to keep us connected during the lockdown.  Each week we were sent instructions to make a house block.  Once a week a zoom meeting was organized and we were able to show one another our blocks (or the lack of one ☺) and chat with one another.  It was a great way to keep in touch and get to know members better.

Kona solids was my choice for this sampler quilt since I have a wonderful collection of them.  I had an awesome piece of house fabric that I bought awhile ago at The Quilt Kitchen in Exeter and used that to choose colours for the quilt.  

 

I had a darker grey Kona solid and used it for background.  I never looked at the size of the quilt and happily started on my first block when I realized it was 18" by 12" or 14"!!  That is huge.  A panic email out to the Quilt Kitchen for more grey Kona.  Yes, she had it in stock and tossed it in the mail that same afternoon and it was in my community mailbox at 9:30 the next day! When does that ever happen? It was quilted by Chris Bogart.

(Click on the photo for a larger view.)

The finished quilt

I saved all the cut offs from the angles pieces of the quilt and used them as leaders/enders and made pinwheels and houses out of them and used them for the back of the quilt since I didn't have enough of the house fabric for the whole backing.  A multi coloured Kaffe Fasset fabric was perfect for the binding.

Chris quilted it with a bird/flower overall pantograph ☺.

 

This summer I got a Bernina 1230 and it has a blanket stitch!  I tried it out on these cute bird appliques on this quilt and it worked very well.