Circle crazy!

My quilt students bring me the most wonderful gifts!  Check out the Royale tissue box that Roxene's husband found in a package he bought at the grocery store.   

Aren't these circles just too cool?

 Roxene made a baby quilt using the Tossed circles pattern from Swirly Girls with lovely bright coloured batiks.  She was about to throw these leftovers in the garbage can when I stopped her.  I played around with them until this design 'popped out' and fused them in place and finished the satin stitching with various King Tut variegated threads.  I am just quilting straight lines across the whole piece with clear Mono.poly thread from Superior.  I'm liking the way it's turning out.  We're going circle crazy here LOL.  Someone needs to stop me!!

Quilting the leftovers from the circles Roxene used for her baby quilt

Leaders/Enders progress

I've been working on a new leaders/enders project for a little while after finding these cool templates at a local quilt shop.  I spent some time over Christmas break cutting down all my scraps from my Diamond Quilt using the mini tumbler shaped template called Fat Cats and sorted them into warm and cool colours.   This is a bit of a challenge with Kaffe fabrics since many of them are mixed with both warm and cool!  I then sewed rows of 25 tumblers alternating warm and cool.  Here is the progress so far.

Twenty-one rows of 25 or 26 sewn together.  I am adding three more tumblers to the rows and it should turn out squarish.

Closeup of some of the tumblers.

It's always amazing to me how you much you can sew together between other projects! 

Sewing Retreat

We had a great sewing retreat on Saturday at a local Church hall.  It was a great time socializing, seeing what everyone else is making, eating treats and actually getting some sewing done :-).  A few of our members couldn't make it since it was Family Day weekend here in Canada.  We had it scheduled a few weeks ago, but there was a snowstorm on that day.
 

I took my trusty Featherweight to the retreat (since I was the photographer, there's no picture of me sewing)

I'm working on a sampler using some Kaffe scraps and Kona solids from Tula Pink's 100 Modern Quilt blocks book.

Deb's very cute bag

Pat O is working on a lovely blue and white quilt

Barb is working with some shot cottons

Joanne's lovely feathers

We used bed risers to make cutting easier - Roxene busy cutting blocks

Heather and Yvonne - is that the Indian Orange Peel? LOL

Donna and Anne working on a rag quilt and Farmer's Wife blocks

Lots of laughter from Pat P's corner :-).  She's also working on Farmer's Wife blocks

Diane concentrating on her  braid tree skirt

This tree skirt will be gorgeous

A lovely block

Barb's pretty blocks

Joanne

Beth's beautiful bargello done with a layer cake

 

Coffee table runner

My friend, Helen, had a special birthday so it needed a special gift.  We have enjoyed so much hospitality and cups of coffee and tea at her place.  I found the perfect coffee/tea fabric in my stash and made her a table runner.  I cut 60 degree triangles from this border print and played with them until this arrangement popped out :-).

(click on the photos to enlarge them)

Finished runner

I quilted it with organic line quilting with a variegated King Tut thread

I found some coffee bean fabric for the binding and had just enough (inches to spare!)

Denise's Baby quilt

We had a baby shower for Denise's new baby, Landon and she had chosen grey and yellow for her quilt.  I had so much fun with the tossed circles quilt that I decided to do another one.  This one was also a lot of fun.  I used 10 or 12 FQ's for the circles and borders rather than the 5 that the pattern called for.  This produces enough circles to make two quilts.  I've already cut out the background for the second quilt and fused the circles.  Anytime I'm in the mood to satin stitch, I can go ahead and indulge :-). 

The back was fun, but made me dizzy!

Border quilting

loop quilting in the background

The finished quilt

Never Throw Anything Away

This summer I made a baby quilt for my niece which I blogged about here.  I finished quilting the second quilt top for my friend Danielle's new baby as she fell in love with the giraffes too :-).  Here is the finished top (I forgot to take a picture of the finished quilt so I will add that later when I get one):

Finished quilt top

The circles were cut using my Creative Grids Circle Savvy ruler and the pattern was Ring Toss from Swirly Girls.  The circles are cut from squares with a square of steam a seam fused to the back.  After cutting the circles, there is a 'frame' left and it seemed a shame to throw them out.  While at Hyggeligt Quilt shop in London, ON awhile ago, I saw a quilt with small squares with circles cut out of them which someone had layered onto a wallhanging.  I tried a solid black and a white background, but liked them on the white better and spent some time playing with the layout until I came up with a final design.  I have been very inspired by more modern quilting from Tall Prairie Grass Studio's blog and Jacquie Gering's book Quilting Modern.   I spent quite a bit of time quilting it with straight lines and circles and a crosshatch.  It was a lot of work to quilt the wallhanging, but it looks awesome and is hanging on the wall in my sewing room reminding me to never throw anything out :-).

playing with the layout of the circles and frames

Applique done and auditioning borders.  The Kaffe Fasset print leftover from my Bordered Diamonds quilt back won out over other prints. 

crosshatch quilting in the orange circle

straight line quilting

I used the orange Frixion marking pen to mark the quilting lines.  Kind of scary using it, but it ironed out nicely.  I have used the markers on a green print and it bleached the colour out of the print leaving a fine white line.   Any bleaching would not be noticeable with the pure white background.

I quilted it on my vintage Bernina 830 machine

The finished quilt is hanging on my sewing room wall.

Table runner mania!

The year 2013 is rapidly drawing to a close and I am way behind on my blogging!  I'll squeeze one more post in before we welcome 2014.  One of my quilt students is always encouraging me (rather forcefully!) to get my UFO's finished LOL.  She is making an impact though and I have actually finished a number of projects off this year.  I do also confess to starting a few new ones as well.  When the new magazine came out from Fons & Porter, featuring the Missouri Star Company patterns, I did have to drop everything and make a few quick and easy projects.  But, they did not turn into UFO's as I have them all done.  I managed to get 8 table runners finished before our get together with our kids and I numbered all the runners and laid them out on the living room floor.  My daughter and my three daughter in laws each got a piece of paper and had to write down their first three choices.  Miraculously, everyone chose a different one.  Interesting to see which ones they chose.  Here are all the runners (click on the photo to enlarge):

Heather chose this runner which I made at least a year ago as a sample.  It will fit very nicely on her hexagon shaped coffee table. 

Becky picked this runner which is from the Missouri star company magazine from Fons and Porter.  I did make it smaller using 3 1/2" strips instead of layer cake squares

This was done with a Cheryl Phillips Gem Thirty ruler and was quick and easy.  I had leftover Kaffe Fasset fabrics from several projects and they matched beautifully :-)

The center is fussy cut from a different fabric than was used in the topper

I bought this older KF fabric in a sale bin at a quilt shop in Ottawa when we visited there four or five years ago.  It worked great for the backing.

These were leftover squares from a spinning four patch quilt I made with a KF fabric.  I added these shot cottons to make a table runner and quilted it using a King Tut variegated thread and organic line quilting

Here is the finished runner

I bought this as a kit at Quilter's Nine Patch in Elmira/St. Jacobs area.  It was a fun quick runner.  I quilted around the shapes and added flower petals just to the lime green hexagons.  Jannyne chose this runner

This modernish table runner was also in the Missouri Star company magazine. It was a nice quick project.

close up of the straight line quilting in the trees

I bought one of the new Moda Scrap bags and a Jaybird Quilts braided table runner pattern at the quilt shop in Waterford.  I got just enough strips from the scrap bag to make this braided runner.  I quilted it with red thread and organic line quilting and my daughter, Amanda chose this one for her table.

This is also an old sample of a twister done in a wreath shape with borders added.  One of my students did this one and added a gold shiny pinwheel to the middle bottom which really looked nice.

Now that I'm on a roll on these UFO's, I may just finish the Indian Orange Peel this year :-).