Fall Batik exchange quilt

In my last blog post, all the quilts in the Hearts and Hands exchange are shown.  Here are a few more pictures of my quilt the right way up as well as closeup photos of the spectacular quilting job by Cathy Shepherd of Eagles Wings Quilts. The pattern is Four Patch Charm Quilt by Tamarack Shack.  She used a technique to make the blocks from a Missouri Star you tube video.  I have enough fabrics left to make another one of these quilts..perhaps I will do a different layout with the blocks.  The binding is done with 12" strips of all the fabrics. (Click on the photos for a larger picture.)

My quilt right side up :-)

I thought the photo above looked a little pale so I took it outside to take a few more photos of it :-)

Corner showing the scrappy binding and quilting

close up of the quilting in the white areas

Close up of the quilting

Some of the original fabrics - 2nd from left in the 2nd row is the focus fabric and the one beside it on the left was my contribution to the mix

more of the fabrics

I found this lovely wide backing fabric which is also a batik

Fall Batik exchange with Hearts and Hands Quilt Guild

In the fall of 2014, we chose a focus fabric and everyone purchased a 1/4 yard strip of fabric for each person participating.  We had a total of 18 pieces in the exchange.  Today we got together for a very fun morning of show and tell to see what everyone did with their fabrics.  Some of the tops were not finished and some binding was still warm when it got to the meeting LOL, but 13 of us were able to show what we were doing.  We also had the quilt from one member who was not able to make it.  Here are some photos of the grand reveal (click on the photo to enlarge it for a better view):

The second fabric from the left in the second row was the focus fabric...the one beside it to the left is the one I chose to go with it.

Tina (left) bought some extra of the beige background, which was her contribution, and made these lovely houses

The long arm quilter did a great job of quilting this one

All the doors were quilted with a different design

Laurie is working on the blocks for her quilt.  She added some other batiks to it to give more variety

Ina did a split hourglass pattern from the Block magazine.

Chris added a cream background which really set off the blocks nicely

Deb's cool quilt top is almost finished..one more row to add to it to fit a queen sized bed

Audrey really got out of her comfort zone and used a lovely vibrant striped fabric to set her disappearing 9 patch.  She figured sunglasses were needed to view the quilt LOL

Elizabeth decided to do the disappearing hourglass as well, but found it too fiddly so she......

....just did the hourglass blocks and put them together to make this wonderful quilt top

Corrie's beautiful star quilt

Maria also used the Block magazine from Missouri Star to make her 'ring' quilt.  She used an embroidery stitch on her machine to quilt around the rings...very pretty

Cathy made this beautiful top for her over 90 year old father whose favourite colour is red.  He will love this quilt!

Mary Lynn was not able to make it as she was out of town, but she left her quilt with me to take along to show.  It's all finished, quilted by Bonnie Wilson and bound :-).

This is my quilt...I used a pattern from a tutorial from the blog "Tamarack Shack" using charm squares.  Cathy Shepherd did the long arm quilting and did beautiful swirls in the white areas.

Joyce is making long legged star blocks and added a few more colours into her quilt.  We had fun brainstorming ideas for sashing and/or cornerstones or leave it the way it is.  Lovely colours!

It is always amazing how different all the projects are when each person started with the same set of fabrics.  We are already brainstorming ideas for our next challenge :-)

Wedding quilt for Justine and Michael

We were invited to a wedding for two young friends last week. I had this quilt top in my UFO drawer and decided to quilt it up for Michael and Justine's wedding.  This is a spinning four patch pattern where you cut four identical repeats of fabric, layer them exactly, cut into strips and then cut into squares. Each set of squares can be arranged in four different ways.  I sashed them in yellow, blue and green kona cotton strips without any extra borders.  Unfortunately, I didn't have any of the original fabric left to put in the backing.  It was quilted with a spiral/flower on my domestic, vintage Bernina 830.

Finished quilt

one of my favourite blocks

the spiral flower quilting

finished quilt

backing leftover from another quilt

A great sewing machine for our collection....

This past March, we were asked to do a trunk show for the Chatham ON Canada quilt guild, which is about an hour's drive from our place.  We took along several of our antique and vintage sewing machines as well as a couple of buckets of quilts to show what can actually be sewn on old machines.  There was a reporter at the meeting from a local newspaper and he asked if he could take my picture with an old machine.  We had a good chat and he took a few notes and then said he was going to stay for a few minutes.  He ended up staying for the whole presentation and did a really nice write up.  You can read the article here.  The story was picked up in our home newspaper as well as in several other cities in the area.

The article mentions a framed photo we have of Jake, when he was two years old, trying to take his Mom's old sewing machine apart!  This is the only photo we have of the machine and it's backwards.  We asked Jake's Mom, but she had no recollection of the machine or the brand at all.  We would love to add this machine to our collection :-).  We did see one on eBay several years ago, but it went way above our price range to purchase it.  Who knows, maybe we'll run across it at a yard sale someday :-). 

Jake at 2 years old already tinkering with old machines

That article in the paper resulted in a number of calls about sewing machines that we may wish to purchase.  Most of them were great machines, but did not fit into our collection.  There were so many millions of machines made that there is just no way you can get them all.  However, one phone call, from a gentleman in our own community resulted in this very fun addition as we focus on machines with Canadian connections.  This little beauty is a Singer 99 with the 1939 Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto badge on it.  We are in the process of servicing it and getting it running smoothly.  I hope to sew something on it with a Canadian connection.

Singer 99

Canadian National Exhibition Toronto, ON 1939

Quilts for the granddaughters

My daughter in law expressed interest in quilts for her two daughter's beds as they are renovating their bedroom.  She asked if I would help her.  Of course!!  What fun.  We tossed some ideas around and since Jannyne loves the One Block Wonder quilts (she helped me design my very first one, which I haven't even blogged yet!), we decided to go shopping one day to see if we could find two fabrics that would be different, but blend together.  

Fabric for Lauren's quilt

Fabric for Leah's quilt

Jannyne pinning the blue fabric

I'm pinning the butterfly fabric.  Since it has only a small repeat, we are doing two sets of repeats and cutting the triangles 2 3/4"

First butterfly hexagons

First hexagons from the blue fabric

Jannyne sewing her very first quilt on my Singer 301.  Her seams were perfect and she did a great job!

Lauren gets to help her Mom arrange the half hexagons

Leah is helping Grandma put up half hexagons and cubes for her quilt

I set up a table for Leah with a whole bunch of light, medium and dark triangles cut out and Leah designed cubes for her quilt for me to sew together

The finished layout for the first quilt.  We will sew the top together next and then layout the butterfly quilt

Sarah and Shane's wedding quilt

I realized I had not posted pictures of Sarah and Shane's wedding quilt yet.  I had it finished for awhile, but because they live several provinces over, way out in lovely PEI, I had to wait with posting pictures until they got it :-).  They were married last summer and I had hoped to send it along with someone driving to PEI, but ended up sending it off to them in the mail.   I had started this One Block Wonder quite awhile ago using a lovely Jason Yenter print.  When I heard that Sarah was getting married, I thought this would be the perfect quilt for her.  Sarah took quilt classes from me for a year or so before moving to PEI.  I knew she would love this one as a quilter herself.

A strip of the original fabric was pieced into the backing

This photo shows more of the original fabric, but the colours are more blue.  This fabric was very hard to photograph.

the final layout with some of the border pieces added

leaf quilting in the blocks

the label

A photo of the finished quilt with the little one I made three years ago for my husband's office at school.  He is a High school vice principal and when they built the new school, his office needed something for the wall.  We called this quilt "Stepping towards the Light" as he works in a Christian School.  I wanted to use all the cubes I had made, so he suggested putting one towards the right "since there's always one kid that falls off the wagon" :-).   

It was made using a 2" strip cut off the 6 layers of fabric before I did the larger one.  It was difficult getting a good photo of the quilt on the wall as it is hanging beside a window.  The colours are more like the photo above.  This little quilt won 2nd prize at the Plowing Match quilt show a couple of years ago.

My friend, Roxene, bought the exact Jason Yenter print, but in the red colourway and is also making a OBW with it.  I will post photos of that one when it is finished.