the Indian Orange Peel - Progress!!!

I finally got working on the Indian Orange Peel quilt again.  I needed some time to put the sheet of pinned units on my cutting table and get them all organized and labeled properly and choose colours for the border units.  Last Saturday, one of my local Quilt guilds held a sewing day in a Church hall and that gave me the incentive to get organized.  I spent the day Friday happily rooting through my Kaffe Fasset stash and got all the fabrics chosen and pinned to each paper unit.  So nice to get that done.  Now I can grab a unit or two and paper piece in between other projects. I have three rows of the center all sewn together and the paper picked out...two more rows to go.  Here is the quilt on my cutting table with all the fabrics laid out for the border units: 

 I took my Featherweight along to the work day and gave it some exercise :-).  

 

The first three units completed

 

More completed units...those inner border units were a challenge to paper piece, but after doing a few and trying a few different ways, it went faster:

 

All the inner border pieces are done...onward ho to the outer pieces

 

The bucket of pieces with fabrics chosen and pinned on, ready to sew at a moment's notice :-)

 

Sewing those units together could be a real challenge!!

East Street top done

Put the last stitches into the Easy Street mystery quilt from Bonnie Hunter over at Quiltville.com tonight...wow a lot of sewing!!  I enjoyed working on this quilt and am very happy with the finished top.  It actually fits generously on my guest bed.  Looking forward to having it quilted and put on the bed.  I may have to paint the room to match the quilt :-).

Here are the blocks on my design wall before the top was sewn together:

Christmas 2012

Just downloaded some random pictures from my camera from the Christmas vacation.  We had a great relaxed Christmas just hanging out and visiting with family and friends and sewing and puttering and eating some yummy food :-).

My daughter went to visit her friend in Australia in November and they hit the quilt shop to buy me a Christmas gift...how fun is that?  Check out these lovely Australian fabrics plus some blueberries because Amanda just had to take them home!  Wonder why she isn't a quilter yet...fabrics are talking to her LOL.

 Australian fabrics

They also raided their friend's stash for an old Australian fabric

 We finished the traditional 1000 piece Sugar bush puzzle that has a price tag of $2.98 on it!!  Can't remember when we got it, but probably in the 1980's.  Our tradition was always to do this puzzle in December and we've revived that tradition again this year.  There are five pieces missing.

 There were 5 pieces missing!

Bought these handy sorting trays before Christmas so I could get my cookie sheets back :-)

 We did this puzzle next and it only took us an evening and an afternoon and have since completed another puzzle.

 Our Christmas tree this year...not a designer tree, but lots and lots of memories including the old lights that we bought at a boxing day sale before we got married!!

 We had a folded foil star for several years and then I made this star soon after I started quilting in 1989.  I should have added the date to the back of this star

We did not have snow for Christmas but a couple days later we had our White after Christmas :-)

The lighted village

 The Christmas quilt comes out every year.  This was my very first internet exchange organized by a Dutch lady and administered by a relative of hers in the States.  We had to make and sign 64 rail fence blocks with a Christmas greeting

 My block

done in 1997

Block from Australia

Block from the Netherlands

After Christmas, The Marsh Store in Coldstream has their 30% off sale...these lovely fabrics came home with me

Snowmen for Christmas!

Check out the cool snowmen/ladies I got for Christmas :-)

Aren't they the cutest??  I had admired them at my daughter in law's house and she knit like a mad lady to get a whole set done for me for Christmas...they still felt warm when I opened them LOL!  Thanks Heather.  I LOVE my snowman family!!

....couldn't resist a new project :-)

I've always wanted to do a Bonnie Hunter Mystery quilt....her site has inspired me to be more organized, use my leftovers and introduced me to usable leaders/enders.  When she posted on her blog and face book page that this one would be smaller than the previous projects and posted the colours, I jumped in with a couple friends from my Quilt guild.  It is called "Easy Street". 

We had a great time raiding our stashes and drawers of scraps and pre cut strips and buying a few new FQ's and trading black on white 2" strips.  I got a little behind during the two weeks before Christmas as I was finishing Christmas gifts, but this week has been very relaxed and my husband has been restoring some more sewing machines and, of course, I need to try them out :-).  As of this morning, I'm all caught up!  Here's the little Featherweight machine that I got to try out...it's a 1955 version and has the marked throatplate for 1/4" seams and more modern decals.  It sews like a little champ.

 It has a few scratches and small chips in the paint, but overall a pretty machine:

All the units done for 6 steps and the fabrics in the back:

Part 1 - four patches

 

Part 2 - flying geese - and cut bricks

Part 3 - shaded 4 patches and cut two green squares :-)

Part 4 - more flying geese and cut green squares

Part 5 - sitting turkeys

Part 6 bricks and cut green triangles

Looking forward to next week's clue!  I'm enjoying this mystery very much.  While doing the "sitting turkey" blocks, I saved the cut offs and will use them as leaders/enders to make half square triangles.  Wonder what I can do with those :-)

Back to working on UFO's :-)

Jenn and Dietrich's Quilt

This quilt has been finished for quite a long time, but we wanted to connect and visit with Jenn and Dietrich to bring the quilt, which was not finished on time for their June wedding.  I did get it completed in July, but with our schedules, we finally had a chance to have that lovely coffee visit last Friday evening.  We enjoyed seeing their home, chatting and having yummy apple crisp done in the crockpot.

I used the same pattern, Split Decision, that I used for another wedding quilt in black and white, but added purple to it.  Jenn painted one wall in her living room a lovely light Easter Egg mauvy colour. I raided my 2 1/2" drawer and retrieved all the leftover blacks and whites that I used for the other quilt and added any purples that I could find.  There are even Kaffe Fassett fabrics in here :-).   The final layout of the blocks:

  
The finished quilt:

 I took a workshop with Elaine Quehl in May, though the London Friendship Quilt Guild and stretched myself on free motion quilting and decided to get brave and try some swirly flowers on this quilt.  I was very happy with the way it turned out:

I was very excited to find this lovely dark purple backing in the sale bin at a local fabric shop :-).  The binding and the quilting on the back:

I think this is a pattern that I will use often!! (Click on the photos for a larger view.)

It's finished!

I finished the binding on the table runner and am very happy with how it turned out.  It's a bit of a pain to sew the binding on, but worth it. You can also trim the edges straight for a quick finish :-).

Closeup of the binding:

 Here it is on my kitchen table: