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

 

Round robin UFO finished

 Way back in 2014, I participated in a round robin with a few friends from the London Friendship Quilt Guild.  You can read about the reveal here.  This top was delayed in the finishing of it and then was put on the back burner for a bit and then I had a hard time thinking of how to quilt it.  Eventually I decided the easiest way to quilt it would be by hand.  I found some Kaffe backing in my stash and had fun quilting it by hand, adding more and more to the stitching.  It was finally finished in April of 2020, but I realized I'd forgotten to blog about this quilt as well. I really enjoyed this round robin and would do it again, but hopefully get it finished a little sooner. 

The finished quilt

After quilting in the ditch around all the piecing and applique, I quilted straight lines through the background fabric.

Closeup of the quilting and embroidery

Christine made this cute little label especially for my quilt!

The backing

The quote embroidered around the outside border of the quilt is from Eleanor Roosevelt:  "Women are like tea bags - they don't know how strong they are until they get into hot water".

 

Round Robin reveal party

Sometime in February, my friend Gail approached me to see if I would be interested in participating in a round robin with Cathy S and Christine R.  I figured that would be a fun challenge, so agreed to do it.  We had to make a center block of our own choosing in any size and add some fabrics to it.  The participants each had to add a border and could add some of their own fabrics if they wished.   We had approximately a month to complete each border before it had to go to the next person.

On Thursday evening, we gathered at Gail's place in her gazebo in the back yard and had the grand reveal!  Wow, what a great time we had.  The quilt tops were all amazing and it was great to hear the stories behind each of the decisions that had to be made and the other ideas that each person considered.  Sometimes and idea was just soundly defeated by the quilt itself LOL.  

We are each posting photos of the progress of our own quilt and I will link the other blogs to the bottom of this post when they have them up.  

This is the center block that I started with.  It was intended to be acoffee cup.

Gail was the first to put a border on.  She decided to put the cup straight again and made it a tea cup and added a border of tea bags!

a close up of a couple of the tea bags

aren't these just so fun?

Another border of the light blue was added and Cathy S surrounded it with these awesome T blocks.  How appropriate is that?

Here is Christine showing the final border.

Christine added a white border and appliqued a vine and leaves on it.   Then she embroidered a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt on the border:  "Women are like tea bags - they don't know how strong they are until they get into hot water". 

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 I was totally amazed at how the quilt turned out.  I am very happy with it.  Here is a photo of the finished quilt.  The light wasn't great anymore, so the photo is a little bit washed out.  It's actually quite a bit brighter.  I will post more photos when I get it quilted.  Christine wasn't quite finished with the embroidery yet, so I will get it here in a couple weeks :-).

Gail's blog post about her quilt is here.

Cathy S's blog about her quilt is here.

Christine R's blog post about her quilt is here.

Here are all four of us with our quilt tops