Pas de Deux stitch along

 Last year, Rachel Hausser of Stitched in Colour, hosted a stitch along for a quilt she designed called "Pas de Deux".  I totally loved the colours she used and used similar colours from my stash for each section.  This quilt was a challenge and used many different techniques, from paper piecing, to piecing, to applique, y seams and inset seams.  It was amazing how the quilt came together at the end!  It was totally made from my scraps.  Here is the finished quilt with some closeup photos of the various sections. It was quilted by Chris Bogart.  Click on the photos to enlarge for a better view.

The finished quilt

I had a piece of an Anna Maria Horner print leftover from another quilt and pieced it for the backing.

 

Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt - Chilhowie

After some pondering, I've decided to join the Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt again this year.  It is called Chilhowie this year. The first post on the mystery can be found here. This post gives information on the colours and amounts of fabric needed and the first clues will be up the day after American Thanksgiving.   I had a good time this week digging through my scraps and stash finding colours.  I will add and remove from the stash yet as I go along I'm sure.

I had this Ana Maria Horner wide back on the table for another quilt.  Doesn't it look great with the colours?  But, this backing is meant for another quilt :-).

Here are the possibilities so far from my stash.  There is definitely enough to get started on the quilt. The pain chips are clipped to the baskets.

Curved Log Cabin Quilt UFO finished!

Kay Hannah came to speak at our London Friendship Quilter's Guild awhile ago and did a workshop the next day on the curved log cabin. I cut up beige and green strips from my stash and used a dark brown center. I used almost all the leftover strips and bits and pieces to make a piano key border. The dark strips on this quilt were cut wider than the light strips to get the curved look. I finally finished this quilt for a wedding gift for Jason and Willeke who got married August 1st.


I meander quilted with a really neat variegated thread from King Tut and quilted leaves in the border.

It was fun playing with the layout of the blocks. I eventually settled on the traditional field and furrows:


I did really like this funky layout:
Here is a butterflies option, but because there was not a great deal of contrast in the lights and darks, this didn't show up as well as it does on the photo:
This quilt was a bit of a challenge because I sewed it on four different machines in four different places as we were moving several times. I also forgot to square up the blocks before sewing them together. I sewed all the blocks together in rows and then started putting the rows together and realized that there was a major problem! After pondering if for awhile and calling Christine to check the pattern size since I can't find my pattern yet :-), she encouraged me to just bite the bullet and start picking. I'm very glad I persevered in that, but it was quite the job pulling all those blocks apart again. But, once the blocks were squared up, it came together beautifully! Here you can see just how far some of the rows were out!
I made liberal use of 'my best friend', the stitch ripper!
The finished quilt again taken outside (amazing how different the colours look inside and outside):

Josh and Janneke's quilt

Today was my nephew Josh's wedding to Janneke. The wedding was very nice and the weather was perfect! This is the quilt that I made for their wedding gift. It was so much fun to make. The pattern comes from Bonnie Hunter's www.quiltville.com site. It is from the leaders/enders section. I started it in February of 2005, cutting out blue and white or cream 2" squares and pairing them together into four patches. I also cut triangle squares from 3 1/2" strips of whites/creams and blues as per the instructions on Bonnie's page. I used those pieces as leaders/enders (or thread pads as I was taught :-) for several months. I put them together into a 60" square quilt and then added 2 1/2" blue borders to frame it. I had a lot of fun quilting feathers into the light diagonals with light blue variegated King Tut thread. I quilted leaves into the border. By this time, I had done a lot of leaves and got brave enough to use contrasting thread on the blue borders! Actually, I was too lazy to look for darker blue thread :-). I was very happy with the way it turned out. Here is the completed quilt:

A closeup of the border and feather quilting:

The Feathers:

The center of the quilt:

The label:

Amazing what can be accomplished while you're working on other quilts! Thanks so much Bonnie for the wonderful inspiration!! I loved this quilt so much that I almost didn't want to give it away...solution? Start another leader/ender quilt in blue and white! Again, it is pieced and quilted on my trusty 15-88 Singer Centennial treadle made in 1951 in Canada. Did I ever mention that I LOVE this machine? :-)

Nick and Anita's Quilt

Here is the latest quilt I finished. It was for Nick and Anita, who got married on July 14th. I couldn't post the pictures earlier, because a) the quilt wasn't quite finished; b) it had to be mailed in the US and c) I didn't want Anita and Nick to see it on the blog before they actually got it! Just heard that they have received the quilt in the mail so here it is! We went on vacation (and to a sewing machine collector's gathering) in Michigan the week after the wedding, so I took the quilt along, finished hand stitching the binding and attached the label. We then took it to a Post Office we found along the way and the friendly clerk (who was born in Canada!) helped us mail out the quilt in a 'foreign' country :-). Nick is an American and they moved to the US after the wedding. The quilt pattern is from Bonnie Hunter's wonderful website www.quiltville.com. It is made from 2 1/2" strips and called "Boxy Stars". If you look carefully at some of the corners of the star blocks, they look like three dimensional boxes.

I started auditioning fabrics to blend with the border fabric from the "Giverny" line. The white with little green flowers was perfect for the background and centers of the stars.


A closeup of the border fabrics:

The quilt is entirely pieced and quilted on my trusty 15-88 Singer treadle from 1951. I quilted leaves in the sashings. The green corner squares and navy blue sashings were of leftover fabrics from Ben and Heather's quilt.

A closeup of the quilting in the block. I also got brave and did the outline quilting around the star freehand. I was happy with the results. This will greatly help quilting on a large quilt....no more wrestling with a huge quilt turning it at every corner!


It's a little hard to see, but I quilted freehand feathers in the border of the quilt. I had never done feathers before and figured this would be a good border to practise on. I'm including two pictures of it. If you click on the picture you may be able to see it better.

The label: