Antique Quilt find

On Canada Day, we went to visit our son in Leamington. I went yard saleing with his girlfriend and parents. It is always fun to go to yard sales in a different area! At a neighbourhood yard sale, I walked up to a table and spotted a quilt all neatly folded up. It looked like it was in good shape. There was a price tag on it for $1.00!! Yes, you read that right...one loonie!!!! I didn't even open it up, but gave her the dollar and wisked it out of there in a hurry LOL. It is in good shape, with a little fading of the colours here and there. It looks like it's been on a bed with the sun shining on one side of it. It is pieced by machine, but entirely handquilted. It has a really interesting design. Here is a closeup of the block:

The whole quilt:

Isn't it pretty?

Foolish? Just Plain Crazy? ...or Amazing?

This past November, Cathy B joined our quilt classes and jumped right in with a table runner. She caught on quickly and completed several smaller projects. She fell in love with the log cabin class that some of my students were taking. She went shopping and picked up some lovely black and white fabrics. She decided that she would jump right in and make a king sized quilt for her own bed!!! Not only that, she decided to design it herself and incorporate two different blocks into the design. First she did the traditional log cabin layout:


Next she did some blocks with light squares in the center and some with dark:


She went home and drew out a layout with exactly what she had in mind and once the blocks were all completed (learning many lessons along the way and using her best friend...the stitch ripper) we laid the blocks out on the design wall and added triangles on the top and bottom:

Rather than taking the easy way and adding some plain borders, she persevered and made piano key borders from the leftover strips and added corner stones in the four corners:

Next came the huge job of pinning the quilt!

Cathy is tying this quilt with white and black narrow ribbon so that she can do it all herself.

Here she is busy putting in the ties into her quilt (btw, she's not angry here....just has a clip in her mouth lol):

The amazing thing is that Cathy has just had her 4th round of chemo for cancer! She has been going through treatments for 5 years. She is an amazing inspiration with her determination and upbeat attitude to life and we are all proud of her for this awesome accomplishment. She often wondered if she was foolish or just plain crazy to take on such a huge task, but we all agree that she is one amazing lady. Way to go Cathy....it took me 12 years to finish my bed quilt :-).

Robyn and Mike's Spinning Four patch

It's been awhile since I did a blog post! I haven't finished much in the last month, but did work on a lot of projects. I did finally finish a quilt for a wedding we attended on May 28th :-). That's what happens when I miss my deadline...no more pressure to get it done on time LOL. Actually, that was the same week we had two huge quilt shows in the area and I had several ladies sleeping over to attend the shows. So, I do have a good excuse.

I bought a lovely piece of fabric at Hyggeligt's sale bin awhile ago thinking it might be good for a Spinning Four Patch block. It did work, but it's not as dramatic as some of the other fabrics I've used. Here are a few of the blocks:



I tried to set the blocks with two different colours, but nothing seemed to work until I found this solid brown. I used wider sashings than usual and this helped to make the blocks float.


I had the perfect green in my stash for the border (it has little beige flecks in it) and had enough brown left for the binding:

I quilted leaves and funky flowers in the sashing and feathers in the border with a King Tut variegated thread:

The finished quilt:

Sewing room progress

My daughter and daughters in law gave me some great additions for my sewing room. Jannyne gave me this wonderful clock. I hung it up in the sewing room, above the yard sale cabinet I picked up last year. This clock keeps us all on time for classes :-).

Heather made this cool wooden button from a cheese board bottom. It was featured on a decorating blog and I fell in love with it. Fortunately, I hadn't found a cheese board at a yard sale yet so Heather painted it black and put a black check X in the middle. It found a perfect spot on the coat rack that Jake made out of an old piano years ago. The Chocolate sign says: "Warning, may cause clothing to shrink" and was a gift from my daughter Amanda last year.

Closeup of the button:

President's Challenge at the LFQG

The London Friendship Quilt Guild had a President's Challenge due for the month of May to celebrate 30 years as a guild. The rules were simple. We received two Fat Quarters in the guild colours; one gold with little stripes and one solid blue which had to be visible on the front of the quilt. One of the dimensions had to be 30". The focus fabric is shown in the photo below and was used in the top and right side of the cubes.



I had a Japanese fabric that I picked up at The Marsh Store in the sale bin and thought it would be great for a Spinning Four Patch. I bought 4 repeats and added half a yard or so to possibly use as borders. I happened to throw the two FQ's for the challenge on my sewing table and it landed on that Japanese fabric and the colours blended beautifully! I've been having so much fun with the One Block Wonder quilts and then the light bulb went on! Could I do a One Block Wonder with this Japanese Fabric? But, I only bought four repeats and needed six. I remembered buying extra and wondered if possibly there was a sixth repeat. I managed to squeeze one 2" strip for a sixth repeat and I figured it would be fun to see how small you could go on these hexagons. Here is the original fabric:

I sewed the hexagons together and began experimenting with them. My first idea was to use 30 hexagons. Here are a few layouts and ideas that I tossed around:


Using 30 hexagons would be difficult, so I decided to make one dimension 30" instead and added some cubes in the focus fabrics:

I found some wonderful navy blue that matched beautifully and added that for borders:

I used the rest of the yellow focus FQ to add a small 'lippy' between the quilt and the binding.

If you click on the photo above of the focus fabrics, you can see the quilting in the blocks and the photo below shows the feather quilting in the borders.

At the guild meeting last week, each entry was assigned a number and we all voted for our favourite. I was very excited that my little quilt won 1st prize!! Here is our President, Rose B. holding up the quilt while I had to tell everyone why I chose this design and where the 30" dimension was. I'm saving my prize money to spend at the big quilt shows in our area next week :-).

Thread Catcher

I made another thread catcher this weekend and finished stuffing the pin cushion today. I found enough Kaffe Fasset selvedges in my collection and had solid lime green to go with this fun print.

This snippet catcher will be donated to the Canadian Quilter's Association Committee for the Quilt show being held here in a few weeks.

Jasmine and Richard's Log Cabin Quilt

My niece, Jasmine got married today in a lovely outdoor wedding in the park. The weather was perfect. I made a log cabin quilt completely from my stash of beiges and greens. I used up the leftover strips to make a piano key border. The only thing I had to buy was the batting. I even had the backing, a Debbie Mumm garden print I've had in the house for years. It was the perfect colour for this quilt. I forgot to take a picture of the backing. Here is the finished quilt:

A closeup of the quilting. I used a Bernina 817 that is a little stiff from sitting around for years...I gave it a good workout meandering across the whole quilt. It made a perfect stitch and passed the free motion quilting test with flying colours :-).