Stars and nine patches

It's another finish from the two-inch square box! This time I used all the mediums, and went for a muted look in the four-patch nine-patches. I also used up lots of uglies from the 80s in the light print -- click for a closer look at the busy little calicos. No yardage was sacrificed for this project (OK, I did cut the borders from yardage) with most of it from the two-inch square box or other smallish pieces from the stash)and Mom's stash. It measures 45 by 63 without the narrow border, and I'm planning on adding words and names in a wider border to make it a nice throw size. This is intended for an amazing elementary school teacher we've had for the past five years, and I'm going to put her name and some of her favourite sayings around the edge. I'm going to back it with a nice flannelette and machine quilt it on the diagonal. Here's a closer look at some of the wonky stars and the background fabrics.

Silk Amish Strings

This little quilt is made from silk noile scraps and inspired by Gwen Marston's Liberated String Quilts. I pieced it on paper because the weave is quite loose, and bordered it with wide pieces of silk. It is handquilted and bound above. Below is the unfinished flimsy. What's fun about this quilt is that I made it from my huge bag of silk scraps. Fifteen years ago, I pieced a suit jacket from these same fabrics, minus the red, that I wore to my sister's wedding. I don't wear it anymore, but I'm enjoying the quilt.

My houses have a new home

That little house quilt in the post below just went home with my friend Laura, who oohed and ahhed over all my other letter quilts before finally spotting the house quilt hanging in the hallway. She's a calligrapher, so she loved the letters. Thought you might like to know that it is appreciated. It's always more fun for the quiltmaker when the quilts go to a good home.

Completed houses

This little quilt is hand quilted and bound now, 10 days after I started it. I quilted freehand fans in each of the houses and repetitive lines inside the letters. Here's a closer look at the quilting in the letters. This is moving to the West Coast with my friends, and I'm hoping it will have a place in their home.

Pillowcase-a-thon

On Saturday, a dozen sewing and church friends gathered for a day of making pillowcases for Mennonite Central Committee, for use in the kits they provide to AIDS patients.
We had a huge box of what I considered ugly fabric -- busy floral prints of dubious quality, with a few quilting cottons thrown in. It was all donated fabric, and with creativity and boldness in mixing and matching colours, we made this pile of beautiful pillowcases. We used the hotdog method of sewing body, contrast strip and cuff together that I've found on various sites and blogs, but can't now locate the link.
The best part was stopping for a wonderful lunch made by the church staff, and a triple chocolate cheesecake by DH. Here's the pile again -- 72 in all. It was truly a transformative day -- 72 metres of unwanted fabric into 72 beautiful and useful pillowcases to give comfort to seriously ill people.

home sweet home

Actually, it says street, not sweet, and it is not a mistake. I put together this little quilt for church friends who are moving away. The church is named after its location on, you guessed it, Home Street. This photo is a bit dark, but I think you can see the batiks and hand dyes used to make the letters and houses. I've put a narrow scrappy border around the whole thing, and will bind it in black. The fun part is it incorporates letters from a couple of previous projects -- the orange E's are from the label in the posting below when I got my background and letter colours mixed up, and that dark R was rejected from my To Be quilt. And the houses are Bonnie's happy scrappy houses.

Back to back

This is the label which was integrated into the pieced back for my double-sized four patch made from my box of two inch squares. I concentrated on values instead of colours in this quilt, hence the name (all the squares work together to make a pattern, regardless of colour or denomination!) The back is typographical print with magic squares and numbers. I've used three colours in the back -- red, orange, and this orangey-yellow. I'll post pix of the whole thing once it is back from being quilted. This is the back of my genealogy quilt from the post below. I used up large scraps for the back, and put in the name which you see in my profile. I had hoped to piece together names of my own genealogy on the back, but ran out of time.

Also, my friend Val (ValleyP) has joined blogland. Please check out her amazing work, and her Peppermint patty quilt.

It's finished and completed

The genealogy quilt I made for my university class is done, and so is my course work for the class, hence two finishes in one day. Here's some of the quilting detail in the names. Bathsheba was quilted in freehand fans. If you click on the pictures, you can see the freehand stitches on the dark rectangles.
Here's the whole thing. I showed the top on my first post. If you missed it, it represents the Old Testament women in Jesus' genealogy in Matthew. All the men are represented by dark rectangles, and the women stick out with their coloured letters. It was a fun project in several ways -- I was quilting for course credit, and I've received a variety of reactions from people I've shown it to. Despite all the Tonya fans out there in blogland, it seems the average person isn't used to actually reading words on a quilt.

Shopping in Saskatchewan

Here's some eye candy from a recent shopping expedition in four shops in rural and urban Saskatchewan. I found some $5/metre lipstick fabric for a cool pillowcase, and some more word and letter fabric for my word quilt. Here are my real finds from a thrift store, all for less than $5 total -- four embroidered blocks, a purse closure for 20 cents, a vintage quilt pattern book, and a tote crocheted from wool yarns, perfect for carrying small projects, and trendy in a retro sort of way.
These blocks are cross-stitched, and each are slightly different.
I stopped at Shirley's Sewing Room in Moosomin on the way home and found some 1930s prints to coordinate with the blocks. Maybe I'll make a small tablecloth. Anyone have some other ideas?