A huge Friday finish!

I have a huge finish to share:

This scrappy log cabin made in a quilt as you go style.

Members of my quilt guilt started this project in September,

and at our March meeting, we hand sewed the binding down.

It has about 2,500 pieces, all from our scrap bags

and the batting is all 3 inch strips leftover from other quilts.

Here are my binding buddies!

We only purchased fabric for the binding, 

since no one had the right colour in their stash.

It is backed with wide backing flannel in dark grey.

The quilt has 36 blocks measuring 15 inches,

and all of them are joined by 1 inch strips.

Read more about the technique here.

I participated in the rainbow mini challenge at Winnipeg Modern Quilt Guild,

and I used my leftovers to make two needle books.

I've been machine quilting a surprise baby quilt,

and I'm pleased to have finished all the quilting a month before the baby is due.

I still need to trim and bind it.

This is not a finish, but a start.

My mom spray basted this quilt in Sept. 2016 

and I promised to quilt it in time for my niece's high school graduation the following June.

Well, I didn't make that deadline

but I did start quilting it yesterday.

Nobody to blame but me,

and ongoing neck issues from whiplash injuries.

I'm linking up with other Friday finishers at

Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Crazy Mom Quilts

TGIFF

Five Friday finishes

I made some pouches with this great Melody Miller typewriter print

in a linen/cotton blend.

It it trimmed with a wheat coloured linen and a handdyed cotton.

The back has the word Qwerty free motioned on it.

And I found another typewriter print in cotton for another set of pouches.

The back has the same grey and white typewriter keys as the trim on the front.

My mother is a long time quilter and teacher

but lately has been knitting more for her church's prayer shawl ministry.

She also cleaned out her stash to the bare minimum

so I gave it new life with a couple of quilt kits I put together.

The top was a sale price jelly roll paired with a half hexie ruler.

I put together this kit for her birthday last month.

I cut large HSTs with my Accuquilt Go cutter, which finish at 6 inches.

I had purchased the fabric months earlier for this purpose, but then stalled on the project.

These are bright, large prints, with 40 HST in each colour.

Two weeks later, she's sewn all the HST together 

and is now pondering designs.

I took this photo for everyone who asks me about waste from a die cutter.

This is what was left from four metres of fabric cut into half square triangles.

Some slivers and those 1.5 inch bits at the bottom.

Here is the completed log cabin top before the backing went on.

I quilted wavy diamonds on it with my walking foot .

I quilted it to a flannel backing at a recent sew-in,

and my partners-in-crime squared it off and trimmed it for me.

It is waiting for the perfect binding,

which ironically I may have to buy.

Everything else came from the scrap bin on this project.

I'm linking up with

Confessions of a Fabric Addict

and Crazy Mom Quilts.

Near finish for Friday

I've been coordinated a guild quilt as you go project

and finished joining the 15 inch blocks together.

The quilt measures 90 inches square with 36 15 inch blocks

I joined the blocks with one-inch strips

and got them all together last weekend while sewing with friends at a local gallery.

I'm backing this with flannel and quilting it at another sew-in this coming holiday Monday.

 I took the leftover light strips, some of which I rejected for being too medium in value,

and joined them to make a 15 by 29 inch table runner.

I dusted off my free motion quilting skills for a design in each strip.

I backed it with a bright Riley Blake print

and bound it all in a neutral.

I'm linking up with other Friday finishers

at Crazy Mom Quilts

and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

Maker Monday

Some recent and ongoing makes here:

A wire coat hanger transformed into two Featherweight thread stands.

Note: Older Singers like this need a thread stand when using cross-wound threads, like Aurifil,

because the sewing machines were manufactured during an era when all the threads were wound straight on a bobbin.

The thread stand lifts up the thread for even feeding.

My engineer son made these with a pair of pliers

and shrink-wrapped the end because he just happens to have shrink wrap and a heat gun.

Handy to have a handy guy around.

We've finished 36 quilt as you go log cabin blocks for this guild group project.

Today I'm sewing them together.

Stay tuned.

It's a lovely quilt with thousands of fabrics.

My friend Audrey finished her string pieced strip quilt,

based on a design I figured out as a group project.

You can see those over here and over here.

This was the first Sunday of January.

By the last Sunday, she had it quilted, bound and was showing it at a quilt retreat.

String pieced log cabin blocks

My guild friends and I have been string piecing onto strips of batting lately

with my choir of Singer Featherweights.

Then I join them with a one inch strip.

Check out my tutorial here.

to come up with 15 inch log cabin blocks like this.

We've got 9 done and we're aiming for 36

but with the amount of scraps we all hoard

it will be no problem.

I'm linking up with The Needle and Thread Network.

String Pieced Log Cabins

I designed my guild's challenge for the year, 

and I thought I would share it here for the rest of you to join in if you like.

I'm not asking you to send me your blocks, but just giving you an idea

for a group project or a way to use up those long bits of batting.

Just a little aside: My quild is called The Strip Piecers,

so we often have challenges with strip piecing techniques.

We're also a thrifty bunch, so this project is using up what we have

in terms of scraps of fabric and scraps of Warm style batting.

We hope to display this quilt at a local show in May 2018.

Here's our challenge:

Finished block size: 15 inches; Finished quilt size: 90 by 90; Total number of blocks: 36

Colour scheme: lights and darks and brights. 

Method: Cut your batting strips into 3. 25 inch strips. Piece your small bits in a flip and sew method on the batting. Trim fabric and batting to 3 inches.

Block components: Each block needs 30 inches of light strip pieced batting, and 45 inches of dark/bright. They do not have to be continuous.

Cutting instructions: From your finished strips, cut the following:

Light strips: 3 inches, 6 inches, 9 inches, 12 inches

Darks: 3 inches, 6 inches, 9 inches, 12 inches, 15 inches

Light and dark fabrics: Cut 1 inch  joining strips of light and dark. You will need 30 inches (non continuous) of light strips and 45 inches of dark

This is what the back of a similar block looks like when the pieced strips are joined:

 Sewing instructions: Referring to photo, sew dark 3 inch block to light 3 inch block with one inch dark strip, using scant ¼ seam. Continue clockwise around the blog in log cabin style, using dark 1 inch strips when joining dark pieces and light strips when joining light pieces. When joining dark to light or vice versa, use dark strips.


We plan to bring our finished and cut strips to our January meeting and then swap them so each block has a variety of colours. The sample block here was made from my dark scraps and I think it needs a bit more variety.  We plan to tie the completed top to a wide flannel backing.

Here's a quilt I made a few years back using solid joining strips

and the Steps to the Courthouse pattern.

My batting strips were slightly wider and I only made four blocks

for a throw sized quilt.

Read more about it here and here.

I'm fine if you link to this tutorial, but please credit me for the idea.

And let me know if you are making blocks alongside us.

Quilt as you go hexies

I've been hand stitching hexies lately,

first on vacation in the Rockies,

and now with friends at home during my Wednesday evening quilt camp.

I put together a visual tutorial so you can see my process.

I cut the hexgons with a Go! die.

The big one is 2.5 inches on the sides, and the smaller one is 1.5 inches.

I'm having fun with these, matching up fronts and backs

and using up little bits of batting trimmed from quilts.

This full-sized quilt by Elsie Peters of Winkler, Manitoba is my inspiration.

She use different sized hexagons so the border is a bit narrower.

I like the subdued effect from her colour choices, but I've been cutting into Kaffe prints and hand dyes so mine will be brighter.

Freshly pieced stars

I've pieced my friendship stars marriage quilt,

but in four sections.

It will finish at 90 by 63 inches,

 a perfect size for two people to snuggle under

on one of those recliner/couches.

I meant to sew it into two equal pieces for ease of quilting.

but right now it is in four pieces.

If I sew it into two halves, each will measure 45.5 inches unfinished,

which is wider than the width of quilting fabric. 

I hate piecing backs,

so I'm thinking about it another way.

Should I keep it in four pieces?

I've shown three of them here.

The fourth part didn't fit on my design wall.

Each block is 9 inches finished,

which makes piece 1 and 4 18.5 inches

and pieces 2 and 3 27.5 inches wides.

With these widths,

I could use up fat quarters and half-metre cuts on the back.

I was planning on a pumpkin seed quilting motif

in the stars

and some stippling in the backgrounds.

I'd welcome your ideas and suggestions

on the best way to free motion quilt this on my Juki.

It has a 8,5 inch harp, so it can easily handle this size.

My issue is  that I don't have the table space to support a big quilt

so quilting it in parts makes it easier to handle.

I'm linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced
and WIP Wednesdays at The Needle and Thread Network.

Steps to a finish!

 STTCH QAYC

Yesterday I finished this quilt -- and then promptly gave it away.

Some of you may recall this Steps to the Courthouse

quilt as you go project I've been working on in the last few months.

Here it is finished, and tied to a fleece backing.

It measures about 58 inches square.

I used many scraps in this,

and many little bits of batting.

it was satisfying to use up all those narrow parts from trimming up quilts.

 My strips are 4.5 inches. 

I joined them with a one-inch connecting strip, 

and then tied the completed top to a fleece backing.

Here's the new owner, who is happy with his new "blanket"

Because I was in a rush to get it done,

I went for a simple label,

done with free motion quilting in the light blocks.

And here is the back before the backing went on.

The seams lie flatter than in this pix.

I'm linking up with Sarah and Amanda and TGIFF.

I must have missed a step to the courthouse

Since Saturday I've been building large blocks

in traditional pattern called Steps to the Courthouse.

These blocks finish at 23 inches

and they're made in a strip-pieced quilt as you go style.

I was inspired by Christina who figured out how to combine the quilt as you go method 

with long skinny batting scraps.

I decided to take the idea one step further and make traditional blocks with them.

So far I've made four, which would make a baby blanket.

Six would make a decent sized throw.

Here are the four together, and I'm not loving it.

I like the blocks individually,

but they mush together as a group.

Here they are set with the alternate ones flipped 90 degrees.

Is that any better?

What can I do to make it look better?

Add another strip of the light?

put solids between?

I'm linking up with TNTN WIP Wednesdays

and Freshly Pieced.

On the wall and ready to post

We're well into winter here in Manitoba with cold temperatures and lots of snow.

So I decided to send Beth some houses showing the snow falling

 during the day and night for her neighbourhood party.

There's still time to make some houses and join the party.

Over the weekend I took out an old WIP and machine quilted it in sections.

My quilting is fairly simple, but I really wanted the piecing to shine here.

These blocks are from the first challenge my guild held back in 2008-2009.

I couldn't decide how to proceed, so I left it in a drawer in four sections.

Here's two parts of two sections. You can see the seam in the backing in the one at the right

I'm going to cover that with matching fabric, and then sew the two long sections together.

All it needs then is a binding, and then this quilt is ready for a new home.

It measure about 48 by 60, so it will be a perfect couch blanket, possibly for a gift.

This project did several great things:

It got an UFO out of the drawer.

It used up several metres of stash fabric for the backing.

It used up a long skinny piece of batting (with only one piecing seam).

It helped me overcome my fears of quilt as you go.

And the best thing of all:

I have a quilt nearly ready for a gift!

I'm linking up with Judy's Design Wall Mondays.