Smaller group (Penny, Betty, Leng, Nancy, Marybeth and Sue) but we were productive! We learned how to make the “easy churn dash” block that June gave the instructions for. We made use of Marybeth’s new quilt space, ironing table and design wall!
Quite a different look when the light and dark bits are switched, and when the block is on an angle.
A fun afternoon!
Pauline is busy doing family things, so thought I'd pop in and write a little report on Wednesday's gathering.
We had a special guest - June from Pender Harbour and she brought along some show and tell - she had a particularly interesting way to "use up the fabric" from a project. She bundles up all the leftovers and creates interesting backings for her quilt. She likes the backing to co-ordinate with the top, so what better way to do that than use what was on the front. The pieces varied in size to tiny scraps (you know, the ones that should go into the bin) up to 1/2 m. sizes. She sewed them together, leftover or extra blocks, small cut offs from HST somewhat Improv and they looked terrific. I didn't take any photos, but maybe Pauline will be able to insert some.
We also helped her celebrate her birthday! Happy Birthday June! Joyce baked her soon to be famous Lemon Cheesecake and it was delicious. Light and airy and that lemon flavour was lovely. We will be your guinea pigs anytime.
June brought along one top that had a block called Easy Churn Dash with a Pinwheel with instructions, so we thought we'd do a bit of "practicing" next week at Marybeth's. Don't really need to bring anything - we'll just play with the block and see what develops. It takes 2 - 6" squares with colour l and 2 - 6"squares with colour 2 (contrasting). We thought we'd gather in Marybeth's sewing room and do some playing.
I'll send out the instructions via email for those that didn't get a copy.
Hope you're feeling better Colleen and Sue had a great time at her golf school.
I confess I did a bit of experimenting last night - been too long since I turned on my sewing machine (other than to hem pants ;-() so came up with the block - think it would be interesting to make two alternating the dark and light for the background.
Hope to see you all next week at Marybeth's.
Nancy
We met at Joyce's on Wednesday. Colleen, Penny, Joyce and I were there. There was lots of Show and Tell and getting caught up on news. Nancy will have 6 (!!) quilts in the Fraser Valley Quilt show next weekend so I hope everyone gets a chance to visit. Details are on the Upcoming Events Page.
Now for the Show and Tell.
Penny had two panels. She is working on the lovely sewing machine quilt that her friend, Shauna gave to her. Nearly done. A nice one for Penny's sewing room.
In case you're wondering, that is not the famous cat in a hat photobombing Penny. It's actually a needlework cushion.
This is the detail of the photos of the team on the back of the quilt.
This is a follow up to Nancy's posts. If the ruler interested you, here is a longer video with more detail and includes marking clamshells. As quilting rulers go it's not even that expensive at $16 but the shipping is also $16. You can get a new cutomer discount which brings everything, including taxes down to $31.
Here’s the actual video about the hand quilting. Sorry about that. There are quite a few videos from Moda and Jen.
On Wednesday at Marybeth’s she had a quilt which she started hand quilting a few years ago. She was hoping someone could finish the hand quilting as it’s become difficult to continue.
Sue did say she’d have to think about it (no presssure 😀)
It’s quilted using the Baptist Fan pattern. Marybeth used Bonnie Hunter’s method which started in the corner and continued with 5 (?) arcs. While I was doing my surfing I came across these video’s produced by Moda Fabrics with Jen Kingwell (Australian hand Quilter/designer). I thought the video’s very informative (even though I don’t hand quilt) and her ideas could apply to machine quilting.
Nancy sent this report about the meeting on Wednesday.
It's been awhile since I've done a post. This one is for anyone who has a Stripology Ruler, anyone considering getting one and also anyone who isn't convinced that one of these rulers won't make much of a difference in the chore of cutting.
My ruler is not the latest edition and some of the features are missing, but once I got more comfortable with inserting the cutter blade in the slot I didn't need anything to convince me that this cutting tool was going to reduce my cutting time to about 1/3 of what it used to be. My ruler was given to me so I didn't have to spend $100 plus for it. You never could have convinced me any ruler was worth that much money until I actually started using it.
Recently, in my Virtual Quilting Group one of the members asked if anyone had one and could recommend it and there were quite a few people there who weighed in with glowing reviews. One of the women suggested watching the three tutorials by Gudrun Erla, the developer of the ruler. They're a good place to start if you are a new Stripology user or are wondering how exactly they can save you so much cutting time. If you've had your ruler for awhile you will probably learn some new ways to use your ruler, for example, cutting triangles. I saw a lot more videos on Youtube which I didn't get chance to watch, like cutting bias strips. It seems like people have learned a lot of cutting tricks with these and have shared them on Youtube.
Here is the Stripology 101 video.
Here is Part 2 of Stripology 101
Here is Part 3 on Stripology Squared ruler for squaring off blocks and fussy cutting
Here is Video #4 on How to cut extra long fabric and squaring off oversized blocks
This is the other quilt I received and passed along to Dianne. We placed an additional label on showing that I passed the quilts to Dianne and the date.
CD.Nancy wrote on the blog about Dianne’s presentation at FVQG meeting last week.
The quilt she mentioned, that I gave Dianne, is a Redwork quilt and it, along with another quilt made by the same lady and that I also gave to Dianne, has an interesting history. I will try to find a better picture of the quilt, as this one doesn’t show the quilting and fabric as well as it should. I have to go back in my old iPhoto to find a better picture.
Here is the story of how I came into possession of the quilts.
One day in 2003 I received a phone call from a friend who volunteered in the thrift shop at South Burnaby United Church on Grey Avenue. Someone had dropped off two quilts and the staff knew that I was a quilter and thought I should see them. They were given to me and the only hint I had was the name "Mary 1928" in the corner of the Redwork quilt. The second quilt didn't have any information. No one in the thrift shop knew who had dropped the quilts off. I asked the secretary in the church if a note could be put in the Sunday Bulletin asking if the person who dropped them off could contact me. A few days later I received a call from Ida Cooper. She game me the information about her aunt, Mary Bolton, that I put on the label. Ida was downsizing and didn't want to keep the quilts and no one in her family wanted them.
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On Tuesday at guild, Dianne was our speaker. She gave a great talk that included a bit of history and an update on what she is currently working on. She mentioned Colleen and showed a slide one of the quilts Colleen gave her and was part of her presentation. Her two new pieces with the Northern lights were beautiful. Her IT guy (Bruce) was there too, so nice to say hi to him too.
I gave Dianne the two photos of her teaching back in the Quilters' Haven days. Her first comment was she remembered the denim dress and said it was one of her favourites.
She sends greetings and hugs to you all!
We met at Joyce's today and Betty had her We Are Canadian quilt completely finished. She found some fabric from Canada's sesquicentennial with lines of little maple leaves for the border--a great way to finish off this quilt. Speaking of maple leaves, does anyone know why the Toronto Maple Leafs are Leafs and not Leaves? Is this just bad grammar?
Betty also swapped out the rabbit's carrot for a hockey stick which was appropriate for a Canadian quilt.
Sue and Adrienne both finished off the two pastel baby quilts, one made by Marybeth and one by Joyce. They might both need labels and I should have a look through our stash of donation quilts because I think there might be a few more there that need labels.
Charlie was visiting again today and was hard at work keeping us entertained by squeezing into a box in order to provide us with photos ops. Here is one of her sweet poses:
Betty, Colleen and Adrienne worked at arranging our Disappearing Nine Patch I Spy quilt blocks. At first we decided to use sashings to calm down the busy-ness of all those I Spy fabrics but once Joyce and I started sewing the blocks together we all liked the result as is so went back to our original plan
Here is a picture of the blocks being added to the design wall that Betty rigged up. Charlie made sure she had a spot right underneath it in case we needed some help.
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We decided against sashings on this one but on future Disappearing Nine Patch I Spy quilts we can consider making the blocks between the corner blocks in white to add a built in sashing. That means fewer I Spy fabrics, of course which might not be so interesting to the child who receives the quilt. |
The final snap is our finished top which we all thought looks great. It always feels good to get a new quilt pieced because the next quilt is always the most exciting one. That will probably be the X & Plus scrappy quilt that Nancy showed us recently. Joyce originally sent us a photo of a finished quilt and we put it on our list to use up some of our growing collections of scraps.
Joyce will be busy for the month of April so we will have to come up with some other places to meet or we could have some Zoom meetings. Adrienne will likely be available to host next week. I put that on the next meeting page but please check back as that is not confirmed.
I am going to have to be absent for awhile. I have started going to an Osteo For Life class at Bonsor. The classes take place at 12:30 on Tuesday and Thursday. I feel this is necessary at this time for my recovery. My physiotherapist has recommended that I attend. I will miss you all but I will miss fitness class occasionally in order to attend TAQ. I look forward to reading the blog so I can see what you are all doing.
March has been a busy month for quilters. I hope everyone was able to do something quilty last weekend, especially on March 15 when it was International Quilting Day. I know many Tuesday Afternoon Quilters got to the PSQG Fleet Show, Little Quilts in Small Spaces.
Our meeting on the 11th was a busy one, as usual. We had a special visitor, Charlie the cat and she cooperated by posing for endless photos, some of which follow:
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Leng made two and they could probably be incorporated into a quilt.
 This is a rag quilt that was made from a donation of flannelette squares already cut to size. There were enough to make four of these quilts, two of which will be donated back to Heron's Nest for the toddlers in their program. I made this one as a trial. I used three layers of flannel without any batting. It was quick and easy to make and the cutting wasn't too onerous or hard on my hands. The other three bundles were taken by Nancy, Colleen and Sharon. It's really great to be in a group with such hard workers! We also had a large donation of flannelette in two different patterns that we can use for backing our baby and toddler quilts.  We were given approximately 10 meters and it is 60" wide so it will come in very useful. They were donated to us by Debra DeGaust who makes knitted blankets for Project Linus. They referred her to us when she was looking for a group that makes community quilts. |
We were so busy working on Tuesday I forgot to take any pictures so this will be a very short report.
There was a large group present, all of us had busy hands since this was a working meeting. Sue and Adrienne continued working on bindings on Marybeth's and Joyce's baby quilts.
Joyce had her dining room set up assembly line style. Sharon and Leng ironed, Betty, Nancy and Colleen cut squares, Joyce pieced the blocks and I pinned the blocks together for stitching.
We produced 16 blocks and need 7 more nine patches which will yield the 26 blocks still needed to complete the top. We are cutting enough blocks to make two of these quilts. If you want to do some cutting before the meeting the I Spy blocks should measure 5.5" square. We will save any duplicates for future quilts.
We recently received a stash donation from Adrienne Beaton at the Heron's Nest. Most of the fabrics, notions and craft supplies will be donated to Bases but there were some precut flannelette squares that we will make 4 rag quilts with and at least two of those will be donated back to Heron's Nest per Adrienne's request. I made one from beginning to end in just a couple of days. It was very easy and a great quilt for a beginner because it is very forgiving of wonky cutting and stitching. This was my first flannelette rag quilt and probably my last but, thankfully Sharon, Nancy and Colleen volunteered to make the remaining three. I was quite fearful that the loose fibres and lint would clog up my washing machine but that wasn't a problem at all.
I also kept three pieces of flannel from the donation which we will use for quilt backings. Yesterday Project Linus called me about another fabric donation of flannelette and fleece, mostly in prints suitable for babies. It isn't a huge amount so I will pick it up on Thursday or Friday next week and save any flannelettes we can use and take the fleece fabrics to Bases with the other donations. Please let me know if anyone is interested in looking at the fleece.
Please visit the Next Meeting page from the tabs at the top of this page to check out what we will be doing at our next meeting.
Here is a great little video which addresses this question. Click on the box on the lower right of screen to watch full screen.
This is just a reprint of an email I sent you all on Thursday. I wanted to post it to the blog so that it would be easy to find for future reference.
There were a few interesting finds from the Heron's Nest donated stash, such as 4 meters of Quilt Fuse. It looks like it is 45" wide (or more) and similar to a very fine non woven fusible interfacing with a 2" grid printed on it. It always seemed like an easy way to sew little squares together without having to match the corners. I had never considered that you could make a variety of quilt blocks in this manner. For example, The two different blocks in Nancy's quilt could be made with Quilt-Fuse and no need to match corners until you sew all the blocks together, but since the product is 45" wide by almost any length you choose to work with, a quilt that is 90 x 90 could possibly be made with only two horizontal seams and two vertical seams to match. I know I've probably lost you all, already, but when you watch this really short video you might see what I am talking about.
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| I outlined the two blocks. If you manage to get through the whole 5 minute video, at minute 4:05 you will see the product used for a really good idea for an I Spy border. You could make it with bright coloured plain prints as shown in the video or with 2" squares of small print I Spy fabrics separated by a solid border from the inner part of the quilt top. |
One whole box of the fabrics I received from Heron's Nest were 7" flannelette squares in a variety of prints. Adrienne, the co-ordinator of Heron's Nest called me and said that it would mean a lot to her if we could use those squares to make a couple of quilts for the babies at Heron's Nest. Her mom died last summer so I couldn't say no to her request.
These squares were obviously being made into rag quilts as there were a couple of block samples in the box with the cut squares. I've never made one before and had no desire to but I will work at these intermittently between now and September.
I looked at a tutorial on Youtube and think I know how to do it now. I can use one of the left over pieces of flannelette instead of batting so everything is there to finish several quilts, except maybe some enthusiasm.
Joyce suggested we all do this together but I think no one should feel under any obligation to participate. I'll let you all do the cutting 😉.
On Wednesday I picked up a huge donation of fabrics and notions from Adrienne Beaton at the Heron's Nest, one of the donees of our quilts. When I dropped off the donations last Fall, Adrienne asked if we would take her mom's stash off her hands since no one in her family knew what to do with it. I was hopeful that there would be lots of fabrics in the eight huge boxes I picked up but unfortunately, besides the Quilt Fuse and three pieces of flannel it wasn't a very successful haul. Although Adrienne's mom probably loved her stash as much as we all love ours, most of the quilting fabrics were very dated and not the quality that we are used to these days. Also, the majority of the fabrics were actually for garment construction.
I went through everything and pulled out anything that I thought could possibly be useful to someone. I only saved 100% cottons. There was a huge amount of broadcloth but only a couple of pieces that were cotton. I tested all those to be sure. All of those prints and broadcloth pieces have been washed but not ironed. The would look better ironed but I just don't have the time and I don't think they will have much appeal. They are definitely useful for scrap quilts or quilt backs but most of us don't have the space to store them.
I will start bringing them to our get togethers for you to choose from. Remember, these are for your personal use. I don't think we should be keeping a separate stash for our group. I don't have room in my house and we all seem to be able to come up with enough fabrics for our projects by culling our own stashes.
Sue mentioned that Bases will take any small scraps and offcuts from our projects. Also, Joyce reminded me that any fabric donations to Bases don't even have to be sorted because they have volunteers who are used to doing that. I called them up to confirm that because their website didn't have that info and I didn't want to burden them with things they cannot use or cause them extra work. But it's all true and that is good for all of us to remember for the future. Bases will take all your scraps no matter how tiny because these are all shredded and returned to fibre.
I have another post to do about this fabric donation so stay tuned...
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Here is a short summary of our budget after our recent top up to the kitty:
We have matched the Shimokura Family donation of $100 so we now have $200 which is earmarked for a special project such as long arm quilting for a big quilt but that is just an idea of what we could use this money for.
Besides that we have an additional $171.30 for birthday cakes, etcetera which should last us the rest of the year. Please don't forget to see me for reimbursement when you buy something on behalf of the group. I'm not strict about receipts.
Nancy was busy between the meetings working on our behalf to get us started on the planning for two more group quilt projects.
You will all remember this little Jelly Roll quilt that we've seen before. Nancy brought it back to the meeting with her Quilt Record which contains all her notes on the fabric requirements and other useful information such as this tutorial from the Cluck Cluck Sew blog.
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| This quilt only takes 18 Jelly Roll strips plus some border fabric so you could make two with one Jelly Roll. Nancy's notes say that the finished quilt measures 38" x 38". I have been saving a Jelly Roll in Indigo batik prints for this one and I also have several pastel Jelly Rolls that would work for some of the quilts that were featured during Jelly Roll month in September. Note to Nancy, I will make copies of your notes and return yours on Tuesday. |
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| This is Nancy's X & Plus block. There is a half snowball block in each corner, two on either side of a two patch with a long strip with three units in the center. Nancy wrote it all out for us and I will make copies of her instructions for everyone who wants to start making blocks from their scrap collection. We can discuss the construction method but most of us have enough experience to easily complete this block |
There were lots of us present at our Tuesday meeting at Joyce's. Sue and Adrienne set right to work hand stitching bindings, Sue on Marybeth's pastel baby quilt and Adrienne on Joyce's.
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| This is Nancy's quilt. You can just see the top of her head on the left. Nancy was in the second photo but this was a better picture of the quilt so Nancy will appear in a later photo. Nancy said there are only two blocks in this beautiful scrappy quilt. Here is a hint: One is a Sixteen Patch. |
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| Here is Nancy's fabulous Improv Sampler. I do not recall all the details of this class that Nancy took but I think it was a Quilt-Along. Each student made the sample blocks and then had to arrange them as an Improv quilt. I love the way Nancy has arranged this. It really succeeds in keeping your eye moving around the quilt. The colours are gorgeous and is really balanced between lights, mediums and darks. The fabric line (one more question for Nancy) is available at Fabricana but I didn't note the name. Nancy, can you bring this to the next meeting again if it isn't too much trouble. I really didn't get a good look at this and Colleen missed it entirely. |
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| Penny brought one of her Disappearing Nine Patch blocks to show us. She is well underway now and determined to use her stash on this which she plans on keeping for herself. That will be a perfect project for Spring. |
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| Here is another quilt on Penny's list. This is really adorable and looks pretty scrap friendly. I think Penny will be showing off her embroidery skills with this one. |
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| Two birthdays were celebrated with two cakes--Penny's and mine. Penny is a year older than me and I can't remember how old I am so that's all I can say on that subject. |
