Big Block Quick Quilt

       Five members of the SQG are each making a big block quilt called "Pina Colada".    The pattern is made up of HSTs of 3 different sizes, the largest finishes at 12".  That is a really large HST.

It was very quick to get the center panel pieced.  I just need to add the borders of 6" finished HSTs so it will finish at 60 by 72".

More from the Quilt Show

    Following are some of the winning quilts from the NC Symposium show last weekend. As you might expect I did not agree with all the judges choices but this first on was a fabulous one for Best of Show.

This won for best machine quilting.

Check out the close ups of the machine quilting.

      I hope seeing these will inspire you to work on a quilt.  

Amazing Handwork of Anne Francis

      At the NC Symposium show this past weekend they had a special exhibit of local guild member Anne Francis’amazing handwork .  She does not own a sewing machine and 13 of her bed size hand pieced and hand quilted works have won Best of Show awards. She also designed them.

Here are a few photos.  If you click on the photo, you should be able to see a larger photo of the quilts.  I'm sorry I did not take closeups of her quilting. 

There were a surprising number of show entries hand quilted.  

Fun at NC Quilt Symposium

    My sister and I had a great time at the NC Quilt Symposium in Fayetteville, NC this past weekend.  We enjoyed and learned a lot in the 2 classes we took.  Our Friday class was from Judith Montano to learn embellishment stitches that can be used on crazy quilts or simply to embellish.  Here my sister is working on her piece. 

 

Here is my first piece. It still needs a lot added.  This is just the beginning.

     Our Saturday class was from Annette Ornales on peeled back folded inserts to create the look of pieced curves.  Her pattern is called “Carolina Dogwoods” and here she is standing in front of her quilt. 

Here is a close up of one blossom.

You can see more of her lovely and cute patterns on her website at www.southwindquilts.com/

Instead of using a dark background I chose a light background to go with a floral border fabric.   For class we pieced 3 flowers and 5 leaves to make a wall-hanging but the pattern has 2 other sizes.  I would like to make a larger quilt similar to Annette’s sample.  Here is one flower and a couple of leaves I made in class.  

Hopefully tomorrow I will get around to showing some of the wonderful quilts from the show at symposium.

New Project for SQG and Heading Out

     Today at SQG the 5 of us present each started a quilt using the "Pina Colata" pattern

from the July/Aug 2004 Fons&Porter's Love of Quilting. It makes a 60 by 72" lap quilt using very large squares and half-square triangles.  We mostly pulled fabrics from our donated stash of cottons (not batiks like the photo).  It will be interesting in the coming months to see how the 5 look when finished.

     I will be heading out tomorrow for the NC Quilt Symposium in Fayetteville and hope to have some great photos to post when I get home.

Keep Sewing / Quilting !

Need More Strings

    This morning I had a construction company rep here to discuss remodeling my kitchen.  Hopefully, that will take place about midsummer.  In the afternoon I pieced more string blocks while watching a couple of episodes of “Wish Me Luck “ on Netflix.  ( It is an interesting British series about women who served as spies in France during WWII. )  I finished the 24 blocks I wanted.  That’s the good part.  The bad part is that I depleted my string stash so much that I will have to collect more before I can work on my string spider web blocks.  

 

The temptation to work on strings will be removed so I can move on to a project on my UFO list or maybe I will get some new clothes made for myself.

      There are a couple of special birthday’s in the next couple of weeks so I took a few minutes to make quilted postcards for them.

Hope you are working on a quilting/sewing fun project.

Design Wall String Half Logs

    Instead of piecing, I have spent 2 mornings this week on yard work and Tuesday was guild day bee meeting.  Afternoons I have spent some time free piecing more string half log blocks.   I currently have 20 finished ( 4 more than on the design wall ).  

I played some with layout.  I think I like this better.  I will try a few more before I’m ready to sew rows together. 

I have planned to teach a string piecing class at Midlands Tech- Harbison campus in the fall.   You can check out the classes at  http://mtconline.midlandstech.edu/

I find free piecing scraps relaxing. 

Playing with Strings

    This weekend has been a lot of family time with company in town for a niece’s college graduation.  We had a great day Saturday.  I spent a quiet Mother’s Day string piecing with breaks for short chats and visits with family.   I finished another string spider web block; that makes 4 so far.  I want 12 so I have a good bit more to sew.  

     As leaders and enders, I started some more half log cabin string blocks and finished up 5 more.  These are fun to piece when you don’t want to worry about seam allowance.  I don’t even care about the width of the strips until I get close to the finished size I want.  

    I am finding that my tub of strings is running low on warm colors.  I may have to actually cut some fabric to create strings.  All I have so far were left over from projects. 

Quilt-As-You-Go Finished

   The bargello style quilt-as-you-go quilt is finished.   

I will not be doing another quilt-as-you-go project for a LONG time.  After sewing all the column strips and the borders on using the quilt-as-you-go technique, I felt it would look better with more quilting so I did  free-motion leaves and loops. 

part of the front

 

view of back

 

I divided the border into equal sections and marked with soap then I free-motion quilted simple spirals.

   This has been yet another charity / comfort quilt that was not on my list of quilts to finish.  Next I really  need to finish one from my list.

Grape Leaf Trapunto Finished

    I have been studying Cindy Needham’s Craftsy class “Design It, Quilt It: Free-form Techniques”, because on my wish list of quilts to make is a whole cloth quilt.  I considered using the grape leaf class sample as a practice cloth for some of her free-motion background quilting. I decided that would not be appropriate for students I might have so chose to do simple echoing and stippling.   

My second class sample with grape leaves is finished.

     It has been cool and damp most of the day so I did not want to spend the afternoon working in the yard, although my yard needs some attention.  I pulled out the bargello WIP.  About a month ago I had pieced the columns and started sewing them together in quilt-as-you-go.  I quickly knew this was NOT the technique for me but I have to finish with this method.  I sandwiched the backing and batting.  Then I marked the center and started adding columns from the center out sewing through all the layers.

Finally all the columns are sewn together and it is ready for a border. Maybe that will get done tomorrow. I am VERY happy that this one is almost done. 

Butterfly Trapunto Finished

    The butterfly small quilt is finished.  It is my first sample for the trapunto class I will be teaching in October at Midlands Tech.

After stitching the butterfly motif with extra batting, I decided to stitch the background in a ½” grid.  I had to mark it and with the trapunto already done, it was difficult.   I learned when you think you might want to stitch a grid for a background filler, you need to mark it when you mark the design for the trapunto.

Also, for marking I used a Dritz fine point Mark-B-Gone marking pen (blue) which I have used many times before with no problem.  In the past I would just spritz the marks and they disappeared.  This time after wetting them a couple of times and having them reappear, I put the small quilt in the washer full of water to soak and spin.  So far, all the blue marks are gone. The quilt is still drying.  The warning says heat will set the blue so I did not put it in the dryer. 

Here is the back.  I like it as well or better than the front. I decided not to add a hanging sleeve so the back will show well.