Two More Finishes

    This has been a very productive quilting weekend so far.  Today I put the finishing touches on 2 prayer/comfort quilts that are for my church quilt group.  The carpenter star is finished.  

I enjoyed quilting feathers in the diamond areas and the triangles top and bottom.  I changed to light gray thread for the purple diamonds so that the quilting shows up more.  At least I could see where I had quilted.

I simply meandered the border instead of doing more fancy quilting.

     My second finish was the squares and strips quilt made from my stash of scrap squares and strips. I did cut the white 2 ½” strips especially for this quilt.  This was a great quilt to also use scraps of leftover binding.  I simply quilted it with a large meander. 

    In the next few days, I hope to get back to finishing another UFO.

Afternoon of Quilting

       As I have done for several days recently, I spent the morning working in the yard.  After cleaning up and a short rest, I went back to quilting on the carpenter star quilt.  I have meandered all of the background and stitched-in-the-ditch to outline the center star and both inside and outside edge of the outer wheel.   

This afternoon I started free-motion quilting feathers in the star diamonds using dark gray thread. The feathers show up well on the green.  It is difficult to see the thread on the purple and that also made it more difficult to quilt because I could hardly see what I had quilted and where I needed to go. 

On the outer wheel I may find a purple thread or another color for the purple diamond
 areas. 
Tomorrow will be another great day for piecing or quilting!

One More Border to Add

        Very little sewing has gone on this week with guild meeting Tuesday morning and yard work 2 mornings.  I did manage to sew the dogwood quilt top together.  Here is the top except for the last simple border.  

Today I bought a green leaf print for the outer border. It is so large it is difficult to get a great photo.  It will be queen size.  I need to give some thought as to how to custom quilt it.  I hope to quilt vein lines in the leaves. I plan to take my time with the quilting so it won’t be finished very quickly.

Playing with Made-Fabric

     I enjoyed a visit with my sister, made a presentation to ACPQ guild and led a workshop on creating and using made-fabric. 

I have been inspired by the work of Victoria Findlay Wolfe and her book, 15 Minutes of Play: Improvisational Quilts.  You can find many tips on her blog   and also many made-fabric tutorials and challenges at http://www.15minutesplay.com/ .

In the workshop the ladies had fun creating their made-fabric.  Here are some photos from their play with scraps. 

Sue was not 100% because of eye surgery so she acted as assistant. 

Sue has also been busy playing with her green crumbs.  Isn’t it lovely? 

Progress on Dogwood Blooms

    The past few days I have been enjoying time with family so no sewing has been going on.  I did layout dogwood blocks to see how they will look. The blooms will be sewn in 3 columns with the floral fabric in between and as a border. I will probably also have another border maybe of green which I don’t have yet.  I’m getting excited about this quilt. 

Sorry the perspective is off.  I took the photo viewing the columns from the side and then rotated it. The blooms almost cover a full size bed top so difficult to see all. 

     I won’t get to work on this for a few days.  I will be presenting working with crumbs and made-fabric for my sister’s guild but then will get back to work on dogwood blooms. 

String Piecing with Students

     Thursday morning I worked with 2 students at Creative Sewing on string piecing.  I focused on the variety of uses and patterns for strings.   Leslie chose to piece half-logs on phonebook pages.  She does not yet have a stash of strings so she used a jellyroll. 

I love her warm and cool half-log blocks. 

 

     Cynthia chose to work on spider web units using dot fabric.  I did not get a photo of her completed units.  However, she recently took my beginning quilting class and brought a finished quilt to share.   

I enjoyed sharing string piecing info and hopefully inspiring them for more string piecing.

 Here a some of my scrappy spiderweb blocks. 

Working on Flowers Real and Fabric

      I love this beautiful spring weather.  I have spent several mornings working with real flowers in my yard . . .

 . . . before I relax in the afternoon and sew on fabric flowers. 

 The above photo shows all curves stitched.

I have all 21 needed dogwood units together and feel great about the progress.   I have stitched the leaf curves on only one unit so far but that is the last part before sewing the units together for the quilt top.