A Celebration of Quilts XI: Silent Auction - Part 3

I finished the quilting on the 2nd small quilt I plan to submit to the silent auction that will be held at our guild's quilt show this fall.  Again I kept it simple, just followed the outline of the leaves.  The next step will be the beading. 

I already had a nice pale celery green and a deep maroon but wanted to get a fuchsia pink for this quilt.  I went to Michael's and all they had was light pink but the gal told me about a place called Bead FX which wasn't that far from where I live and all they sell are beads.  I went today and oh boy you could go nuts in there.  I found my fuchsia beads and some nice blue and green ones that I may also use in this piece.  These beads were sold by what they call a hank and there are 12 strands in each bundle and the price ran between $4.50 - $4.65 per bunch. 

In addition I also bought these 3 bundles, couldn't resist and I haven't got a clue as to what I will do with them, but had to have them.  If you are interested here is their web site and they do ship to the states as well as Canada for only $5.95 ($20.00 for international). http://www.beadfx.com/catalogue/index.html

Jade's B-Day Quilt - part 4

I got the back finished for this quilt.  I used up the 6 blocks that ended up being the wrong size due to the not greatest of instructions in the book.  The sashing on these is a batik that I had with similar colours and tones as the fusions fabric I used for the sashing and borders on the front which I only had enough to do the front.  I also had the main batik that I'm using on the back in my stash from a few years ago. 

Tonight is our small quilt group meeting and it is at my place so I'm going to get the gals to help me with the quilt sandwich  on this quilt. I find that one of the hardest parts of quilting.  So I figured with 7 pairs of hands helping it should go fairly quickly and without much problems.

Jade's B-Day Quilt - Part 3

I've made great progress on Jade's quilt and the top is now finished.  I'm very pleased with how it turned out and here is what it looks like.  I was also very lucky in that I had just enough of the the fusions fabric for the sashing and border.  I have a bunch of left over blocks that I will try to incorporate into the back of which the primary fabric is a nice batik that has many of the colours that are on the front.  This one I plan on keeping the quilting simple and just doing simple wavy lines going across the quilt but I plan on using multiple colours including a lime green, a forest green, turquoise and blue to give it some interest.

So you may wonder how I got everything done so quickly given that I was missing in action and so busy at work.  Well this past Tuesday I was let go from my job.  Yes it's a little scary being unemployed but the job that I was at was so incredibly stressful that it was affecting my health and life balance.  No one should have to work under those kinds of conditions but unfortunately may people do.  I'm looking forward to a little time to unwind, get some rest and do some quilting.  Then it's back to job hunting and given that the economy has picked up a bit I'm hoping that I won't be out of a job for too long.

MIA - Missing In Action

Yes it must seem that I have been missing in action since it has been over a month since I have posted anything on my blog.  Work was extremely busy this past month so there was no sewing or quilting after work since many an evening I was bring work home, not a favourite hobby of mine. Then unfortunately a few of the weekends I ended up being sick either with migraines or once it was a flu bug so those were write offs as well. 

This past week I finally had some vacation time and the first few days were just some decompression, relax and get caught up on sleep.  I went up north of Toronto to Horseshoe Valley for part of the week which was quite nice just to get away from the big city.  I did manage to work on some of the beading for the small wall hanging that I plan to give to the silent auction at our quilt guild show this fall.  Here is my progress, it doesn't look like a lot but it's amazing how long it takes to sew those little seed beads on.

So now that I'm back I actually have gotten back to doing some sewing on the blocks for Jade's quilt.  Earlier I was having issues with the pattern, and I came across one more before I left for vacation.  I found out that it is very important to make sure that all the pieces get sewn back together in their proper order.  Even if some pieces look very similar, sewing them in the wring order results in a non-usable block.  As you can see from the picture below it doesn't even look remotely square.  When I tried to trim this to an 8" square there was no way to make it work without ahcking off some of the points.

So for a pattern that was supposed to be easy and stress free, this one certainly became anything but easy and stress free.  I think I have figured out where all the quirks are of this pattern and so far I have made 20 blocks and I need to make another 15.  This is what I have so far. Despite all the issues I think this will be a lovely quilt.