Modern Day Quilting Bee

Quilters Pets, the small quilting group that I belong to had our last meeting before taking time off for the summer yesterday and we had a modern day quilting bee. Joan, one of our members got volunteered to make a quilt for a charity raffle for the Home Child Care Association. This is one of the associations that she is involved with through her work and they are having a big fund raiser in the fall. Last month's meeting was at my place and I gave a tutorial on the wonky star block that I used for the bushfire quilt I made earlier in the year. Joan liked the block and decided to use it for her charity quilt and it would be a good block to work on in a group setting since it doesn't require extreme precision.

We had a great time, lots of laughs and got 12 blocks made for the lap size quilt within 2 1/2 hours. We started with cutting the fabric into the needed squares and triangles. Here's a picture of the 2 sewers and the presser. There was a gal at this table trimming where the gals were sewing but every time the camera came out she very quickly disappeared.

Here's one of the trimmers of the wonky squares...

... and the second trimmer of the wonky squares.

I ended up floating around from table to table assisting everyone. The big challenge was getting people's minds out of orderly and into wonky. It was an interesting process to see how gals kept wanting to put the blocks together in a neat and orderly way instead of randomly to get the wonky look. Here is the end result of the evening's efforts.

Here are some close up shots of the blocks.

Art & Cold Cash - Collaborative Art Quilt Project

I'm working on a collaborative art quilt project with friend and artist Jack Butler and another quilter friend Bernice. Jack spent several years living up in northern Canada (Baker Lake, Nunavut: located 320 km (200 mi) inland from Hudson Bay) with the Inuit working on a critical exploration of the introduction of capitalism into Northern economies. "Art and Cold Cash" explores how capitalism was introduced to Inuit culture through the development of indigenous arts and crafts industries.

During this project Jack explored his own introduction to money with a work titled "My First Memory of Money is Selling Flower Seeds Door to Door". This piece is a story of his grandfather showing him how to package 4 o'clock seeds in envelopes and then going door to door selling them to the neighbourhood mothers.

Jack's original work was digitally scanned and the image was sent to Spoonflower to be printed onto cotton fabric. The size of the printed image is approx. 30" by 40".

This cloth version will be quilted and embellished with thread painting, beads yarn and ribbon. There will be a small inner border of red fabric about 1/4" and the outer border will be a cream raw silk which will also contain some additional embellishments. We are still planning out the details of the treatment.

In addition there was a digitally manipulated version of the image that was also printed onto cotton fabric in the same dimensions. This image has a "northern lights" kind of feel to it and will also be quilted and embellished. It will also have a 1/4" inner border of red fabric and the outer border is a dark blue and black mottled cotton.

This will be an on going project for many months given it's collaborative nature and I will keep you posted on its progress. We have yet to decide which of the two we are going to start first.

Woodland Symphony II - Part 6

Despite coming down with a flu bug this weekend, I managed to complete the Woodland Symphony II quilt. Saturday was pretty much a write off and I didn't do much. Yesterday I was just a bit under the weather and all I had to do was the hand stitching of the binding and pulling all the quilting thread ends to the back and weaving back into the quilt sandwich. So it was easy work sitting on the couch. The quilt turned out great and I'm looking forward to seeing what Anna will think of it.

Woodland Symphony II - Part 5

It was great having a long weekend and I managed to get all the quilting done on the Woodland Symphony II quilt. I quilted a leaf motif in each of the blocks. For some of the blocks I tried to match up an appropriate image such as an oak leaf in the oak leaf block, or a pine tree in the green pine forest block. For some of the other blocks it wasn't as simple and I tried to find a leaf type image that suited the fabric.

My free motion quilting has improved greatly since last fall and this came together much easier and with very few stitching glitches. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. I tried to take pictures of the various squares to show the quilting but the lighting wasn't quilt right and I couldn't get enough contrast between the fabric and the quilting thread. So I only have two pictures where you can see some of the details.

So now I just have to sew on the binding and pull through all the lose threads the the quilt will be finished. So that will be work for this coming weekend and then I will be able to deliver this quilt to Anna next week. I'm sure she will like it.

Woodland Symphony II - Part 4

Just a quick update. I got all the stitch in the ditch sewing completed over the weekend on the Woodland Symphony II quilt, but didn't get any time to tackle any of the leaf motif quilting that I plan to do inside each of the blocks. I also have a leaf border to quilt, so it looks like this coming weekend will be busy. Fortunately it's a long weekend with Monday being a holiday so I should be able to make some good progress and have some photos of the quilting to share. Enjoy your week.

Woodland Symphony II - Part 3

I got the quilt top completed and I'm pleased with the results. I can tell that my piecing skills have definitely improved since last fall thanks to the Friday Block Party. The quilt top went together without a hitch.

I got the back put together from this batik that I had, so now I still have to make the quilt sandwich and then I can start the quilting.

I didn't get as much done today because it was a lovely spring day and I decided to take some time out and go out and enjoy the weather. Where I live there is a wonderful ravine and parkland area and the wooded area was filled with blooming trilliums. It's great to see the spring flowers after such a cold long winter.

The tulips trees in our neighbourhood are also in bloom and they make such a pretty show I had to take some pictures of them as well.

Woodland Symphony II - Part 2

I made great progress on the quilt top today and I got as far as finishing the inner border. Tomorrow I should be able to get the narrow accent border and the main border on, prep the backing for the quilt and get the quilt sandwich made up. Depending on how the time goes I might even be able to start the stitch in the ditch portion of the quilting.