Quilting times

 Quay Quilters was in a different venue this week. Under Pauline's direction we made up kits of Christmas tree ornaments to sell at our show. I struggle with crafty things like this but I finished mine at home. At the evening my neighbour had made two while I didn't finish. Mags held up a quilt for her daughter who insisted on squares. The fabrics made the quilt and the prairie points were impressive.
Also at home I finished the rest of the "Just My Size" blocks but think the colours are just too intense. I'll put dark blue sashing between to relieve the intensity.
That will have to wait, though, as a conversation with Mavis reminded me I'd better get on with my churn dashes as we have a deadline. These are for the next "frame" of our medallion project.

Mags' quilt



The frog princes need some blue sashing

Churn Dash 6" square

christmas in May

Shipshape QAYG

A kind retreater gave me a fat quarter with sailing yachts on it so I used a fussy cut section as the centre panel of this little charity quilt. The backing and wadding are spray basted. I placed the panel in the centre and then added borders all round, stitching through all layers and so quilting as I went.



Three sides added, one to go.



One final border to add by flip and sew.

Trimmed and edge stitched, awaiting binding by class.

Corner detail

Pleased

I needed some blocks to illustrate QAYG with frames and dug out some very unprepossessing 9-patches and then some equally unprepossessing fabric pieces to frame them and guess what I'm very pleased with the resulting block and arrangement, totally unfashionable. The finished quilt is  destined for an old people's home specialising in dementia cases. It will be 50" square.

Arranging the blocks

Blocks pinned up with frame pieces

First two rows done

All framed and ready to quilt

QAYG

Mile a minute squares set on point.

Quilt as you go dolls


 

 These quilts serve a triple plus purpose: to donate to charity for others to enjoy, to use up some of my stash especially strings and as teaching samples for a U3A class on finishing. I've left the mile a minute corners free so they can practice mitring and the QAYG doll quilt is for binding practice.

Dolls detail

This week

Preferred version

Rejected version

Blocks laid out ready to turn over

Ruby's quilt

At Quay Quilters this week Ruby showed an utterly charming quilt inspired by a picture in her quilters' diary, made for no other reason than that she wanted to, a very good reason in my opinion. I have continued getting stuff ready for the U3A class on finishing quilts. I first arranged the autumn blocks from the back beginning with a regular arrangement which looked awful and then went for organised random. I then turned the blocks over and labelled each one  according to the fabric on the reverse. If I swapped any round I swapped them with its fellow. Once done I put them into bags of four with joining strips and quilt-as-you-go-instructions.

Friday

By the time we'd had lunch and it was time to leave, I think we all thought we'd achieved a good deal, eaten a good deal and had a great time.

My "autumn" strip pieced blocks

Belinda's Kaffe quilt taking shape

Margaret's quilt for a child

Belinda's stacked and cut squares

Preparing to depart

Thursday

We spent a few minutes each day working on charity blocks. Stacked and sewn squares were the first and then a clever way of sewing and cutting squares to make uneven ninepatches. The last one was making 12" blocks from my vast collection of novelty squares. This was the most popular as retreaters could not resisting trawling through the boxes and making different assemblages. At first I thought Margaret's effort was an art piece but it proved to be made from my sheep squares. I need to take photos of the others. They are still packed up as I'm unpacking my project boxes on a need to work on basis.

 

Margaret and sheep block before trimming. Thank you!

Cut and sewn uneven 9-patches

detail

Three fabric frog version - for blue read orange.

Judi's quilt for a veteran.

Valerie's stars from a small part of her b/w stash.

Stacked and sewn squares - I added to the pile/

Detail

Mirror image arrangement

Wednesday

Marigold's pretty squares sewn up

Margaret's modern quilt for a grandchild laid out.

My "Spectacular Stars" laid out.



Margaret's quilt held up.

Gillian's Japanese Dolls

Gillian with a fraction of her blue blocks

Maggie's Patience Corners in the making

Valerie's batik Stars in progress

Tuesday's photos

Judy's sister's quilt - great job.

Marigold's pretty squares

Belinda's pretty squares



Belinda's bunting

Belinda's Kaffe Fassett workshop quilt set up ready to sew

Belinda's broken dishes

Maggie's marvellous squares and oblongs - top done