Crab & Winkle Day: bringing up the rear

Here is Maggie's day bed covered with the buzzsaw top we all contributed to and its former appearance covered by a star quilt.  My contribution is the rulers quilt which will be given to Project Linus.

Crab & Winkle day: Mary

Mary brought in her mystery quilt, one we all did, which she is handquilting, her wall hanging which we've all contributed to and the wonderful hearts quilt she is making for her daughter based on a wrapping paper design.

Crab & Winkle Day: Marion

Marion had been very busy as usual. She has solved the problem of how to set her cat blocks (a group block swap)by placing a triangle in the corners and alternating with ninepatches. The ginger tom was one of my contributions.
There was also a map of the UK made long ago from tiny hexagons which she is reworking, a "boxes" quilt with multicoloured binding and her square ruler pocket in a log cabin pattern. On the right are little quilts made for little beds.

Crab & Winkle day: Melanie

The main business of the day was celebrating Melanie's birthday. We had each donated eight 10" squares of blue, turquoise and purple fabrics to make a personal layercake beautifully presented by Maggie. There was a cake and candles, a card  made by Marion and Katharine Guerrier's scrap quilt sensation. Here too is the quilt she is currently working on made from shirts.

Cobblestones reunited

We went to visit our daughter today and as well as the quilt on her bed I was reunited with a batik cobblestones I made for a certain little person seen in this picture.

Rulers Quilt 01

The block pieces were cut out by Quay Quilters using various "special rulers". I sewed them into blocks and joined quilt-as you-fashion. Now I just have to stitch and flip the borders.

Bag Workshop

I went to an Oast Quilters members' workshop on Saturday. These are extra to the workshops led by speakers and are conducted my members, usually not the general run of teachers as these are asked to teach by groups anyway. Cilla led this one, making a bag in good time for our bag tombola. It was a very good pattern to do as we all finished but learnt one or two things along the way and the pockets and panels made for a very pleasing result. I took the easy route of using all the same fabric as I hadn't seen the sample at the meeting but will mix it up a bit if I make another as planned. Judy's was pink and the others were all pinned up to be admired at the end.

Reunited

Last Monday the Usual Suspects met up at Judi's for lunch and I spotted a quilt of mine now owned by Judi - it was quite a surprise to look at it again. I made three Snail's Trail mysteries and no longer have any of them, two sold and one given. Valerie showed us where she is up to with her Lone Stars and we discussed layout possibilities. This is going to be one stunning quilt.

Patchwork Party

I've made the last two blocks for our Patchwork Party quilt though I have still to frame one. I have three to handquilt and also the setting triangles so still some way to go. I like the colours 1920's-30's and different from my usual grunge. These will be a nice carry-a-long project as I hand quilt. I hope the quilt-as-you-go goes well. I haven't tried it with poly batting before. The block with green star points involved LOTS of set in seams and was a bit of a struggle.

Quay Quilters

Quay Quilters met yesterday. I was my turn to teach our beginner (log cabin) so I took little part in the main activity of the evening which was putting our group quilt together. My contribution to this was to casually remark on the way to make the tea "Oh you're doing zigzags then". Great consternation as they weren't doing zigzags but squares . Some of the rows were wrong after all the careful arrangement and had to be rearranged but the result is still fine. In the midst of all this I omitted to take photos and anyway it hasn't all been joined yet. At Show and Tell Vanessa showed a wonderful quilt where the pattern has been created by discharging with bleach and she has done some amazing regular patterned free machine quilting but following markings. Helen had made some luscious tissue boxes employing the folded flowers she'd shown us earlier. I have finished a bag intended for the Oast bag tombola but it hasn't turned out as well as I hoped; it was like a drssmaking pattern and I meticulously transferred all the seam markings and all went well until the last stage - top stitching round the strap and of the bag. the first side was fine but for the second side I had far too much of the main fabric. How could that be from the the same strip of fabric? I remain mystified but managed to bodge and ease but  it isn't as neat as I would have liked. And the fabrics were lovely too - for the bottom part of the gusset I used a coordinating fabric with an appropriate message.

Crab & Winkle meeting

Crab & Winkle met last Friday and as usual there was a lot to see: a bag, ponchos and fabric boxes from Marion and Mary's wonderful group hanging. She made the central home and family portrait; we contributed hearts, boats, beach huts, pinwheels and seagulls.

Fifth Finish

I've already listed five finishes for 2010. There certainly won't be five this February but it's a good start even it was only because I had various quilts near to completion. However, I hope to press on with the finishing and that finishes should easily outnumber new starts. There was one new start AND a finish in January, my Kente Quilt done for the BQL list challenge. The goal for January was a quilt for a soldier and I determined to do this using fabric on hand and an idea for a quilt I'd had in mind for a long time. The woven is Indian cotton and was bought at Hancocks of Paducah. I still have a lot left. I used alternate directions of the weave in alternate rows. The others are mostly Ghanaian wax prints from Magie Relph's African Fabric Shop. http://www.africanfabric.co.uk/  I attended a workshop with Magie making blocks for a similar design based on traditional Kente woven cloth; her blocks were various foundation pieced patterns but as time was of the essence and the fabrics were in themselves so super I just used plain oblongs. I used a sort of ladder stitch in the ditch and variegated thread for the diagonal quilting. The quilt measures 54 by 72 inches. I shall send it to my local Quilts ofValour contact here in the UK (hence the spelling) with the proviso that if they don't deem it suitable for any reason it go to Project Linus as a teenage quilt.  They specified heirloom quilts which put many people off. This is not an heirloom quilt but it is made well from good quality fabrics and should stand up to wear and use. Quilts do not have the same emotional and cultural charge here in Britain as they do in the States but it is by such dissemination we create an audience and perhaps a market for quilts.

Judi's Stars

At the Usual Suspects meeting Judi also produced  some stars from a  transatlantic block swap of stars-in-an-eight-pointed-star using batiks on a white background. I belong to this swap group but passed on this one. These ladies always do lovely work as shown here and  Judi sent off some superb ones too.