Donation Quilt is Finished

My little quilting group finally finished their donation quilt for the 2017 Mennonite Relief Sale in May. We have been supporting this cause for over 10 years now and have raised over $2,000 from our collective quilting efforts. 
It's a long journey from picking a pattern, gathering scraps from the stashes of 5 very different quilters, sewing blocks, organizing a layout, sewing the quilt top together, quilting and binding it, and finally putting on the label.

The pattern is called "Warm Breeze" by Sarah Maxwell and Dolores Smith (finished size: 78" x 80"). It was published in McCalls Quick Quilts magazine and is available as a free download over at the Fons and Porter website - click here. This is a photo from when it was just a quilt top on the design wall. It's now a finished quilt sitting in a bag at the MCC office waiting to be auctioned in May. I was so nervous about getting it submitted before the deadline, that I forgot to take a photo of the quilting on the finished quilts. Hearts are hand quilted in the blue setting triangles.
We are already working on our next quilt for the 2018 auction. We have decided to start by compiling the blocks we collected on last year's July Shop Hop and see if we can make a quilt out of them.

Group Quilt Top is finished

The quilt top for next year's auction is finished! 
The pattern is called "Warm Breeze" and is by Sarah Maxwell and Dolores Smith. It is in the McCall's Quick Quilts magazine Feb/March issue.
















There are 85 whirlygig blocks in this fun quilt top made from 6 quilters' stashes. Even though each quilter's 1/4" seam is different, we managed to get the blocks together quite easily. 
The only guidelines we used in making the blocks - use bright fabrics and a blue background. It is interesting to look at the quilt and try to guess which quilter made which block! You can see that everyone's definitions of the guidelines were different :)  But it all works together.
We are ahead of schedule this year so there will be lots of time to get the quilting done over the winter. 

Slow Sunday Stitching & Auction Report

Life is Beautiful Block #9

What crazy weather we had yesterday! It was so hot in the morning, I didn't know if I would be able to stay at the quilt auction, and you just know it must be really  bad when I can't stay at a quilt event! I did work on some hand embroidery to distract myself from melting, and finished block #9 of Life Is Beautiful.






My little sewing group's Sunshine Quilt was sold for $450 and we are very happy about that! We have raised over $2,000 for the relief efforts of the MCC.






In February I made a block for the "Canada: What it means to me" quilt. You can see my block to the top left of the centre medallion. You can read more about it here.
This quilt sold for $3,200!!

Photo by Dolores Sedore

The top seller of the day was the "Threads of Africa" quilt (read more about it here). This photo was emailed to me by Dolores and is much better than the photo I took at the auction. It really is a spectacular quilt... 
it sold for $42,000!
For real! It was very exciting to be there, and made the heat exhaustion worthwhile.

In the afternoon there was a huge downpour, and the temperature became more bearable. When it was time to leave, we had to swim to our cars! Just look at all that rain. The gardens needed the rain, but so much rain fell so quickly that the ground couldn't absorb it.

Don't little boys love to play in puddles? And this was a very big puddle for them to enjoy. I watched these guys have fun for quite a while.
I think they enjoyed the puddle as much as I enjoyed the quilt auction!


And while I waited to leave, it continued to rain, and I continued to stitch. The stitches are a little wobbly so don't biggy size the photo. The traffic was at a stand still, and look how much I got stitched on my next block! I will be putting more stitches in today.

What are you hand stitching? Link up your blog post below and share a photo of where you do your hand stitching. In a car, at the park, in the waiting room, on the patio... any place is a great stitching place!

Good Friday Sewing

Usually by this time of year the weather is warmer and the robins have returned, but I haven't seen one here yet. I did hear a robin singing this morning so it won't be long until they show themselves. 

Group members' blocks

Besides searching for robins, today I will be working with my little sewing group on our next donation quilt, which I wrote about on Monday's post.

My blocks

Here are some of the blocks we have collected so far. We will add these to the blocks I made (always brighter than the usual LOL!) plus the blocks that the group members have made this week. 







We will put them all up on the design wall and see what happens. Wish us luck!

Design Wall Monday - Whirligigs

A new project is on the design wall today. It's actually been "in the works" for a while, but I'm just getting my blocks finished up this week. The pattern is by Sarah Maxwell and Dolores Smith from the McCall's Quick Quilts magazine Feb/March issue.

My little sewing group (we call ourselves "the sew 'n sews") are always working on a quilt to donate to the annual Mennonite Relief Quilt Auction.  It is quite the lengthy process from finding a pattern that we can all handle with different levels of sewing experience, finding a colour scheme we can agree on (that is always the hardest part), getting the blocks sewn, and then the huge task of agreeing on the layout. 
The colour scheme for this quilt is brightly coloured whirligigs on blue backgrounds. These blocks will be in our next donation quilt, which might be in the 2016 auction if we work hard and complete it by then.  
Sometimes we complete a quilt within one year, and sometimes we don't, depending on how life goes.

Here is a list of the quilts we have donated:
2008 Wings of Friendship - $475
2010 Split Decision - $400
2011 Chicklets - $325
2013 Bricks and Stepping Stones - $375

Our quilt in the 2015 auction this year is blue and yellow, and we called it "Sunshine Quilt". It's so big that we had a hard time getting a good picture of it. In this photo the quilt is hanging over the bannister and around the corner. We combined all the yellow and blue scraps from our stashes for the Sunshine Quilt and hope it raises more money for the international relief work of the MCC.

To see more design wall postings, hop over to Patchwork Times.

Scrappy Saturday

It's the last Saturday of the month and we'll soon be getting a new colour of scraps to play with for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge :) I spent some relaxing time (in between machine quilting) piecing these red, white and blue scraps together. No fabric was purchased for this quilt top. It was created from my scraps, plus the scraps of 3 of my quilting friends (we call ourselves "The Sew 'n Sews").

The pattern is Bricks and Stepping Stones by Bonnie Hunter. The rows pieced together perfectly...I didn't even need to use pins! Now it just needs a couple of borders and then we'll send it off to the hand quilters.
And I am heading back to the sewing machine to finish the quilting on July's UFO!

Design Wall Monday #22

I have been doing more gardening than quilting these days, but don't have much to show for all the work...yet! So what's on my design wall?

It is the beginning of a donation quilt to be ready for next year's quilt auction. My small sewing group (the Sew 'n Sews) have picked Bonnie Hunter's pattern called "Bricks and Stepping Stones" for our 4th donation quilt.
We are each searching our stashes for more red and blue fabrics for the bricks and I am sewing the black and white 4 patches using fabric from my stash. I love to collect black and whites and am happy to use up some of them in this quilt.
Hop over to Patchwork Times for lots of design wall inspiration.

Quilt Auction 2011 Report

It was quite a cool day for the New Hamburg quilt auction this year and the turn out seemed better than ever, perhaps because the lack of sun, cool temperatures, and the constant threat of rain caused all the gardeners to come to the auction (to read the local newspaper report- click here).

I missed out on buying some tea balls on Friday night, so I foolishly stood in line for one hour on Saturday morning for these darn things (yes, during the quilt auction... won't do that again!) ...but OMG they are so good! There are few things in life that I enjoy more than coffee and tea balls, while watching a fabulous quilt auction!

Our "Chicklets" quilt was #15 (of 201 quilts) and it sold for $325. This is a very washed out photo of the quilt being auctioned. We hope that this quilt has found it's way to a happy home with lots of children to cuddle!


The feature quilt was #150 and sold for $9,000! To see this quilt and description - click here. This is NOT a cuddle quilt...it's an amazing piece of art!

Remember the paint chip block challenge I worked on in March? (You can see my blocks here and all the blocks here).


This was quilt #186 and it was sold for $1,050!!
You probably can't see the fabulous hand quilting on the border in this photo, but it was amazing. And it had a very cool label that I wish I had a better photo of.


What else do you want to know?
The 75 block kits that we made up (to create a quilt for next year's auction) are gone! If you desperately wanted one and missed out,  I might be able to get my hands on an extra one for you... just let me know!
And if you want to see the arena where the quilt auction is held, someone posted a video on YouTube of the choir - click here to see the video (turn on your sound). Maybe next year I'll be technically sophisticated enough to post a video of the quilt auction on my blog...wouldn't that be something?!?!

Donation Quilt Finished!

My sewing time for the past two days was all hand work to finish up our group donation quilt (to read more about the quilt - click here).
We picked up the quilt from Country Lane Fabrics (no website) which is a country Mennonite store that did the hand quilting for us. They generously donated their quilting services for our project knowing that we made this quilt for the Relief Sale.


Here are some close up shots of the wonderful quilting...the double 4 patch blocks were quilted with 4 X's, and the squares with white sashing blocks were quilted with diamond shapes.

Don't you just love that they used a dark purple thread which showcases their wonderful hand quilting stitches?!?!

Here is another photo showing the border quilting and the corner design. It's just so pretty!


So, my first job was the binding.
I had the binding already prepared like I always do. I prepare the strips and roll them on a paper towel tube to store until the quilt is ready for the binding. That way I always have the matching binding fabric and haven't used it up in another project!

I like to stitch it on to the right side of the quilt by machine and then hand stitch it to the back. I know there are many quick ways to bind quilts all by machine, but I love hand stitching a binding (one of my favorite parts of the quilting process) so that's what I do!
I even painted my fingernails to match the border and binding fabric to make it a little more fun (it doesn't take much to thrill me!)

The next step was the hanging sleeve, and that is just plain boring. It's the same stitch as I use on the binding, but it sure feels different to sew it...weird, I know!


The last step was attaching the label. Isn't this a great label that group member Pat found for us?!? There are 4 of us in our little quilting group and only 3 quilters on the label, but that's because I'm always taking the group photos, and am rarely in one!








SO here is the finished quilt, which we are calling "Chicklets"! It is not a good photo and the colours are off, but it's a finished quilt and handed in before the deadline!!

Design Wall Monday #47

This was on my design wall very briefly. I just finished putting on the borders. "To border or not to border" was a big decision for the group that made the quilt, and we finally decided to border the quilt with this fabric.

It had to be finished to go to the quilters' to give them lots of time for the hand quilting. To read more about this quilt - click here. This quilt will be donated to the Mennonite Relief Sale quilt auction to be held in May. To see the gorgeous 2011 feature quilt which is now posted on the website - click here.

And now...back to Santa's quilty workshop where there will be mass production of oven mitts for my older nieces and nephews for Christmas. Making oven mitts is not a fun job for me ( I particularly dislike the part where you sew the EIGHT layers together!)  but I like the end result, so I'm going to put on the Christmas music and enjoy the machine quilting part of the process.
Even though I quilted through 4 layers including the heat resistant lining, I'm having no trouble quilting with the Aurifil thread. (I wrote about some machine quilting challenges using other thread last week on this blog post).


I made this hot mat last month from Maxine fabric. It was a gift for a friend who hosted a thanksgiving dinner party and it was more fun to sew than the oven mitts :) I think I might make a few more of those with any leftover pieces of the heat resistant lining.

To see what other quilters are working on the week before Christmas, check out Judy's Design Wall Monday.

Design Wall Monday #39

Continuing with my theme of scraps from yesterday's post,  this is the scrap quilt that my little quilt group ("the Sew 'n Sews") has been working on for the Mennonite Relief sale and quilt auction in the spring.

This quilt was originally inspired by "Crazy Mom's" quilt on this blog post. We thought it would be a great design that could accommodate 4 different 1/4" seam measurements :)

And we were right...the rows sewed together quite well with a minimum of fudging and stretching!

This quilt top is already bigger than my design wall (you can see the corners flopping over at the top) and we are now deciding if we want to add borders to it or not.
It is a quite an interesting quilt to look at, containing the bright scraps from the stashes of 4 quite divergent stashes. Some of the blocks are almost like an "I Spy" quilt with so many things that a child would enjoy looking at...a castle, fairies, cats, etc.

It all started with a little starter kit that I put together...kind of like a quilty friendship dough.
I made up these fabrics kit to start from, and each quilter added their own ingredients/scraps from their stash.
Any ideas about the borders???

Quilt Auction Report

I said in my blogpost on Saturday that I would report on the quilt auction on Sunday, and now that Sunday is almost over... I better get typing!
I took a little video at the auction but I can't figure out how to upload it to my blog, so I'll keep working on that.
In the meantime, here are the photos. This is a shot of our group quilt being auctioned:

It was quilt #17 (of almost 220) so it was auctioned early in the morning and the crowd was about half the size it is around noon. But still it sold for $400 and we were happy about that. To read more about the above quilt - click here.
This was the first look I got of the basket block quilt...isn't it wonderful!?!

To see the blocks I made for this quilt - click here. This was a challenge for the quiltmakers to set together the great variety of blocks they received...some were set on pointe and some not.
The basket quilt was # 60 at the auction and it was sold for $1,200!
The highest selling quilt this year was this a block sampler quilt:

It was sold for $6,400! This seems like a lot of money, but relative to other years it was "low". You can read my report from the 2008 auction here  (highest selling quilt was $25,000) and the 2009 auction here (highest quilt was $7,000).  Every year we say that the prices are lower and the crowd is smaller, because we were very spoiled by the most exciting quilt auction in 2003, when the highest selling quilt went for $44, 000!! Click here to see that one.
Now it is time to start planning for next year's donation quilt!
***Update....I read in Monday's newspaper that $115,000 was raised at this year's auction. 
That sounds fabulous until you compare it to last year's report that stated $320,000 was raised by the quilt auction. It wasn't just my imagination that the crowd was smaller and the bids were lower. ..I guess the economy is really taking it's toll on this event.
*****Tuesday update...apparently the newspaper misreported the amounts brought in. In this article, they must have been referring to the total amount of money raised by the event last year, not just the quilts. This year the quilt auction total was just $500 less than last year, which is good news for relief efforts of the Mennonite Central Committee!

Great News

I have 2 pieces of great quilt news!
The first is that I received a box of scraps in the mail from Julie! Look at all these great fabric bits! Thanks for sharing your treasure Julie! They are going in my pile of things to take to quilt retreat at the end of February...yes, I'm starting to get my projects organized and compile my list of things I want to work on. It gives me something to think about when I can't fall asleep. These scraps are going to be sewn into string blocks that I have been working on for a couple of years. You can see some of my blocks and another pile of scraps in this post from 2007. I should soon have enough to start putting them together and am using the "quilt-as-you-go" technique.
The second piece of news is that my quilt group called the "Sew 'n Sews" picked up the quilt that we made to donate to the Mennonite Relief Quilt Auction in May. (You can read about the beginning of the quilt here.) You can click here to see where the money goes and what they are doing to help the people of Haiti.  The MCC does great international work and we are proud to be a small part of their fundraising efforts.
Our quilt was hand quilted at Country Lane Fabrics, where they also put the binding on for us.
It was a cold day to venture out to the little country store but we were excited to see our finished quilt...here it is!

What's on the design wall Monday?

We are back from camping at Killbear Provincial Park. It was a relaxing vacation for the family but for me, it's a lot of work - packing food and equipment, doing piles of laundry before and after, working twice as hard to prepare each meal, etc. 

Add that to my sleep deprivation due to cold weather, my uncomfortable, constantly deflating air mattress, and the occasional middle-of-the-night adrenaline rush fearing death by a bear attack!  Gee...sounds like a fun holiday to me! I was craving my sewing machine I'll tell you that!

So now I have to hit the ground running since I have one kid starting high school next week and one starting university. So, not much time for some relaxing sewing this week. However, next week, the house will be very quiet and it will be a whole new ballgame - almost like a real vacation for me!! I plan to relax and quilt to my heart's content...and maybe shed a few tears about my babies growing up too fast!

On my design wall today are some of the blocks for a developing group quilt - you can read about the beginning of the quilt here. Some of these blocks need to be unsewn and rematched with other fabrics. You can probably pick them out - there are a couple of blocks where the fabrics both read as dark. We still need to sew about twice as many blocks, but the quilt is coming along and we are hoping to get it sewn together in the next 2 weeks. 

Design Wall Monday

One of my sewing groups that enjoys making quilts for charities has started another quilt. (Our last quilt was sold for $475 at the Mennonite Relief Sale - you can see it here.)

Our new quilt was inspired by Deirdre Brown's quilt pattern called Split Decision - you can see her quilt here.  When we are looking for ideas for a group quilt, we want a design where 1) you can use a wide variety of fabric scraps, 2) the block is easy for all levels of quilt experience to sew,  3) the quilt doesn't have a lot of seams to match and 4) finished blocks can be squared up to the same size, because as we know, every quilter has a different 1/4" seam allowance!!

We started by selecting a border fabric from a pile of bolts (yes, bolts!!) of fabric from one of our group member's stash. Then we each took a chunk of the border fabric home and looked in our own stash for scraps to match. 

Here are my pieces, all cut up and ready to sew.  The test block is on the left of the photo. Some of these are really old fabrics and I am delighted to be using them up.

Here are 12 of my finished blocks on my design wall. Each group member will make 25 blocks, which will give us a few extra blocks just in case some are not the right size or don't look right with the colours in the final layout. 

If you want to see what other quilters around the world have on their design walls, go to Judy's blog and check it out (click here). But don't blame me for all the quilting time you wasted while surfing the quilting blogs!!

Our butterfly quilt has flown away!

Today was the 42nd annual Mennonite Relief Sale and Quilt Auction. It is a long day since of course you have to get there early to have pancakes and sausages for breakfast. The quilt auction started at 8: 15 am and we sat on those hard arena bleachers until 3:30 pm! The only reasons to leave your seats are a) bathroom breaks and b) buying strawberry pie!Here we are - me on the left, my long time quilting friend Linda from London (this is Linda's blog here), and 2 of my co-conspirators on the butterfly quilt, Marg and Joanne of the "Sew 'n Sews".

Throughout the day they auctioned over 230 quilts, including all sizes of bed quilts, wallhangings, and baby quilts. Here is a photo of about 1/3 of the quilts hanging before the auction. This year we noticed that the crowd was smaller and the prices were generally lower than in previous years. The most exciting moment was the auction of the quilt that was featured on the program cover, which sold for $25,000 (you can see that quilt, which is a cross stitched quilt here)!! The second most exciting moment was when our butterfly quilt was auctioned...and raised $475 toward the relief efforts. This is a photo of the auction at the moment when the butterfly quilt was being sold. It was a very exciting day and we had a great time!

We are already planning our next group quilt, and as Joanne says: "We are solving the problems of the world, one block at a time".

Now I am hungry and the kids are asking what is for supper...guess what? Strawberry pie! This looks like a good piece for me - I probably don't need that much whipped cream on the top, but too late now...yum yum!

Added Information: In the newspaper today it said that the $25, 000 quilt was made by Mrs. Schlegel, an 87 year old woman, which she made while she was recovering from kidney surgery. It was purchased by her daughter who came from her home in Texas to attend the auction. The quilts from Mrs. Schlegel have raised more than $60,000 over the years! Now that's a goal to aim for ...let's beat Mrs. Schlegel's total! The total amount raised at this year's sale was $335,000 towards their goal of "alleviating global poverty and hunger"!

Another Quilt Finished!

This is the finished quilt made by the "Sew 'n Sews" group which we called "Wings of Friendship". It was a difficult quilt to photograph since noone in the group was tall enough to hold it up! If you missed reading about the development of this quilt, you can read about it here. We sent it out for hand quilting by a local Mennonite group and it has been submitted to the Mennonite Relief Sale Committee to be auctioned in May. I have rarely missed attending this auction since I started quilting 16 years ago, but have never had a quilt in the auction that I took part in making. So this year's auction will be even more exciting! I usually have attended with my Mom, and we always buy a Strawberry pie - it signals the beginning of summer for us, even though some years have been quite chilly!
If you have ever made a group quilt you will know that it can be a challenging endeavour. Each quilter's quarter inch seam is different, and each artist has her own ideas about things such as use of colour, adding borders, etc . But I have to say that we had a wonderful time working together, getting to know each other's strengths, and making decisions as we went along in a way that we all could be happy with.
And here we are - pleased as punch to see our finished quilt! Now what are we going to work on!??!

Stash Butterfly Quilt

A group of my quilting friends have been working on blocks for a donation quilt since last summer. You can read about the beginning of the project here. We finally are finished piecing the last blocks. I thought the butterflies needed to have antennae. The group members agreed and said "have fun with that"!! But what kind of antennae to make? I couldn't decide, so I am making each butterfly different. It was fun at first and now I am bored with it!
How many more do I have to do???
This many!!!
On the right is a photo of all the finished (antennae-less) blocks on my design wall...made completely from our stashes. We worked on piecing them mostly at home and didn't know what fabrics the other quilters were using, so there is a wide variety of colours.