Machine Quilting Tetris

Monday night's visit to the Halton Hills Quilters' Guild was lots of fun! I didn't get lost on the way there, didn't get caught in traffic jams, didn't get lost in unorganized or sudden detours/road closures, and I even arrived to the meeting early. That was the easiest drive I have had in a long long time and made me realize how stressful the "season of construction" has been for driving! LOL
The Halton Hills quilt show is coming up in October so there was a lot of excitement about planning for that. It's a big undertaking to plan a quilt show and organize all the volunteers required to make it successful. At the meeting I got to see a couple of the quilts that will be featured at the show and it promises to be an inspiring event. Hope you can make it if you live close enough!

My UFO of the month is finally getting some attention. Nothing like leaving it until the last minute, since it's the last week of September! 

The "squares on black" border fabric was attached without drama. The whole quilt was pin basted on the weekend and the quilting was started. During the basting process I decided that the quilting was going to be primarily straight vertical lines for the main area of the quilt. It's fairly boring stitch-in-the-ditch quilting with the walking foot, but the quilt just didn't want anything fancier. And it's going very quickly so I might even make the end of week/month deadline!

The straight quilting lines are continuing right into the borders. You can see that the the backing fabric (on the right of the photo) is a black on white print that I'm happy to be using up from my stash. 

Adventures of a Directionally Challenged Quilter

Last night I was the speaker for the Haldimand Quilters' Guild in Hagersville. It was quite the adventure! On the way there, the police had closed a road on the route I had carefully planned to follow. And because there was a mouse in my car last week and I had cleared everything out to get the car completely detailed on the weekend, I forgot to put my trusty paper map back in the car. NO MAP?!? How is a directionally challenged quilter supposed to find her way?!?
Of course I got hopelessly lost, and was almost late for the meeting. Maybe it's time to either invest in a GPS or figure out how to use my cell phone properly. Yuck.

I made it just in time, and here are the lovely quilters waiting patiently. I wish I could put a video camera on my shoulder and play for you the conversations that I enjoyed last night. These women were so fun, and so encouraging to me, that I actually felt a little teary on the way home.
That might also have been partly because after the meeting I loaded the quilts in the car in the pouring rain, and white-knuckled the drive home through a vicious thunderstorm wearing soaking wet clothes. But there were no road closures, I didn't get lost, and I arrived home safe and sound, though soggy.
A huge thank you to Shirley for not giving up on contacting me, to Deb for helping with the arrangements, to Linda for the lovely letter and gift, and to all the quilters who came out on such a stormy night to hear a stressed out crazy quilter talk about her quiltaholic behaviour! Thank you for reading my blog and for sharing with me how it has helped you over the years. 

Remember...
"NO" is a complete sentence! 
(which I learned from the inspirational writings of Cheryl Richardson and Anne Lamott).

One Step Forward, Three Steps Back

This week I am going on an adventure to visit the Oxford Quilter's Guild in Ingersoll. They have so many quilters in their region that they have an evening meeting AND a daytime meeting, so I'll be doing two trunk shows for them. My quilts are looking forward to an airing, and I am looking forward to a road trip, seeing old quilting friends and making new ones.

I wanted to take along my En Provence mystery quilt top to show them, so I pushed myself to try to get this thing sewn together. 
We all know what happens when you rush!!
Of course I sewed the top two rows together along the wrong seam.
Sheesh.
Now I have to unsew. I guess that will be the hand work project that I bring on my trip!

Aurifil Block of the Month

Last night I had a fun visit with the Paris Quilting Bees. What a great group of enthusiastic quilters! I was so wrapped up in the moment that I forgot to take a picture of them to show you. But I did get a photo of their guild banner before I started talking ... I just love a block sampler!
I have some exciting news to share...
I have been sewing the Aurifil blocks of the month this year and have really enjoyed each one. Well, guess what happened?!? This month I won the draw for a box of Aurifil thread! Yes I did! I am so excited and can hardly wait for it to arrive in the mail. I have always looked at the Aurifil thread collections and coveted them... and now I'm actually going to have one of my very own!
My block from last month is even posted on the Aurifil blog... OMG... check it out here. And I got an email from Pat Sloan to tell me that I won... that was exciting enough! But did I mention that I'm also getting new thread too! I'll show you as soon as it gets here.

And in the meantime I sewed my 9th block, which is called "Into the Blue". I think my version will be called "Into the Red". You can download the pattern here. There are 72 pieces in this 12" block. I'm not totally thrilled with how the stripes lined up in the centre, but I'm leaving it anyway. You can see more variations on this block at the link up here.





Here are all my blocks together on the design wall. We've finished 9 blocks so far and have 3 more to go to the end of the year. It will be a great sampler quilt! But wow that is a lot of red!

Apparently I love red!
Here is how many spools of red thread I already have to machine quilt this project when it's done! I ordered a box of it from Tristan a long time ago. I have no idea why I thought I needed that much red thread!!

Grand Guild Visit

More than four years ago I taught a class at the Grand Quilt Guild. It happened to be at a time in my life that was really difficult, and the students that attended that class were so kind and loving, I still think about that day all these years later. And last night I went to the Grand Guild to give my lecture that I call "Answers to Crazy Questions".

It was wonderful to see these quilting friends and enjoy their friendship, and soak up their creative renewing energy once again. It was such great fun for me and the quilters were able to relate to my experience of being asked the standard crazy questions people ask you when they find out you are a quilter. Also, I was reminded by several people that I have been remiss in putting labels on all my quilts, and I promise I will fix that.

Here I am, surrounded by quilts and the energy of creative quilters (and lots of flags, because the meeting is at the legion!)  




Remember this tip from Cheryl Richardson ... 
"No is a complete sentence!"
It's all about honouring your own path and creative interests, and staying true to what fills you up. 
Quilting friends... you fill me up!

Quilty Adventure

Yesterday I was invited to teach a miniature quilt making class for the Hamilton Quilters Guild. It's not too far from my house, and should have been easy to get to, but just because I've been somewhere once, doesn't mean I can get there again, if they stick a new round-about on my path! 
Study this diagram and see how helpful it is! 

NOT!

I detest round-abouts!!


So, this is the first sign that confused me.
Okay...I want #8.

Now what does this sign in the middle of the highway mean!?!?

Is highway #8 gone now?

Where is it?!? I need #8 east?!?

WTF?!?

There should be a little sign on the bottom that reads..."for those of you who screwed up at the roundabout and are frantically searching for highway #8 east, make a U-turn right now"!  

Clearly I need to be on the signage committee!

And this is the sign I missed first time through the round-about when I was trying not to hit anyone, while I figured out my exit.
Oh...if you want to go east, you need to turn right/south as you exit the round-about, 
and you don't actually keep driving east until you end up on the 403 east to Toronto, panicking and unable to turn around, when you really want to go to Flamboro, which is supposed to be to the east!  
Breathe...breathe...try to access your logical left brain problem solving skills...breathe :)

Needless to say, I was late for the class (OMG) and I'm sure they thought I was not going to show up. I got a few more grey hairs yesterday I'll tell you that!! 
And I'm asking Santa for a GPS next Christmas!

But eventually I found them and what a great classroom space they have, with lots of windows, tables to use, and room to spread out.
I was so happy to see a former mini quilt student from about 13 years ago (Hi Jan!) and my former neighbour who lived 2 doors down from me when I was a teenager, and whose niece is now dating my son (Hi Sandra!) ...what a small world it is sometimes!
And what a great day it was!

These quilters were game to tackle anything, and they fearlessly tried out some of the tiny little blocks. They had great scrap bins and fabric collections to make projects from. And there was not one bit of swearing throughout the mini quilt challenges of the day! 
Here they are holding various blocks and projects and mini quilts.  Thanks so much to all the students for your patience (especially Barb) and for such a fun quilty day!

One Life

Yesterday I packed up some of my quilts and went to visit the quilt guild in Vittoria. I met some women who read my blog and it's always a surprise to me that my quilting adventures are followed by anyone except my family! 
Thanks for reading, and for your encouragement :)


We enjoyed a fabulous potluck lunch, and just look at this amazing dessert table! 
Everything was delicious - well, I didn't try everything, but what I did eat was amazing!



Here are the quilters waiting patiently for the trunk show  to start, while I goofed around with my camera. I couldn't fit them all in one shot, but here are most of creative quilters from the Simcoe area that attended the meeting .
During the business part of the meeting I did a little hand quilting on one of my longer term quilting projects. I started embroidering these blocks in March 2008 and sewed them into a quilt top in June last year. I was hoping to finish up this quilt a long time ago, but the idea that it wanted to be hand quilted would not go away, and eventually I gave in!

I finally have the quilt basted, and decided to "big stitch" the red chains with perle cotton, and do some hand quilting with white quilting thread in and around the blocks. I'm not going to mark anything, and I'm just going to quilt it in the same manner as I drive the car...start out in the general direction I want to go, and figure it out as I go along, using my intuition and common sense to guide me. 


I saw this on Lori's blog, and just loved it! 


Yesterday I was doing everything I ever wanted to do, and today will be more of the same!

Road Trip to Kingston - Long Post

I just came back from a quick trip to Kingston with some quilting friends. I checked Bonnie Hunter's blog tonight and guess where she is? In Kingston! But I was in Kingston, Ontario, Canada and she is in Kingston, New York, USA! Too bad we weren't in the same Kingston in the same country! 

On our way there we even stopped in at the "Big Apple"...but not the New York Big Apple...the one in Colborne, Ontario. 
The apple was closed for maintenance, so we couldn't climb inside and go up to the lookout platform. We wanted to have a good look around to search for the wildlife that all the signs were warning us about... 





And just how big and scary are the local rabbits that they get their own warning sign!?!? We never saw a single  deer, bear, moose or rabbit!
Why was I in Kingston? First we went to visit a couple of wonderful quilt stores. The first one was in Cobourg and it was called the Stitch Witch, and the second store was Quilt and Stitch in Kingston (the rest of the bolt of the yellow paperweight fabric on this link came home with me and will become part of this quilt). Don't you love visiting new (to you) quilt stores?!?
But really I went to visit the Quinte Quilters' Guild of Belleville to do a trunk show and teach a miniatures class. 

These are some of the brave students who tried their hand at sewing a wide range of smaller blocks in various sizes. 







I also had a wonderful experience of serendipity! Guess who happened to wander into the classroom that day, having just moved to Belleville. Hilary Rice!
I was so surprised to see her, and she was surprised to find some local quilters! Hilary came back for the guild meeting at night, and Linda and I had the chance to show Hilary the quilts we had made in classes with her in the past (click here to read about the classes I took with Hilary when she came to teach at my guild). I was a little overexcited and look like a cat that swallowed a canary in that photo!
I first met Hilary at Quilt Canada in Newfoundland, took 2 classes from her in Guelph, and Linda took a class from Hilary in London, and there all three of us met up in Belleville! Wow...it sure is a "small quilty world" sometimes!
Anyway, it sure was a great day! I tried to make a Smilebox photo collage of some of the photos my friends took of me doing my trunk show, so let me know if you can see it on your computer.

Hamilton Quilters Guild

Last night I was the speaker at the Hamilton Quilters Guild meeting. Here is the group of ladies waiting to see my quilts.  It was a wonderful evening that followed an absolutely exhausting week. I was so tired driving there and so energized coming home. I don't think I have ever had such an attentive and appreciative audience as this group of ladies. Their feedback and comments were so touching and supportive that they almost made me cry!

Here are some of the quilters looking at my quilts after the trunk show.

A big thank you to Sue for inviting me and being so warm and friendly. She even gave me a gift...how fun is that?!?

I got a recipe book that I can't wait to try out, some thread and some fabric...

now that's a perfect evening for a quilter!

Busy Hands Guild Mini Quilt Workshop

The weather turned quite cold here, with frost overnight, and a high of 3 degrees today. The daffodils are laying on the ground this morning wondering what the heck happened!!
And what better activity to do on a cold spring day than quilting?!?!  I taught a mini quiltmaking workshop for the Busy Hands Quilt Guild and it was a fun day with some very creative quilters! Here are some of the students showing the mini quilt projects they started...

I have had a couple of email questions recently about mini quilting details, so thought I would answer them in this blogpost.  I have no affiliation to any of the mentioned products, just my personal preferences which are subject to change at any minute, if I find something I like better LOL :

-thread: I prefer Aurifil, but sometimes will use Mettler Silk Finish to get the right colour. Yep...I use a LOT of Aurifil! Now what am I going to do with all these saved spools people have asked me?? I might make something, maybe a Christmas wreath from them? Or not...it's hard to say what I might do!!

-batting: I use Warm & Natural since I like 100% cotton, it always lays flat and has a nice weight that I prefer. However, it is only good for machine quilting (hand quilting through W & N is way too tough for me). I buy it by the bolt for large quilts and use the excess side trimmings for mini quilts.

-quilting: the easiest finish is a quick "stitch-in-the-ditch", but it's boring to do so I prefer a free motion design most of the time these days. You can see how tiny my quilting is on this piece where the "coins" average about 3/8".

-embellishing: I love to do beading on quilts, but usually only bead the quilts that insist on it, or quilts that I dislike and think that the beading will help me to like it more! I usually use Nymo thread to attach beads or embellishments.

-binding: I prefer a double fold binding cut at 2.25" but will do a single layer binding if I am running out of fabric.

London Friendship Quilters Guild

I just got back from a great visit with the London Friendship Quilters Guild. On Thursday night I did a trunk show of some of my quilts and Friday I taught a class on making miniature quilts. Here is a funny scene from the workshop. Anne had set up all the necessary supplies for a workshop in the middle of the winter - a Tim's coffee, some aspirin, and a box of tissue!!


I just love the sight of a quilter's work area...all the tools laid out, pieces cut and ready to sew into blocks.


Some of the quilters accepted the challenge of working with really tiny pieces, where the HST's  finished at 1/4" once they were pieced into the block! Two brave quilters made flowers blocks that are 1 1/2" and have 26 pieces!


Gail (from The Cozy Quilter blog) played with a friend's "garbage" - all of these HST's were rescued from the trash, and turned into this adorable little 6" mini quilt.
A huge thank you to Jacqui (from Treadle Quilts blog) for organizing my visit and inviting me to stay in her home overnight. Jacqui has a beautiful quilt studio and the most amazing design wall I have ever seen. Maybe she'll do a blog post on it some time??? It was a real treat to see some of her antique sewing machines and her fabric stash, which is to die for!

Here are some of the quilters that attended the mini quilt class. Each person worked on whatever project they chose from the collection of instruction sheets provided...and just look at all the tiny quilts they started!

Relaxing Sunday

It has been a long week and I'm tired today, so I am pin basting a quilt. I needed something relaxing to do... and this is a "no brainer" activity.

Want to see what it's like inside my busy (sleep deprived) brain?  Click here. It's a scary place in there! LOL

Don't know why I am working on finishing this particular quilt today...it was calling me I guess. I am a "quilt whisperer", so quilts do talk to me - remember this blog post from 3 years ago?? This quilt wants to be finished, and I have the backing and binding fabric.

Am I working on my UFO of the month? NO! It's #5 on my UFO list and I don't even have a photo of it to show yet. The only explanation I can offer is that I don't have any workable border fabrics or backing for that quilt yet...need to go shopping tomorrow at the Creative Sisters Full Moon Frenzy. 

Yesterday I taught a class on making miniature quilts to the Royal City Quilter's Guild. Lots of creative energy was generated and many great projects were started.

It was a fun day spent with many of my most favorite people on the planet!

Tough going

For the first time in at least 2 years I missed a Monday design wall posting since I have been just too busy to blog, and the same project is still (untouched) on my design wall.  Also my journey with the BRACES is way harder than I thought it would be, and seems to have zapped my resources. My new best friend is orthodontic wax!

I was able to teach a miniature quilting class with the Grand Quilt Guild on Friday. They tolerated my dental challenges very well and we had a fun day of trying different techniques. 


Here are some of the ladies showing a few of the projects they worked on. From all the talking at work, and teaching on Friday, the insides of my lips were pretty much "hamburger" by Saturday, so I missed out on most of quilt bee day at my guild. It is very hard not to be able to talk as much as I usually do!
Sure do hope I can talk and quilt more this week!

Having fun visiting but still sewing!

I had a wonderful day with the Waterloo Quilters' Guild on Wednesday. I wish I had more hours in my days and weeks to visit more quilting groups like this. There were so many wonderful stories told by the quilters as they shared quilts at the Show 'n Tell part of the program...showing us their grandma's quilt made of pieces of dresses and aprons from decades gone by, bedquilts made for loved ones, a memory quilt of photos showing a family's Halloween costumes throughout the years, a treasured quilt gifted many years ago to a recovering cancer survivor by her quilting friends, "touch" quilts made for the Alzheimer's program - all these heartwarming stories shared to inspire and encourage each other. I also got to see some of the award winning quilts from their quilt show in September...wow!
Above is a photo of half of the room at the evening meeting, which had less people than the afternoon meeting - they are such a large group, they meet twice each month.  You can just see the top of my head and some of the quilts I brought along to show folded on the table. Can you believe I even took along my very first quilt (which is STILL a UFO) on this outing!?! You can see it in this blog post from 2007! I'm sure I will finish it this year! LOL!
And here are some of the quilters who took me out for supper between the meetings. Too much fun!

And to prove that I have not been a total slacker, eating out and visiting with fellow quilters, I want to announce that I have finished a table runner that I will be able to use this Christmas!  It is made using Monica Solorio-Snow's pattern called Jingle Jolly Tablerunner. All the fabric, except the white, came from the new Have a Sherry Berry Christmas fabric line from Northcott. I really can't put my finger on why I like this fabric so much...is is the retro softer colours? I don't know. Here is the quilting I did on the the white stars and just stitched in the ditch to finish it off.
Special thanks to Monica for this pattern and for giving me permission to teach it to 4 ladies at my local senior's centre.
And here is the finished tablerunner, which is just big enough to cover my diningroom table.