The Five Year Project

2014.  That's when I took a stitch and flip class with Jacquie Gering.  

It was my first Jacquie class and thankfully, there have been several other classes with Jacquie since then.  At the end of the class, I asked Jacquie to sign a piece of fabric for the label for my quilt, and somehow, I managed to keep track of it for 5 years until I finished off the quilt this week. 

My biggest hold up in getting this quilt done was deciding how to quilt it.  I finally decided to take it to Cathy at Eagles Wings Quilts to see what we could do to get this project to the finish line in time for the London Modern Guild Quilt show this September. I brought along Jacquie's book, WALK, for inspiration.

I took the top, batting and backing out of the bag and we laid it out to look at it and discuss quilting possibilities.  When I took the book out, it fell open to this page...

Perfect!

Cathy was able to have my quilt done in a couple of days and I went to pick it up.  On Thursday night, I put the binding on and Cathy came over for some slow stitching time in the gazebo after supper.

Cathy worked on an EPP star,

while I hand stitched the binding.

I finished off the rest of the hand stitching this afternoon in the comfort of my air conditioned house.  It is stinking hot here and I was much more comfortable sewing inside today.

I took some pictures of the finished quilt outside in the backyard.

You can see the leaf quilting design well in these pictures.

The binding is a green Kona solid from my stash.

There are lots of fun fabrics in this quilt. The background is Essex Linen.

The quilting adds great texture.

The backing fabric is fun too.

 Now, just the hanging sleeve to go...

I will be linking up with Kathy and the other slow stitchers on Sunday Morning.

A Cityscape and Frank

Saturday afternoon, my husband and I spent some time in the gazebo...he read a book and I worked on my Frank Lloyd Wright counted cross stitch picture.  You can see below that I have added more outlining in this corner as well as some more cross stitches in red and blue. It is easier to see the waterlilies once the outlining is done. 

My daughter has been busy at work lately, but hopes to find some time this weekend to continue working on her most recent cityscape.  I am still not sure which city she is doing this time...any guesses?

A colleague at work retired this week so I made her a wide open zipper pouch (pattern at Noodlehead's blog).  I found out after giving it to her that her travel case had just fallen apart so the gift was timely!

I have made several of these as gifts for friends and family.  

In the Spring of 2014, I took a Stitch and Flip class with Jacquie Gering.  Yesterday, I finally sewed one seam in the backing and took it to the long arm quilter's house.  I have had the backing for several years and I'm not really sure why I took so long getting this quilt to the finished stage.  The picture above is the backing.  I will do a blogpost later this week to show off the finished quilt.  Cathy should have it done by Monday. 

Our Japanese Lilac tree is in bloom this week.  I love the creamy white flowers.  

This baby robin was in my flower garden yesterday morning when I was out watering the plants.  When I checked back later in the day, he was gone.  I'm hoping his Mom came back to get him. 

I will be linking up with Kathy on Sunday morning with the other hand stitchers/knitters/crocheters.  Take a peek at what everyone is up to this week. 

Camp Kintail Retreat--Part 2

If you read my previous blogpost, you will know that Christine and I spent the weekend at Camp Kintail at a crafter's retreat.  I worked on 4 projects..placemats for Meals on Wheels, a table topper (both of which were in the previous post) and a wall hanging.   In August 2017, I took a workshop with Jacquie Gering in St. Mary's Ontario about making house blocks.   You can see my post about this workshop here.   My houses have been hanging around on my design wall for over a year and this retreat was the perfect time to get them made in to a quilt top.

I brought along a flannel design wall and laid it out on the floor.  I added a painter's tape grid to help plan my quilt layout and then put a building in each space on the grid.  

The background is Moda Grunge in Ocean blue.  I added pieces of the background in each "block" on the grid and then sewed the blocks together.  It is a bit like putting a puzzle together and is one of my favourite ways to build a quilt!

Only one more piece of background to add!

I added borders to each side (not all the same size) to make the house blocks float on the background. I think I would like to live in this neighbourhood!

The trees outside were beautiful, even in the rain.

I liked the festive decorations on the tables in the dining hall at the camp.

As you can see, there were lots of people crafting at the camp on the weekend!  I am on the far right of the picture holding up my table topper.

I bet you are wondering about my 4th project...

We are into the season of secret sewing so I can't show it to you right now.  It will be revealed in due time. Suffice it to say that progress was made at the retreat...

LMQG Swap: What is it?

Members of the London Modern Quilt Guild are swapping small quilts with members of the Ancaster Modern Quilt Guild.  Christine and I both decided to participate in the swap. We received the name and preferences of our swap partners in February and the quilts were due at our July meeting this past Saturday.  Now that my quilt is handed in, I can show it to you on my blog!

I started by making some random sized building blocks with some brightly coloured scraps.

I was on a roll and did not take any more process pictures as I put it together in two evening sewing sessions.  I used a light grey diagonal mesh print for my background. It was fun to figure out how to piece it together from my building blocks. At this point, I showed it to my husband to see if he could tell what it is...his guess...A HAT!  He was wrong.

I quilted it with fuchsia thread...the lines are the width of a piece of green painter's tape and the second set of lines are two pieces of painter's tape wide.  Painter's tape was my friend when I was quilting this quilt!  Next, I did diagonal lines through every other intersection in both directions...I'm not sure that is a good explanation, so I will show you...

The idea for the quilting came from Jacquie Gering's book "Walk" and also from the two day walking foot quilting class that I took with Jacquie a couple of years ago.  I think the quilting makes my quilt sparkle!

Several years ago, my friend, Erin, gave me a couple of yards of this fabric. It makes an interesting backing for my swap quilt and the colours are similar to those on the front.

It is bound in fuchsia grunge fabric.  Have you guessed what I was trying to depict yet?   Yup--it is a SEWING MACHINE! I hope my swap partner likes it!  Maybe she will find a spot to hang it in her sewing room.

My Thread Stash and a Finish

Back in August, I took a two day design workshop with Jacquie Gering.  You can read my blogpost about the workshop here. 

If you went back to the post, you would have read that I had the quilt pin basted shortly after the workshop--I just needed to find the right colour of thread.  I had lots of colours in my thread stash, but not the right colour. (Here is a picture of my thread drawer--the colour I used in the quilt is in the picture.)

Jacquie had suggested a lighter colour of thread for the quilting of this project and I did not have any suitable colours in my thread drawer.  Every time I was in a sewing store, I checked to see if they had Aurifil thread and if they did, I searched for a light colour that would work for my quilt.  Finally, I found this light peach colour.  This was one of the colours that Jacquie had suggested. 

I have saved my empty spooks in a basket in my sewing room for several years.  You can see that I have gone used lots of thread since I started sawing the spools.  Each orange spool represents a kilometre of thread--half a kilometre of sewing if you consider that half the thread gets used in the bobbin. 

Now, back to my quilt...

I used a quilting idea from Jacquie's book "Walk".  If you don't already have this wonderful book, go out and buy it or drop subtle hints to Santa...  I used my Hera marker to draw two gently curved lines diagonally across my quilt, intersecting them in the centre. Then, I echo quilted each quadrant, using the edge of my presser foot as my guide. 

The lines of quilting are 3/8" apart  and by the time I finished all of the quilting, the quilt would not lay flat.  Jacquie had told us about how she blocks her quilts by spraying them with water and stretching them out to flatten them after quilting and before trimming and binding.  I decided to give this a try, but first I had to buy a clean spray bottle.  This took a while because I kept forgetting to look for a bottle when I was at a hardware store.  Finally, my husband picked one up for me when he was out one day.  I sprayed my quilt, stretched it out and pinned it to the carpet in my family room.  I sprayed it one more time and left it to dry overnight.  In the morning, it was flat!!!  I trimmed it and made binding with some navy fabric leftover from making the quilt.

This week, I sewing the binding on first by machine and then finished it off by hand last night.

I had this bicycle print in my stash and since the front of the quilt spins, I thought it was appropriate.

Here is a close up of the quilting.

And... here is the finished quilt:

When I first made the label, I called this quilt "clockwise"...then, I realized that it if actually spinning counter clockwise, so I had to change the label to reflect this name change.

I will be linking up with Kathy and the other slow stitchers.  Go and take a look at what everyone is up to. I hope to have some more hand stitching time later today.

Design Workshop with Jacquie Gering

I spent three days in workshops with Jacquie Gering last week.  You can read about the first workshop here.  The second workshop was two days of learning to design the Jacquie Gering way!  We were told we would not need our sewing machines until Day 2!  We spend much of the first day using paper and scissors to experiment with achieving "exchange" (balance, harmony...) in our paper designs.  My first attempt is shown above and I got a gold star from Jacquie for this one!  My second attempt was not even worthy of a picture before it landed in the trash can!  I made two more--

By lunch time, we had lots of ideas up on the design wall on one side of the room.

Next, we looked at some of Jacquie's quilts and discussed the designs, some of which she loved and others that she did not love.  We talked about ways that some of them could have been designed differently to create different looks.

Our design challenge for the rest of the afternoon was to play with some paper blocks that Jacquie gave to us to create more quilt designs.  I could not believe the number of possibilities that the participants came up with in this exercise!  Here are a few of my designs.

On the second day, we discussed moving from paper or craft-foam designs to fabric.  I decided to skip the mock up of my design idea on using craft foam and moved straight to fabric.  I make 18 liberated drunkard's path units and started playing with placement on the design wall.

I have done a lot of garment sewing in my life so a few curved seams did not faze me.

At first, my blocks were too big so I ended up cutting them down to a smaller size and playing some more.

Jacquie and I played with this 16 patch design for quite a while, moving pieces here and there and trying to find a pleasing design.  After a while, she left to work with someone else.  I stared at what I had on the design wall and all I could see was the curved arrow on the upper right corner.   I then came up with this idea...

Others in the room, including Jacquie, concurred and after a bit of tweaking, this became my final design.   I sewed the blocks together and had my top together before the end of the day.

This was a fun and challenging workshop with ideas that will continue to influence the quilts that I make for a long time!  I already have my quilt basted and ready to quilt.  The quilting pattern is already chosen. I just need to find the right colour of thread...

Thanks again, Jacquie, for an amazing three days!