UFO for February

This project is the reason I signed up for this challenge in the first place! 

I began my African Collage in May of 2010 when I took a class from Pippa Moore at Quilt Canada in Calgary.  When Judy announced the challenge for 2011 I was quick to add this to my list because I wanted to get it done.  But that number was drawn in December, and no matter how hard I tried, I wasn’t getting any quilting done that month.

So African Collage took its place on the list for 2012, and its number came up for this month. 

I am pleased to report progress.  When I took the pieces out of their bag I found I had four panels, the three animals and another with African people on it.  Each panel had the beginnings of borders.  Try as I might, I could not get the components to get along nicely.  So I removed the fourth panel and decided to go with just three.  I worked in some lighter fabrics, repeated some motifs, and came up with this arrangement. 

It is not a perfect design, but it is much closer to being a completed design!  Next come the borders – I’m auditioning different black fabrics and different widths and trying to decide if I need something else along the top before the black. 

And another near-finish to report:  A few days ago I pulled out a small top that had been folded together with its batting and moved from place to place in the sewing room for several  years.  I had made some of the the scrappy blocks, then passed them on to a friend to “do something with”.  She made more blocks, sewed them all together, and handed it back to me. 

I’ve quilted it.  The blocks are scrappy, the batting was pieced from leftovers, the backing was made from several odd bits of flannel.  The binding will come out of the box that is labelled  “Binding Leftovers”.  Then we will find some small person to give it to!

Technorati Tags: UFO challenge,African Collage,scrappy,Half Log Cabin

A special place for quilters

 

There’s a new sign up at Granny’s House!

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First UFO for 2012

 

I’ve completed the first of the UFO’s on this year’s UFO Challenge List!

Sometime last year I pulled out a small pile of fabrics that “sort of went together” and made the quilt top using the directions I found here for the Double Slice quilt.  The original quilt maker used a Layer Cake (10” squares), but I had yardage and scraps, so I used my 9 1/2” square ruler to cut my starting pieces. 

I’m very happy with the back of the quilt – I used some “chunks” of plaids that had been taking up shelf space for too long.

 

 

 

 

 

The batting was also from stash.  It was a piece of that old polyester stuff that must be about an inch thick.  After wrestling with it on the quilting machine (and losing 5% both lengthwise and widthwise in the quilting), I will certainly be happy to go back to the lovely thin battings we use these days!  The batting did make the quilt nice and fluffy, and I’m sure it will do a good job of keeping someone warm.  The quilt was made for donation and will be finding its way to a new home shortly. 

 

Technorati Tags: UFO challenge,scraps,quilting

UFO Challenge results for 2011

January began with a list of 12 UFO projects to be worked on through the year.  How did I do?  Of those twelve projects, six were completely finished – Hooray!  Four saw good progress – to the flimsy stage.  One project I abandoned but finished up something else in its place.  And the last one, my African Collage which was the project for December, never made it out of the bag!  -- that project is first on my list for 2012.

In my defense, however, I will say that sometimes there are more important things than quilting.  My father passed away in December and time and energy went into spending time with family, holding a memorial service, and cleaning out Dad’s apartment. 

As we sorted through Dad’s things I was surprised to see how many quilts there were!  I had made them for Mum and Dad over the years, and somehow they all made their way to the apartment.  Here are a few of them: 

The gardening quilt hung right outside the apartment door to remind visitors that growing things had always been important to Mum and Dad.  (The blocks were made from a series of  patterns in Quiltmaker magazine.)

 

Dad had this stained glass quilt above a bookshelf.  I borrowed the pattern from a friend who worked in glass and enlarged it for the quilt. 

 

The loon quilt was made as a guild round robin project.  The block is from a book by Margaret Rolfe, and friends in the guild added the borders.  I think this one reminded my father of fishing expeditions on prairie lakes.

 

 

 

 

I made the African Violets for my mother to remind her of the plants she always kept on the kitchen windowsill when they lived on the farm.  Pattern from Paper Panache. 

 

 

 

 

 

The watercolour quilt is called My Father’s Trees. It was made for my parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary in 1997.  They spent those 50 years running a tree nursery and selling plants to beautify the surrounding community.  The images represent a blue spruce, a maple, and a golden elder, three of Dad’s favourites. 

Technorati Tags: UFO Challenge,family quilts

UFO list for 2012 Challenge

 

It is time to list the projects that I undertake to complete during 2012 while I take on the UFO Challenge at Patchwork Times.  Here we go: 

1.  African Collage – this is a holdover from last year’s list.  Surely this time it will be finished!

2.  Orca Bay Mystery

3. Buggy Barn project – flowers.  Blocks are made.

4.  Framed scrappy logs quilt.  Centre of the top is done.  It needs borders and finishing

5.  Log Cabin and Stars.  Top is complete.

6.  Stack and Whack six-pointed stars.  The blocks are made and have been hanging around for more than a decade – time to get it done!

7. Double Slice Scrappy – this one even has a destination ready for it, so it will be great to see it completed.

8.  Wall-hanging made of vintage 1950s scraps. 

9. Monet’s Wedding Ring – pink and white. 

10. Scrappy Braids – this one is leftover from last century!

11. Batik tiles

12.  Summer flowers – designed to hang over the fireplace.

Let the Challenge begin!

Technorati Tags: UFO,challenge

Christmas quilts

Each Christmas season I enjoy putting up my Christmas quilts around the house.
The oldest one is this Cardinal Quilt (which is a good example of why we should label our quilts when we make them!)  I THINK it was made about 1998.  Pattern is from the book Go Wild with Quilts by Margaret Rolfe. This one hangs on the quilt rack in the dining room.

Somewhat newer is the Star Sampler that was made with a group of friends in 2004.  We chose fabrics together and each made a set of stars.  Then we swapped blocks so that each person had one of each star.  I really enjoyed figuring out the set for this and piecing the borders and setting blocks.  The values don’t quite work (the large star into which the others are set doesn’t really show up), but I hang this one by the back door and remember my friends every time I see it.

The little Nativity Quilt is a pattern from Linda Worland at Paper Panache.  For this I used some batik scraps and I had a great time choosing the fabrics for each section.  This is displayed in the entry way on a display rod that I found at Ten Thousand Villages.

Putting out the quilts is one of my favourite parts of the Christmas season.

Technorati Tags: Christmas foundation piecing

UFO for November

No, it isn’t completely finished, but it has come a long way from the stack of blocks that languished in a bag for years! 

I made the hexagon blocks from a pretty pink daisy fabric some years ago.  I bought the fabric and the One Block Wonder book by Maxine Rosenthal on the same day.  But as pretty as the hexagons were, I wasn’t happy with them with the One Block Wonder technique, and they were put to one side.  I have carried them around with coordinating fabrics for YEARS!  Every November at retreat I would vow that this would be the year.  Another retreat has come and gone, and there was still no progress. 

The sticking point with this project was in making the decisions – which fabric? where?  One day I sat down with EQ and considered my options.  I made some decisions.  I started to sew.  Nearly came to a halt when I didn’t like the way one fabric was working out, but I made ANOTHER decision and carried on.  (I’m sure you didn’t notice where I used two different fabrics because there wasn’t enough of either to do the job!)

This still needs some borders, but I have enough of the original daisy fabric plus a coordinating dark pink or dark green.  So that part will be easy. 

There is one UFO left in my stack for the year.  It is the African Collage from a class with Pippa Moore at Quilt Canada in 2010.  If I put the pieces up on the design wall, do you think they can be turned into something by the end of the month? 

Technorati Tags: UFO,One Block Wonder