Life has been very full since the last set of directions where posted for the Rainbow Rose quilt along. I forgot how busy things get in June when groups are winding down. Friends in Quilting had a lovely last meeting in my backyard last Thursday. It was a small group because some of the members of that group were at the Canadian Quilters Association show in the outskirts of Toronto. I spent Friday and Saturday at the show. On Friday I was volunteering in the Toronto Modern Guild display room. That was a blast! I met MR Charbonneau who blogs at Quilt Matters, and Janet Archibald who blogs at What Comes Next. M-R and Janet are both super talented quilters and had quilts juried into the show. On Saturday I went with some friends and looked at all the quilts and the vendors. That was a blast as well.
My quilting time has been very limited but I did manage to get 1/2 of the weeks assignment for the Rainbow Rose Quilt Along finished.
I might be able to finish the other two corners tonight or tomorrow afternoon. I'm not sure when I will get this weeks assignment done as we are going to Montreal for my niece's wedding this weekend. We leave on Friday and come back on Monday.
In other Rainbow news, I decided to put together a quilt top for the Pulse Nightclub quilt drive organized by the Orlando Modern Guild. I sent an email to a few of my friends in my local quild (basically whoever popped into my mind when I was writing the email. The response has been great!
These are the blocks I have received so far.
I know there are 10 more completed blocks, and there are a couple of people who have yet to make their blocks. That would include me. My plan is to see what I get and fill in the blanks. As you can see there is a large blank in blue blocks. This is a good thing as blue is my favourite colour.
I've had an offer to take the quilt down to Florida, an offer to mail the quilt in the States to get cheaper rates, and offers to piece the quilt top together. My boss who doesn't sew has offered to help pay postage to mail it down.
Like many people who have LGBT family members and friends I was knocked flat by the news of the massacre in Orlando so it's important to me that I piece this quilt. Although I do think I will do that with two of my friends.
I'm linking up with the good folks at Modern Quilters Ireland and Let's Bee Social
One of the best things about quilt blogging is getting to know all sorts of quilters all around the world. One of the best things about joining an online bee is trading blocks with quilters in other places. I've really enjoyed getting to know the other Stash Bee, Hive Eight bloggers this year. I don't know the folks that aren't bloggers as well but perhaps if I was more active on instagram I might. I got the instagram account a couple of weeks ago and I'm as slow as molasses in winter whenever I'm dealing with new (to me) technology. My quilt blogging friend Helen has offered to help me with this and one of these days I'll take her up on this.
Katrin who blogs at Puppilalla is the Hive Queen this month and she asked us to make the most awesome block. It's pretty simple although she added a tricky bit to the middle. Here's my version of her block. I'm definitely putting this block in the block of the month idea file for my local guild.
Katrin sent us the background fabric and choose a rich palette of warm patterned fabrics for the feature fabrics. Imagine a whole quilt made of such rich beautiful fabrics. It's going to be amazing, and I'm looking forward to seeing its completion. Katrin is participating in the New Bloggers blog hop this year and I'm looking forward to reading her post on Wednesday July 13th.
Speaking of which, are you following the New Bloggers Blog Hop this year. You can find the details at Yvonne's blog Quilting Jet Girl, or Cheryl's blog Meadow Mist Designs, or Stephanie,s blog Late Night Quilter.
I decided to crash Hive 9 this month. Martina, the Queen for Hive 9 chose an improv house block and I couldn't resist these cute little houses. When I was cutting my fabrics for the Rainbow Rose Quilt Along (you can see my blog post here) I thought some of the fabrics would look great in the house blocks so lickity split, I made them up.
I like these blocks so much I just might have to make a set for myself....and I'm sure to suggest them as a block of the month...maybe for both of the guilds I'm in. I think traditional and modern quilters would have a blast making these blocks.I'm linking up this post for Lets Bee Social at Lorna's blog Sew Fresh Quilts.
For week two of the Rainbow Rose Quilt Along we cut out our background fabrics and sewed the middle blocks. I decided to use the white and grey fabric as background in this quilt after getting so many compliments on it in my last post. I'll use something else for my other project.
After posting my photo last week and seeing some of the fabrics chosen by other quilters, I decided I wanted more gradation between the colours in my pull. I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing that I live so close to my local quilt shop, but two trips to the store and I'm now happier with my fabrics. I'll have lots of extra rainbow fabric left over so I'll have to plan some more rainbow goodness in my future.
Here are the completed blocks. Like Ruth I chose to use Red, Yellow, Turquoise and Purple for these parts of the quilt.
Looking at the photo I just realized I sewed the points of the red block to the wrong side of the red squares. I'll resew it so the pinky red is up near the pinks and the more orangey red is down with the oranges. Have I mentioned that I have become really obsessive about how I want the fabrics to go together. I'm looking forward to seeing how they flow together in the quilt.
I'm adding my picture to the Modern Quilters Ireland, Rainbow Rose linkup. I'm looking forward to seeing other peoples blocks. If you'd like to join us you still can.
I'm joining Ruth of Charley and Ben's Crafty Corner and the Modern Quilters in a quilt along. It's the Rainbow Rose Quilt Along and we'll be making Ruth's rainbow version of the Dutch Quilt block. There's still time for you to join up if you would like to. This week we are linking up our rainbow fabric pull. Here's mine.
I picked up this background fabric on sale at my LQS for a different project. I thought it would also look good with this project so I went back to see if there was more I could pick up but as I suspected it was all gone. So I picked up a similar design in all white. I also picked up a couple more pinks, blues (not turquoise) and oranges to fill out the colours a bit more. If you have any tips or comments about my fabric choices please feel free to add your suggestions.
I'll be making the baby quilt size and enlarging it to a lap by adding more negative space around the Rose Block.
I think this quilt along is going to be a lot of fun so I'm happy to be getting the first set of instructions on Wednesday. I don't think I've made a rainbow quilt before. I'm linking up with the Modern Quilters Ireland, won't you join me?
I'm also linking up with Let's Bee Social at Lorna's blog Sew Fresh Quilts.
This weekend I set myself the goal of finishing my Broken Frames quilt top. The pattern is by Cheryl Brickey of Meadowmist Designs. It's been raining a lot today (this is a good thing, we need the rain) but I managed to get outside for a photo shoot between the showers.
I like how it turned out. The graphic nature of the prints plays well with the frames and the Kona ash background is a good compliment for the prints.
This quilt will be a donation quilt for my local guilds outreach program. I made it a bit shorter than the lap size in Cheryl's pattern, to fit the needs of our program. I'm adding Broken Frames to the quilting pile. I'm linking this up to Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts.
I've chosen a different donation quilt for my OMG for June. This disappearing nine patch has been sitting at my house for about a year now and it's time I g quilted it and handed it in.
My intention is to free motion quilt the top on my domestic sewing machine with an all over boxes design. I'll be using Machine Quilting with Style by Christa Watson to help me with this. I won this book a couple of month ago at the OMG linkup at Red Letter Quilts.
This quilting design will be a challenge for me because I've never done an all over design on anything bigger than a mini and because I find straight line fmq to be a bit difficult. Things could get very wonky.
I'm linking up with Heidi of Red Letter Quilts for the OMG for June and with Julie of Pink Doxies for the Brave Quilter linkup.
We'll see how this all pans out.
The Canadian Quilter's Association will be in the Toronto from June 15 to 18. This is a juried show like the American Quilters Association shows. Recently a Modern Category has been added to the judging and local Modern Guilds have been invited to have a display area of non juried quilts. The Toronto Modern Guild is having the display this year, which will include quilts made by members, as well as some challenge pieces.
Despite missing most of the guild meetings since life became very busy in February, I decided to make a challenge piece. The rules were to make a 14" quilt using two or three colours from a predetermined set of Kona colours. The quilt had to be Modern and it could not have any other colours including white and no embellishment. It also had to have a faced binding.
Here's my finished quilt. I chose the colours Ash, Storm and School Bus. Other possibilities were Peridot (green) Berry, Coal and Pomegranate.
I used Score 1, Floating Squares from the Book the Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters. I chose to cut free hand with scissors and used the Ash and School Bus for the squares and Storm for the fill in.
The name of my piece is Can't Cut With Scissors because I found cutting straight lines freehand with scissors to be a real challenge. I had little snippets of fabric floating all around my sewing room from trying to straighten things up.
I really enjoy improvisational piecing and got this section together fairly easily.
What made it get tricky was that I had to finish at 14 by 14 inches so as the work progressed, I had to think a little bit more about how the pieces had to go together and how to have things fit together to reach the right size. Because things were fairly wonky it would pull in and get smaller than I needed it to be. In the end I'm happy with how it turned out.
My original intention was to quilt it with big stitch quilting with navy and orange thread,but once I started I was unhappy with the result.
In the end I opted for doing what I'm calling Improv quilting with my walking foot. Here's a close up of the quilting.
My goal was to make a quilt that I would be happy to have hanging with the quilts made by other members of the guild and I feel that I have accomplished that goal. I put it in the overnight post on Tuesday and I'm hoping it arrived safely. If you go to the CQA show maybe you will see it. If you are there on Friday afternoon drop by the TMG display and say hello.
This is my third finish for the 2nd Quarter Finish Along. My original post is here. I'm linking up with Leanne of Devoted Quilter who is hosting TGIFF this week.
I finally managed to meet up with my daughter and give her the new quilt. When I was at her place I borrowed back the first quilt that I gave her and brought it home for some loving care. ( I have visiting rights with my kids quilts).
After I washed and dried it I took it out in the back yard for a photo shoot.
This was the second quilt . I made it to give to her when she left for university, about 7 years ago. At the time I belonged to a batik fat quarters club. I got some orange and purple fabrics one month and asked if she would like a quilt made of these fabrics. She said yes and asked that I make the pattern that came with the fabrics. I believe it was called 10,000 pyramids.
I added green to the mix and bought more fabric and a triangle ruler and set about making the quilt.
I have to admit that cutting out all those triangles just about drove me mad. I hadn't discovered the no slip material you put on the back of rulers at that point and I cut out each triangle one at a time. Trying to match up all those points was another challenge but it came together reasonably well.
I quilted it in the ditch sort of. That had been suggested as the easiest way to quilt but to be honest I think quilting the width of your walking foot away from the ditch is easier and looks better. Here's a close up of the quilting, not quite in the ditch, but not all that noticeable with these fabrics.
The quilt has been well loved and needs a little loving care to restore the binding, so I'll get out the needle and thread before I return the quilt to its' home.
I'm adding my post to the Throwback Thursday linkup hosted by Jenn at a Quarter Inch From the Edge. But I just noticed that Jen's holding the linkup a week later this month so I won't be linking till June 9th. Thanks Jenn for giving us the opportunity to link up these gem's from the past.
