You may remember this quilt top. It's the Broken Frames quilt designed by Cheryl Brickey of Meadow Mist Designs and I made the top last summer. It's a donation quilt for my local guild's outreach program. I am currently the chair of the outreach committee (was co chair last year).
Community outreach co-ordinates the making of approximately 100 quilts each year, although this year the President's Challenge was to make comfort quilts and we ended the year with 168 quilts. The quilts go to the Sexual Assault/Domestic Violence unit, housed at the local hospital. Guild members can contribute by making individual blocks, by making a quilt top, by quilting tops made by others , or by donating a complete quilt. I matched this top up with batting and a backing and put it with the others waiting to be quilted.
Vicki picked up the quilt and used it to teach her 13 year old daughter how to use her long arm. Vicki is really happy that her youngest daughter has shown an interest in quilting as her oldest two have shown no interest. Here's a close up of the quilting.
One of the great things about the outreach program is that in addition to making quilts for a good program, members are encouraged to learn new patterns and skills. Working on the quilts is way for people to give back to their community while practicing their skills.
I asked Cheryl for permission to share the pattern in a couple of kits for the outreach program and she generously agreed. I had two sets of charm squares from Cotton and Steele that I had picked up at my local quilt store and Wendy and I made kits by combining them with white background and frames of fabric, donated by Joanne's sister.
The first one was sewn by Josee. She picked up the kit at a guild meeting. The colourful charms were from the Mochi line, designed by Rashida Coleman-Hale. The dark green frames went well with this line.
It was quilted by one of the generous long armers that belong to the guild.The swirls look great don't they.
Cyndy put the last kit together. These charms were Tokyo Train Ride by Sarah Watts and the frames where a copper brown, which complement the charms quite nicely. Sometimes we are lucky to have things in the guild stash that work perfectly together.
The quilting on this one was straight lines quilted diagonally across the quilt, also done on a long arm. I think it's very effective.
Many hands helped to make these quilts which will be used to provide comfort and healing. You can read about more donation quilts at the Sew Some Love linky at Kat and Cat Quilts where I will be linking up today. I'll also be linking up with Lorna of Sew Fresh Quilts for Let's Bee Social.
Lisa
Despite being very busy over the last month I've managed to squeeze in a little bit of sewing time and I am happy to report that I've finished my One Monthly Goal for June. It was a fairly simple one as I knew I would be busy.
My goal was to make a quilt top out of my Stash Bee blocks for 2016. After seeing the blocks on the design wall I decided to add some sashing between the blocks and to add a wider border on the sides. There are a lot of fun fabrics in this quilt.
The quilt finishes at about 58" by 76" I received quite a few blocks from people who crashed the hive to make fun blocks so I will be able to make another quilt with the leftovers.
I'll be linking up with Beth of Cooking up Quilts for Main Crush Monday and with Patty at Elm Street Quilts for the One Monthly Goal link up. It feels good to have this happy quilt top finished.
I am really in love with this quilt. It's our version of the Free Fall Quilt, put together by myself and my friends Cyndy and Wendy. I took it out Sunday morning to get photos in the early light.
As we are going to donate this beauty to our Guild's outreach committee, we enlarged the quilt to fit the dimensions needed. We added extra leaves on the white fabric below the shadow leaf to lengthen the quilt and plain borders on the top and sides.
I love how the leaves on the bottom look like they are swirling in the wind.
We bought the fabrics for the shadow leaf and the background from Creative Sisters, which is our new local quilt shop since Greenwood Quiltery has closed. Local now means going to Kitchener, the next city to the west.
For the smaller leaves we used larger scraps and fat quarters from our stashes, including fabrics from Tamara Kate, Kaffe Fassett, Malka Dubrawsky and Amy Butler.
There was absolutely no hope of us quilting this beauty before the link up because our lives are too busy right now. Cyndy's daughter and two grandchildren are visiting from Qatar. Wendy's youngest son is getting married mid July and she's sewing a lot of the dresses.
We welcomed our new grandson two weeks ago (the day after we moved his family across town). This has been both joyous and stressful as his mother ended up with an infection and had to go back to the hospital twice. She has an auto immune condition so this is quite serious for her. She is back home now and appears to be much healthier so we are all hoping she will continue in good health and the family of four can get back to normal.
Dwight and I, along with the other set of grandparents, and many friends have been pitching in to babysit both the new born and the 15 month old as Mom has been very sick and in the hospital for a couple of days at a time. We love spending time with the little ones. The new born Eli is pretty laid back so far and Gabriel is a going concern who loves to be outdoors. I'm feeling very grateful to my employers who have let me have extra time off work. Everything else has pretty much gone out the window.
I'll be linking up with Beth of Cooking Up Quilts for the Main Crush Monday link up and with Sandra of Musings of a Menopausal Melon for the Free Fall link up. Thanks Sandra for designing this quilt and holding this fun quilt along, and thanks Cyndy and Wendy for joining me in making this wonderful quilt.
It's a beautiful day today and lucky me, I have an unexpected day off so I've been using the fact that it's not dull and rainy to take some photos of some of the blocks I've been making in the last while.
Why the day off! Well my second grandson was scheduled to be delivered by C section yesterday and I booked off today and tomorrow to help out with Gabriel and the new baby Eli while my son is at non violent intervention training. Eli decided to mess up everyone's schedule and arrive a week early so I scrambled to get off two days last week as well. My shifts this week were filled so as I was not needed today I get to relax. I'll be back with the kids tomorrow. Yay!
I plan to do a little cooking also to help keep everyone nourished.
I've been scrambling lately to find enough time to quilt and to blog but here are some of the things I have been working on.
First up is this paper pieced, paper airplane block I made for the block lotto for the Toronto Modern Guild. I love this block and sadly I did not win the blocks so I'll have to make more sometime. The pattern is a free one from Kristy at Quiet Play and it's a pretty easy pattern.
Have you seen the Little Tents quilt that Daisy from Ants to Sugar ( Now Warm Folk) designed? I think it's beautiful and I proposed it as a summer block lotto for my local guild Royal City Quilters Guild. For our block lottos, the community outreach committee gets half the blocks and we use them to make donation quilts. This is a 12 1/2" block and the quilters can make this size or 6 1/2" or 18 1/2". We are giving people till November to get these blocks done.
Keeping with the outdoorsy theme, we are holding two block lottos over the summer and the second is for these tree blocks using the tutorial by Amy Smart of Diary of a Quilter. This one is due in October. And if you are wondering about the socks that go so nicely with these blocks they are Maggie's organic cotton, made in the USA. I have a bit of a love affair with Maggie's socks so I thought I would share it here.
The Delectable Mountains blocks were made for the Grand River Modern Quilt Guild block lotto details here. We had to use a solid and a low volume fabric. I chose purple because the sample block was green and I thought they would go well together. I also made the May block but I don't have a photo of it.
Now I know what you are thinking...three guilds, is she nuts? The answer would be yes. At some point I will have to do some adjusting here. I've belonged to the local traditional guild for about 10 years and for the next two years I'm chairing the community outreach committee which I love. I joined the TMG about two years ago and the Grand River Guild a couple of months ago. Grand River is closer to my home and I was thinking I would eventually leave the Toronto Guild but after the last TMG meeting I realized that I am quite bonded to those women....especially the ones I went to Quilt Con with so I guess I'll just thinly spread myself between the three guilds for now. Both Modern Guilds are quite laid back and casual which suits my style.
Which brings me to Stash Bee. Here is my version of the block we made last month for Susan. It's a Celtic Knot and Susan asked for bright happy fabrics. I think it will fit the bill.
I'm linking up with the Social Butterfly herself Lorna of Sew Fresh Quilts. It's good to be back and hopefully I'll stay a while.
Well May managed to get away from me somehow with only two blog posts to show for it. In all truth it was a very busy month with a visit to my sister for the Victoria Day weekend, and a day moving my son and his family into their new rental house.
I did get some sewing done at a sew in at my local guild and I'll share that later in the month when Sandra has the link up for the Free Fall Quilt Along but I didn't manage to finish my goal for the month. I do have a really good excuse though.
My second grandson arrived one week and a day before his scheduled C section and quilting plans went out the window! I don't have any really good pictures of him yet so you will just have to trust me when I tell you that he is gorgeous! His name is Elisha Luke but they call him Eli for short. If like me, you are unfamiliar with the name it rhymes with Elijah. He weighed 6 lbs 15 ounces and is almost the spitting image of his older brother. Both boys were born with a full head of hair. Gabriel's never fell out.
Back to quilting. My goal for May was to sew the flimsy together for my Circle of Friends Quilt. I did manage to square up the blocks and I put them on the design wall.
I decided that once I sewed the blocks together the circles would be closer together than I would like so I decided to sash them. This is as far as I've got. These are big blocks 15 inches , so I am making the quilt to have 4 rows with 3 blocks each. The sashing and outside borders are 2 inches.
I've decided to push this goal into June and hopefully I'll complete the flimsy this month. It will be a busy one with lots of babysitting as mom recuperates from her C section. Life with a 15 month old and a newborn is wonderful but also tiring!
I'm joining the OMG link up at Elm Street Quilts.
