Mid Arm Progress

     How's this for simple beauty?  Patricia pieced this quilt top  from a layer cake of lovely tan, cream and light teal batiks and donated it to our comfort quilt program. I decided it would be a perfect piece to practice free motion quilting on our Mid Arm. I finished it about a month ago and left it at Wendy's. She trimmed it and put the binding on using a co-ordinating batik she had in her stash.

     I quilted a boomerang pattern, quilting across the quilt. I am pleased with my progress as my stitch length is getting more consistent and my movements  more fluid. This quilt was a lot smaller than the last one I worked on which made the quilting feel really easy.  The next quilt in line is a bigger one again. I haven't been on the machine since quilting this one.  I've been quite busy this summer and  I've been finding I want to spend a bit more time chilling at home.  Mid way through August I hope to get back to using the midarm and midway through September when I cut back on work I hope to use it once or twice a week.  There will be no stopping me then.

     Like all the donation quilts we make, this one will be heading to the sexual assault/domestic violence unit housed at the local hospital.  I'm linking up with Brag About Your Beauties  TGIFF and Finished or not Friday.

Jelly Roll Waves Update

 

   Summer is just flying by. We've had a visit with our friend from Germany and her extended family and a visit from Dwight's sister who lives in the States all in the same week.  We have also had the joy of spending time with our grandsons once a week for three weeks in a row.  Last Friday we arrived in time to have dinner with the family and put the boys to bed while their parents had some much valued child free time with their adult friends.  I'll be back with the kids all day Friday and the following Monday we are all going to the zoo!    
     There has also been some sewing time with a full day on Saturday spent with a small group from the Modern Guild finalizing the plans for our Quilt Con Charity Quilt, and starting the sewing.  Spending time with this group of women brings me so much joy.
     I also finished the rest of my blocks for the Jelly Roll Waves quilt along, they are in the photo at the top of the post, and I'm on to the next step.  Working on this project has been a fun and satisfying experience.  I'm linking with the Jelly Roll Waves linkup and with Let's Bee Social.

Keeping With the Theme of Simple Summer Sewing

     Keeping with the theme of simple summer sewing I'd like to share this quilt top that I made for a charm pack challenge with the community outreach committee of my guild.

     We had been gifted boxes and boxes of charm packs by a former  guild member. My co chair Katrina came up with a challenge for our committee members.  Take charm packs and make quilt tops to share at the September guild meeting, using any pattern you like and adding any other fabrics you like.  She thought it might inspire other guild members to look at making similar quilt tops. 
     When she asked the committee members if they wanted to participate, charm packs where flying every which way as the enthusiastic quilters grabbed them up.  There were slim pickins when I got to the pile but I ended up with two identical charm packs and another grouping of similar to each other charm packs.
     Here's a closeup of the quilt and some of the leftover fabrics from the pack.  If you look at the two charms on the bottom left of the photo you can see there were differences in dye lots between the two packs.  You can also see better in this photo how the black patterned fabrics show up against the black background.

          Apart from the aqua, the colours in the packs are not my usual, so it took me while to figure out what to pair them with.  Our donation quilts work best if they have some bright colour and contrast.  Wendy suggested the black background and together we chose the coral to add that pop of colour.
     The pattern is called Modern Basic and it is from the book
Charm School by Vanessa Goerzten of Lella Boutique.  This is a great book if you are looking for quick makes for donation quilts as the patterns come together quickly.  The only draw back is that many of the patterns require multiples of the same charm pack for the designs to work.  The designs are not limited to charm packs however as there are also directions for making the quilts from fat quarters.  Cyndy and Wendy have each made different patterns from the book as well.

        In the book this pattern required 3 charm packs plus background and contrast fabric (in my case coral).  It makes a 81" by 81" quilt.  I cut it down to 54" by 67" which is the size of our donation quilts and managed to use 2 charm packs because there where repeats in each pack.  There are quite a few leftovers a few of which I can add to these two packs

     Because there are no duplicates here I won't be able to use the same book but I do have an idea of what I would like to do.  It will require a lot of additional 5" squares that can play happily with these.  I may just have enough in my sewing room.  But that is a quilt for another day.  I'm linking this post with Let's Bee Social ,  with Finished or Not Friday and with Brag About Your Beauties. Oh and I almost forgot.  Making this quilt top was my OMG for July so I'll be linking to the One Monthly Goal linkup as well.

Jelly Roll Waves Progress

        The current link up for the Jelly Roll Waves Quilt along is for sharing 1/2 the blocks for the quilt.  Here are mine.  I'm making the smaller lap sized quilt which has 5 vertical rows, so the half way point would be 2 1/2 rows.  It's not so easy to see in this photo but what I have completed here is three rows.  So I am ahead of schedule. Yay! 

     When I decided to participate the Jelly Roll Waves QAL with Myra of Busy Hands Quilts, I thought I might be just a little bit crazy.  I won't go into details here, but there have been some ongoing stressors in my life and it has recently been suggested to me that I do less.  So here I was taking on more.
     But you know what, it turned out to be a good thing.  This is a pretty easy project and I can just sew along without much thought, unlike my other sew along, the 2019 summer sampler which I have set aside for the time being. There, taking on something easy led me to let go of something a little more time consuming.  Not that I've totally given up on the sampler.   I'll be cutting my work hours to two days a week in the fall so I can go back to the sampler then.  I'm not saying I won't do the odd block here and there.  In the mean time I'll keep my sewing simple for the summer.  I'm linking this post with the Jelly Roll Waves linkup .

First Finish of the 3rd Quarter

     This is me standing in my friend Wendy's backyard wearing my new cotton knit top.  It's Kwik Sew K3802.

          I made the top at Wendy's because she owns a serger and also because she is a great seamstress and can help me when I have issues.  I have limited experience with making clothes.  I'm pretty pleased with the result although I think the bottom is a bit stiff, which I think is because I used a cotton knit.   This hem style is around in a lot of ready made clothing at the moment and it seems to look best in softer fabrics, like rayon or bamboo. The hemline has softened a bit with washing and I'm hoping that will continue. I have enough of the cotton left over to make a tee shirt.  This is awesome as I paid about $36 Canadian for the fabric. For the most part, I find making clothing to cost more than buying clothing, so it's nice when you can score a deal like this. Wendy is really good at noticing the bargains in our local Len's shop.

     I'm including a photo of the pattern so you can see a better view of the hemline. It's the one on the left.

     The top is my first finish during Quarter Three of the 2019 Finish Along, the original list is here.  I'll be linking with TGIFF over at Faith and Fabric this week and with Bragg about your Beauties and with the Q3 Finish along linkup. Also as this is the only complete finish I managed all month I'm linking it up with the Favourite Finish linkup as well.

Lunch with Betty....summer quilt alongs

   There are a whole bunch of quilt alongs going on this summer and even though I have a lot of unfinished projects 
(don't we all?) I've decided to join in with a couple of them.
     These are the fabrics for my two new projects.  I don't have a lot of yardage in my stash and no jelly rolls so I decided to do some shopping for the two quilt alongs.

     The yardage in the photo is for the Mosaic Mystery Quilt Along hosted by Cheryl of Meadowmist Designs.  Cheryl's quilt alongs go at a nice slow pace which works well for me.
The white fabrics are from my stash and will be my background fabric.  They are  30" cuts of fabric from a kit I got several years ago which I am never going to make.  The other fabrics are four fabrics from  the Betty's Luncheonette Line ( Violet Kraft for Rogert Kaufman) with Kona Pickle thrown in for interest.  I bought more fabric than I need because I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do when I was in the store, but I've settled on my plan now.
The lined fabric is fabric A.  The darker blue and the pickle are fabrics B and C. and the grey fabric will be the borders.  You can't see it well in this photo, but this fabric has some green in it just like the pickle.  Neat eh?  I'm thinking I'll use the lighter blue fabric for binding.

      The jelly roll is for the Jelly Roll waves quilt along hosted by Myra at Busy Hands Quilts.  This quilt along goes at a fairly speedy clip  but it looks like a fairly easy project.  All the cutting should be done by I think Tuesday.

      I had to do a bit of sleuthing to get the Jelly Roll.   At first I couldn't find very many Jelly Rolls in my usual Canadian on line shops.  I looked around and eventually found my jelly roll at Chicken Feed Quilts in Alberta. If you are looking for Jelly Rolls, Chicken Feed Quilts has a lot.  I chose (you guessed it) the Betty's Luncheonette Jelly Roll.  I was drawn to the bright clear colours.
     Although I told you about the yardage first, I actually ordered the jelly roll first.  The funny thing is, when Cyndy and I went looking for fabrics for the Mosaic Mystery  at Creative sisters in Kitchener, there was the very same jelly roll sitting on the shelf.  I wasn't intending to make both quilts from the same fabric line but this fabric was just calling my name.  I'm going over to Cheryl's blog to join the Mosaic Mystery Linkup and see who's quilting along.

2019 Finish Along Third Quarter List

I managed to get three finishes in during Quarter 2 of the Finish along so I'm happily compiling my list for Quarter 3.  What's left over from Q2?  Quite a bit but I won't keep it all on the list.  Here's what I'll keep.

1.  Sisterhood Swap.  Here are the blocks I pieced and sent out.  I need to piece together the blocks I received and get her quilted.

2.  I guess I'll keep the Modern Plus Sign quilt on the list although I'm having a hard time getting to it.  You never know though I might get suddenly inspired.

3.  Even though I didn't finish it, I made quite a bit of progress on the Clam Shell quilt, and it's now at the flimsy stage. If I can figure out how I want to quilt it, I might get this one done.

4.  The last thing from that list that I'm keeping is the bag.  Ridiculous that I haven't done the small amount of work to finish this....obviously avoiding a technique I'm nervous about.  

     Well now it's time for the new stuff.

5. The Penny Patch Quilt Along Quilt (Stitched in Colour) from many years ago.  I've got this quilt spray basted and ready to go on the mid arm, so when my life allows me the time to get to Wendy's I'll get started on it.  It's a pretty big quilt, twin sized so it will take a few sessions to quilt it.

6.  I'm thinking I might want to quilt my Circle of Friends quilt top.  It's also several years old so onto the list it goes.

7 & 8.  The Community Outreach Committee of my guild received a whole bunch of charm packs from a former member.  We challenged ourselves to make quilts out of the packs.  I'll be working on the tops for sure this summer and as I may choose to quilt one or both of them. I'll include them on the list.

My One Monthly Goal for July  is to turn the top fabric grouping into a quilt top.

9.  I managed to get a really good deal on some cotton knit fabrics earlier this year.  Here's one fabric.  I'm planning to  make the Ebony dress with this fabric.  I paid about $25 for the fabric so I'll be pretty happy to get a dress out of it.

10 & 11.  I also picked up this fabric at the same time and I'm thinking I can get two tops out of it. It cost about $35 another great deal.

12.  Is the Jelly Roll Waves quilt which is a quilt along with Myra of Busy Hands Quilts.  The fabric is on order from Chicken Feed Quilts and I've got the pattern in hand.

     Despite my optimism, I have never managed to complete more than three things in one quarter so we will see which projects I get to the finish line.  I'm linking this post to  to Elm Street Quilts OMG for July, and to the 2019 QAL third quarter list.

Good Luck completing your goals everybody!