Zoom Sewing

This is the second stacked coins quilt I have worked on.

I worked on putting this one together during the Zoom quilting session that Chookyblue from Australia organized on Saturday. The Zoom session started at 6 am on Sunday in Australia which is 1 pm on Saturday here in western Canada. I still marvel that a pandemic was responsible for bringing together quilters from all over the world to sew together in a real time setting. This is the second Zoom session that Chookyblue organized that I attended. I am quite enjoying sewing along with the group. The different time zones in the different countries make it a bit challenging, but the the quilting conversation brings us all together. Quilters have a unique way of connecting with each other.

This top just needs borders. Maybe I will get those attached during our regular Friday night guild Zoom sew-in.

Who knew a pandemic would open our eyes to the possibilities of technology?

Projects From the De-Stash Table

At our guild’s January meeting every year we have our De-Stash. Members bring any quilting related or other craft items that they want to get rid of. The items are put out on tables and the members get to pick through them and take home anything that they want. Any unclaimed items at the end of the night are donated to a local thrift shop that benefits a Women’s shelter.

About three years ago during De-Stash, I picked up a large ziplock bag of pieced triangles and some 2.5 inch strips from a jelly roll. I pulled out the triangles and tried to piece them into hexagons. The piecing wasn’t the best by the original quilter so piecing together into hexagons was a frustrating exercise. I finally gave up on that idea and just started to randomly piece them together in an improv fashion. Once I had a large unit pieced together, I trimmed it square into a block. This is the resulting quilt top. The blue sashing strips were in my stash. The Moda fabric on the border was something I picked up at last year’s De-Stash night.

This quilt top was made from the 2.5 inch jelly roll strips that were in that ziplock bag. I pieced string blocks and then put them together with the beige tone on tone fabric from my stash to make string pieced half square triangle blocks. I played with the placement of the blocks until I got a layout that I liked given the number of blocks that I had.

The COVID-19 pandemic has prevented us from attending in-person guild sew-ins since March. For the last two Friday nights I have hosted Zoom sew-ins for members of our guild from 6 pm to 10 pm. These on-line sew-ins have been well attended which confirms that our membership is craving social interaction. These sew-ins have proved productive for me and have jump started my quilting again. I finished putting these two tops together to the flimsy stage during these sew-ins.

Teal Stacked Coins

I have named this quilt, Teal Stacked Coins. This is my original design.

I started this quilt on retreat in October 2019. Originally I had thought I would alternate the string pieced units with solid units the same size as the string pieced rectangles. I had to abandon this idea after sewing a couple of columns together and realizing that I had too much bulk in the seam intersections to get the quilt to lay flat. I ended up playing with the layout on the design wall and ended up going with alternate blocks that were half the size of the string pieced rectangles and I added a plain sashing strip between the rows to remove those bulky seam intersections.

The string pieced units were pieced onto used Color Catcher sheets. The Color Catchers remain in the quilt. I have made many quilts from these 4″ x 9″ string brick units but I think this one is my favorite because of the Kona teal background.

The quilt was quilted on my long arm using the Swirls pattern with an 80-20 Hobbs batting that gives the quilt a bit of loft that helps define the quilting and makes it perfect for cuddling in front of the TV. This is a large lap size quilt–my husband is holding the quilt for the photo and it generously covers his 6’2″ frame.

Finished size: 59″ x 78″.

Project Bags

I have started making my own project bags to organize my cross stitch projects. I must admit, they are a lot nicer than ZipLoc bags.

Christmas Project Bag – front
Christmas Project Bag – back
Happiness Project Bag – front
John Deere Project Bag – front
John Deere Project Bag – back
Vintage Sewing Machines Project Bag – front
Vintage Sewing Machines Project Bag – back