Wacky Fab Challenge #2 – Reveal

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Wednesday night was the reveal for our Wacky Fab Challenge #2. The last package had arrived at its destination during the day on Wednesday. When I got home from work, there was a message for me letting me know that the planned reveal would be at 6 pm. I had just enough time to grab a bite to eat for supper. I guess I was taking a little too long because precisely at 6 pm the phone rang. The call display said Alabama. I knew I had to quickly grab my camera and get to my computer–or else I would have some explaining to do!

One by one we opened our packages and then quickly took pictures of the contents of the packages to share with the rest of the group.

This is Joey assisting with the opening of my package. The tape slowed me down and some of the other FABs wanted to know if I needed assistance in opening. LOL It is all part of the suspense.
This is what was inside my package…..summery placemats from Linda.


There were four placemats in total – one for each member of my family.
Thank you Linda! The applique is fabulous!

Do you remember me teasing with just a sliver of the project I was working on?

http://silverthimblequilting.blogspot.com/2009/01/fab-challenge.html

This is a picture of the challenge fabric:

This is a picture of the project that I made from the challenge fabric for Pat.

This picture was taken when the top was still a flimsy, before it was quilted and left my house for Pat’s house. The pattern is 4 Patch Stacked Posies from HD Designs. I know that Pat had been admiring the 4 Patch Posie quilts that Linda and I had been working on. Pat wanted to make her own 4 Patch Posie but she is a very disciplined quilter and has a quilting to-do list with at least another 10 quilts on it to make before she was prepared to start one of these. Now Pat has her 4 Patch Posie quilt and she can stay on track with her other 10 projects!
We had to use a large percentage of the 1 yard piece of challenge fabric we received while staying within the theme of summer. A Summer in Winter challenge. Summer to me is all about heat. Heat in colour is red, orange, and yellow. As soon as I received the challenge fabric in the mail I knew instantly what fabric I was going to use with it–this large floral depicting the colours I associate with heat–red, orange, and yellow.
This is the same quilt, now quilted at at Pat’s house.

This was a great challenge. Thanks to Cher and Pat for organizing.
I believe Linda and Pam are responsible for the next challenge–details TBD in the future.

Is Spring Finally Here?

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This is the weather that we woke up to on the morning of April 1st. Yes, that is snow! Although it was April Fool’s Day, this was no joke! They mentioned on the TV news that we have had 5 months in a row where we have had snow. This is very unusual weather for this part of the country. We are tired of snow! By Saturday (April 4) the weather had improved significantly. I couldn’t resist taking a few pictures in the afternoon.

This is the view that my DD has when she is at work.

The red strip in the foreground in this picture is a cranberry field. There are no cranberries at this time of year.

A pasture just a little farther down the same road. This is the view I have when driving home from work each day.

Look on the ground at the base of these trees.


This is where I found the most beautiful and delicate little blue flowers.

And at the base of another tree…..

Crocuses–a sure sign of spring.


There are no signs of spring in my yard so I headed to the greenhouse to fix that.

We have had nice warm weather with no sign of snow since Friday. Let’s hope that Spring decides to stay and the cold weather and snow is gone till winter!

Sewing and Crafts Show

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Last Friday (April 3), I headed down the Valley from where I live to attend the Sewing and Crafts Show.

The show was smaller in size this year than previous years. However, despite the smaller size, I still managed to convince some fabric to follow me home. I also purchased a new book that has me excited about starting a new quilt or two–Bargello Quilts With a Twist by Maggie Ball.
I met several of my quilting “buddies” at the show and enjoyed a visit over a cup of coffee with DL and EH. While sitting in the coffee shop visiting, we spied a couple of ladies sporting the greatest jackets. I was able to convince the ladies to pose for me, showing their backsides and the artwork on their jackets. It turns out that the lady on the left in the grey hair made both jackets–one for herself and one for her good quilting friend (pictured on the right). The lady on the right told me she has the greatest friend–and I would have to agree!
Chickens and quilts just has to be the best combination. Thank you to the anonymous “Quilt Chicks”!

International Quilting Weekend

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Saturday, March 21, 2009 was National Quilting Day in the US. I noticed another Canadian blogger who referred to Saturday as INTERNATIONAL Quilting Day and I feel a little like her and think this should be more than an event limited just to the US. Given all the good that quilters do worldwide for their communities, we should be recognizing quilting world wide and the day should be changed to International Quilting Day!

I told my mother that it was International Quilting Day and she asked me what I was going to do. I told her that I was going to quilt of course! And quilt I did. I joined http://catsnqlts2.blogspot.com/ in a Move It Forward Challenge. We challenged one another to pick a UFO and move it forward from pieces of fabric sitting in a box on the shelf to at least the flimsy stage.

Friday night I had put the finishing stitches in a quilt that Linda and I had worked together on previously – on Super Bowl Sunday in 2008. As I quilted Linda’s quilt I thought about the fun we had making our quilt tops together–Linda in the southern US and me in Canada, connected only through our computers and the Internet. What fun we had planning our quilts and working together through some of the challenges of the pattern. We ended up with a flimsy each. I quilted my Bargellobowl quilt last weekend and this weekend, I finished up Linda’s Bargellobowl quilt. Linda’s quilt is large–approx. 90 inches square. This quilt was so large that my daughter’s arm span was not large enough for her to act as the official quilt hanger. So for the picture, we put the quilt on the floor. As you can see, Joey is walking the border, doing his customary quilt inspection.

Once the pictures were taken, I packaged up the quilt and headed off to the post office. Linda’s quilt is now on its way back to her. It still seems surreal that the quilt that had only existed as pictures on the Internet up until now was actually in my hands, thousands of miles away from where it was pieced. Linda’s quilt is full of memories–there are fabrics in there from the FAB stashes, her Mom’s stash, and it now has my quilting stitches holding the sandwich together. So I started the Move It Forward Challenge by helping a fellow FAB move her flimsy one step closer to being a finished quilt.

The next project I tackled was taming the overflowing unruly box of string pieced rectangles that I have been working on over time. When I am looking for a mindless project to do where I don’t have to match anything or concentrate much, I work on string piecing scraps to used Color Catcher sheets. Once I have a stack, I trim them up to 4″ x 9″ .

These are the stacks of blocks that I trimmed up on Saturday. Each stack is at least 3″ high. Linda asked me what I had planned for these blocks. I was just going to sash and cornerstone them into a simple top. Linda asked if I had thought of making a Railroad Crossing quilt.

After searching the Internet for ideas and swapping pictures of quilts back and forth, I came across a quilt with pink and tan alternating squares that I fell in love with. It wasn’t long and Linda sent me this EQ drawing of a quilt similar to the one that I fell in love with. With this drawing it is easy for me to figure out how many squares of what fabric I need and just how many of the string pieced bits that I need. It is obvious to me now that I have enough string pieced bits to make about three of these quilts!
This is very typical of what happens when Linda and I get together and start discussing quilts and quilting. We start with one idea and the next thing you know the pattern ideas are flying back and forth over the Internet and we both have a few more quilts added to our Quilting To Do list! It is great to have someone to bounce your ideas off of.


The UFOs that I decided to move forward were my Easter table toppers. This first topper is for me. It was previously just a flimsy and Saturday I managed to get it quilted. Sunday I machine stitched the binding to the front of the quilt. That pink strip around the perimeter of the topper is the binding ready to be hand stitched to the back of the quilt.


This second topper is for my Mother. The fabrics are those that my mom bought while we were on our recent trip to Arizona. I managed to piece and quilt this topper on Saturday. This topper is also ready for the hand stitching of the binding to the back of the quilt.


This is a picture of the cute fabric that is on the back of both toppers.
The members of my local Monday night quilt group have decided that they would like to make some quilts together. We have picked Bonnie’s Scrappy Trips pattern. I have decided to make my quilt out of fabric in my stash. I have a huge collection of floral fat quarters that I am cutting 2 1/2″ strips from for this project and 4 1/2″ strips from for a future project – Terry Atkinson’s
Daisy Chain. While putting together this first block on Sunday night, I remarked to Linda that maybe I should make the center squares on my blocks out of green fabrics in order to tame some of the chaos caused by all the florals that I am using. I was asking Linda what she thought of my idea.

Before I knew it, Linda had drawn up this diagram in EQ to give me some idea of what my idea might look like.
So, what started as National Quilting Day ended up as International Quilting Weekend! It is great to celebrate time to quilt together with friends – no matter where they live!

Guild Night

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Wednesday, March 18 was our monthly guild meeting. Our guest speakers were some of our members who presented their pieces that they have created together as a group as they have worked together through some art quilting books.

Later, a couple of the members disclosed during show and tell that sometimes they incorporate some unusual elements into their quilted pieces–in this case it was Guinness beer cans. They have discovered that after being heated with a torch a Guinness can turns into a bronze/gold coloured medallion shape. Interesting for sure!

The highlight of the evening was after show and tell when all the We Care quilts that had been handed in that night were held up for display. We had 32 quilts turned in at this meeting and once we had them all held up, they circled the hall.

You will recognize some of the quilts from the workshop we had earlier this month.