What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

 It's true.  My friend, Christine and I have attended two quilting retreats in March, two weeks apart.  (We won't mention that we were away for a week at the end of February at QuiltCon in Raleigh, NC...).  This is the end of our quilting retreats for until November, when we have two more. We are both very productive on the retreats and manage to get lots of sewing done.  It's amazing what you can accomplish over the course of 2 1/2 or 3 days of concentrated time with no cooking, dishes and other distractions!  I spent ...

 Almost all of my sewing time this week was spent making a wall hanging for a swap which will take place next week.  I have spent months ruminating over a design and colours and fabrics.  I am really pleased with the end result and am in the process of adding the hand stitches to the binding and hanging sleeve.  I will show my finished quilt and the quilt that I receive from my swap partner in my next blog post. 

 This past weekend, my friend Christine and I went to the semi-annual Oxford Guild Quilt Retreat in Stratford.  We both were very productive at the retreat--sewing morning, noon and night with breaks for meals and sleeping only! This is why there was no blogpost here this past weekend.   I brought lots of projects with me--heaven forbid I run out of things to sew!  

I made a couple of Christmas gifts, one of which I can show here now.  This little wall hanging is for my MIL for her room in the nursing home where she lives.  She loves Christmas and ...

 Late last week, I picked up my Weight of Love quilt from my local long armer, Julie. My goal for the week was to have it bound in time to bring it to the Oxford Quilter's Guild meeting on Thursday for show and tell. I finished the hand stitching on Thursday morning.  Yahoo!  

The backing fabric was in my stash. There are a few strips in my gray scrap bin from trimming the quilt. 

The week got away from me and I did not show my favourite quilts from QuiltCon so I will show them to you in this post along with my stitching efforts from this past week.  I'll start with my stitching...

I have finished the flowers to the right of the rabbit in my Spring cross stitch picture and I'm now working on the carrots and beets under the rabbit and the flowers on the left side. I'm surprised all these flowers and vegetables have not been eaten by the bunny--that's what happened in our backyard when ...

This week the Project QUILTING challenge is Sew Not a Square. Specifically, the quilt could not be a square or have any squares in it's composition. "use no square shapes in doing it"

I was out of town until Monday evening on my trip to QuiltCon and came down with symptoms and tested positive for Covid on Tuesday evening {whomp whomp} so I've been isolating from my family. I've also had limited energy as you can imagine. I still wanted to participate in this week's challenge so I grabbed a few supplies from my studio to ...

 Almost all of my sewing time this week was devoted to finishing the turquoise and gray wedding quilt.  Several hours were spent at the sewing machine, adding lines of quilting with turquoise thread using my walking foot.  The herringbone part of the quilt was quilted with diagonal lines following the pattern of angles of the turquoise strip piecing. 

The backing of this quilt is turquoise flannel--so soft and warm!

I did the hand stitching of the binding in the car.  I had some solid turquoise in my stash which was used for the binding.  I just noticed the thread formed ...

 The condition of my sewing room has deteriorated over the last month or so to the point where I could not find my rotary cutter... it was time for a clean up.  I spent over an hour putting things away, folding fabric, sorting through piles, etc. and still no rotary cutter.  I tried to think of the last time I used it...then, I remembered I used it at a recent guild sewing day---it was in the bag I took to the sewing day.  Oh well, the sewing room is looking much better and I had a new project planned ...

It would be nice to write about all the things I made this year before the end of the year is up! 

One of the makes I'm most proud of, I finished in early autumn and it had been a while in the making. I started making this coverlet when Jenni Smith taught the Manx log cabin technique at Stitch Gathering in 2019.

This traditional technique involves measuring and ripping fabric strips by hand, folding and sewing the blocks by hand and sewing them together front and then back. I made all the blocks by hand, sewed the fronts ...

 I have been furiously sewing this week to finish off some Christmas gifts in time for the big day.  Just a little bit more to do! My cousin and her husband came for lunch on Friday.  We do not get to see each other very often but often talk on the phone about our mutual genealogy project--shaking the family tree on our mothers' side of the family to see what we can find out.  The majority of our family members are Scottish with some Irish as well.  I made my cousin a wide open zippered pouch with some fabric I ...

I have not one but two finishes to share this week!  I quilted the baby quilt that I made for the church bazaar this week using light yellow thread and my walking foot to create a rectangular grid.  The backing is donated minke in light green which goes perfectly with the colours on the front  of the quilt.  The binding is made from the same Kaffe fabric that was used to make the spinning four patch blocks. 

Over the past 10 months, I have been making 36 patch blocks in the colour of the month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  This past week, I quilted, bound and labelled my quilt--that's two quilts finished in two weeks!  I'm on a roll!  I used my walking foot to sew straight lines diagonally through all of the white squares with 28wt thread.  The backing is a wide back called Sea Glass.  It has lots of colours in it to match all of the squares on the front.  There are no repeats of any of the coloured squares on ...

I have had my lupine quilt back from the long arm quilter for a couple of months now.  Finally, this past week, I had the time and energy to get the binding made and sewn on by machine.  I don't usually measure my quilts before I cut the binding.  I tend to just cut the number of strips that looks like the right amount--usually, I am pretty accurate doing it this way.  This week was no exception and I had 7" of binding to spare when it was all on.