A Tale of Three Quilts

 
     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

June Goal Finished

    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.          

The Free Fall Link Up

     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.
   

Getting Social Again with a Little Bit of This and That

     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.

One Monthly Goal for June

     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.

Free Fall Progress

     The past two weeks have been even busier than normal. I've been to three different guild meetings, one bee day, a workshop with Sherri Lynn Wood in Toronto and a training for my job.  I've also had a cold and allergies so it's been hard to sit down and share my experiences here.   I do however, have some progress to share on the Free Fall quilt along.  None of the progress you are seeing here is mine though.  There is a little bit of Cyndy progress and a lot of Wendy progress added to my blocks in this photo.  The lighter leaves don't show up too well so you will have to use your imaginations.

     One of the 1/2 and 1/2 blocks is missing because a small piece of fabric was with me and not with Wendy. Actually now that I think about it there is some progress by me as I fixed the leaf points that were going in the wrong direction.   We are making our quilt larger than the original so there are a few more blocks to come.  There is a sew day at our local guild on Saturday and we are planning to put the top together there....I know Sandra has yet to post the  instructions but I think we can figure it out.
   
      Things will continue to be busy in the next while as we will be visiting my sister over the Victoria Day weekend.  Fingers crossed she's not flooded.  Two weeks after that our second grandson will be delivered by C section and lucky me I get to babysit his older brother for a couple of days while his Dad is at a work training.  Life is good.  Just no time to sit down.  I'm linking with the Free Fall Link up.

One Monthly Goal for May

     It's time to set my Monthly Goal for May and I've decided to tackle putting the top together for my 2016 Stash Bee Top.
I chose the Circle of Squares or Circle of Friends block for that project.  It's been a year since I posted the tutorial to my bee mates so it it will be nice to put it together for that anniversary.

          The pattern for these blocks came from Janeth of Toefeather.  I altered the pattern to make 15 1/2" blocks not thinking about the fact that my biggest squaring up ruler is 12 1/2".  Lisa of Lisa in Port Hope shared  in a comment with me how she squares blocks using her cutting mat, but I've managed to borrow a really big squaring up ruler from Cheryl so I will be able to use that. 

     So while I wait for the last of my 2017 bee blocks to arrive, I'll move the 2016 blocks closer to completion.

     What's your monthly goal for May? 

 I'm linking up with the OMG goal link up at Elm Street Quilts.