9 Patch Pizzazz Progress

These are all my 9 Patch Pizzazz pieces cut and ready to go. The FABs have been having lengthy discussions about block layouts. I am prepared to go with the layout in the book and have cut the following:

From my focus fabric - Merkitties - two 12 1/2" squares, four 6 1/2" squares, one 2 1/2" strip.

From my wave fabric (I believe the author of the book calls this one your companion fabric) - I only had 1/2 yard piece of the merkitties and so I am using the wave fabric to substitute for merkitties. I should have had one yard of merkitties if I was going to follow the pattern exactly - cut one horizontal rectangle 6 1/2" x 12 1/2" and two 2 1/2" strips

From the yellow challenge fabric - I cut three 2 1/2" strips, one vertical rectangle 12 1/2" x 6 1/2", four 6 1/2" squares

From the green and pink fabrics - I cut three 2 1/2" strips of each colour

I managed to finish putting together the top (less the borders) by 1:00 pm (that's starting at 8:00 am). I only managed to make one mistake -- I reversed two of the nine patch blocks. I am not going to change it--as Pam says, IIWII (it is what it is). I made another quick switch and unless you really knew what this pattern layout was supposed to look like, you would never notice my mistake. It is now part of the charm of this quilt.

I am not sure whether I am going to go with the border treatment in the book or if I am going to make up my own border design. sometimes these things have to age a bit and you have to consider options before making a decision.

This was a great way to spend the morning--quilting with Internet friends!

9-Patch Pizzazz FABs Weekend

This is the quilt pattern book that the FABs are going to use this weekend during our Quilt-In. We won't be making the quilt on the cover of the book (this one is on point). The quilt that we are going to make is called, Lily Pond. Each of us is going to make our own version of Lily Pond or some version very close to this depending on what we come up with on our design walls when we lay the blocks out.

These are my fabrics. The merkitty fabric at the top came from LindaJ. I believe it was LindaJ's quilt group, the Belles, that were making quilts for one of the charities they support as a challenge project. LindaJ supplied me with some of the challenge fabric so I could play along. I never got to making my quilt, so I am going to use this fabric this weekend. The yellow fabric with the blue stars and white dots on the far right was supplied by Pam. Pam sent all of the FABs a piece of this fabric to use in our quilts this weekend. By coincidence, this fabric matches my merkitties, so I am able to use both challenge fabrics -- from different challenges -- in my quilt. Once our quilts are finished, we will be donating them to Pam's M2M project.

There are a few rules for this weekend that we agreed to already:

- It is ok to cut out your quilt pieces and it is ok to sew the strips for the 9 patches...but you may not cut the strips into sets.

- Sewing will start at 8 a.m Saturday. You can choose between central time and pacific time...since we are in 2 time zones

We have sewn together as a group. We use e-mail, digital cameras, and IM to let one another know what we are up to, where we are in the pattern, to answer each other's questions, and to cheer each other on to the finish line.

A couple members of the group are "keeners" and have already drafted their quilts using their quilt software. My quilt layout is still in my head and will not likely get drafted in a formal way. I plan on cutting out the pieces and using a design wall to decide on final placement.

Customer Quilts

Once again I find myself not posting for two weeks. I have been busy quilting--just not for myself.

I quilted this first quilt for a customer to give as a wedding gift to a special couple that are her neighbours. The flower blocks were embroidered with her new embroidery machine. She asked for hearts in each of the floral blocks with waves between the blocks. This is a picture of the back of the same quilt. This picture shows the heart and wave quilting a little clearer.
This is a quilt that I quilted for an international friend. This quilt was pieced by a perfectionist and was a delight to quilt. I enjoyed looking at all the fabrics as I recognize many of them--some were in my stash in the past and some are still in my stash now!
The next three quilts were pieced by the same person. This lady is busy "using up her scraps". How wonderful to give such colourful scraps new purpose.

This quilt showcases a wonderful collection of prints. The piecer of this quilt intends to gift this quilt to a very special friend.
This quilt was pieced by a new quilter--her first quilt! The woman who pieced this quilt is also an expert seamstress and her skills shine in this quilt--there are no mismatched seams in this one!
And so now that the backlog of customer quilts has been caught up, I can breathe and spend a bit of time working on my own projects......until the next wave of quilts arrives anyway!

Busy Times

I haven't posted in two weeks, but I have been busy working on quilting projects.

After working on my first Convergence quilt with the FABs on March 8th, I decided to make a second Convergence quilt the following day. This is my Sunflower Convergence.

I love the formula of using a large floral print fat quarter and three contrasting fabrics drawn from the colours of the print fabric to make this quilt pattern. I use up what extra floral fabric I have left from the fat quarter on the border and then pull one of the solid fabrics from the center to finish off the border. This is the second Convergence using this method of fabric selection and I just love how it turned out!

I ended up quilting this piece 2 1/2 times. I had it half quilted and I didn't like the thread so I picked it out, then I fully quilted it and didn't like the quilting design so I picked it out, then I quilted it for the last time which is the design you see now with the "sun's ray's" coming from the upper right hand corner.

Friday, March 14th was my Mother's birthday. This is the Spring/Easter table center that I finished for her using the Spiral quilt pattern I have shown before.

And this is the Birthday Girl posing with her cake.

Saturday, March 15th was National Quilting Day. Did you know that the third Saturday in March is officially designated as National Quilting Day? Quilters love a celebration - especially when fabric is involved - so over the years, observance of National Quilting Day has unofficially been expanded to the whole month of March! To read more about National Quilting Day, follow this link: http://www.nqaquilts.org/NatQuiltDay.html

I celebrated National Quilting Day by working on my We Care quilt --started during our guild workshop on March 1st. (see earlier post)

This is me with my We Care quilt. My daughter took the picture just before I left for my guild's monthly meeting on Wednesday night. Look who decided to get in on the picture taking -- peeking out from behind the quilt!

I loved the fabric on the back of this quilt--dragonflies!

FABs Converged on Fabulous Fabric Projects

For the second Saturday in a row, I had the privilege of quilting with friends when the FABs converged on another FABulous FABric project. This time the friends were not located in the same place as I was--they were in three different locations in the U.S.

The chosen project was Ricky Tim's Convergence quilt. We have been chatting on line for a while now about this project. Some of us were counting the days, some were counting the sleeps. Some were so excited that they had to hide their pattern so they wouldn't work ahead of the scheduled day and time.

We decided to start working at 7:00 am Saturday morning. The most preparation you were allowed to do was to cut your four 16" squares of fabric. LindaJ was first to start as she is two hours ahead of the rest of us time zone wise. Pam decided to keep LindaJ company and started with LindaJ at 7:00 Linda's time. I knew I wouldn't be able to start quilting at 5:00 in the morning with the two of them (I am two time zones behind LindaJ) so I decided to adopt the Mountain time zone and started at 7:00 am Mountain time (6:00 am here). Cher started closer to 7:00 Pacific time--she was probably the smartest one of the bunch because she made sure she was well rested before taking out her rotary cutter or turning on her sewing machine!


These are the fabrics that I chose for my Convergence quilt.

This is a picture early in the process. You can see the various widths that the strips are cut. Yes, the narrowest strip is cut 1" wide--a pain but effective in the final quilt.

This is a picture after the strips are re-arranged, just before sewing them together into pairs.

These are all the strips sew together again. At this point, you turn your project 1/4 of a turn and repeat the cutting into strips, rearranging the strips, and then sewing them together again.

This is the finished top--with borders added. I have since quilted my piece and I am planning to block before binding as suggested by Ricky in his book.

This was a great day. This was a pattern/technique that I have wanted to try for a long time. I enjoyed working along with my friends and figuring out the pattern together. Having friends pulling along with you helps keep the project out of the UFO pile. Thanks to the Internet, computers, digital cameras, and IM it is possible to quilt with friends in different parts of the world!

Oh, Pam, I don't think any of these projects turned out like POCs so your mailbox is safe!

We had so much fun that we are already planning the next quilting day.

Quilting With Friends

On March 1st, A total of 29 quilters came together to make donation quilts for our guild's We Care program.

We quilted from 9:30 to 3:30. The We Care Committee was extremely organized--as always. When we arrived, tables and chairs were already set up for us. Once we picked our spot, we proceeded to the front of the room where there was a table with our names already printed out on tags. We picked up our name tag and our hostess checked us in on her list. We were able to choose one of two quilt patterns ahead of time and then the committee put together the corresponding number of kits.

I have to show you what the kits looked like. A zip lock back contained everything but the batting and label to make the quilt. Pre-cut batting and labels were available for each of us at the end of the day. Double click on the picture below to see the detailed labels that were on the pre-cut pieces in the kits. This was quilting for dummies--how could you go wrong--the borders, fabric A, fabric B, etc were all labeled with small pieces of paper pinned to the strips. The large dragon fly fabric was my backing.

There were two "model" quilts on display to help us visualize what our finished quilts would look like--this was the first one.

This was the second quilt.

Everyone was busy all day. This hall is a favorite location for our guild workshops as there is lots of light and lots of room.

We broke for lunch, but many ate their lunch and got right back to work. Everyone was enjoying themselves so much, they didn't want to stop.

By the end of the day, most of the quilters finished their quilts to the flimsy stage and then received assistance from the committee in sandwiching their quilts. It makes it easier to finish the quilting process at home if your quilt is already sandwiched and prepared for quilting when you leave for the day.

This quilter had to leave early so she didn't have a chance to get her borders on yet.

These are some of the other finished flimsies. The fabric combinations put together by the committee were wonderful.

What a great way to spend a Saturday--quilting with friends!

Confession is Good for the Soul....

Confession is good for the soul.....and great incentive to finish projects! Or, I should say, the thought of having to go on line and confess that once again I was stalled on the borders for a quilt pushed me to the finish line (or at least the flimsy stage) last Friday night.

I expected to hear from LindaJ at some point on the weekend and I was sure she would want to know how I was making out on my Bargello Bowl quilt since she had finished hers on retreat the previous weekend. I had the fabrics picked out for the border, I just had not gone that extra step and attached them. Once I got going, it didn't take that long, what was the hurdle? I am not sure what was keeping me from attaching those borders, but I do know that I was not going to face confessing that I had not yet finished this project, so I soldiered on and this is the final result--my completed Bargello Bowl flimsy!

This finish was just in time as the FABs are scheduled to tackle a project together--Ricky Tim's Convergence. We are scheduled to start at 7:00 am Saturday morning. We have agreed that we can go as far as cutting out our 4 - 16" squares of fabric and that is all! No starting ahead of time--even if it means hiding the pattern so we aren't tempted!

Who knew that confession and temptation had anything to do with quilting?