Quilt show over

Every year a small group of us organize Quilts at the Creek, an outdoor quilt show held at Black Creek Pioneer Village in Toronto. Check out the photos from this year’s show here.

Here are the quilts I entered in the show:

This was a fun show, and I need to spend some time thinking about what I want to do for next year’s show. The theme: BIG and/or small. Stay tuned!

Colour me Blue! (part one)

I love colour, but normally I don’t think of myself as a “blue” person. But I DO seem to be buying/collecting a lot of blue fabrics right now.. so it is time to dip into that growing stash.

My favourite quilts to make are those that use a single simple block. That enables me to concentrate on the colour play at work in the quilt. Here are my inspiration fabrics for this quilt which I have purchased but not used yet:

The blue in all of these fabrics ranges from a deep royal blue to navy to an almost inky blue-black. So I went to my “stash” and started cutting. I never jump right in and start sewing. I am all about “playing” on the design wall, and the final layout comes together: sometimes sooner, sometimes later.

I am using a tumbler template and arranging the blocks in a “Bowtie” layout. After cutting a number of blocks in a mix of blue, yellow and patterned fabrics, I tested two layouts. The one on the left uses a more equal mix of blue with the other colours, while the right has quite a bit more blue, with flashes of contrast yellow/citron. The difference is not striking in these two samples, and I’m not sure which I prefer, so I will make more blocks and test again… stay tuned!

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Black and White, mostly

Top done!

Quilts at the Creek is hoping to get a fair number of quilts donated to Quilts of Valour this summer, in honour of Canada’s 150th birthday. Quilts of Valour is a group organized to honour and support injured Canadian Armed Forces members and veterans. Quilts have long been associated with comfort, and donating quilts to this group is an expression of our gratitude to the recipients. Quilts of Valour has set a mission of donating 10,000 by next year to them, and so far they have donated over 8,500 quilts. This is my contribution to that effort.

This was an extremely easy quilt to make, and no new fabric was purchased to complete the top. Hopefully I can find a backing fabric that I love and get it quilted soon!

MQG QuiltCon 2017 in Savannah Georgia

What a fun few days I have had! I spent 5 days at the Modern Quilt Guild’s quilt show, QuiltCon, held this year in Savannah Georgia. I saw lots of amazing quilts, great vendors, and took some fun classes. Here is what I got done in my classes:

Crazy Eights with Amy Friend, from her book Intentional Piecing 

This is a stunning quilt, and all through the use of various sizes of stripes in your fabric. Can’t wait to continue working with this one!

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West Chester by Heather Jones, from her book Quilt Local

This was also a fun way to spend a day.. and I got 2 letters done. Yeah! (Not sure why the background looks blue-ish on the Y, it is not like that in real life).

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Bunny by Violet Craft from House of Hoppington

The third class I took was a half-day class with Violet Craft, paper-piecing the bunny from her full pattern. This will take a while to complete- the pieces are TINY! But the bunny is so cute, I think that will be motivation enough to work on this soon. Maybe not the whole quilt though, unless I fall in love with her technique for paper piecing. Photos below are not my bunny.. I only pieced the ears in class!

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Here is a link to Flickr with some quilts from the show- charity quilts, show winners, and just quilts I really liked. I have missed quite a few, but just put that down to being overwhelmed!

My friend Jeannie Jenkins won second place in the Traditional Made Modern category..  here is her stunning quilt!

And finally, here are some photos from a challenge I was thinking of joining.. but didn’t! The photo of a building was the inspiration, and I love all the quilts that were inspired by it.

Drunkard’s Path

I have been wanting to practise my curved piecing for a long while. To start with, I watched a lot of YouTube videos on how to do this, and I tried and tried and tried. They were pretty bad. Tried pinning, clipping, and more. THEN I remembered there is a foot attachment you can buy that makes this much easier- they claim! It is called the Curve Master Presser Foot, and as I rummaged through my sewing machine box, I found not one, but TWO of them. I have wanted to work on these blocks for a long time, and I probably bought them years ago in preparation for this!

I am away from most of my stash right now, but I did bring a big pile of charm squares with me.  I rummaged through them to find a variety of green squares, and started working on them. This curved foot does really make piecing these blocks a lot easier.  I have a collection of quilts with these blocks on Pinterest, and found one I really love on Linda Franz’s Inklingo website. Here is what I have made so far… I’m loving it!