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Monday, June 24, 2013

A Sunday spent Quilting

What a lovely way to spend a Sunday.  My quilt club had organised a UFO Day, so I was very keen to join in.  But what to take?  I’m sorry to admit that I have an unmentionable number of UFOs packed away.  When we packed up and moved house, all my quilting things were packed into plastic crates, and they are still there, all these months later.  I opened up one of these crates and found my burgundy and cream paper pieced log cabin blocks.  I had  already made a whole lot of blocks, but I still needed more.  So this is what I sewed on Sunday.  It is quite a slow process:  stitch a log, trim the excess, walk to the ironing board, then press.  But I sewed a set of eight at a time, so at the end of the day, I was pleased with what I had achieved.  And sewing on the tissue foundations keeps the blocks square.

DSCF5753 Sewing more log cabin blocks

I had the company of about 18 or so ladies in the hall.  Some came early, and stayed all day, while others popped in later for an hour or so.  I noticed some mending being done, hand work, and plenty of machines whirring away.  I stopped to admire a lovely Christmas runner which one of the ladies was working on.  Like most quilters, I love Christmas things.  We all brought along something for the shared lunch, and as usual for these sort of outings, there was food galore.  With a spread like this, there was no chance that we would go hungry.

DSCF5748 Our tasty shared lunch

In between my stitching, I checked out what was happening on the other tables.  Moira had a nice selection of Sashiko stitching she had recently done, and plans to turn these into table mats.

DSCF5744  Sashiko stitcheries by Moira

Sitting next to Moira was Rae, who was busy beading.  She was making a lovely elephant using silk tie pieces in mainly reds and greens.  Before the elephant is assembled any further, he needs to be embellished with beads, braids and fancy stitches.  You can just see his pair of rather handsome beaded paisley ears at the top of the photo.

DSCF5745  Rae’s beaded elephant pieces 

Another exotic project was Yvonne’s Japanese Doll sampler quilt.  She was machine button holing around each doll, and it is going to look fabulous when it is completed.

DSCF5752 Japanese Doll blocks

Vickie was another who was also doing some button hole machine stitching.  She was making the most impressive border strips, full of swirls and points. 

DSCF5747 Vickie’s border strips

“Just using up my scraps”, said Jill, when she held up her beautifully shaded random scrap quilt, stitched in a crazy patch style.  The quilt just glowed with colour, all set off nicely with the black lattice strips.  She was busy hand quilting during the afternoon.  

DSCF5750  Jill’s quilt of many colours

Another lovely quilt was Debbie’s autumn toned hexagon quilt.  I really admire people who work with hexagons – all that cutting, tacking the papers on, then stitching together by hand.  Not for me, I don’t think, but I can certainly appreciate all the hours which go into these works of art.

DSCF5749 Debbie’s hexagon quilt

Sarah had her quilt laid out on the table when I arrived, while she contemplated just how to machine quilt it.  Decision made, she got to work on her purple hued quilt..

DSCF5746 Sarah machine quilting

I had a lovely day, as I’m sure all the other ladies did.  It was nice to meet up with some more club members too.

1 comment:

Frances Leate said...

I don't think you can call yourself a true quilter if you don't have lots of UFOs - when I can't sleep at night I try counting mine. Lots of lovely projects being worked on. Take care.