Updates

Thought it was time for a miscellaneous update post...

Raffle Quilt
First off, if any of you are interested, tickets for my quilt guild's (Kindred Spirit Quilt Guild of Charlottetown, PEI) raffle quilt are now on sale for 2$ each or 3 for 5$ (or 30 for 50$ as I like to advertise *grins*).


If any of you are really interested in this quilt (it's King sized, about 8.5 feet square, is my estimate - I'm standing there holding one corner, my arm is up above my head and you still have the overhang past the stage. A long-arm quilter is quilting it right now, and detailed photos of individual blocks are in this post), we can figure out how I could get you some tickets - if you're outside my general travel route, shipping would be an additional cost.

Everyone is also invited to our Guild Quilt Show, held Sep 24-26 in Charlottetown (quilt will be raffled off at the show)! PEI is a beautiful place that time of year... maybe worth a visit???


President's Challenge
Next Wednesday is the day of the President's Challenge at the quilt guild, it's amazing how long excitement will last! ;) I'm planning on taking lots of pictures of the other entries!


Spring Quilt
What else have I been up to? Well, I've been quilting on the spring quilt - came up with a design for the white sashing - between that and the loops on the blue-green leave squares, there's enough quilting on this quilt to hold it together ;) Ready for binding!


Free As A Bird Quilt
I'm ITCHING to keep working on the Free As A Bird Quilt...


However, I have run out of grey fabric for reasons that will be revealed later ;) Remember, this quilt will not look like this in the end!
It's driving me crazy to not have enough fabric to keep going when I really want to be working on this quilt! I'm trying to match the shade of grey right now, as the original store (Fabricville/land of all places!) doesn't have that grey anymore... I'm going to try the Nova Scotia Fabricville next month, hopefully they still have this solid stocked, it's usually one of those staples, but the manager of the local store is as always a pain in the butt with vague answers like "Maybe we get it in again, maybe not, we're not sure". It's a solid grey fabric, it's like having butter and sugar and flour in the house :)
The little patch below is the only grey carried at my local Fabricville these days, and I tried another fabric store and they barely had ANY solids, that was a bit embarrassing, I thought ;)


Sunrise Wallhanging
And lastly, the curved piecing wall hanging embellishments...


I'm really not that happy with the beads, apart from the red ones. I'm thinking of taking the others off and adding some quilting instead! It's on the back burner...


Speaking about the back, mwahaha, here's the back of the wall hanging - all you see are the seams holding down the bias binding, the zigzagging is done on the muslin foundation on the front.


I have also been helping a friend with a quilt she's making, but it's secret because I don't know if the quilt's recipient is reading this blog...

That's what's keeping me busy, and you???

Curved Piecing

Alright, as promised, here's my jamboree curved piecing project!

First, my workstation with my fabrics. I brought all my batiks, most of which I had used in the bento box wedding quilt last year. Plus, I had some oranges, reds and pinks to throw into the mix.

We received a copy of the pattern that we traced onto freezer paper and muslin.


Then we had to cut out the freezer paper pieces and pick fabrics - that was the most difficult part for me, I just can't picture the final product!
I ended up just making some educated guesses on what I wanted there, and then followed my policy of

"Just do it and hope for the best!"

Here are the freezer paper pieces ironed to my fabric choices:

I cut out the shapes and laid them out on my muslin to decide on the last two pieces: the paper-pieced shapes!


Once I picked the colours for those, I learned a new paper piecing method, I forgot the actual name, something to the point of sew-fold-snip. Basically, the seams don't and up on the drawn line on the paper pattern, but instead the lines indicate where to fold and cut the fabric, then lay the next fabric on top and sew a 1/4" seam. It was pretty straight forward. Just the typical trouble of trying to save fabric by using small scraps and then discovering upon folding the seam open, that the fabric doesn't cover the whole pattern it should or that it angles in the wrong direction... like I said, the usual :)

I cut around those shapes too, always leaving a bit of extra fabric.
Oh, and then there was the tedious task of taking off the paper again, I hate that part for the paper pieced sections - the larger pieces that were just ironed on came off easy, of course!


The teacher told us to lay all the pieces out to decide if we needed to switch a print here and there. Well, heck no, after all that work I wasn't starting over, so I didn't even consider replacing anything. It was just for fun and practice anyway ;)


When all the fabrics were butted up against each other, I zigzag-stitched along each seam, again, easy-peasy and so quick!


Then I skipped taking a few photos :) But basically, I learned how to make bias tape with a cool little tool that I'll buy if I decide to make more of these! It was really quick and easy!

Using a really narrow straight seam, I sewed the bias tape down through all the layers of the quilt (incl. batting and backing) and put the binding on.


As of now, the binding is done and I've sewn on some beads, but I've run out of ideas :) We'll see if inspiration hits me. I'm kind of busy right now completing another guild project... the President's Challenge!! More about that soon :)