Convergence Experience

Happy Canada Day to all my fellow Canadian Quilters!

At the last quilt guild meeting, one of the ladies showed a small convergence quilt she made. I had leafed through a pattern book about convergence quilts recently and seeing this quilt brought the quilting style to the forefront of my mind again.

So I checked and tadaa! the guild library had the exact pattern book, so I borrowed it and got down to business.


I'm starting with a very simple practice piece - if I like it a lot, I'll turn it into a bigger quilt, because enough with the wall hangings already! - I'm just not the wall hanging type!

I picked four pieces of tie-died fabric, about 14" square, laid them out according to the instructions, sewed the right seams together, then cut them into the 1", 1.5", 2" etc strips starting in the middle and working out.

Then there's the shuffling of the strips.


And the sewing together of the strips.


All was well, until I became convinced that I accidentally laid one of the fabric squares wrong face up. It's so hard to tell with these. I got nit-picky and started ripping out seams and re-doing them properly. After about 1/3 of the piece fixed, I started wondering if anyone would ever have noticed and if it really was enough of an eyesore to justify the extra time - but too late, now I had started - I'll know for next time! (well, actually, I stopped swapping the strips after I replaced two of them - it really was too much work).



Now a turn, cut it all up again:

... mix the strips together again and you get...


Yeah, okay, I'm not convinced... Maybe I need different batiks. It's not as much of an "umpf" quilt as the one in the book... I'll see what I end up using this thing for :) Maybe it'll grown on me, too! Let's hope so. For now, I'll call it Sunset on Water, at least it definitely inspires a title in me, haha!

The Back And Finish

As I was looking for suitable backing material for the Character Quilt Version 2 (what a coool name! Bah), memory flooded back to me... my mother wanted this quilt to be reversible - just like the one she made herself! She seems to have a taste for reversible quilts.

I was inwardly groaning because I remembered quilting the first character quilt, which has a pieced backing, and how I always got stuck on the lumpy seams where they all magically met at once!

But at least I didn't have to search further for backing fabric - all that was already planned since last fall ;)

She wanted extra blocks on the back, but shaped like an H, which is the initial of her friends last name.


So I did some more figuring and a bit of adapting of the original plan and came up with this: 7 theme blocks, three on each side for the H-legs and one in the center of the H-bar, with red fabric between the blocks, 1" black sashing to outline the H and red fabric on the edges. Tadaa, I love having a plan to follow!

After some cutting, re-cutting (remember the seam-allowance!!!), and re-re-cutting (remember to "measure twice, cut once", not "measure without paying attention and cut away"), I put the thing together and I did come out like I had imagined it. I also pressed the seams open on the top and that will hopefully reduce some of the bulk!


I was undecided between simple pebble quilting (oh the time, oh the thread, but oh the nice look), loops or a totally different pattern on the red.


What I ended up with is this: random McTavishing - i.e. I vaguely remembered what it looks like and did a few variations on it all over the red on the front.


Another one ready to go to its new owner - I loved how quickly this quilt came together (it's been done for a while) - that's always a great feeling :)

The other day was just beautiful here, nice warm air with a breeze, so I decided to go to the water front and read a book (I live right near the harbour).


Of course this thing had to come by and add its noise to the serene scene ;) It seems every port city has one of these amphibian vehicles - in Halifax, NS, it's called the Harbour Hopper. Must be the same company, just must! The tourists on it seem to be half-coerced by the over-animated tour guide to wave at EVERYONE! In Halifax they're encouraged to go "Ribbit, ribbit". The vehicle sounds like a war-tank with a constant hum. I'm quite familiar with it, because its route goes right by my place, so I get to listen to it and the yelling tour guide ("To your right you can see THE most amazing building in town, it was built in...) hourly in the summer ;)

Wonder Chain Done

I finished the border quilting on the wonderland chain, or the Wonder Chain, as I call it :), so it's now time for binding!

I've recently started attaching the binding with my needle in the right position (as opposed to the center position).


I find that both sets of feeds (on my walking foot and the machine) now grip the bulky sandwich of quilt and binding. Also, since I cut my binding strips only 2" wide for double-fold binding, having the needle off to the right and adjusting my quilt position only a little bit - I get a really REALLY scant 1/4" seam, so that attaching the binding is much easier. Before I switched the needle position, I often had to cut some fabric/batting away from the quilt edge. No more!


I'm also still joining my binding at the end instead of overlapping the ends. It just looks so much neater. The time it takes to join the strips in the end is made up for by the trouble I save sewing on the bulky overlap :)


And... done :)


I was on such a roll, I pretty much hand-stitched the entire binding in one sitting.


I LOVE how the border quilting pops out! Just LOVE it! Doesn't it look tasty? Totally 3-D :)


I started making a pair of scissors like the ones in the snip snip print in one of the white centers between the chains, but I really didn't like the look of it, so erased it.


I think I might just leave the quilt as is... :) Don't mess with a good thing!

Right now I'm going through a highly productive quilting phase. My quilt room (i.e. living room) looks accordingly, sigh... I'll blog about the different projects you see here in the next week(s), so stay tuned!

{next to the folded up Disaster (Triple Irish Chain) quilt that is STILL waiting for a border, basting and quilting - *sigh* - you can find my Imagination 1 quilt on the couch - I'm almost done with the border! Yippee! To be revealed soon!}

What a mess! *grins*

Something Slightly Different

... using slightly different colours and prints than I normally do.

... using a previously-tried pattern in a different way.

I sewed most squares of a Moda ZippityDooDah charm pack into 9-patches...

... and turned them into disappearing 9-patches (D9P).


Played around with the layout a bit, but didn't quite like the traditional layout (though it looks better on the photo than in real life).


I ended up sewing them into columns and adding some sashing.


The result is simple - and I like it :)

Fabric Spree

The reason I didn't buy any fat quarters at the last quilt guild meeting is fairly simple. I just bought 21 yards of fabric the day before and was thoroughly disgusted with the thought of more fabric. Kind of like Thanksgiving with cotton instead of turkey :)

This is what happened - the guild sent a notice around that a lady from South Carolina had closed her fabric store and is spending the summer on PEI and she happened to bring her left overs with her. To be sold at 2$/yard.


Weeeeell! So off I drove, 50 km west of PEI's capital, through fairly rural areas (well, never mind, this whole province is rural, urban doesn't really exist. In fact, there's a big farm smack in the middle of the capital Charlottetown).

The choices weren't what I had dreamed off after reading Hawaiian prints and Japanese "cute" prints.

It was more stuff like this:

But heck, for 2$/yard, I bought anything I remotely liked and then some - most of these fabrics will hopefully go into charity projects, e.g. for the children's hospital. There were a lot of "scrubs" type prints, with dogs and cats wearing nurses' uniforms and blurting out courageous messages.


Not my usual taste of prints (the cartoon animals), but since I'm not likely to cut into my designer fabrics for charity quilt (my charity stops there!), these will be ideal - also for the backings of those quilts!

Oh, and the striking red Hawaiian print - I read Hoffman on the label and thought "Heck, that's good quality, it won't bleed, I'm not going to wash all these fabrics by hand in scalding water", so I chucked it in with the others - the water started to turn red immediately.

So after a quick rescue and hoping that dilution is the solution to pollution in my washing machine, I ended up hand-washing the red anyway and then just chucking it in before the spin cycle after most of the red had run out in the bath tub. Sigh, disaster averted, and I'll think twice about the fabrics I'll match this one with!

Last Meeting and Vote

Last week was the last quilt guild meeting before the summer break - that means it was potluck time... so much food! Yum :)

At this special meeting, we also have local vendors bring a great selection of fat quarters - I refrained!!! (You'll find out soon why...)

Next, it was time for the grand President's Challenge Awards!

Here are all the participants holding up their entries:


And here are the four winners:
From left to right: best choice of colour, best traditional design, best contemporary design and viewer's choice.


Amazingly, you voted fairly similarly! And you covered all four winners - I'm actually quite surprised at this :)

Your votes:
Best traditional design (unanimous)

Best contemporary design (unanimous)

Best choice of colour: tied between

Viewer's choice tied between:

After the awards ceremony, we had an extensive Show & Share, here are some impressions:

This quilt was absolutely massive! Probably one of the biggest quilts I've ever seen...

And that's it for the quilt guild until September. I'm trying to get a few people together for social quilting over the summer, let's see if we can figure out our schedules enough to find meeting times ;)