Sunday, July 19, 2009

Day at the Orphanage Event- Success!


What a great day for a "quilting bee", so to speak...(Actually, it was a little muggy for me..whew!) This quilt (I may call it Prisms), was put together in design at the last mtg and Mary Ellen brought it home to put the rows together. I'm not sure what we'll do for the borders, but a nice black frame might be good before we extend the sides...

I went over to the church the afternoon before and spent three hours just sorting through the blocks and putting them on tables to have the ladies get ideas for the designs that we were to create for this little babies....(blocks). I'll try and tell you a little about the various groupings..

This one was a challenge I gave the ladies... Bright center strip, black on one side, white on the other with bright corners. We made two other quilts with some of the blocks, and these were the leftovers.

 
The ones on this table were two "Sudoku" (one squares and one rectangles) quilts that Mary Ellen made and then decided to donate them to the group. The top one, I chose to add a warm brown batik as a border, and the other one at the bottom of the picture, has a few fabrics that are auditioning... (I got voted down on the bright teal and the pink... oh well.) The Pink blocks were leftovers from a few Breast cancer quilts we put together. The note on the blocks at the bottom, says "Too small", as they were cut less than 9.5" square. So I have to remember when making more that they get cut 9.25" sq.
  
This is a closeup of the quilt with the backing (green) and the yellow binding already in a zip-lock, pinned to the top... Ready to go to the quilter (probably me...).

This one is sixteen blocks that Marilyn made and just wanted to try a two color variation (blue-red). The three up in the corner, were stragglers from the Prisms quilt.

These were various HS blocks... no consistant center strip (or even squared up to the center, per se) but I tried to blend them together according to color...I think they ended up being paired up to alternate with the red center blocks (later in this post).


This one was a block that I learned at a workshop. I'm not sure what I thought to do with it, but was pretty and I had a bag full of fabrics that would go with it. The rust 'prairie points' are 3-D".


This is the "muted cranberries",... they were the first attempt for Heartstring blocks by a new member, and although the center four HS blocks (cream and maroon) had no foundation blocks... she has since learned to do them better, I liked the split design to them. The other four blocks I though might go with them... maybe. However, Dot got them to work on and she decided to put the plaids with them... She took it home to finish.
 
This is the Bright/B andW blocks and the Red/white/blue HS blocks. Not sure whether it will stay with JUST RWB, but we do have a good amount of them.
These are strictly red center HS blocks. They'll get together in a quilt with very little help.
These went up to join with some of the blue centered ones, I believe...
 
This table had three choices on it. Clockwise from top; yellow/gold HS blocks. They were all made the same, same centers, same set of fabrics on one side (on all of them) and another set of fabrics on the other. Very stunning. It ended up with a gold border, and a yellow purple wide border on the outer edge. (the Border fabric was one I hated in my stash and had donated it, so it's good to see it got a good home. Halloween Happy blocks are next, not sure how they will get designed... and the left has the red/green plaids that got put together with the cream maroon blocks shown earlier.
 
This is the crew photo (minus Phyllis and Pat) when we finally thought to take a group photo. You'll see Phyllis and Pat in other photos, don't worry. Left to right: Muriel, Dot, Cricket, Jane, "C", Janet, me (Nancy), in lime green and Anna.
Here are Muriel, Dot and "C" working at making sure the blocks we had were all trimmed to the correct size.
 
Here's Phyllis, Cricket (a guest who came from MA to help- she's part of the heartstring group, like me) and Janet. (Hope they don't charge consulting fees...LOL)
 
Here's reliable Pat. She always says not to let her sew, but she's a great ironer! She even brought her knitting to do in between ironing.
 
Here is a quilt that we finally got the borders on (we've had it in the 'closet' for months! Don't know why we haven't finished it, other than other quilts get pushed in front of it). Thanks Cricket!
 
 
Jane (who is charge of our annual Quilt-a-thon for Project Linus) is working with Janet on the Yellow/gold HS quilt.
 
This is a trading patches that just never got a chance to 'play' with any of us. Next time...
I actually DID put down the 'whip' and let them have lunch!! LOL I made strawberry shortcake for dessert (Mom -far right- made the biscuits). ...ok, all I did was buy the whipped cream and smush the strawberries the night before.

This little frog Happy blocks set had filler blocks put inbetween for this affect. It should look great!


These blocks (misc HS) got connected with some of the red centers and were joined with sashing (black). It should look really striking when it's finished (almost got there before we left).
 
Unfortunately we only had the hall until 3pm (although I knew I could stay until close to 4pm), so the quilts that got taken home were the Yellow/gold HS, the Frog HB, the Cream/Maroon Plaids HS, the RWB HS, and the Bright BW HS blocks. Hope to see them at our Sept 1st mtg.
Since I have the last one at home, I'm not sure what will get done with it, since I also have Amazing Grace to finished the quilting and bind (we're putting in prayer ties in the outer edge), and we are starting a new one for a 15 yr old girl with brain cancer who likes moose and the color red.
Oh, just not enough hours! Why CAN'T I BE RETIRED????
These poor guys never even got to see the light of day! Next time...

Monday, July 6, 2009

A couple of stragglers


Here is one quilt that got finished recently... Raspberry/Orange Popsicle. My mom finished the binding, so it's ready to go when needed. Laura McCarrick did another wonderful quilting job on it "Angel Wings" pattern).

Amazing Grace was brought to church and pinned using the long tables in Anderson Hall, while the service was going on . We did get to make most of the service (Mom & I), but it needed to get pinned.




We also need to check out what to do with our orphan blocks. I have organized an event on the 18th of this month to put together all our orphans into quilts. Here are some of the groupings we need to figure out what to do with.

Halloween blocks






and Frog blocks.... I took them home to see what fabrics I could use on the 'space' between. I have many more to 'match' up with my stash. I'm on vacation so I guess I'll have time.