Quilting and other Things

One of the lists asked the question this week -- What was your first quilt and do you still have it?  My first quilt top, in 1993, was Eleanor Burn's Christmas Tradition Quilt. I had the book and had recorded her program from TV and between the two moved from sewing clothes to making quilts. Having made the top, I needed to learn to quilt it so took a hand quilting class and a sampler class. The sampler class had us using templates, hand piecing and I think quilt as you go -- need to go look at the back of the lap quilt.  Both quilts are still upstairs and get used. Afterwards I went back to hand quilt the Christmas quilt. The final stitches went into the binding on May 23, 1994 as the the credits rolled for the final episode of Star Trek Next Generation -- the episode was called All Good Things which seemed quite fitting for a Christmas Quilt.

This seems to have been an applique month.  I finished the geisha block from the previous post --- her hands were in the bag with the pattern. The water brush worked really well.  So now that brush will live with my applique.  Several years ago, I started a Christmas A to Z  quilt by Old Farmhouse Quilts.  A - D were done and E was waiting.  For some reason all the little pieces were bothering me.  So when I saw the geisha block, I decided to do a similar prepare method -- the Elf was prepared with glue and starch and just freezer paper on top depending on the piece.  It spent a bit of time in my purse and pocket and is now complete.  For some reason I hadn't taken photos of the other blocks.  Most of them need embellishments yet (faces, lettering, strings of lights).  Some will get done before quilting, some will wait until afterwards.  So here are all five blocks (on top of this years $10 quilt) Finally t...

I was looking for some applique I could take to the guild meeting the other day but the only thing I could find that was prepared was a Geisha block designed by Laurissa Werhun which has lots of glue in it. The applique is prepared by gluing under the edges then align all the pieces together and gluing the overlaps.  The prepared piece is then glued to the background When stitching this I usually have a little container of water beside the chair.  If I come across a spot that needs to be smoothed or the glue is too hard to get the needle through, I put a bit of water on a finger, hold it on the spot to soften the glue and make the necessary adjustments.  A little container of water wasn't going to work well going off to guild then I remember my waterbrush from my watercolours The handle gets filled with water and it flows out the brush as you need it.  I stopped on the way home to buy a new one as both the ones I have are stained from the watercolour pai...

I went to Elaine's Pampered Sit 'n Sew yesterday as part of this weeks vacation activity.  It was a productive day and led to a productive Thursday and Saturday. Thursday I cut out the house for the $10 quilt assignment this month and did some of the assembly -- ended up with all the little sections done and ready to start building the house Friday at Elaine's.  By lunch on Friday, the house was done and the next $10 quilt class isn't until October 20th.  Something wrong with that but atleast I won't have to be up late on the 19th. Next I took the half square triangles I needed to make from this 2007 $10 quilt. 124 are needed for one of 2.5 the borders on this quilt.  (The third border only goes on two sides -- I still may change that). This week I got busy and cut the rest of the squares then marked them and paired them up one evening.  They got sewn, cut and Elaine pressed them.  THANKS!  Watched three episodes of History of Scotland las...

After Fort Henry, we headed over to Morrisburg to visit Upper Canada Village.  I remember visiting the village one year during a family camping trip and I think I was there once since then.  The mills were all running but in the 19th century they wouldn't have all run at the same time.  The saw mill would work in the spring cutting up lumber for the coming building season.  About the time the cutting was done it was time for shearing and the woolen mill would take over.  Then in the fall when the wheat was harvested, the flour mill would start up.  By each using their own particular time, they could share the mill pond. In the saw mill, these pieces where save up on a rafter.  I saw two owls.  The gentleman said ET is in there too. Bags of flour waiting to go to the bakery or the store. The mill stones came from Europe in pieces as ballast.  Once re-assembled, the miller had to make all the grove lines and little notches to hel...

A long time ago, as all good stories begin, I took a Friday night class out at Hobby Horse taught by Elaine.   During the evening I got all the strip sets completed and may have started a block.  Or maybe the first block was early the next morning so I could bring it to a $10 quilt class.  In 2008, according to some old emails, I finished assembling the top but didn't remember when I started it.  This weekend I finished quilting the quilt and its bound, labelled and has a sleeve but I still didn't know the starting date. The focus fabric has a copyright date in the selvedge  which tells me that the class had to be somewhere between 2002 and 2008.  Mom did $10 quilt classes with me from 2004 on so it had to be between 2002 and 2004.  I woke up during the night and remembered backup email files on the old computer so this morning I fired up the old computer, loaded the old emails and calendar and it appears the class was Oct 2003 which lines up wi...

I was enjoying getting the blocks done in July and started in on the corners. They got interrupted by my vacation but today I got back to them and have them finished. The missing house block pattern is copied onto newsprint and filed away.