Guild Day August 15, 2023

 It seems that I always start the same way- today was a busy day! Yes, it was a busy day, we had 16 members out and had five sewing machines on the go! Four quilt tops (also known as “flimsies” ) were put together, three quilts were pin basted ready for someone to take home and quilt and one quilt was almost finished hand sewing the binding.

Audrey spent the greater part of the day hand stitching binding on an ice cream cone quilt. Hand stitching is a labour intensive job but is a very nice way to do binding.

Donna is working on sashing with corner stones for a batik quilt. We stitched the blocks some time ago and had many to work with. I believe this is the third quilt top to be put together from these blocks.

Rae is preparing borders for a little house quilt. This one is very attractive with trees and other features added.

Phyl is busy pressing the sashing seams on the batik quilt. Good pressing is a very important part of piecing, corners and points fit well and accuracy in stitching is much easier.

Sandra is in the “zone” working on free motion quilting on the heart quilt she started last guild day. The new machine with its large table makes the job easier.

Lorna was quilting as well. She was using a walking foot to do straight line quilting. A walking foot is much easier to use for straight lines than free motion and gives you good stitch control.

Marg F had taken several kits (fabrics that go together) that had been put together. This one included a panel so Marg showed her creativity and stitched a lovely quilt. Some young girl will surely love this!

                                This is another kit completed by Marg. We’ve named it Bunny Love.

                The back of the Bunny Love quilt shows off the complexity of the quilting that Marg did.

The kit Judy took home worked well for this three yard quilt. She also did the quilting as well as the piecing.

We could tell that every one was busy doing summery things and quilting was put on the back burner for a time as Show and Tell had fewer pieces this time.

Sheri and Darby had this quilt to show.  The pattern had four patches surrounded by borders. This pattern is another one that works well with jelly rolls, simple, but very appealing.

This is the third quilt Heather has completed. You’ll remember that Heather was one of our beginning quilters. The pattern she chose was Star Pop and she says this project was a learning experience in pressing, quilting and batting choice. She loves denser quilting and the batting she chose required some extra work.

You can see that her straight line quilting has the lines about 1/2 inch apart. The effect is quite stunning but did require extra care and some redoing!

                Heather’s next quilt was one she made from jelly rolls. This one was quilted by Sheri.

Rae took home a kit that had the black cats on pink, added some of her own fabric, used a three yard pattern, made it bigger,  and came up with this quilt! What creativity! This will be used as a comfort quilt.

Sandra used the Yellow Brick Road pattern to stitch this charming little baby quilt with little elephants on some of the fabric. Beautiful!

This fun bag was her second piece. The bottom of the bag is cork with gold highlights, while the handles are covered with grosgrain ribbon she found at Walmart to give it that extra little pizazz!

This completed our Show and Tell. As you see we had fewer pieces to showcase this time around, but I’m sure we will have more as cooler weather approaches.

September 9th will be our first fall UFO day. This is actually the second Saturday since the first one fell on the long weekend. Be sure to come out and use the day to work on those special projects. Hope to see you then!

Gladys

July 18, 2023 Guild Day

 Here we are in the middle of summer! I hope everyone is enjoying our nice weather and doing lots of outdoorsy things.

We had twelve ladies out to our work day, some staying the day, some only a partial day, everyone was helping!

Our hand stitchers are making good use of the new Ott lights. It’s so much easier to work with good lighting.

Sandra is using the new Juki machine for free motion quilting. The larger throat space along with the large quilting table make the task easier. This machine has a different approach to free motion than most other machines, the quilter works from the end of the machine rather than the side.

A big thank you to the Flin Flon Credit Union for granting us $2000.00 through the Credit Union Community Enrichment Program which enabled us to purchase the lights and the machine. This will help us immensely in our efforts to give back to our communities of Flin Flon, Creighton, Denare Beach, Cranberry Portage and lake subdivisions.

We worked on several projects today. Here, Lorna and June are preparing a quilt backing. Two backings were made up as well as one quilt being pin basted ready for quilting.

The second little house quilt is now at the border stage and the blocks for the gray and yellow friendship stars are being joined. Once we get the rest of the blocks from the members we can complete that top.  If anyone has a kit out for those blocks and doesn’t have the time to complete it, please bring it in at our August guild day and someone will finish it up.

We had three guests at our meeting, Susan came out in the afternoon and then came to the meeting and joined our guild. Welcome, Susan, we’re happy to have you with us! Also present was Randi, Dallas’s daughter-in-law. Randi is not a quilter but does a lot of sewing of clothing and accessories. She does the sewing to showcase fabrics for various fabric companies. Our third quest was  honourary member, Darby, who accompanied her mother. Always nice to have you here, Darby! 

Rae gave us an update on the Ukrainian refugee families for whom we stitched and donated quilts. There are two families who now each have their own homes and are working in their community. They are very thankful to our guild for the quilts we gifted them. We are happy to hear that they are doing well. They plan on staying in Canada.

Rae stitched this flannel quilt for the guild and Sheri did the quilting. We are focusing on children’s size quilts this time around as there always seems to be a need for these.

                                     This one was completed today by our hand stitchers.

My apologies to Myrna, she stitched and quilted a lovely baby quilt and I neglected to get a photo. I will get one next month!

This little elephant quilt is the second one we’ve completed. Lorna did the quilting on this one and again, the hand stitchers did the binding.

This is one of two ice cream cone quilts we put together. The ice cream cones are paper pieced and were a good opportunity to practice that skill. Rae brought a number of cones in for us to use that she had left over from her projects. Thank you, Rae.

This is another of Rae’s creations for the quild. This is a three yard quilt pattern. These patterns are fairly easy to put together and as the name implies, only take three yards of fabric to complete a top.

Rae is one busy lady! During Show and Tell she shared this quilt with us. It’s a free pattern called Cute as a Button. It takes two charm packs and some background fabric to complete. We will likely be making some of these for our childrens’ quilts!

Sandra is another busy lady! She and some of her lady friends are going on a trip to Scotland so she was busy making bags for herself and her friends.

                                                A better look at the bags. Very attractive, Sandra!

                    You can’t travel without luggage tags so of course she made some of those as well!

                   This is a quilt Sandra made for the friend who helped her when she had her surgery.

This is a unique way of making the dragonflies. It uses a technique we employed when making the cathedral window block.

And the grand finale is her Salem Witches Quilt Guild piece! This is one she worked on while escaping winter in Flin Flon. The witches panels are drawn out, traced onto fabric, coloured (with crayons), and then embroidered. A true labour of love!  Beautifully done, Sandra!

Phyl has completed her Sugar Bear quilt and had it longarmed by Lori Suss. Beautiful work, Phyl! The quilting pattern sets off the piecing very well. We’ve now seen several of these quilts from our quilt-along and every one of them is unique. It’s amazing how differing colour ways can change a pattern.

Randi shared one of her projects with us. Her bag is one she sewed with some of the fabric she showcases. The colours are very vibrant and are excellent for a cheery summer, backpack type of purse.

Sheri and Darby showed off their special Halloween wall hanging. This was a quilt-along from the Fat Quarter Shop. It’s called Haunted Halloween Mystery.

Closing out our evening were Sandra and Rae with our next comfort block. It’s called Twists and Turns and is really quite simple to make.

You need four 2 1/2 inch brightly coloured strips and one light beige or white 8 1/2 inch square. When completed the block will make a half square triangle and can be joined in numerous ways. We look forward to seeing what we can create!

Another busy day has come to an end! When we come in the morning we never know what we will be able to accomplish. Every guild day is an adventure!

Gladys

 

June 20, 2023 Guild Day

We had people coming and going throughout the day so please forgive me for not having a definitive number for members in attendance. The day was one of those ooo and awwww kind of days, particularly in the morning. We were greeted by a large box sitting on the table. It was our new Juki sewing machine!

It has a larger throat area so more quilting of larger pieces can be done. There are no fancy stitches, just straight, excellent for piecing. The construction is all metal, no computer in it, all the various feet are metal as well, no plastic. Every one is anxious to try it out.

As well we received the Ott lights that were ordered so now our hand stitchers will be better able to see their work.

                           

                              These will be excellent as certain parts of the room have dim lighting.

Someone jokingly referred to them as the old lady lights, but most of us agreed that we need them, especially if using dark coloured threads. I find I need much more light to work than I used to!

Maxine Long stopped in with a very special gift for us. In 2004 this was the Guild’s raffle quilt and Maxine won it. Now she is moving to a new home in Warman and will not have room to display it there so has gifted it back to us.

   On the label are the names of the members who worked on each square. The quilting was done by Kathy Schwartz before she had purchased her longarm machine.

Maxine also brought a bag of fabric which she donated to us, so we had that and a donation from Marg H. and one from Bev B.’s sister. There was a lot of fabric to sort and exclaim over! We quilters love fabric!

Thank you ladies, for your donations. We will put them to good use!

The bulletin boards in the church hall were in serious need of repair so Randy Beever agreed to fix them. He did a wonderful job! Thank you, Randy!

There is new cork board , the outside of the doors are beautifully white and everything is painted and straight with new hinges and properly closing doors!

                                                  And he left a special message for us as well!

Lynn has a Juki machine so she gave us a demonstration on its use. A free motion table was purchased which is larger than the one in the picture. 

Bev took the opportunity to test drive the new machine while assembling the house blocks that members had stitched.

Lynn has completed our fall raffle quilt. This pattern was one that did not lend itself well to multiple sewers so the task fell to Lynn to stitch the entire top. Thank you, Lynn, for all your hard work and time. Nadine did the quilting and supplied the batting. Beautiful work ladies!   

Tickets will be printed and be available for sale by our July guild day.        

                                                                     

This is one of the baby quilts we completed. Sandra S. did the machine quilting and our hand stitchers were able to complete the binding this morning with the help of the new Ott lights!                                

Baby quilt number two was made from a panel that was donated by a previous member. Sandra S. again did the machine quilting.                                                                                                                                

This is the second heart quilt we’ve stitched. We arranged the hearts a little differently for this one.

Show and Tell was once again a popular time.

Rae completed her Lone Star quilt. She used fabric left from her star to make the binding.

This quilt is from a pattern called Antelope Canyon. The black, white and gray make an intriguing pattern. According to Rae the hardest part of making this quilt was ensuring that all the pieces she cut were put in the correct baggies to keep them organized! Both this and the star were quilted by Michelle at Mami’s.

    This Stash Buster pattern is a free pattern from the Fat Quarter Shop. There is a lot of sewing in this top         and by the way, she says it didn’t  make much of a dent in her stash!                                                           

                                                                                                                       

Eileen was able to stitch this quilt from fabric she had purchased from Faktors and had in her stash. It was a mystery quilt-along. The quilting was done by Lori from Night Owl Quilting And Dye Works.

              Rather than purchase new fabric, she used what she had left from other quilts, for the backing.

Sandra stitched this table runner using the quick curve ruler. She made it for a friend who helped them out when she and her husband had car trouble on their recent trip to Winkler.

Donna completed her second Star cushion in the dark version to match the light colour way she completed last month. Beautiful pair, Donna.

Evelyn and Audrey shared the mesh bags they completed at the Cranberry Portage retreat that was held in Creighton in early June. These bags will be perfect to carry quilt projects!

June has been busy making baby quilts. This one was made from a pillow panel she had. A little slashing, some adding, and she has a lovely quilt some little one will love.

She calls this her wild one. I would say colourful with those bright pretty colours. Little girls love pink and purple!

I completed the baby quilt for our soon to be born great-grandson. Thank you to Marg F. for helping me with border width and binding choices. This is very pastel compared to other quilts I have made. It would be safe to say I was out of my comfort zone.

After backing my previous quilt with this Winnie the Pooh fabric, I had enough left to make a receiving blanket.

And finally, I stitched some burp cloths from a flannel fat quarter bundle that I picked up at Walmart. All I have to do is make some bibs and my baby bundle will be complete.

Sandra shared with us this quilt made for her by her late mother. It is pieced by machine and quilted by hand. Sandra said her mother was an exceptional quilter. She completed a Star quilt for each of her five children as well as many others gifted to various people. If you look closely at the quilt you can see what a wonderful quilter she was. She added more stars and borders because she was not a fan of square quilts.

To honour both her mother and also her late mother-in-law, Sandra created a very special memory quilt. This is a reversible quilt. On this side she used fabrics from clothing worn by her mother-in-law, in her favourite vibrant pink and purple colours. The pattern she used was Not Your Mothers Rail Fence from Highway 10 Designs. Because the fabrics were mostly rayons, Sandra had to mount them on muslin to stabilize them so she used a quilt as you go method to assemble the blocks.

On the reverse of the quilt she created a pattern to remember her mother. Because both these ladies quilted with whatever fabric they had on hand or could repurpose from elsewhere, Sandra chose to use the sheets that were used on her mother’s bed in the care home she was in. Everything she had was marked with her room number, 4032, which still can be seen in the corner of the quilt. After going through a bag of fabric bits and pieces that her mother had, she found some of the extra partial stars that her mother used on her star quilt, and added them to the memory quilt. There were five of them to match the five siblings. When Sandra placed the strips with her mother’s information she did it to match the position of the rails on the reverse side so that when it came to the quilting she could stitch in the ditch on the rails and the stitching highlighted the information bars. By using free motion quilting around the florals in the clothing fabrics she was able to fill the negative space around the information bars.

By very careful thought and placement she was able to create not only a memory quilt but was also able to reflect the personalities of the two women. She created a true family heirloom. Stellar job, Sandra!

A reminder everyone, there will be no UFO days in July and August. We will all be busy doing our summer things!

Gladys