December 26, 2016

My cards this year came from the Adventurous Stars series by Marianne Jeffrey. Can you pick out the card that is different from all the rest?

I spent a couple of weeks with Christy and Rick at the end of July. Except for Christy, no one in the family were using a quilted placemat. I’m always on the lookout for something to make for someone so I told Dylan and Taylor I would make them something.

One of the regular quilters at the Tuesday sewing bee brought in a bin of fabric scraps that she didn’t want. We were like a bunch of vultures picking out fabrics we liked and wanted to bring home.

Although Taylor’s interest may have switched from soccer to gymnastics, the centre fabric and the borders were entirely free-to-me. As backing I used a fabric that I had previously used on a set of curtains for Taylor.

I had a scrap of construction-type fabric so I used what I had as the centre for Dylan’s placemat. I can still hear him calling out “Mighty Machine” whenever we passed anything remotely looking like a construction zone.

I made a lot of math errors in this small project but I eventually got it close to a regulation-size placemat. As backing I used fabric with sporting equipment pictured on it – and Dylan has tried most of them.

When the second request for birthday banners for our local care facility was put out at the September Guild meeting I felt I should try to put something together. I couldn’t find a pattern to follow but I did find a photo on the web that I thought I could turn into something.

I knew that I had a paper-pieced cupcake from Craftsy and one of my books had an alphabet template in it. I put those two pieces together and then had to come up with a bottom portion that would include space for a photo. Pinwheels are a favourite of mine so I included some of them.

I had one disaster early on when I tried to stitch the photo sleeve on; I thought I could cover the sleeve and not have the iron melt it but no such luck! The sleeve turned out to be the very last thing I did on the piece.

Early in June Pat and I traveled to Burgundy, France via London with a stop in Lyon, France. For a week of that trip I was ensconced in the loft of an 18th Century barn sewing with a group of women from England under the direction of Christine Porter. Our meals were provided and we ate them either out in the orchard (Les Cerisiers means cherry trees) or in the farmhouse.

As we were travelling with backpacks I didn’t take any fabric with me but the first project of the week was to make the colour wheel from kits provided by Christine. Some of my fellow quilters managed to get their wheel quilted and bound but I was a tad slower. Besides, I didn’t take any wadding (English term for batting) with me either.

After we got home I was slow to finish my wheel but as the new Guild season approached members were asking to see what I had done. The quilt show is coming up in the Spring and I didn’t want to be faced with a stack of finishes when it came time for my entries. I found the backing fabric at our local quilt shop.

It was great fun to be sewing with the English ladies – everything was fab or brilliant, and everyone was chuffed (very pleased) with their progress.

I’m happy (as well as chuffed) to have this project finished!

I purchased a second kit from our instructor – the same technique but a bit different finish.