Happy New Year Everyone!

Well, here it is the last day of 2010 and what I wish for everyone most of all is Good Health in 2011. 



I feel like I have been sick with one thing or another since October!  I had the remains of a head cold when I left for my vacation in Florida.  During the descent my ears really popped and I had an awful earache and ended up visiting a clinic for that and an eye infection.  Nevertheless I had a very restful vacation and had wonderful weather.  Since returning home I've have one cold after another and a never-ending hacking cough that needed antibiotics and I still have unpopped ears!  I want to wake up tomorrow and feel my old well self!  Good health is really the wish to make, and I wish it for all of us!



There have been no RR's to work on for a couple of weeks, so I've been busy with a quilt that I promised to do for my Seniors Club.  It's the star quilt that I helped with last year, at St. Margaret's in the Pines.  It's paper pieced, and I was able to print off the sheets from a web site. 

Printed paper pattern pinned to two pieces of fabric with their right sides together.  Sew along dotted lines, cut on solid lines.

After sewing and cutting you have triangles.  When the paper is removed and the fabric opened up you have a a neat square of two different fabrics.

These are the combinations I am using:  on the left two mediums, in the middle two lights, and on the right a dark with a light.

Here the squares a pinned to a scrap piece of fabric.  The four middle squares are medium tones, the corners are light tones, and the other eight are a dark with a light.  This gives the star pattern.

Here are nine blocks completed.  Each block has 32 different fabrics and finished are 8" x 8".  The background here is my carpet.  I'm not sure just what colour the ladies at our Seniors group will choose.

Paper pieced quilt ...... finished

This is the finished paper pieced quilt that the craft group at St. Margaret's in the Pines Church worked on for the upcoming Fall Bazaar in a couple of weeks.  I did a lot of the actual paper piecing and there are more photos in a previous post.  Susan, who is one of our leaders organized and motivated us, and when it was finished it was machine quilted.  It's bright and beautiful and some lucky person will have the winning ticket.

A possibility

This may become a second star quilt!  Fabric for these three blocks came from a friend from our Seniors' group, who passed away last fall. Her stash was full of beige, cream peach, browns and oranges.   I put them together using a free pattern I downloaded from the internet.  It's a very simple and accurate way to make these two triangle squares, and very similar to the method used for the star quilt we just finished piecing. 

To get the corner squares which are two light triangles joined, place two pieces of light fabric right sides together, pin the paper pattern on top, and sew on the dotted lines.

The dotted lines are the outside lines of the zig zag.  The cutting lines are all the straight lines:  outside borders, criss-cross, and the middle lines of the zig zags.  This will produce 18 folded triangles, each with one paper triangle sewn to it.  Press the triangles open and remove the paper, and there is the two-triangle square.  

Paper pieced quilt ..... still continued

This is the star pattern quilt that I've been working on, along with other members of the St. Margaret's in the Pines craft group.  This past week the edging pieces were added, the batting and backing fabric measured and cut, and next it will be delivered to the long arm quilting lady who will finish it off.  It's been a wonderful project to work on!

Paper pieced quilt....continued

After this morning's work on our quilt at St. Margaaret's in the Pines, we finished joining the individual squares into strips, and pressed it all.  What a difference it made when we lined it all up properly.  In the photo are Joyce, Dorothy, Susan and Cynthia, some of our ladies who have helped with cutting, piecing, pinning, ironing and sewing (and unpicking on occasion). 

Paper pieced quilt

                                                                                                 The craft group I belong to at St. Margaret's in the Pines usually make a quilt every couple of years for a raffle. We bagan this one last year.  This star design uses pieces of paper marked in triangles with cutting lines and sewing lines.  This is Susan, our fearless leader who knows all about quilts, quilting, sewing machines, and is a great resource for the rest of us who only have a very limited knowledge of all of the above.

The fabric for this quilt came from the stash of one of our dear friends who passed away and left a wonderful assortment of colourful cottons.  So, as well as being an interesting, vibrant quilt to work on, it is a joy to make.

We began this last year and have diligently sewn block by block, week by week (with a few weeks time out to make Easter eggs), and now finally, we have enough blocks to put it together.   For a non-sane-quilter (as opposed to a crazy quilter), it was very uncomplicated to do.  Susan divided the fabrics first into colours, then within the colours were "lights", "mediums" and "darks".    She cut the fabric into strips and then placed two different right sides together and pinned thm to the paper for us to sew.  It seemed like magic the way it worked, but of course it's not.  The paper pieces are called "Thangles" (  http://www.thangles.com/howtheywork.html ) and would inspire me to tackle a quilt with so many points to match, without a second thought.

The first photo shows one finished block sewn together, and one just stuck to a piece of flannelette before sewing. 

The next photo is the blocks all laid out on our working table to get the same design from the pattern we used.

And the third photo is one finished block to show all the different patterned pieces and how the dark triangles make up the star.

This past week I sewed together the first row of blocks.  I'm sure next week we will have sewn it all together ready for the border.  More photos next week!

A new quilt

At the Piecemakers, the group that I mentioned in the violets post, we have just started to make a new quilt. Susan is one of our resident expert quilters and I am a very willing student. She brought in a sample block, made up of lights, mediums and dark values. This is a blue one, but the quilt will contain many colours. The fabric had been cut into small rectangles and pinned onto paper printed with sewing and cutting lines in triangles. It's a very interesting process, and I will do a step by step of this quilt's construction, week by week.