Even though I have been very remiss about writing on the blog, I have been fairly busy in the last week with quilting.
I am continuing to work on the Portugal Stairs quilt that I started 2 weeks ago. I had gotten stuck on it and knew that it needed “something”, but I couldn’t figure out what. So, yesterday I took it to my Bee and, of course, they immediately saw the problem and gave me tons of suggestions. I went into the group being frustrated with it and not wanting to work on it, and now I cant wait to get back to it.
I have also been working on a Charity quilt that will be given to a local Relay for Life event. The basic blocks were made by our guild members, and I started working at putting it together. Once again, I knew that it wasn’t exactly right and, once again, the bee was there to rescue me. As we worked on the design wall, someone said….”what if we put it on point”, and that was the answer. It completely changed the look of the blocks and I am excited about working on it some more.
Last Saturday, my friend Deb asked me if I could help her out of a time jam by quilting a small wallhanging that she was trying to get made for a class sample. This is the first time that I have ever quilted a piece for another quilter, and I found that I was really nervous to start it, but once I got going it was a lot of fun to do. The nicest comment that she made was that I must have been reading her mind because it was quilted in the exact way that she had thought about.
Finally, I worked on one more quilt……it is being donated to a local cancer center and they will raffle it for funding. The fabrics came from a woman’s stash that was left to the center and these particular ones were a kit that she had bought but never started. I began by cutting the strips that were required by the kit, but the charity group then decided that we weren’t really happy with how they would look, so I went home, got onto Electric Quilt, and came up with another design that would use the strips that we had already cut.
After I had pieced a bunch of the blocks, I realized that it was “too much of the same thing” and decided to insert a red sashing strip and then add more blocks to the outside of the sash. At this point I took it back to the charity group and Nancy suggested that we add a “piano key” border. She took care of that, Ellen quilted it and we presented it to the Center board the next week. Here is the finished product……