Goodies from the Bee

Since I haven’t made it back upstairs again to work on quilt blocks again, I thought that I would share some of the show-and-tell that was brought to our Charity Bee yesterday.

Most days we are madly working on quilts for various organizations, but yesterday several people brought in new things to show.

Phyllis started us out by showing a pin cushion that she was given for Christmas…..

She then told us of the massive cup and saucer collection that her recently deceased Aunt had held. She and her sister have decided to use these sets to make pin cushions for all of the cousins. They are using trims and goodies from their own Mother’s collections to trim the cushions…..

Such a fun gift to give and how much fun would it be to receive one!!!

Then Sue pulled out two quick quilt tops that she made this past week. The first one was made with this block…

….one 8 inch square, three 4 inch squares and one 4×8 inch rectangle.

They made up into a cheerful, “thoughts of summer” quilt……

The second quilt that she brought was another easy pattern

But it looked so cute with the pink blocks floating on the background!!

Just what we all need…..more ideas of things to do!!!

Hope you are about and doing!!

Friendship Flowers

August is Sunflower month at my house and this is the quilt that hangs in the entryway…. In 1988 I was active in a Quilting Bee that was part of my local guild. We were called the “Friendly Starters”…..intimating that we started a lot but didn’t get much finished!!

After making several charity quilts as a group, we decided to make a Round-Robin quilt. The rules were as follows…… each person would make one 12-inch block in the style and theme that they wanted. They would put it into a box, along with miscellaneous fabrics that fit with it.

The box then traveled to each person in the group and that person would make blocks that would fit with the desired theme. These blocks had to be in multiples of 4-inches….ie 4 inch squares, 8 inch squares, 4 x 8 inch rectangles etc. You could simply include a 4 inch piece of fabric.

When the box was returned, we each set out to make our quilt using the blocks that we had received, plus any others that we wanted to add. We also included the rule that you didn’t have to use all of the received blocks and could even include them on the back if necessary.

I started out with this block , and told my group that I wanted the theme to be “Sunflowers and Summer”.

One of the blocks that I received was this sun

I added it to the paper-pieced chickens and added a stem and 3-dimensional leaves to make this section.

These four patches were embellished with some bobbin threadwork

And I made these three dimensional flowers to fill in some spaces…..

The final part was to add this wonderful pieced flower garden

The last of the fabric patches were added to the background and the label was made to dub this piece “Friendship Flowers”!!

I have lost track of several of the ladies that added to this quilt and I am afraid that one has since passed away, but I think of them each time that I look at this Sunny and fun quilt.

The joys of quilting with a group!!!

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……