Quilting, Quilting & More Quilting

Hi Everyone...I just wanted to update you on a few things I have been involved in since Christmas.

Last Saturday, March 1st, my friends and I went to Claremont to work on a charity quilt. My mom's boss, Laura, is chairing an American Cancer Society walk in May and wanted to raffle off a quilt. She had seen several of my quilts and asked if I would like to help construct the quilt. She also asked if I knew of anyone that would also like to help. I promptly asked my two quilting buddies, Joy & Yvette. I wanted to ask Teacher Extraordinnaire (Ms. Janet) as well but I knew she was probably way too busy with teaching her classes, quilting for people as well as herself, and getting ready for Saturday Sampler to start too !!! However, she was with us in spirit as we RAVED about her often.

Anyway, Laura had already purchased the material and one of her friends did all the cutting. All we needed to do was sit and sew !!!! My mom was there and even though she doesn't quilt she was a HUGE help. She ironed for us, did our "reverse sewing" (i.e. ripping out our mistakes), and even ran out and picked up lunch for us !!! It was truly a rewarding day. Here is the quilt top, minus the borders. We sewed from about 11:00 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. and just ran out of time....but we did finish the hard part of sewing all those squares and rectangles together.

However, before I went up to Claremont, Ms Enabler (my bestest buddy, Joy), talked me into joining Saturday Sampler with her, Karen, and Yvette; AT 8:00 A.M. ON SATURDAY MORNINGS...Yikes !!!! I didn't really want to make this quilt because I didn't particularly like the colors of the quilt. However, I thought it would be great just to LEARN different aspects of making different blocks. This is how it works....You join Saturday Sampler for a small fee and attend the first Saturday of every month for nine months. You are given the option after nine months to purchase the remaining three blocks for $5 each. You are given material and instructions and then have to go home and cut out and sew that month's block. If you come the following month with the finished block, you get the next month's block (including material) for FREE ! If you do that for the entire nine months, you basically can make the entire nine blocks for like $30, which doesn't even cover the cost of material for anyone who knows about quilting. Anyhow, Joy cut out her block during class on Sunday, but I was working on other things. I was bound and determined to get mine cut-out and not fall behind. Then on Monday, I decided I was tired of working all day, so about 10:00 p.m., I decided to sew the block together. It really went pretty smoothly and I'm very pleased with the results:

Here is my first block of Saturday sampler !!! I can hardly wait for April to get here so I can work on the next block.










Also, here is a baby quilt I made and quilted it using my new Bernina machine with the stitch regulator. I thought it turned out pretty nice. I wanted to make a baby quilt because it is much smaller and more managable than a lap, twin, or queen size. Also, I figured if it didn't turn out I could just give it away to Project Linus or whatever because they would be happy to have it and I just wanted to practice quilting by myself. This pattern is called Little Blessings. You can click on the picture to enlarge it. All of the bugs, flowers, frogs etc, had to be cut out separately or "fussy cut" as we quilters would say.
















I found a delightful multicolored batik for the backing. Look closely and you can see the quilting....I made curly-Q's or attempted to anyway !















Lastly, as you all know, I'm working on Craig's charity quilt as well. I designed this quilt myself and am appliquing most of the quilt. All of the stems, leaves, ribbon, and flowers have to be appliqued. Then, I'm going to be putting on a "piano key" border .....for anyone who doesn't know, Craig plays piano (or at least he used to) and loves piano jazz music. Anyway, I was feeling like I really cut off more than I could chew, but again, Ms Janet (teacher extraordinnaire) came through with the most simplest ideas......KITE STRING !!! After I laid out the string to help me visualize the stems, everything else just fell into place.


This is a picture of quilt just three weeks ago after I replaced the string with the green stems. Unfortunately the ribbon (symbolizing the brain cancer color - gray) was way too small for the rest of the flowers and I didn't have enough material. Luckily, I was able to order more material online so I could make it bigger. It also needed more leaves and stuff.

I am working on it little by little and I finally got the quilt the way I wanted it. Now I am doing a blanket stitch around all the stems, leaves, ribbon, center of the flowers, and the flowers.

This is what it currently looks like and the stitching is very time consuming. I'm taking my time because I really want people interested in buying raffle tickets. I will post more pictures of the quilt as I get futher along on it with the borders and everything. I'm pretty proud of this quilt and it really is like painting with material.

Love to all my family and friends,

Karene