How should I quilt this?

For months, I've been waffling over how to machine quilt this.

Should I quilt the stars in a darker thread?

But how do I jump from one star to the next?

Should I just straight stitch through all the blocks?

Or meander around the stars

and quilt only in the light?

I'm also considering an all over design

where I would quilt in words and motifs

in a dark neutral thread.

I hate breaking thread repeatedly 

so I'm not keen on many starts and stops.

But I really want to get this done soon.

After all, Yvonne (below) started hers months after me

and she's nearly finished hand quilting hers.

if I was hand quilting,

I would stitch 1/4 around the stars

or in the ditch around them.

Ideas, please?

I'm linking up with the WIP Wednesdays at The Needle and Thread Network.

Friends quilting friendship stars

I spent part of my weekend quilting on a frame with my friend Yvonne.

She's hand quilting a double quilt in time for her nephew's wedding

in three weeks.

Does this look familiar?

Y. was inspired by my friendship stars

and I gave her my leftover bits.

Mine is still a flimsy, but not for long.

A scrappy wedding quilt

In January 2012 I gave my friend Yvonne a quilt kit,

cut from my scraps and those of my mother,

for her 50th birthday.

All the bricks measure 2.5 by 4.5 inches.

Fast forward to last weekend, 

where the quilt top is in a frame, ready for hand stitches

at her daughter's wedding.

Here Mr. Scraps is putting in a few stitches

and he's not even left-handed!

 Yvonne set up the frame at the venue and encouraged everyone to put in a few stitches.

She had an eloquent speech at the dinner about how this quilt features fabrics from many people

and like a marriage, is beautiful in its variety and contrasts.

Yvonne (left) and me at the quilt.

Sorry for the blurry pix.

And we can't have a wedding quilt without a bride, right?

Here's DS1 and DS2 with the bride.

An interesting note: The bride started sewing the bricks together

and her mom finished the job,

so they both had fun with my quilt kit!

I'm linking up with WIP Wednesdays at The Needle and Thread Network.

Decades-old finish!

Last year my friend Y. gave me this vintage quilt top found in a thrift shop.

The top measures about 39 by 48 inches.

It's machine pieced in a modified log cabin pattern,

with lots of fabrics from the 1960s, and even older.

You can see from this photo that it is wonky in places,

and not entirely squared off.

 

Last night I took the plunge,

trimmed the edges,

and lined the top with unbleached muslin

(also from the thrift shop, for the record)

and backed it with a piece of left over microfleece

 

 

Then I embraced the quilt's wonkiness,

and quilted in the middle of that sashing fabric with a variegated grey thread.

This created another grid in the quilt,

established in a little order in that wonkiness,

and put my own 2013 stamp on a very vintage quilt.

 

 I bound the quilt with a DS navy/blue/red/white floral print

and now it's done.

It's destined for a new baby coming this fall,

whose mother has grown up with thrift shop finds

and so I think she'll appreciate this quilt, which stretches back many decades.

I'm not an expert on dating fabrics,

but I like the huge variety in this quilt,

and the poverty piecing in some of the blocks,

including that salmon/black one in the middle.

Here's some more fun fabrics.

I like that geometric tan/brown/white/red print.

And I like that green and black print too.

These cats -- not so much.

I think that pink one with blue features looks deranged

and is strange enough to scare any baby.

But that floral print on the blue background is adorable.

 

Here's a shot of the back.

And the binding again

 

Thanks, Y., for sharing this top with me.

I had fun looking at the vintage fabrics,

and giving new life to a quilt waiting many decades for a finish.

 

I'm linking up with Sarah and Amanda.

Yvonne's scrappy Irish chain

My friend Yvonne with her double Irish chain, made from thrifted and pass along fabric. This is the third double quilt she's made for the weddings of her nephews and nieces. She's going to put it into a frame at their multi-day family Christmas retreat and ask everyone there to put in quilting stitches.

Click here to see previous wedding quilt.

An embroidered life

Isn't this a great piece of fabric?

I love the colours, and the diagonal stripe.

Except it's not fabric, it's embroidery --

hand embroidery with a story.

My friend Y, who is a great scrap quilter, using reclaimed fabrics

from clothing and thrift shops,

rescued these from the nursing home where she used to work as a social worker.

One of the residents, named Helen, had passed away,

and the person who was clearing out her stuff

was going to turf it all, so Y. rescued it.

Helen was a quirky sort but she loved to embroider.

She embroidered all her clothes. These are just a few that Y. would part with.

(stupidly, I forgot my camera, but another time.)

She kept the ones with all over circles, ovals, and dots, in wonderful colours.

I love the tan sleeve with all those lovely flowers.

Obviously she ran out of time with that one.

I'm passing these on to Joyce to use up the lovely bits in a bag, except for the diagonal one

which I'm keeping for a bag or a pillow top.

So the spirit of Helen and her love of all things embellished and bright

lives on in another way.

Y. also shared this patchwork top, made from vintage fabrics.

It measures about 30 by 40, and Y. had no real plan for it.

I love that pink and black piece in the middle.

And those pink and blue cats above.

Y and I are doing a round-robin with this.

I'm having a first go by putting on borders

and then it is back to Y. for her to work her magic.

And the giveaway winner, chosen by Mr. Random Number New University Student

(aka DS 1) is Kathleen C, who has no  blog of her own,

but contributes to several group blogs.

congrats!

The big finish.....and a litle encore

This big finish is a group effort, headed by my friend Yvonne,

who is celebrating her Jubilee year (50th).

Her sister solicited string blocks from Yvonne's friends,

and I sewed them together and put on the border.

Yvonne coordinated a quilting bee 

and many of her friends put in hand stitches.

I pieced the quilt on January 2, and by the beginning of April,

it was completely done. 

My only finish this week is this table mat now enroute to Pennsylvania.

I made it from triangles pieced from hand dyed fabrics.

My friend Cheryl gave me the triangles left from her project.

If you live in Akron, PA, and might be hosting students from Winnipeg this weekend,

my son is bringing this to you as a hostess gift.

For any of my blog readers who live in that area,

you can hear my son's school band and choir perform

at Akron Mennonite Church on Sunday morning

and Weaverland Mennonite Church 7 p.m. Sunday. 

If by chance someone in blogland hears this group,

wave to the tall clarinetist in the front row.

 Check out what other folks finished this week over at Sarah's blog and Amanda's blog.

Hand quilting in progress

I was part of a quilting bee for Y's birthday quilt on the weekend.

I pieced together this queen-sized string quilt from blocks

contributed by her friends.

With all the varieties of non-quilting fabrics in there,

I was recommending machine quilting.

But Y's sense of community prevailed

and half a dozen of us got together for a few hours

to put in our handquilting stitches.

She's marked it in horizontal rows every three inches

and we got a quarter of it done

So in the end, Y was right

and I was wrong

and I'm saying it right here.

I'm linking up with Freshly Pieced WIP Wednesday to show the quilting world

that hand quilting is still alive and well!

A thrifty wedding quilt

My friend Yvonne is determined to make a quilt for the weddings of her nieces and nephews. She's a quiltmaker on a budget, and her favourite fabric store is her local thrift shop. Recently I suggested she try men's shirts as a source of fabric, especially since on bag day she can get a a bunch of shirts for $5.

She decided to use the whole shirt, including the labels and seams and tabs

and the pockets and buttons, as in the yellow patch in the middle

to make a beautiful Amish-inspired quilt.

This is Yvonne with her sunshine and shadows quilt, made entirely from thrift shop shirts. She took it to her family's Christmas retreat, and all the nieces and nephews, mostly in their 20s, and some in their teens, sat around the frame and handquilted it. Yvonne is a firm believer in quilting as a community affair, and invited all her friends to help with the last wedding quilt, blogged about here.

(See that bookcase behind Yvonne? that's my secretary desk, now in the corner of the living room, and where I write and blog, fyi.)