Slowly but surely...*
July 2oth - I had 12 crazy patch blocks - foundation pieced on the back of phone book pages. In September, every now and then I would turn a few into a star - here and there. Now, here we are in mid-October and I've got 12 Crazy Patch Stars! OK, so I only have a photo of 3 of the stars, but trust me - there are 12. Some of them have slightly different colored star points because I didn't have enough of any 1 fabric to make 12 matching stars. That is what I like about scrap quilts - mix and match!
2 weeks ago I showed my fairly NEW quilt group (we just started up last year) how to make these. It is exciting because some of these ladies have very little sewing know-how while others are very exacting and precise. Such beautiful work! And the hand quilting that goes on in this group, oh my! Me, well, I guess I just have my own crazy style! Another quilter and I were paired up to give a demo on paper-piecing - she did the detailed way - and I did the crazy patch way! Talk about extreme opposite results, but it was really fun to do the 2 together. I thought that this would be a fun little project to get some of the newer sewers - sewing. So, I brought in pre-cut squares of phone book pages (I think I cut maybe 3.5 and 4.5 squares - I found the 6.5" size in these stars a bit finiky -it gets harder as the square gets bigger). I brought in my tote of scraps. Gave a little demo. Shared my scraps. Guess what? MANY of these ladies have ZERO scraps. ZERO fabric. Honest. Some of them come to the meeting with 100% of their sewing supplies AND stash in a little tote bag. Can you imagine!!! But rotary lessons are being given (not by me), rotary cutters, rulers and mats have been purchased and I am seeing some new fat quarters being brought in to be admired and a pattern to be picked. Then again, there are others in the group with a very good working stash. We aren't just a quilting group either - we are a quilting/needlework/knitting group. Got lots of bases covered!
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And everyone is having F-U-N. Or, at least I think they are. I am anyway! Here are photos of the 2 group quilts we made last winter... The smokeshed quilt raised $6,000 for our local Rotary group!!! They aren't barns - they are smoke sheds for smoking herring in... there is appliqued smoked fish in the corners and swimming fish on the top and bottom borders. All designed from a photo of an actual smoke shed. Cool, huh? The little 9 patch was a fund raiser for our group. We have a new pattern all picked out for our winter quilt project and it is going to be a beauty! We didn't meet all summer because of gardening, company, etc. But we did have a fabulous quilt show! Speaking of... 2 weeks ago a group of us took a road trip to go to a quilt show - we were gone 12 hours and had a great time! OK, so a good portion of that was spent traveling - we weren't AT the quilt show for 12 hours, and we had to eat too (2X), plus hit a fabric store and the mall too. All in all, it was very fun. And no - I didn't buy ANY fabric for quilting, but corduroy to make School Boy some pants.
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5 comments:
I have made the last quilt you showed. It's a great way to use up scraps and much easier than it looks.
Wow, that smoke shed quilt is great. I attended my mini group last night and ended up giving a fundamental rotary cutting lesson to several of the ladies. It cut our sewing time on our disappearing 9 patch down to nothing so I hope the blocks that were taken home to be sewn together work out ok. *sigh* I have a feeling I will be frog stitching and resewing some of them together because some of the ladies just don't pay attention.
Wow I love that smokeshed quilt. It raised a very nice sum. Congrats.
The smokeshed quilt is ingenious, who came up with the pattern? I love the fish on the borders. Have you put the pattern out there to market, or was it bought on the market? I think selling the pattern along with the raffle tickets would be a good way to raise even more money, but the Rotary must have been thrilled. Great work!
so glad I checked in and caught up with you-what lovely quilts your group did and what fun you all are having. LSB (after all he is still Little!) in kindergarten...boggles the mind how fast he has grown up-wow. I feel for the learning curve you are going through-it sure sounds like you have a great handle on it however.
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