UFO Quest: April 2011

Things have been pretty busy the past couple of weeks. Embroidery, knitting, quilting...all of these things have been taking place. And the more I do, the more I want to do. April 9th weekend, our embroidery guild, The Texada Island Needlework Guild, also know as TING, had Helen McCrindle come up and teach a weekend workshop on stumpwork embroidery. It was a great workshop, full of new techniques and learning. Guess what, I finished the project during the class, so... NO UFO!!! Here is a photo of our class project:

Dogwood Flower Roundlet - Stumpwork Embroidery

On Monday, I went to visit my friend Lynda in Gibsons. We relaxed, went shopping, listened to music, etc. We visited Carola's Quilt Shop and Unwind yarn shop while we were out and about. I am ashamed to say that I bought stuff for a beaded scarf at Unwind and was busy stringing beads onto shiny rayon cord about 30 min after getting back to Lynda's house. The lace gloves were forgotten, cast aside as I succumbed to the glittery lure of the scarf.

I restrained myself at the quilt shop. I only bought a "layer cake" of reproduction fabrics for 30% off. I have plans for it; Angel, Cheri and I are going to do a block exchange of the "Whimsical Quilt Garden" pattern, using reproduction fabrics. http://www.pieceocake.com/Books/whimsicalquiltgarden.html
Angel and Cheri have gone shopping for background fabrics, I have some on hand. Now we just have to get started. We are going to make one block a month.

Of course, first we should finish the other quilt we started a couple years ago. Rosewood Cottage by Nancy Odom. http://nancyodom.biz/shop.html Angel is clearly in the lead. She finished all the blocks and has only the border to work on. I made three blocks and stopped there. I am not sure what Cheri accomplished. We sent her block kits when she was in Alberta for the first four blocks. I don't know if she went any further with it. Barb McCormack started making the blocks for her version of this quilt at the retreat. She decided to fuse them instead of hand appliqueing them. After seeing her fused blocks up on the wall, all ready for machine stitching, I am starting to rethink my original plan to hand applique mine. Maybe invisible machine applique is the way to go. Hmm.

Barb's version

The Texada Retreat, a weekend filled with friends, food, quilting, more food, and, for many, UFO's. My weekend projects consisted of:
1. Finishing a quilted bag for my co-worker Roxanna's accordion.

2. Making two long-awaited T-shirt quilts for my former co-worker, Maureen. I am ashamed to say that I accepted the T-shirts in 2006, with the promise that I would construct two quilts, one for each child, from their collection of T-shirts from the North West Territories. I believe I looked at the shirts, whose logos were unfortunately already cut out, making uniform sizing of the t-shirt fabric blocks impossible. I stabilized a few, ran out of interfacing and stuck them in a bag to deal with in the near future, once I obtained more interfacing. There they sat for way too long. I did not have a clear idea of how to lay them out due to the inconsistent sizing of patches, so I decided to deal with them by ignoring them. However, in recent weeks, their thin piping wails began to get on my nerves, so I decided to knuckle down and figure out how to make a T-shirt quilt. The internet was invaluable in this endeavor. I looked at a few websites with tips and tricks, rolled up my sleeves, borrowed fabric from Barb McCormack, which saved me a trip to Powell River, and voila!...