Divas Reconvene

We're back at it! It was a pretty chilly day so what's better than to get together and start some more quilts? This year we are going to make quilts for random charities that we like and that express an interest in using our quilts to help with fund raising. First 2010 Divas' Day was held at Diva Kristie's home.

Here is Diva Joan at the cutting table.

Gourmet Diva Sue. We all agreed that we simply will not have any Divas' Days if Sue is not participating with her culinary skills!

Diva Dorothy and Honourary Diva, Megan the golden retriever.

Kristie and I picked up this fabric awhile back on one of our expeditions. It has "border and backing" written all over it! Well - actually it doesn't - it really says "My heart always comes home to you." We liked it so we both bought some with no plans. So it's going into a couple of Divas' quilts.

Divas Kristie and Joan at the cutting table. We have a very good division of labour!

Diva Dorothy at the ironing board.

Diva Joan again.

The beginnings of our housing project. For the record, Diva Dorothy and myself did most of the sewing today.

The soup - it was to die for!Crab cakes with sauce - also extremely yummy!
Sue made these "crackers"! They were soooooo good! And some special cheese to go with. Anyone can sew a quilt - but Sue is the Queen of the kitchen!!!

I neglected to take a pix of the fabulous dessert - a killer chocolate cake with home made ice cream. Kristie made the ice cream. I want to adopt these women!

Dorothy and Sue.

And here is the payoff! Quilt One - orange corners.

Quilt Two - purple corners.

We think at least one of these will be going to Ronald McDonald House.

We were all extremely pleased with the outcome of our day. We'll get these babies loaded up on Harley over the next little while - quilt them - finish them off and send them off to their destinations.

Beetlejuice

Beetlejuice quilt top is finished. Still to be loaded onto Harley and quilted, finished, etc. I think it's safe to say this one is definitely one of a kind! It took three Divas to hold him up for the pix!

Red or White? Finished at Last

Here is Red or White? It's pretty big. Close to a queen size. I really didn't intend for it to be that big - it just turned out that way. But I'm pretty happy with it. I have no plans for it now, so I'll put it away and eventually someone special will get it.

Filling in the Blanks

I'm back to Beetlejuice this weekend - filling in the blanks. I've made quite a bit of progress, although I had hoped to get the top done this weekend. Wishful thinking. Too many other things going on. But, as you can see, it's mostly just the top and right top that need to be finished.

The "flower" on the right here is just pinned on for the moment. It will go there as an applique once I get something to sew it to in there. If you're wondering - no - it will not be a regular rectangle when it's done. Whoever ends up with this one is going to have to have a good sense of humour. Of course, knowing about Beetlejuice would be good, too! Or they won't get the joke!

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One reason so slow with the Beetle is that I spent most after work time this week hand stitching the binding to Red or White - the wine quilt. It's totally done now and I promise a pix eventually, but it's a big baby so I need a couple of people to hold it up. The Divas will be reconvening next weekend so I'll enlist them!

And as a final note, Kristie's quilt that I quilted on Harley fetched $350 in a silent auction for STARS Air Ambulance! We are both thrilled with that outcome! Yay!

Have a great week!

Saturday Round-Up

Beetlejuice! I found a pix online, printed, traced and turned it into an applique.

Worked on Beetlejuice each night after work this week. I think it's going to one of those things you either like or hate. I personally like this - it amuses me greatly! But I guess some people will think it looks like a "dog's breakfast," as my Mom would say. But it takes quite a lot of fussing to put a dog's breakfast together, let me tell you! It all started with the black and white stripes. When I started messing around with the colours, it reminded me of the Beetlejuice colours. I was initially thinking of the movie, but then I remember the kids used to watch the cartoon, which was totally done in these bright, harsh colours - so I think that's maybe what I was remembering. In any event, a quick search on line confirmed my memory - these are the Beetlejuice colours and patterns!

Here's the haunted house - again, found a pix, but made this a bit wonky and did a pieced block.

Here's the long shot. You can see there are still quite a few places to "fill in the blanks." I'm not going to make it rectangular - it will be irregular around the edges. I can't imagine Beetlejuice in a regular rectangular quilt! What's missing? Maybe some sandworms!

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I spent the better part of today loading up Harley with "Red or White" - the quilt top I made over the Christmas holidays. I'll start quilting it tomorrow. It's the biggest quilt I've made to date so it will take awhile to do all the quilting.

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Finally - here is Kristie's STAR Air Ambulance quilt all done. She was delivering it to her Mom to put up for auction or raffle to raise money for STARs.

Ten Year Plan

I'm reading a rather interesting book right now: The Self-Esteem Trap: Raising Confident and Compassionate Kids in an Age of Self-Importance by Polly Young-Eisendrath, PhD. This book has absolutely nothing to do with quilting, except in it the author refers to "Peterson and Seligman's ten-year rule, that no one can make a truly creative contribution to a field without first devoting a full decade to mastering the field."

This is a fancy way of saying "practice makes perfect."

Translated to my quilt making skills, I have another nine or so years before I need to worry about producing "truly creative" quilts! In the meantime, I'll have a lot of fun practicing and maybe in nine or ten years, I'll be able to retire and devote a lot more time to getting better at making quilts!

If you want an interesting read about why "our" kids are the way they are - not my kids of course - they are perfect! :) - read this book!

Saturday Accounting Time

So where am I at? I think I must be a "real quilter" now. I have several projects started but not finished... Up to now, I was starting, finishing before going to next thing.

Sew... at the moment I have the gold stars started. Ran out of fabric on that one so had to go shopping but there were a number of snow storms and I'm a wuss when it comes to winter driving. And I knew there was a sale coming up after Christmas, so I decided to just wait for that. Which is what I did.

In the meantime, I started the "Red or White" wine quilt. I was going great guns on that - had three blocks left, when I ran out of the yellow I was using! So needed more fabric (seems to be a theme - mostly due to my lack of planning - I just buy a meter of fabric and hope for the best because I never know exactly what I'm going to be doing...).

Dorothy and I went to the sale on the first day and it was insane. There is nothing on the planet that I want or need badly enough to elbow through a packed crowd to the back sale tables and dig through the bolts. Plus, there was a cutting line probably 30 to 50 deep and each person had a stack of bolts so at any given time probably half the fabric was waiting in line. Dorothy and I went in, turned around and left.

We stopped at a number of other stores on our way back and I did get some yellow to finish up the wine quilt - but of course I couldn't find the SAME yellow - so it's a different one - but you have to look pretty closely to see that they are different. I finished the top for that quilt, now I have to put the backing together, wash the batting (yes, I'm a washer - old habits die hard - I wash all fabric and batting - press the batting out before I put it in the quilt), and get it loaded onto Harley for quilting. I will need assistance to get a pix. The darn thing turned into an almost queen sized quilt - I thought 5*6 12 inch blocks would be a good size - I think 4*5 would have been better! But the upside is I'll get a good workout on Harley with it.

I've also been itching to get going on some of the other books I have - particularly Quilters Playtime - Games with Fabrics by Dianne S. Hire. So the above and below pix show the beginning of a quilt using some of her ideas. I think I'll probably have tried every technique in the book by the time I get the thing done. I think it's pretty cool, but that's just me. I'll be curious to see what others think.

I think I'll call it Beetlejuice because the colours and patterns reminded me of the Michael Keaton movie. When I showed it to Joe, that's the first thing he said - "Beetlejuice"! So I guess I'm not so nuts after all!

And I did get back to the fabric sale later in the week. It was much better so I was able to look through the tables and find some things that I needed (for the gold stars) and things that I saw that looked useful or cool.

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Kristie is making a quilt to donate to STARS Air Ambulance for either an auction or raffle - I can't remember. To practice on Harley, I quilted it for her. Can't believe she trusted me enough to do it for her! I'm still learning! But here it is. I don't think she names her quilts but maybe she should call it STARS Air Horses. :)