East Quilts West

For several years I have participated in a monthly workshop, East Quilts West, hosted by Quilted Fox Quilt Store and led by owner Louise Georgia. The blocks are from Kumiko Sudo's book, "East Quilts West." It is now out of print, but copies can be nabbed from time to time from Amazon. Here is a slide show of my blocks. Give it a few seconds to load, turn up your speakers, and enjoy.

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Grandmother's Choice: Endless Stairs

The Grandmother's Choice block this week is "Endless Stairs" and here's mine.

This Memorial Day has been very productive for me. I am getting caught up with Bonnie Hunter's Lazy Sunday mystery quilt, making 24 of the yellow, orange, and turquoise blocks of step 3. When that task is complete, cutting begins for two quilts to take with me to retreat next weekend.

It's a four day retreat! I haven't been on a commercially sponsored retreat in several years. Usually they are only over a weekend, beginning on Friday and ending on Sunday. With all the stuff you have to haul to a retreat, what amounts to a day and a half of sewing time doesn't seem worth it. For me, it usually goes something like this: arrivie Friday, set up, eat lunch, and  finally get to sit down and sew on Friday afternoon; eat dinner, sew an hour or two after dinner. Saturday is pretty much all day sewing. Sunday: breakfast, show and tell, pack up to be ready to leave directly after lunch. This time we arrive Friday in the morning and don't have to leave until Monday afternoon.

Have to figure out how to get my Bernina sewing chair into the car. Four days of sitting and sewing is too long to use a metal folding chair. The last time this happened, I could barely sit or walk afterwards and could not sit and sew at all for longer than 15 minutes. That was when I bought the Bernina chair. It was worth every penny and I have never had any pain while sewing since then.

Less Mardi Gra-ish

Other than the fact that the upper left block has an entire row sewn in backwards, I am satisfied with how the two blocks look together. I am sure they are not going to end up in the finished quilt in this order. Bonnie always has a surprise at the end. This month we are also making a whole lot of black/white print and purple rectangular units. They have to go somewhere.

Lazy Sunday

Lazy Sunday is a mystery quilt by Bonnie Hunter published in four installments of Quiltmaker magazine. 24 Jacob's Ladder blocks complete my work on month 2. Since month 3 has landed in my digital edition, I can move forward on those blocks. All the parts and pieces for the month 3 block have already been made in months 1 and 2. There is quite a bit of cutting and sewing in month 3 for blocks that will appear in month 4. I have no idea where the Jacob's ladder blocks will end up in the finished quilt. Right now they are looking pretty "Mardi Gra-ish", which I hope dissipates with the completion of month 3.

Grandmother's Choice

Nameless Star. Uh, not really, it has a bunch of names, most commonly Sawtooth Star.

Nonsense. No, really, that is the name of this week's block.

In addition to Grandmother's Choice blocks, I have been working on quilting Pinwheel Daisies. On Friday a friend and I visited a local sewing machine dealer. She bought a machine and I didn't, although I was sorely tempted and still may go back and get one. Pfaff has a new small sewing machine, Passport. It weighs in at just under 14 lbs. and the Singer Featherweight was the inspiration. Passport has 70 built-in stitches, needle down, drop in bobbin, and Pfaff's iconic Integrated Dual Feed. As a promotion to introduce the new machine, an extension table with zippered carrying case and single hole needle plate was included. It's a very nice machine for retreats and classes, but you could sew on it every day.

Pinwheel Daisies

A sneak peek at what is under the needle right now. I made this quilt top years ago - maybe 2006? It's from a pattern in American Patchwork & Quilting from that approximate era. It will go to the big sister of the little guy who got "Ahoy!"

Ahoy!

The boy's baby quilt is finished - more or less. It is bound and labeled, but I need to touch up a bit of the quilting. See the little dot in the upper right hand corner? That's a flower pin and marks the place where the thread apparently broke leaving a small gap in the quilting.

Happy Mother's Day to all!

The Fox Has Spots #10

This is optional block for month 10 of Quilted Fox's The Fox Has Spots. I don't know why it looks wonky in the photo, which I took twice. The block itself is square. Bad photographer, I guess.

Suffragette Sue

This week's Grandmother's Choice block is Sunbonnet Sue. I added an apron, some rickrack, and flag, so now she is Suffragette Sue, in keeping with the theme of Grandmother's Choice.

A Pretty Block for Spring

The May block for Quilted Fox's BOM, The Fox has Spots, is a pretty one for a not-so-pretty spring - at least so far. I haven't been very productive this week due to an aunt who died. A whole slew of cousins (she had six sons) that I never see, were all together and in town for the wake and funeral. Lots of visiting going on and not much sewing. The funeral was yesterday and it rained heavily all day. In and out of the car and church and the cemetery chapel  - it was impossible to stay dry. On top of that it was chilly - only in the 40s.

More help from Charley. He decided that the Grandmother's Choice blocks needed a more exciting layout.