A cover up

My Guild meets in the fellowship hall of a local church.  The church had recently installed a new electrical panel  front and centre above their coffee counter.  The Guild was asked if someone would be willing to create something that would cover that electrical panel.  Along with two others (Catherine, Shirley and Deborah) I stepped forward.  Yes, yes I know I have other projects to finish, but remember my word for 2015 is BEGIN.  So I began another one.

We started with orphaned blocks that were left in the Guild's "scrap stash".  I thought they would look good along the borders.

We measured and measured again and determined what was needed was a rectangular piece.  Using some coffee themed fabric we stitched additional borders.  They're marked "2" and "3" in the picture below.

Yes that's right...we were working from the outside in. Next came some simple nine patches for fillers and paper pieced coffee mugs.

We now needed something to tie all the pieces together.  Shirley experimented with machine embroidery.  She had chosen a wonderful way of doing some embroidery so that it formed a sort of "crossword" centre.

Notice that certain letters are capitalized?  You'll see in a minute why she did this.  We needed something more to fill in the spaces; some pieces were fussy cut and others simple fabric squares.  Here is Catherine auditioning fabric for additional sashing.

With some additional piecing, the top was finally ready for sandwiching and some fancy free motion quilting.  Deborah added her flair and VOILA!!!  Done and presented to the church.  Here is the completed wall hanging.

The wall hanging is centered over the electrical panel and can be easily slid out of the way if the panel needs servicing.  Oh yeah!  See how the capital letters spell out "COFFEE"?  It was challenging working from the outside into the centre.  When it was presented this month, the pastor and staff's eyes glistened and smiled.  It was an enriching experience.

First Attempt

I recently joined a group that is challenging itself with creating pieces with a modern aesthetic.  My first attempt is yet to be finished.

As you can see from the following detail shots (sorry for the blurry edges) it is in the stages of quilting at the moment.

At the end of that first meeting we were given three strips of fabric; a black, dark grey and light grey, and told to produce something.  We could add additional fabric.  Here is what I came up with.

and the detail.

It's hard to see by you can just barely make out that the binding on this one uses the same fabric as the circles and is placed on alternate corners.

Because I can't seem to stop at just one I've started another one.

Now I just have to figure out what kind of quilting I want to attempt in the negative space.  Straight line, boxes, greek key?  what do you think?

Down but not out

I have been absent, but not necessarily quiet.  I've been busy finishing off a few more items that have been sitting around for some time.  One of them was a top that I made with "leaders and enders" that has been sitting in my FMQ pile.  For those of you that don't know what leaders and enders are, you can go here to find out.

I did free motion quilt it, but not very tightly.  I wanted it to be rather cuddly so that it could drape nicely on someone's lap.   It was donated as a "Community Cares" quilt to my guild.

Another pieced top that had also been patiently waiting its turn for some quilting is this little "I Spy" quilt .

Again this one was quilted very simply in the ditch, bound and is now also in my guild's Community Cares chest waiting to be donated.

Now I'm off to see what else my studio has been hiding from me.

Placemats galore and some pillow slips

Just six hours of work and this is what the quilters at the seniors' centre were able to make.

They were created using just four fat quarters, some cutting, stitching, more cutting, shuffling, restitching and voila!  Placemats.

The ladies are hoping these bright little goodies bring a smile to someone lucky enough to end up with them.

Busy Beginning

Funny how time just gets away from you when you aren't paying attention.  I've been focussing on beginning several projects and completing some of them.  I finally managed to finish my piece I called "Light Switches".  I showed a picture of the unfinished piece here and here.  It's finished now and as luck would have it, it hung in a local gallery.  Here is what it looked like in the gallery,

I donated the piece for their fundraiser "Almost Famous".  You can read about the fundraiser here.

I also finished the quilting on the "Three Gals at the Beach" which I posted about here.  This close up shows some of the free motion quilting I did on it.

Next time I'll show you the place mats that were made by a small group quilters at the local seniors centre.