It almost feels sinful to enjoy sewing for charity so much. Odd, I know.
I spent all afternoon on Saturday sewing at the Charity Sew Day. At first, since I don’t like lugging my sewing machine around, I thought I would run around and cut and press for people. Nobody responded to my forum post about that idea so I brought my back up machine. What a waste! I forgot the foot pedal so I ran around and used other people’s machines while I was doing an improv quilt top, then Gerre let me use hers pretty regularly when I started on the second top.
One of the great things was showing Gerre how to do leaders and enders. She was charmed and made 2.5 blocks at least in between her Dr. Seuss wonky log cabin blocks. That means another person knows how to do leaders and enders and more blocks will get made.
Michelle and Peggy were really well organized, as usual, and had a number of different solids to use with our scraps.
I took the ends of quilt backs, which Colleen cuts off and returns to me. They aren’t much good unless I want to cut them up into squares or something and I never seem to get around to that. It occurred to me that I could make some Improv quilt tops with them so I brought them along. Two birds, one stone: gets the ends out of my house, adds comfort and, hopefully, beauty to someone else’s house.
The first top I made was made from the leftover back pieces from the Flower Sugar hexagon quilt. Edge pieces were quite large and I sewed them together relatively quickly. This is not great work of art, but it isn’t completely boring either. I brought it home to make the back for it. I’ll use some of the leftover Flower Sugar fabrics. I still have a lot of them and I am happy to use them for a good a cause. I may also ad something to the bottom. It looks a bit unfinished.
Next, I took the edges from the Star Sampler and worked with those. Michelle had an idea to make a sort of easy log cabin, but I thought the pieces were too small and I made them into rectangles. I got pretty far – to putting on the sashing – but I wasn’t able to finish the top, which would have been my preference.
I still have trimming to do and the sashing to finish. I will have used all the green fabric, from the charity stash, before I get to the two outer borders, so I have to figure something out about that. I don’t know what, but something.
I have two long strips of Philip Jacobs Chrysanthemums that I will put on the outside. I’ll probably put another border on after that, but we will see. I pinned a lot of it together so I could just sew on Sunday.
It was also fun being there with other people. Gerre, Rhonda, Susan, Leanne and Lindalee, with our bosses, Michelle and Peggy, of course, were all there sewing and we were laughing quite a bit. Kelly stopped by, but couldn’t stay.
Rhonda made a large house block quilt and then worked on an Improv medallion piece. The stripes were made by sewing 2 parallel straight lines the width of the black and white fabrics (right sides together) about an inch apart, then she cut 1/4″ away from the sewn line and had strips already sewn together. I want to try the idea.
We played around with the placement of the stripes – both width and direction. It was kind of a group activity and really fun to see how people interpreted the design.
That coffee cup fabric is really nice and in a colorway I haven’t seen. I have some with a teal background. This colorway goes well with Rhonda’s overall design.
Rhonda has only been quilting for a few years and I am continually impressed with her design sensibility and what she chooses to tackle. The house block quilt reminded me of my house block quilt, mostly because of the placement of the house block.
In case you can’t tell, she made the door open, which is a really nice touch.
I also really liked the four patches she used as windows in the upper story.
Gerre was using Dr. Seuss fabrics to make wonky log cabin blocks. The red in that line of fabric is very primary, making the blocks really super bright. Working at her table made me feel very cheerful.
Leanne brought some fabrics that were not her style and she was trying to figure out what do with them. They felt as though they had never been washed even though she said they had.
Lindalee was making strip sets and ended up with two strip blocks, where the strips are on the diagonal. She does really nice and precise work.
Michelle was working on two really, really Improv quilts. One was blue and gold and had inset strips throughout the blocks. The other was a beige and purple piece with a lovely New York Beauty-like arc as part of the design.
Peggy was working with brown and turquoise and she did an excellent job. I really love the color combination and know that my sister would love it as well.
there was a lot of discussion about layout and at one point the two shorter sections were down at the bottom, placed symmetrically. I’ll let your imagination consider what the visual symmetry could have symbolized. Someone suggested moving one up and filling in top and bottom and that solved the problem. It is really a nice looking quilt and a good use of color.
Even though I sewed steadily, I didn’t get as much done as I expected. I have high expectations, but am satisfied with what I got done.
