Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Tidy Up Tuesday - Carolina Hurricane Quilt Project/Hands2Help - My (Quilting) Contribution

Welcome to another edition of Tidy Up Tuesday!!  Today's post has been long in the making.  In September AND October of 2018, the North Carolina coast was slammed by two back to back hurricanes.  Seeing a need, Carole (From My Carolina Home blog) spearheaded a the Carolina Hurricane Quilt Project.  A quilt collection program to add to the relief efforts.  I decided to answer her call for volunteers to quilt several donated tops.

Here is a review...

Carole matched longarm quilters with quiltmakers who weren't able to quilt the large size requested for displaced hurricane victims.  Near the middle of March, the first box arrived from the Brunswick Quilt Guild.  You can read about that in this Mail Call Monday post.  I was busy with client quilts at the time, so the donation quilts sat.  And sat.  And sat!  (Carole had assured me this was fine.)

In late April 2019, Katie at Salt Marsh Path posted that her Hands2Help quilts were ready to go.  That got me moving on my own H2H quilt contributions!  The quilts that I'm quilting for the Carolina Hurricane Quilt Project will be counted for Sarah's Challenge at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.  Since the CHQP was among the beneficiaries for this year's quilt drive.  Unfortunately, these three quilts will be late.  They have to be fit into my limited quilting time (and in between my client quilts.)

Photos and stories of each of the Brunswick Quilt Guild quilts...

Throughout the remainder of the post, I have used BQG as an abbreviation for the name of the guild.  When I (finally) got started, I began with one of the "twins."

BQG1...

By the middle of May, I finally had a break in my quilting schedule and took the first quilt out of the box.  Twin One was made from the Guild's Perkiomen Valley Block Drive blocks:


Follow the CHQP FAQ link and scroll to 'Is there a specific pattern that needs to be used?'

Freehand swirl/hooks in a soft green thread cover this quilt:


The back was a donated plain green sheet with the seams removed.  Simple and cost effective:


After several hours at the longarm, the quilting was complete:



When squaring up the quilt at my Evening Quilt Bee, a fellow member volunteered to do the binding.  Off-cuts from the trimming will work perfectly for that.

I attended my Weekly Quilt Group the following week and picked up BQG1 Donation quilt from Margaret (Thank you!!) with binding applied and sewn down:



Here is a close-up of the swirl/hook pattern on this quilt:


Oops!  Can someone PLEASE pick that thread off the quilt before posting this photo?!?!
I guess not.  Just TRY to ignore it.  :P


BQG2...

The beginning of June found me taking the next quilt from the box.  Twin Two looked just like Twin One, but there were no seams removed from the backing provided:



I'm guessing this big, beautiful print must have been a duvet cover:


The quilting took quite a bit longer on this quilt than on the first.  Same sized quilt.  Nearly TWICE as many hours to quilt!  This was a lesson that I won't soon forget. Multiple evenings were spent standing at the longarm.  Eventually, I finished the quilting on the BQG2 Donation quilt for the Carolina Hurricane Quilt Project:



I used a free motion loop/double loop pattern and a soft gold thread that worked well on the front AND the back of the quilt:


Now...  I just needed to figure out what to use for the binding, as the front and the back are quite different from one another.

Thanks to my good friend Britt, I have a lovely shade of deep purple fabric for the binding:




 It's PERFECT.  Thanks SEW much!

I made and attached the binding to the back of the quilt at an Evening Bee meeting and delivered it on our Weekly Bee's Field Trip in June:



Thank you, also, to Candy who finished the binding while I got to work on the final quilt.  She returned the quilt at June's Quilt Bee meeting and I shared the completed quilt there and at my Monthly Evening Bee a few days later:




BQG3...

Along about the middle of June, I was starting to worry that I might not finish the final quilt on time.  For me, panic breeds action!  It took some doing to choose thread for this quilt, shown here spread over the rails of my longarm in all its autumnal splendor:



Ultimately, I decided on a denim gold thread, wound bobbins, and loaded the back for BQG3 Donation quilt.  A day or so later, the top was loaded and quilting was begun:



The quilt top (and probably the backing) was made by Laura L. of the Brunswick Quilt Guild.  The Guild provided the batting and the binding came from my stash.  If you zoom in on the photo below, you can see how well it went with the colors of the quilt:



Candy made and applied the binding, as well as finished the quilt (so that I could work on a couple of other projects with looming deadlines.)  Thank you SEW much, Candy!!

FYI... 

When I brought this particular quilt home and opened it up, DS2 exclaimed, "That is GORGEOUS!!"  If you knew him, you would know this is not a normal behavior for this reserved son. Honestly, I had no idea that he even LIKED fall colors!!  (How sad is THAT?!)




The colors are a bit washed out in the photo shown above.  :o((

The point is, Laura, it appears that your quilt has universal appeal.  Nice work!  I'm sorry to say that I somehow managed NOT to get a photo of the pieced backing.  However, I found a shot from my Weekly Quilt Group (Thanks, Deborah!) showing that this could easily function as a double-sided quilt:


With the third quilt done and dusted, it was delivery time...

Please note - even as I post this - that the deadline is still a couple of weeks away.  Yes.  I am VERY proud of that fact!!  :P

Upon my arrival, I took some shots out on the "terrace" at Cary Quilting Company of BQG Donation Quilt 3:



BQG2:


And finally BQG1:


Layered on the patio:



The rocking chairs inside looked inviting...

Quilt One:



Quilt Two:


And...

Quilt 3:



Of course, a quilt stack:




And one last shot as they were taken away to wait for the "ferry" to Wilmington in a couple of weeks, when Julianne will drive them down to Loving Stitches in Fayetteville for the next leg of their journey:



I was pleased that last week's APQS Owners Group at Thread Waggle Quilting worked with the approaching deadline for getting CHQP quilts to my (somewhat) local drop site.  If the quilts were done, (which they ended up being) I would only need to make ONE trip to Raleigh!  Thank you to Julianne of Cary Quilting Company for offering her store as a collection point.

SEW...

You KNOW what that means, don't you???

Shopping!!!  :o))

There was LOTS to see...

Class offerings:




Quilt Carolina information:


Another interesting class:


I came home with a new book...



... And narrowly avoided buying one of these Mini Charm Packs:


LOOK!!!  Many shades of PINK for my RSC Quilters:


I almost came home with a darling batch of Fat 16ths, too:


Beautiful quilts everywhere you looked:


It was a rainbow of color and information at every turn:


The curated bundle of "scraps" dwindled to these six with PINK and an adorable bird print that you can see on the windowsill below...


... And with one of the metal quilt blocks available for purchase:


Hedgehogs!!!  SEW adorable:


Then, reason took over and my little bundle of joy was (reluctantly) returned to its basket of family and friends:


On the way out, I got a laugh from the sign that I missed on the way into the shop:


And, just so you know:  It was 99 degrees on the way to the shop and 105 degrees on my car thermometer on the drive home!!  That sign was like a breathe of fresh air.  :o))

Until next time...
Donating time is SEW important!!!

Monday, July 22, 2019

Mail Call Monday - Scrap Infusion

Welcome to another edition of Mail Call Monday!!  This week's post is two-fold.  Hand delivered scraps and a shirt that came in the actual mail.

My Monthly Quilt Bee met on Saturday.  Several people brought gifts for me.  Yay!!  Thank you to Margaret, Ella (and Barry!) and Jean.  They each shared bits of their scrap stash with me.  I am a VERY happy quilter!  :o))

Margaret brought TWO small bags of scraps:



Ella delivered a gift from Barry:



Jean has been cleaning out her studio and handed over TWO tall kitchen garbage bags full of scraps:



One full of fabric fabric chunks...



... And  a stack of white shirt parts with random printing:


The second bag was stuffed to the brim with smaller scraps:



Beneath those scraps were hidden jewels...

Jean included a batch of her gorgeous hand dyed fabrics:




As if that wasn't enough excitement for one day...

I also got a package in the mail.  Sorry!  You'll have to wait for the next edition of Mail Call Monday to hear about that.  I haven't even opened the mailer, yet!  Oops!

Until next time...
Share the SCRAPPY love!!!

Sunday, July 21, 2019

Sew Some Love Sunday - Kit Quilt

Welcome to another edition of Sew Some Love Sunday!!  Last week, I put together a kit quilt for the donation program at my Guild.  If you visit my blog regularly, you might have seen this photo in this week's Wonderful Wednesday post:


I pieced the kit at last week's Sew/Craft Friends-zy event:


If you are new here, you may have seen yesterday's ScrapHappy Saturday post.  I shared another photo of the completed top:



Well, I got a wild hair today and decided that I needed to tackle my (longarm) tension issues.  That meant loading a quilt and the Donation Kit Quilt was the smallest one with all the components waiting to meet needle and thread.  It loaded in a flash:



The quilting didn't take very long, at all, either:


Immediately after the quilt was removed from the frame, it got a quick trim and a full floor shot:


All that took LESS THAN an HOUR!!!

I really should have made and applied the binding, too.  The strips are already cut and, had I done that, it would have given me the satisfaction of a fast finish (and saved me the frustration of reloading a quilt that wasn't really ready for the frame.)

Not QUITE a finish...

Maybe the binding can be a project for one evening this week.  I don't believe that I have any meetings scheduled.  Come back next week to find out!  In the meantime, I'm off to go check my calendar.

Until next time...
Sew Some Love!!!

Saturday, July 20, 2019

ScrapHappy Saturday - RSC19 - Week 29

Welcome to Week 29 of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge!!  I have a feeling that PINK will not be playing a primary role in the coming week.  I could be wrong, but there are quite a few other activities scheduled.

Read on to see how the days passed...

SUNDAY - Trip to GBO.  Multifaceted.  First stop, Target to pick up our new gas grill!  :o))

Next stop, MIL's house.  To give her a BIG hug!!!  She is the one who found such a sweet deal that we couldn't resist purchasing our new gas grill.  Our old one still cooked, but it was literally falling apart!!

The last stop was a visit with DH's brother and SIL, who are spending the summer on the East Coast.  We don't see them often since they moved out of state.  Dinner, dessert, and catching up was on the menu.

MONDAY - Guild Night, What is Modern Quilting?  Some of the quilts donated this month and one featured PINK:



I also managed to release a quick Mail Call Monday post.

TUESDAY - Girls Night Out.  Table for four.  Everyone was an achy mess, so we had dinner and went home early.  On the up side, I finished weaving in the yarn tails on my Hoodie Shawl Cardi!!

WEDNESDAY - Cooked dinner on our NEW grill and released a new Wonderful Wednesday post.  I also spoke with DS1 on the phone.  That's a fairly rare occurrence these days and it was nice to chat for a little bit.

THURSDAY - Weekly Quilt Group... and I was there!  I forgot my Show, but had a Tell.  I would have shown THIS, if I had remembered to bring it:




It's the donation quilt top (made from a kit) that I completed over the weekend.  Now, I have to decide how to quilt it...



FRIDAY - It was a LONG day!  I woke up early and headed to Raleigh for APQS Owners Group.  There was PINK to be seen:



Carolyn had a BRILLIANT idea!!  She makes a LOT of baby quilts, but recently she's been using her scraps to make what she calls "quilt starters" ahead of time.  An example is shown above.

When her son or daughter asks her for another baby quilt for a friend or co-worker, Carolyn chooses borders and customizes the gift with a customized machine embroidered label.  Genius, right?!

Once the meeting was over, I made a few purchases and left to deliver the CHQP quilts from Brunswick Quilt Guild:



Patience, dear readers!  I know that YOU may have questions about what that means.  Never fear, a wrap-up post is in the works for this coming Tuesday.  Please be sure to stop back by.

It's Pizza Night with DH, as DS2 had an event to attend.

Afterwards, I spent some time on the computer and some time in the studio.  Sorry!!  Nothing photo-worthy, though.  Just packing for tomorrow's quilting event.

SATURDAY - LINK PARTY at Angela's So Scrappy blog.  My Monthly Quilt Bee meets today and I'm hosting.  Normally, that would mean house cleaning.  I got smart!!  I opted to rent G's Quilt and Craft Retreat for the day.  Members can choose to contribute (or not.)  If not ONE person hands me money, I won't even care!!!  It was SEW much less stressful (and everyone got to bring their projects to work on all day long.)



The rainbow quilt shown above is on display at Cary Quilting Company.  I couldn't resist sharing a photo for the RSC Quilters.

Until next time...
Get SCRAPPY!!!