Saturday was a perfect day for working on baby quilts at the New Hanover Orthopedic Hospital where we get to use one of the conference rooms once a month. There was quite a good sized group on Saturday and lots of quilt tops were finished.
People are busily working. The really neat part was that almost everyone did a different variation of the quilt using the same blocks! I got pictures of a lot of them but not all. This is a creative group!
This last one was the one I was working on. I just chain pieced like crazy and ended up making just about enough blocks to complete the quilt in an "on point" arrangement ( 59 out of the 61 I needed). I had all these scraps left over from the Augusta Cole class last year. It doesn't look like my scrap pile has decreased at all though. I have seen a couple of other quilts on Pinterest that might be a little less fussy (although this was easy) and may use some of the strips for one of these.
Here is the work part! This is one of four dining room chairs for our beach house. They are upholstered with pseudo-leather and perfect for young kitties to climb and scratch on so something has to be done as the four rather large chairs are now all resident in one of the bedrooms with the door closed.
My thought was to cover them with pseudo-suede and I think I have enough of black to do it. Not sure the correct approach to doing this but I did it thusly: First I made some really rough patterns using newspaper. I cut out some muslin using those pattern pieces and then pinned them together on the chair. I will then sew them together with a basting stitch and see how they fit -- I don't care if they aren't perfect. I will then mark the seams and put notches where things meet. I will the cut the pieces out of the suede fabric for one chair and again see how it looks. Only then will I do the other three chairs. I need to get them done before my yearly Bridge ladies come for our Wilmington tournament.
This was a block I did not too long ago that I wasn't crazy about so it became a candidate for play. I cut it first into four pieces and rearranged them so the outside corners were in the middle but this wasn't much of an improvement. I then cut it again resulting in 8 pieces. I tried several variations of twisting and turning but nothing really worked.
I finally rearranged them into this spiral and decided this was my best bet. I decided white as a background would work the best as well. I had to fiddle a little bit to make the pieces that make it into a square. Four of the white pieces are triangles the same size as the original triangles and four were large rectangles that I sewed onto the other four triangles and then trimmed down to size (rather than calculating what I would need).
The on to auditioning borders. Nothing too complicated. This was my second thought - the first was reversing the two borders but too much green.
I went through my stash again and found this deeper purple and decided that I would just do the one border but make it about six inches wide all the way around and then use the green for binding. So now to think about the quilting.
This is another of the less than desired blocks in its original configuration.
Here I have rearranged it and like it better. Have to decide what kind of sashing to put between the panels.
This is the third one I cut up and this is the before picture which I do kind of like but think it is because I rearranged the four pieces from their original configuration.
Here is the rearranged pieces with the purples in the middle. I like it too so will have to make a decision before too long about which configuration to make into a quilt
There were a lot of neo-natal quilts turned in this week and I only got a small portion of them. The ladies still don't stay still long enough holding up their quilts to really get a good picture!
A few more of them!! Lots of variety and color. I am thinking I may do some black and white ones with color added. Babies can only see black and white after all and I will add some color!! I have been collecting pictures of black and white quilts on Pinterest for some time now and brought 3 boxes down with me of these fabrics!
Ann shared two quilts on Monday night. This one for a new grandchild featuring kitties and the one below a result of her Bee's activities.
This is a very prolific group with a lot of large quilts!! Loved this scrappy one (of course).
Nice use of color!
Huge very graphic quilt.
Nice little applique piece.
One of a couple of quilts for Habitat for Humanity new homeowners. I do like this pattern!
This was a rather spectacular quilt by one of our member's mother who is 92. I only hope I am still quilting at that age -- only way I will ever use up even a quarter of my stash!!
I also showed my quilt on Monday and vented my frustrations with the pattern and the pattern maker.
This was a tote to match the one she showed in our challenge in the fall.
This was a pillow with woven strips -- can't begin to understand how this was done!
This quilt was made from Seminole pieced strips -- very familiar to all us who took classes from Priscilla Kibbee in Rochester!!
I loved this quilt that Bobbi did and it is a design I am sure I have in my Pinterest file for doing at some point. Good use of value and color.
This and the next are very nice baby quilts for two lucky children!
Made as a result of a collage class -- handsome sea horse!
Nice peaceful colors in this very nice quilt!
This was a smallish piece but absolutely spectacular. I might just have to do this one. I try to keep the picture sizes to give you some idea of the size of the piece except when I want to show a lot of detail which I did with this one. Gorgeous feeding right into my love of scrap quilts!!
There was an incredible number of quilts shared at our meeting so I decided to split the pictures between two blog entries. The first entry will feature the quilts of our guest speaker -- quilt artist Eileen Williams!! To begin with, let me say that I was on the waiting list for her class which was filled. I just loved her quilts without exception!! She certainly is prolific as my friend Becky showed me pictures of many quilts that she has exhibited before. She is a transfer coastal North Carolinian like myself. She was born in the Philadelphia area like myself as well which was interesting.
This was a display of mini-quilts featuring her favored water and beach scenes -- may contain shells and embellishments and the class featured some of these techniques. The ladies loved the class and I am sorry I didn't get the opportunity to take it.
The following three pictures feature some of the work done in the class.
This was the first quilt she showed and one that she says she did specifically for a show's theme. That was the last time she worked outside her preferred area which is sea life and the beach. I liked the piece although didn't care for the coasters hanging from the bottom of it!
Besides the images being just gorgeous (she loves to take pictures like I do as inspiration), her quilting truly enhances the pieces as you can see here.
I loved this piece with the Great Egret machine embroidered in the middle!
This is the back of the previous piece showing the stitching more clearly.
This piece also has a Great Egret machine embroidered over the background.
This piece was done in a Ruth McDowell class. She feels the same deep appreciation of Ruth that I do -- she has always been one of my quilting idols and I am so glad I got to take a class from her before she retired. Of course I love the subject in this quilt as well.
Another beautiful landscape.
Here is Eileen talking about the first of her two mermaid seascapes.
Another mermaid. I suspect she didn't see any when scuba diving however!!
We all really loved this piece. She has used all sorts of embellishments in this ode to the beauty of jelly fish. Reminds me of one of the tanks at the Monterey Aquarium.
Just look at the quilting in this one. My friend Becky showed me that this was one of four in different colors, although we only saw this one.
Another lovely beach landscape -- I would assume dawn if on the East Coast.
Another beach landscape.
Featuring translucent fish whose name escapes me right now
This was developed from a picture of her son surf boarding.
You can see more of Eileen's magnificent quilts on her website which is:
,
Fiber Arts of Eileen Williams.
It was a great meeting with lots of show and tell which I will publish in Part 2 tomorrow!
