The Last Hurrah...

I'm doing my best not to become maudlin, but the end of vacation sucks. Today, on my last day of vacay, I staved off a brutal case of advanced Sundaynightis by quilting with a good friend, Adrienne from Chezzetcook Modern Quilts. She's the one responsible for all this quilt-y madness... I'll go into that in another post some day. We're having a friendship renaissance and one of the pleasant offshoots has been two great quilting days.

I don't sew off-site very often, so I have trouble deciding what to bring. Nothing too scrappy - hard to bring scrap bins. Nothing improv - might need something I don't have with me. Nothing too big - hard to transport and hard to work on with shared table space. Ugh.

Here's what I ultimately decided upon...
More HSTs! This time it's blocks for my Warm/Cool HST quilt.

I hadn't planned on sewing these together until I had the prerequisite 50 warm and 50 cool 5 inch squares. But collecting them is happening pretty slowly. Plan revised. I made 50 HSTs today of the 100 needed. I'll pick away at them as 5 inch square scraps present themselves.

I had some visits from The Orange Cat. He's a very nice cat. Unless you inadvertently ignore him. Then he becomes un chat Ninja. He is, in this pic, closely examining, my charm squares.

Whilst I tried to give T.O.C the correct amount of attention and sew HSTs, Adrienne was working on the most glorious blocks. Can you see all that lovely Amy Butler in there? She's fusing 3 inch squares to fusible interfacing. This technique makes such exact seams. I can't wait to try it! I am particularly pleased that she adopted my suggestion to toss all the squares in a box, mix 'em up, then draw without looking to create a plappy (that's planned scrappy) look. After watching her work on her pressing board, I'm thinking it would be a fine addition to my creative tools.
Adrienne continued on to complete six of these blocks and I pulled out a little something I unearthed during the great studio clean up/out few weeks ago.They've been in the closet for so long that I don't even remember when I started them. I do know that one's for me and one's for the 'Rents. I even know which one is which... just by looking at the little houses. Hint: My suburban abode has tan siding and a brown roof!

The tops were pretty much finished, so all that needed doing was layering and quilting. They're pretty small (just 10 by 14 inches), so they didn't need a tonne of quilting... just a little to hold things together. Here they are a few hours later, all bound and ready to have hanging sleeves added to the back.

My next project of the day was a quilt I'm making to donate to the IWK Choices program. Adolescents who use this program often come with nothing and quilts can offer much needed comfort. I've decided to rock it old school and make a double Irish chain... the first quilt block I ever made. I'm using a paisley print and a dot print from the same line. I'm saving the coordinating stripe for the binding. And you probably wouldn't know it, but that blue is a solid. A Kona, Denim to be exact.

The first quilt technique I ever learned was strip piecing. It was formative. I pretty much believe that everything should be strip pieced if possible. It's just so quick! Here are the strip sets for my first batch of A blocks.

Then you get to cut 'em up! It was so scary that first time, but now, slicing into my hard work doesn't faze me at all.

Even thought it was past the time I planned on leaving, I just couldn't pack up until I'd finished one block. Part of me wanted to take Adrienne up on her offer of supper and keeping cranking out blocks, but didn't want to wear out my welcome!

Adrienne moved on from her postage stamp blocks to this fab baby quilt. I just had to hang around until she finished it! I love, love, love these fabrics. Look carefully at outermost strip in each block... yup, that's Kona Ash. It's Ade's first time using it and she's hooked. We even discussed going halfsies on a bolt! I only wish I had taken some more pics while she was putting it together so you could see all those lovely fabrics a little better. Never fear, I'm pretty sure Ade did and, if we're lucky, she might write about it too!

It's bigger than I'd normally make for a baby quilt, but so what? Babies rarely, if ever, complain about presents! It just means more to love.

All in all, we both had a very productive day! I can hardly wait for our next Quilt Therapy session!
 
J