To Boston With Love... Calling all members to participate

I'm sure that everyone was, like me, shocked and horrifed by events in Boston this past week. With all its Irish connections, those of us who have family members there and the fact that thousands of students like me passed through, visited and lived there during our summer holidays in our college days, Boston has a special place in many Irish hearts including my own.

The Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild is coordinating a fantastic project - a collaborative effort of makers to bring peace and love from far and wide. They are planning a public exhibition of flags strung into banners to be displayed in Boston - hopefully in early June 2013.

I've seen pictures of flags springing up on Instagram in the last couple of days as other Modern Quilt Guilds and quilters around the world have started to participate and would love if our Irish guild could participate too. I (Sarah) will coordinate the collection and postage of flags, if you will make them and send them to me.

The guidelines for making them are here - you can use the tutorials provided, or make your own design within the guidelines so I would love if you would get sewing and get your flag in the post to me to reach me by 13th May next, as they need to get to Boston before May 31st and I want to allow ample posting time. I will ask for a very small contribution (approx a euro/pound each depending on the total cost) towards postage also. If you are not a signed up member (why not? join us please!), you can still contribute a flag if you want, I will accept flags from any Irish based quilter/sewist who would like to participate.

So please comment below, or email me at mqgireland@gmail.com to participate and I will send you back my address and answer any questions you have.

Don't forget to add your flags to the Flickr pool and please please spread the word :-)

What's New, Ruth?

Hello everyone.  My name is Ruth and I write about my projects over at Charly & Ben's Crafty Corner.  I made my first quilt about this time last year and am now working on my fifth quilt.   I was thrilled to bits when a family member asked me to make her a quilt for a single bed and had great fun searching for fabric and deciding on a layout that I thought would be perfect for her.  She was happy to leave it all up to me so I picked  this fabric range Coquette by Chez Moi.  Not having much of a stash I went out and bought everything (any excuse to go fabric shopping!) I thought something colourful in spring colours with stars would be great.  The background material is Kona Snow.

I had a pattern from Miss Rosies Quilt Co. called Bounce that uses scrappy stars so I modified this from a twin to a single bed quilt and so far so good.  I've gone from tiny squares to pieced stars.  Last week I trimmed them off centre to make them "Bounce" as per the pattern and sewed all 28 of them into a 4 x 7 layout. 

Now I'm working on the borders.  I'd like this to end up somewhere around the 58 x 78" for a single bed so I'm adding a scrappy border per the pattern and a nice wide solid border on the outside.  The scrappy border is made from the leftovers from the 28 stars +4 more layer cakes cut into strips and BGF strips.

It’s a lot of cutting and piecing but oh so pretty!  You can see a small part of the stencil I'm hoping to use to quilt this when the top is finished.  I'll be practicing this pattern before I touch this baby with my Free motion hopping foot!

The border is coming together slowly but I'm really happy with the result.  It's very hard to be random.  I've heard of a tip of putting all the pieces into a bag and using whatever is pulled out.  I may have to try that!

Ruth, thank you so very much for giving us a peek in your sewing room!  

What's new, Sonya?

I have been patch working for over a year and a half now and am surprised at just how much scrap fabric has built up in my sewing room. Finally I decided that if I did not want to be classed as a hoarder I had better decide on a project. Not having masses of experience in using scraps I finally decided to make a 2.5 inch square boys pram blanket.

I am using mainly Robert Kaufmann fabrics, just mixing in a few others to help keep the bright & colourful theme.  Here is my progress so far, I have 6 of the nine blocks finished. I work on it on & off as I come across scraps that tie in, but I am loving how it is coming together. Once its finished I plan on making a girl version with all the girls scraps I have in my sewing room:)

Thank you, Sonya, for giving a peek into your sewing room.  Please do come back and show us the finished quilt.  Anyone else have a WIP post to share?  Email Cindy at fluffysheepquilting(at)gmail(dot)com.