Quilt Along Update

We had our last official quilt along for about six months because a couple of our members are moving to MO next week!  Of course I will still get together with  some of my other friends and sew and quilt throughout the summer with them.  We had a potluck Wednesday, Chipotle style, my favorite!  We had a few ladies not able to come though.

Kayla is teaching our newbie, Holly, how to hand quilt.  All we have left is a couple of rows on these two blocks they are working on, then I will machine quilt the borders because we need to have it finished by this Sunday!

Chrystal has almost finished her granny square top.  She is thinking of adding a border of the blue to make the quilt bigger.

Here is a sample quilt she is working on for her mother.  She does her piecing on her machines but will hand quilt them when she is done.  She is going to embroider the names of her mother's children in one blank square (with birthdays), and the grandchildren in the other blank square.

Abideth is hand quilting her first quilt.  Her grandmother traced hearts all over it onto her quilt for her to hand quilt.

I'll share updates on my what I'm working on for my personal quilts tomorrow!
Missy

A Quilter's Hands

I'm glad I gave myself a manicure on Sunday!

We had another quilt along on Wednesday.  I was asked for some closeups of our stitching  and we had Siouxsie at the last quilt along and she is our resident professional photographer!  She taught me how to take closeups and took several pictures with my camera!  After looking at the pictures, I wrote a poem about a quilter's hands.

Miss Debra has been quilting for a very long time.

Her stitches are perfect!

She has trouble seeing and these are here tools to see!  A thread guide and a magnifying glass.

A Quilter’s Hands

What makes a quilter’s hands?

Are they a certain age?

Young, old, from a certain land?

A hand that sews?

A hand that works?

A hand that’s seen sorrow and woes?

A hand that is barren?

A hand that multiplies.

A hand that is caring?

God gave us our hands,

To serve Him,

In every land.

To nurture and care

To toil and serve.

As we tarry here.

God gave us our quilter’s hands,

To sew together our lives,

With fabric, tears and laughter,

Serving Him the best we can.

By Missy Shay

Abideth is seven and she wanted to sew a few stitches!

Abideth also worked on her mom's cross stitch!

Here are some closeups of the stitching.

These are mine and very crooked, but a lot better than when I started!

I try to stitch in the ditch so that no one can see my crooked stitches!

Joeann's stitches are perfect!

Siouxsie's stitches are very uniform, which is good!

 

We even got some pictures of stitching from the underside of the quilt!

Verity "helped" Siouxsie with her tangle!

Of course the best thing about the quilt alongs is the fellowship!

I really recommend getting together with friends to quilt, it is what threads our lives together!

To see how I played around with the poem to make it look nice, go here:  http://missyscakesandaprons.blogspot.com/2013/03/feline-friday_29.html

Have a great day!

Missy

Quilt Along!

We had a lot of fun today!  We have combined our quilt alongs with our prayer quilt ministry.  We started hand quilting our granny square quilt which will be going to a lady in our church who is having a tough time right now.  Some of the pictures were taken by a young man who came with his mom, so ignore any blurriness please!  And yes, my thread was way too long!

 Unfortunately we can only fit four people at a time around our quilting frame, we really want a full sized one, the type you can hang from the ceiling and let down when it is needed.  Until then, we can only sew four at a time and have to take turns!

   We have sold our church building and are now taking turns meeting at everyone's houses, which I really like because it is so homey!  (We are sharing our building for a couple of months)
Tabitha and Valerie were sewing their twosies together for their postage stamp quilts.  Valerie borrowed my hand crank and has decided that she really likes it and is going to try to talk her parents into buying one for her!  Tabitha is thirteen and Valerie is twelve.

 You can see all of their blocks that they have cut out!
Here is half a 16 patch that Valerie has finished.

Valerie put her little sister Atarrah to work and has her ironing her twosies.  Kayla is helping her out.

Atarrah is crocheting a granny square quilt, she has three done so far.  She is nine!

I suggested putting the two seven year olds to work snipping the threads between Tabitha's twosies, with Kayla supervising.  Abigail and Alexa liked being able to help!

Chrystal spent the first part of the hour fixing Tabitha's machine, it turns out they were using the wrong size bobbin!  They were using class 66 instead of class 15, as far as I know the majority, if not all of the new machines are class 15.  I have an old Redeye 66 that uses a class 66 bobbin, they are a tad bigger than the class 15.

Chrystal has finished 10 of her great granny square blocks and has ten to go!

She is teaching her daughters how to hand sew.  Camelia is five and Mary is three.

I also wanted to show you a quilt that Chrystal has, I meant to take another picture in better lighting, but I forgot.  This quilt was made by her Nana's friends for her Nana's wedding!

The prints have Raggedy Ann and Andy, Hobby Lobby and I love that orange cat and the apples!  I wish I had gotten a picture of the quilting, they stitched in the ditch and quilted a circle in the middle of each square.  Simple but very nice.

Just remember that you are never too young or old to learn how to quilt!
Missy

Quilts update!

We had our Tuesday quilt along today at church.  We did not have many show up today, it's a pretty busy week.
I basted my quilt today, but when I take it out tomorrow, I'll have to make sure it's done right, because I had to rush.

While I was basting I started laughing really hard because I felt so foolish crawling on the tables at church.

Do you feel silly while crawling around basting your quilts?

Here is the backing I'm using.  It is a thin fleece I won back in January with my Janome.

Siouxsie is making a postage stamp quilt using solid colors.  I taught her today how to strip piece her blocks and she finished her first 16 patch block.  Isn't it gorgeous?

Valerie and Tabitha sewed a lot of their squares together.  Since they are using scraps, I'm having them sew twosies and then sew the twosies together to make four patches.  They have to wait two weeks for our next quilt along before they can sew the 16 patch blocks.  They really like chain stitching.

Tabitha's was so long I could not get it all in the picture.

This was the first quilt-along  Ashleigh was able to make it to.  She is crocheting granny squares.  I love the colors she picked.

If I don't have to rebaste my quilt, I'm hoping to get it quilted tomorrow.
I also HAVE to sew my husband's bath robe tomorrow, which I will do first!
Have a great day ya'll!
Missy