QUILTING BEE SPARTA

After the summer break, the Quilting Bee Sparta started two new projects and finished the two quilts they were working on before and during the holidays. Both turned out fantastic! The first one has appliqued flowers from the Magic Vine Quilt. We used the book written by Eleanor Burns. The original designer of the Magic Vine flower blocks is Florence LaGanke Harris. As a quilt designer Florence wrote a syndicate nationwide newspaper column under the title of the "Nancy Page Quilt Club", starting in the early 1930's and ran the column for seventeen years. Each week, Florence printed one pattern from a quilt and gave her readers a week to complete the bloc. 

 

We made 30 blocks with all different techniques, some machine appliqued and others hand appliqued with the blanket stitch or with the needlepoint technique. As we couldn't decide with colour to use for the binding, the idea came up of making a multi-coloured one from all the scraps we had. The binding turned out great!

 The quilt will be given to one of our members who has some health issues at the moment. 

The second finished quilt was a crime!! The pattern and the fabrics I choose from our donated stack of materials didn't really match. I look if the colours go nicely together, which, I think, they do. But.... the yellow fabric was rather thin, nice to work with. The patterned one (an old  sheet) had too much synthetic and little cotton and was very stiff and difficult to handle. Not exactly handy to make the triangles of the Butterfly at the Crossroads blocks. Too much for most of our members. So, one of us took the quilt and managed to sew it with this great result.

 

The quilting had some difficulties too, because the back is also from the thin yellow fabric. Next time I really have to consider the fabric thickness too in the designs. But, we are doing great!! All fabrics are donated and until now we didn't buy any. The finished quilt will also be donated.

 

Our next project will be an English Paper Piecing star quilt from 60-degree diamonds with interlocking background. For EPP we use the book from Jessica Alexandrakis Quilting on the Go!

Here are the first two starts. Still 70 to go!!