Quilting in South Africa

Back in January I sent my "Eileen's Quilt" pattern to Penny in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.  

She wanted to share it with her Quilt Squad, which I think is her small quilt group.  She also belongs to the Diaz Quilters Guild in PE.

Well, here 7 months later, look at the beautiful result!!  Here is what Penny had to say when she emailed me the pictures:

"The fact that we are in about day 145 of our lockdown in South Africa has made it possible for me to concentrate almost exclusively on making it, and it's lovely. I made Paper piecing templates for the star blocks and also for the courthouse steps, hand appliquéd the flowers, and joined the blocks in 3 long strips, and then quilted each one  and joined the strips, all on my little Janome home machine – quite a job, but so satisfying to see it done!"

And oh how beautiful it turned out!! Penny gave it to her husband for his 81st birthday!!

She said he loves it 😊❤️. Hurray for you Penny - this is absolutely amazing.

Here is another quote from Penny, with which I absolutely agree:

"I find it amazing how a common interest unites women worldwide - aren't we blessed to have the internet!"

Who would've thought I could make a new friend in South Africa, all because 

of a little old quilting blog.  Much love to my quilting friends worldwide!! 

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

 

Machine Appliqué

A friend of mine, who knows I do not like to machine appliqué, asked me what I am machine appliquéing so I'm sharing some pictures.  The top one is that mystery block of the month I'm doing from My Girlfriend's Quilt Shoppe (from the Countdown to Christmas box I participated in). Little did I know when I pieced the pots together that I'd have to appliqué flowers in them!  And the flowers were all pre-cut with the AccuQuilt Go, so no chance of hand appliquéing like I did with the doll heads.  Sigh....
The bottom picture is my Circle of Friends quilt top that I'm working on with my miniature quilt group, the Little Bits.  Since we each made our own little selves, these also had to be fusible and therefore machine appliquéd.  I've been putting this off for months, so in order to make myself finish it I decided I couldn't start anything new until I finished it up.  It's been in my way all that time, moving it from one place to the next over and over. Do you have any projects like that?  The good news is I finished stitching around every little piece today (I did the flowers yesterday), so the worst is over!  Now I can design a border and get it quilted and finished.  Yeah!!

Market Fresh

Tomorrow I am starting a class at Hi Fashion to make this Market Fresh quilt, which is on the cover of the book Urban Country Quilts.  You can see my brown fabric and my scrappy colorful fabrics are all cut and ready to go!  I just need to pick up a little bit more fusible interfacing and get that cut and I will be all set.  This will be machine appliquéd, which is not me!  I usually hand appliqué everything, but this quilt will be big (queen size), and it is not intricate work, so machine appliqué will work the best.  It is a new technique I have not tried too, so it is always good to learn something new!  Happy Quilting!