January 17, 2024

You can see from the title I hope to have more Community Quilts done throughout the year. I know I have at least two that are waiting in the wings that need to be completed, sandwiched and quilted.

I don’t know who pieced this particular top. At our last Community Quilt weekend I took four tops that I hoped to have sandwiched. They weren’t doing any sandwiching at this particular time so the tops were added to the pile. I felt guilty leaving so many so I brought this one home for quilting.

I’m particular about which quilts I bring home as I only do straight-line quilting and I feel it should be a top where that method will look okay. In hindsight I probably should have done a bit more quilting in the border but done is done!

I was lucky to find a fabric in the Community Quilt bins to use as binding.

January’s project from Little Handfuls of Scraps was not my favourite when I looked through the book. But I’m doing the patterns alphabetically and this one was next in line.

I was pleased that I had enough strips from a neutral-coloured jelly roll to use as the background. There was a lot of tracing, cutting and bonding to do but it really wasn’t difficult.

I originally thought I would machine appliqué the pieces but by the time they were all cut and placed on the background I realized that would be a daunting task for such a small project. I used the mattress stitch on my quilting machine and I’m very happy with how it turned out.

Now that it is done and hung, I think, so far, this is my favourite project from the book.

I bought this kit at the Saskatoon Quilt Guild’s quilt show several years ago. I had seen the poppy fabric when someone from our Guild was using it; when I saw the fabric used in a kit I had to have it.

I’m not sure why it took so long to quilt; it had sat finished and sandwiched for a long time. It became one of my first quilting projects after treatment and it went very well. I used the same pattern for some placemats so I already know the quilting pattern I will use.

In my mind I had put some Christmas fabric on the back so it could be reversible but the fabric I picked wasn’t the best. With black binding it doesn’t look as Christmassy as I would have like so it probably will only be used for the month of November.

As I didn’t get this finished before Remembrance Day this year it now hangs in my sewing room hiding some bins of scraps.