Friendship Star

It's my turn to select our guild's Block of the Month.  Since the OrlandoMQG is starting its sixth year, I thought the Friendship Star to be most appropriate!

Friendship Star

I have made this block quite a few times, and just love its simplicity yet boldness.  I also can't seem to stay away long from scrappy, low value backgrounds.  I cut into my new Cotton + Steel Playful for the center square.

The tutorial we are using is from Sew Happy Geek which also includes a tutorial for double pinwheels which I am using for a bee block .... stay tuned.

Flowers for Eleni

Yesterday, I mentioned the charity bee do.Good Stitches.   Rachel of Stitched in Color is the driving force behind this wonderful platform for bringing quilters together in helping those in need.

Now it's our turn to bring comfort to Rachel and her new baby Eleni.   If you are unaware of the situation, please read Rachel's post regarding Eleni's birth and her updated post.

hexie flower for baby Eleni

Tales of Cloth is collecting hexi flowers to make a quilt for Rachel and her family, and there is an online Auction for Eleni this weekend.  I encourage you to click on these links for more information of these two efforts to help Rachel and her family.

Thank you and happy stitching,

QuiltCon 2015: Charity Quilts

There is so much to say about QuiltCon...the quilts, the classes, the food and of course the people/community....  I did not enter any quilts into QuiltCon, but I did play a small part in three charity quilts that were on exhibit.

Geese in the Round by Wish Circle of do. Good Stitches a charity bee

One of the special exhibits at QuiltCon was  Pieced With Love: The Quilts of do. Good Stitches showcasing twelve do. Good Stitches {a charity bee} quilts.  I was excited to learn that one of the selected quilts was from our Wish Circle.  Geese in the Round (quilted by Caitlin) was one of the first Wish Circle quilts I participated in...see my block there in the bottom right corner?!

OrlandoMQG charity quilt-quilted by Ellen

Our OrlandoMQG members made blocks which were assembled into this QuiltCon Challenge Charity quilt.  All the challenge quilts were hanging in two of the ballrooms.  I was unable to get pictures of all the charity quilts, but I did take pictures of more than half.  I uploaded a Flipgram video on instagram if you want to see more.  If you search the hashtag #52QGoestoQuiltCon, you should find it.
 

Four of my blocks are in this quilt

Since I'm on the MQG Charity Committee, I wanted to also participate in the Region 4 QuiltCon charity quilt with several individual MQG members from my region.  I met two of them at QuiltCon but sadly didn't get a group picture with our quilt.

Region 4 Charity Quilt

I am still decompressing from my QuiltCon experience,  as well as still unpacking from that trip, so I plan to spread out my blog posts detailing my week in Austin.

Hope everyone is having a great week so far.  Thanks for stopping by,

Choose Your Own BlockAlong 3/9/15

Most of the classes I took at QuiltCon did not require a sewing machine, so it felt good to sit down and sew on one today after about two weeks away.

Dear Jane Block B-10

My Dear Jane block for this week is another blue block, this time using scraps of Flea Market Fancy and Kona White solid.  I have been using so much low volume fabrics for the backgrounds, it was nice to go back to a solid for a change.

the blues

I need to update my layout (and count how many blocks I'm up to now), but here are my blocks made with blue fabrics.  

I also made some progress on my bee blocks and have done some hand sewing.
What have you been up to?

Next Week

I'm home from QuiltCon and now enjoying a visit from my grandson.

first time at Animal Kingdom

Next week I will return with Dear Jane blocks, share pictures and tell you all about my adventures at QuiltCon.  In the meantime, you can read my "goodbye" post over at 52Quilters which includes some QuiltCon tidbits.

  

from Gnome Angel

There is also an interview over at Gnome Angel with Chris, the creator of 52Quilters.  It's an interesting interview, and I love that our guild's QuiltCon charity quilt from my week's post is featured in the collage.

I hope you will check out them both!