Secret Sewing Projects

It must seem as though I'm not doing anything in my sewing room lately. I am creating but I can't show photos here as there are secrets to be revealed and it wouldn't do if they had been seen here in advance.

I have a couple of long-term ongoing group projects.

One is my June Bride project. For this I have gathered a group of 13 other quilt friends who were willing to be challenged. We are up to chapter three of the June Bride and here is how it works; I find a set of old quilt blocks and hand one (or two depending) to each participant. They need to use that old block and come up with a new 24" x 24" finished quilt. It is called the June Bride because I was one and we incorporate "something old" (the old block), "something new" (the new quilt), "something borrowed" (the concept from Mary Kerr - see her website here) and "something blue" (blue has to appear somewhere in the new quilt).

The big reveal for chapter 3 is next Saturday and I am running tight on time...yikes. Right now I'm waiting for a block to dry before I can stitch it into the row. I'll give you a sneak peak at that block

The block on the left has been rejected. That pale blue was just too pale. I enlarged the flower just a little, put it on a different background (that background fabric was given to everyone and has to be used someplace in the quilt) and I'm a lot happier with it now. The bloom idea comes from a pattern by Deborah Kemball (Beautiful Botanicals) - she has used it in several quilts and sometimes adds the embroidery. Her quilts look divine especially the ones she makes from silk fabrics. I'm not sure if I should add the stem lines in the new block or not. My "technical director" thinks not. What do you think?

My other project is Holidays Greetings Incorporated. For this we are a group of seven friends (3 in Melbourne Australia, my sister in New Zealand, I friend in Newfoundland Canada and 1 in North Carolina and I make the seventh). We have been sewing together making variations of a round robin style for years. For this project we have each chosen a holiday as the theme for our quilt. The deadline for this round is coming up on October 1 but I have my block finished quite a few weeks ahead of the deadline.

That's good because I need to get organized for Grandmother's Choice which begins September 1. I am working on pulling together my fabric pile. This is another block of the week project masterminded by Barbara Brackman - I have put a link button on the right so you can see what this will all be about. To be truthful "I" did not put it there - things like that are the responsibility of my "technical director" (aka #2 son). He does not at all approve of my current choice of chartreuse green as one of the main color choices but there is a reason for it. And besides, everyone who knows me will immediately understand why I use green as it is the biggest color pile in my fabric collection.

Alright, let me see if that applique block has dried out yet.