Love  in the time of Covid

Paddy and Mary would like to issue a challenge to VQG members.  We would like you to make: 

•  A small quilt (18″ X24″) … Maximum size … can be smaller … if you wish.
• Depicting what you loved during this stressful time of COVID:  It can represent: a person or people whom you got (were forced) to spend time with in 2020, OR a favourite activity you found you had time to pursue (such as finishing off some UFO), OR maybe taking up sour-dough bread making, OR jig-saw puzzles, OR some other activity you were able to do while going through the past year.
• It must contain a plant, flower, fruit or vegetable or some form of vegetation  from at least ONE of the following: (a)  your home province, (b) a place where you spent a lot of fabulous time, OR (c) your homeland ( if you were not born in Canada).
• Finished Challenge pieces will be shown when we are able to meet again in person.
• Prize-winners names will be drawn that night.

Good luck and we are anxious to see what LOVE IN THE TIME OF COVID  looks like for you.
— Paddy M. and Mary B.

Fabric Exchange:
Join our fabric exchange and use and share your batik fabrics. By sharing fabrics you’ll be able to make a scrappy quilt with lots of variety. The exchange will be an outdoor event where you can drop off, and at a second date pick up, an equivalent number of pieces. Please see the June 2021 newsletter for further details.

Stretched Star Quilt:
These instructions make a lap size quilt 49.5” x 58.5.

Use fabrics from your own stash and those you get from the VQG fabric exchange to make a “Stretched Star” Quilt from half snowball blocks as follow:

1. Cut the 2½” strips into 2 ½” squares (light neutrals).
2. For each block pick one of your 5” dark or medium batik squares and 2 of the 2 ½” lights.
3. On the wrong side of each of the 2 ½” squares mark a diagonal line in your preferred method.  For example, you can finger press across the diagonal or press with an iron.  Or you can mark a line with a pencil or a marker such as a Hera marker or fabric pen.  Some of you will be confident enough to eyeball the diagonal line.
   (Note: Often the right and wrong-sides of batiks are indistinguishable in which case you do not need to pay attention to which is the right and which is the wrong side.  For those batiks that do have a discernible right side you will need to take care to put right sides together.)
4. Place these marked squares on opposite corners of the 5” square, wrong sides together, and sew on the line you have marked.
5. Trim ¼” away from the sewn line and press towards centre (darker fabric). Your light/dark fabric placement will be the opposite of this illustration:
   
6. Make 99 of these 5” unfinished blocks.
7. Quilt Assembly: Arrange the blocks 9 across, 11 down all facing the same direction.  When you are happy with the layout sew the rows matching the intersections.
8. Border:  Add 5” cut (4.5” finished) borders.

Variations:
These blocks can be set in an X’s and O’s pattern by arranging the blocks in alternating directions.

For more variations see: Missouri Star Quilt TripX’s and O’s Projects with Jenny Doan

Open those bins, go through those piles, and search your closets.
Pull out all of your unfinished works.
Either donate them to the free table, or join us for the 2020 WIP Program which is now underway.

You must show your completed item(s) at a Show and Tell during the year (2020) to be eligible for the draw in December.  Full details are in the February newsletter.

Loretta R.

I usually have a song playing in my head as I go about my day. Right now as I write this in late November, the song is Singing in the Rain. (I wish it was Blue Skies Smilin’ At Me). Some members of my family love the rain and call themselves children of the rain forest. I just want to go back to bed and pull a quilt over my head. Oh well, it’s Vancouver where we say “at least we don’t have to shovel it” and “we don’t tan, we rust!”. Our Guild challenge for 2018 is our Quilt Show Challenge and it’s about rain.

SINGIN’ (AND QUILTIN’) IN THE RAIN: Choose a song about rain. It must have the word “rain” (or rainy, raining, etc.) in the title. I found 205 songs about rain on my computer in 5 minutes. (Here’s a list of just a few.) Even if we all did Purple Rain, each of us would make an original and interesting piece.  Make a small quilt that represents your interpretation of the song or just the title. The outside perimeter or circumference cannot exceed 120” but it can be any shape. You must use at least one embellishment and the colour yellow has to appear somewhere on your piece. We need that glimmer of bright colour to brighten up the dark days.

Andrea G.