Quilt Qwasy Queens

Today the Quilt Quasy Queens blog hop continues celebrating International Quilting Day and it's my turn to share what I've been up to.  The idea of this blog hop is to talk about our UFO's and to finish one or some of them up.

At the end of February I hunted through my UFO's and found I had more than I thought. There's the grandmother's garden English paper pieced quilt which I started several years ago. I've recently been working on this one but as it is all hand stitched this will not be finished in the near future.

I have  another quilt that includes hexies which I started as my Rainbow Scrap challenge in 2015. I pulled this one out and thought seriously about finishing it but I want to add another row of blocks to make it bigger and  in hunting through my scraps I found I didn't have any large solid colour pieces for the backgrounds. I put this one to one side.

I also decided against this one as I just didn't want to work on it.

So that left my  Compass quilt.

I finished this quilt top last September and put it to one side ready to be made into a quilt sandwich. At the end of August I had a mastectomy and before I dealt with the quilting I needed my scar to heal and also to complete my radiotherapy. At the end of November I bought the backing fabric and the wadding I needed and in early December I spent a day basting the quilt. It took me all day because the chemotherapy had caused me to have neuropathy and handling the heavy quilt caused me pain in my hands. Therefore I needed to do a little at a time. 

Having decided to work on this quilt I got out my Brother machine which has a large aperture under the arm making quilting easier. I hadn't used this machine for a year as being bigger it is heavy to move. I practised using the machine to refresh my memory of the controls and was finally ready to begin when the weather turned colder and blew in with lots of snow. My hands started to hurt a lot and moving the quilt around was impossible so I reverted to hand stitching some hexie blocks.

The great thing with quilting is it's a hobby that doesn't need to be rushed so there is time to get my UFO's completed once my hands have settled down. 

Several years ago at Guides we made prem baby quilts like this one for the neonatal unit at a local hospital.

Recently a couple of the girls had used fabric that we had left over in the cupboard to make some more little quilt tops. So I added the fleece fabric to the back of them since I couldn't get on with quilting my compass quilt

If the girls want to make any more  we will have to get more supplies as we have exhausted all the fabric we had. I haven't made any baby quilts recently so haven't added any suitable fabric to my stash. This was a relaxing job and one that needed doing. I finished them on my Elna machine stitching the fleece to the wrong side and turning them. The opening was closed with hand stitching.

Just as my neuropathy was settling down again to be manageable and I thought I would get at least some quilting done we had the return of the cold snowy weather at the end of last week and my hands are once again very painful. Hopefully as we move into the warmer months I will be able to get my quilting done. I really want to be using my compass quilt on my bed later this year.

There's a give away for you to enter. Good luck everyone.

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Here's the schedule for today and tomorrow;

Tuesday, March 20, 2018

| Words & Stitches | Sew Many Yarns | Quiltin’ Grandma’s Blog |
| Books, Hooks, Sticks, etc. | Adventurous Applique and Quilting |

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

| Kathy’s Kwilts and More | Seacoast Quilter |
| DesertSky Quilting | Seams To Be Sew |

Have fun visiting and seeing what everyone has been working on. It's been great seeing the UFO's that have been finished and I wish I had been able to complete mine but at least I got the prem baby quilts finished and we can now give them to the hospital.

Lyndsey