Update - Champagne Quilters

Marg and I are still quilting once a week. We are still making wheelchair lap quilts.

This is the one that Marg is working on. We had a pre-printed panel and just added a bit more fabric on two sides to make it into the size we wanted.

This is the panel I'm quilting.

Here's a better photo of it. This one just turned out to be the size we liked.

I came across another panel that we could use. At least they won't be sitting on my shelves anymore. I'm glad that they will be put to good use.

A finish and a beginning

Marg and I have been steadily working away making wheelchair quilts. 

This is one top that is now complete. Deciding on the pattern was the easiest so far in the history of us making quilts. Marg happened to be perusing a quilt book of miniatures or something and we saw this and it was like a 'eureka' moment. The original had more blocks and one more row but that gave us the idea. We are trying to use up the fabrics we have and so this is what we came up with.

This is the top we are working on at the moment. One of the guilds I belong to had some kits to be sewn up into lap quilts and I picked one up. This was a couple of years ago and I remembered how easy the pattern was. The one I had put together was prints of blue with a white solid. When it came time to make another wheelchair quilt, I remembered this pattern but didn't know the dimensions. I knew that it was a square when finished and so, if the print in the middle was an 8.5" X 4.5" and the solid sashing strips were 8.5" X 2.5", then once the pieces were sewn, it would make an 8.5" square.

That's it for the Champagne Quilters. If someone has any suggestions for easy quilts, let me know. We are always on the look-out for fast, easy scrap quilt patterns.

Champagne Quilters update

Marg and I will be breaking for the summer but we decided to get a couple of tops done so we'd have something to quilt when we get back at it.

This one finally got done and the binding was sewn on. I do the sewing machine part and Marg does the hand sewing part.

Not much quilting. Just around every block and then a cross through the middle. This one will be a wheelchair quilt. Marg's daughter is in a wheelchair and used a big bath towel to keep her legs warm. We just took the dimensions and decided to use it as a model for our wheelchair quilt size.

This is the beginning of our next top. We got this much done in one evening. We selected the fabrics, I cut the rectangles, sewed them all together and this is basically, three 12 inch squares.

I got the idea for this from Christa Quilts blog.

 We used up all of the solid coloured light gray fabric and decided to use borders to make it the size we wanted. Next time, we are hoping to get the whole top finished so we can make another one.

All done - almost

I finally got a chance to iron some fusible appliques down.

The latest BOM from Fat Cat Patterns is called Gnome for the Holidays. This is the first installment. It's ironed down but not yet sewn. I'll get to it. All my gnome bodies are made from various checks and plaids that I have.

This is what I'll be working on at Marg's tonight.

This is the one that Marg is quilting.

Just a little update

Here's the last mug rug I made. The little Dresden plate was made a couple of years ago and I finally got to use it. I had always meant to make it into a mug rug but it never got finished - until now.

The colour is not that good in this photo. 

I enjoyed making all the mug rugs.

This is one of the wheelchair quilts that Marg and I are making.

This is the other one. We cut the backing for both but won't start quilting them until the New Year. We thought one was more feminine and the other could be used by a male.

I finished this blanket for little Atticus. It's been delivered so I can show it now. It took one whole ball of yarn - not my favourite acrylic.

These are two little dresses that I just finished for the twins. I hope they like them. They are made out of knit fabric that is brushed on the reverse so it's nice and soft against their skin.

I've still got some things on my list of sewing and knitting so hopefully, I can get something finished this coming week.

The temperature is a bit milder for the next couple of days. Perhaps it will be warm enough to melt the little bit of snow we have.

Try not to stress over the holidays. If you don't get everything done, that's OK. Just do the important things on your list first and all will be good.

Short update

Marg and I are still quilting away. Now we're making a couple of wheelchair lap quilts. Quick to sew tops is what we're after. Since Marg has a 6 inch square ruler, we try to use it whenever we can.

Here's the first quilt we put together. We adapted Katie Blakesley's free pattern called "Star Bright." At first we were going to add a dark border but Marg came across this lime green fabric and we thought it was perfect. The next quilt we are putting together is in pink and purple.

Charity recap

A couple of weeks ago Marg and I got together to package up all of the baby quilts and baby hats that we had made to deliver to a lady who is connected with the Silent Children's Mission. Here's a visual list of the quilts.

One of the few pre-printed panels we have.

Easy peasy squares.

This star quilt is a free pattern from Swim, Bike, Quilt blog.

I'm sorry you can't see the teddy bear that Marg quilted in the star.

The second star quilt.

One of what I call 'the ice cream quilt.'

The second 'ice cream quilt.'

The refreshing gingham quilt.

The ducky quilt.

That's it for this year. I didn't count the hats but there may have been about a hundred of them.

One done, two on the go and baby names

Marg and I have been diligently working away on the charity baby quilts.

While two frames are in the basement, Marg has one frame upstairs and finished this quilt. I love the colours - they remind me of ice cream.

This is the one with the white ducks.

And this is where we came up with the ice cream colours - the floral fabric.

On to baby news:

It's almost like having another set of twin granddaughters but these two are exactly two weeks apart. The little girl on the left was born on May 3rd and her name is Esme Ina (after her great grandmother.) The one on the right was born on May 17th and her name is Darcy May River. Another Canadian name - for D'Arcy McGee (Thomas D'Arcy McGee was a writer, poet and one of the Fathers of Confederation), she was born in the month of May and River was to keep her connection to her twin big sisters Mackenzie and Severn (names of Canadian rivers.)

Sewing news:

This is what my kitchen table looks like. The polka dot fabric and the floral under it are two remnants I picked out this morning. Under it is some Heat and Bond lite because I am in the process of fusing a few appliques and one of the fabrics I am fusing is the brown log or 'wood' fabric.

These are two surprise polka dot fat quarters. They were found in a box that held a pattern for a summer top and lots of photos in frames. Surprise, surprise.

Well, I'm off to a quilt show tomorrow with my friend Judy. I'll try to remember to bring my camera.  ;-)

Baby quilts and fabric

As I was doing a bit of cleaning up I came across some fabric that had little duckies on it. 

It was just a piece of fabric - not yardage. I put it in a pile to bring to one of the guilds I belong to. I figured someone might be able to use it. There were other fabrics in the pile that I no longer wanted. One night I grabbed what I had and put it in a bag to bring to the guild meeting. This one piece though, was forgotten. I don't know if it was on purpose or not but as it sat on the desk where I had put the other stuff, I started to think about it. It might just be something that Marg and I could do something with. So, I washed it up again and ironed it and brought it to Marg's. It just so happened that we had finished quilting the wheelchair lap quilts and needed something new to work on.

I cut up all the ducky fabric into 6 inch squares and then Marg and I looked for other fabric to go with it. The duckies feet were a browny-beige so that's what we found. Unfortunately, the one fabric piece we cut up didn't have enough yardage for the whole quilt so we found another piece to go with it. At first we put the six darker squares in the top and bottom rows but then Marg noticed that we could put them diagonally. 

The following week, when we came back to it, Marg had decided that the beige wasn't quite right and she found this yellowy broadcloth. She thought that this fabric enhanced the blue. Since we had the other squares cut, we decided to use them in another quilt.

The beige stayed in the same place but Marg found some backing fabric that she liked and we took the colours from it.

This is the backing fabric. Once we cut enough for the backing, we had a small piece left over. We then wondered if it would give us another quilt.

We needed 24 of the floral squares and 24 coloured squares. Luckily for us, there was enough of the floral to give us yet another top with nothing left over. I do like it when a piece of fabric gets all used up and in this case we used up three pieces in the making of three quilts.

Ta da, we now have three baby quilts to finish. 

Marg came across some fat quarters.

This is the same bundle but the reverse side.

She gave me all the fat quarters because she said she would not be using them. Marg has made several full-sized quilts in her lifetime and quite a few baby quilts too. She is 89 and doesn't make quilts for herself anymore. She just quilts the ones that we both work on. The odd time she will hand quilt a pre-printed panel. She also crochets baby hats and I think she has made a little more than 200 in the past couple of years. 
Quite an inspiration.

Brown and orange

Marg and I started our second lap quilt last week.

This is how far we got.

A few more blocks got added. I brought a couple fabrics from home that I thought would blend well. Those are Marg's feet. As I sewed, Marg ironed and then laid out the blocks. After cutting, sewing, ironing and trimming, we needed five more blocks.

Then we needed just two more. More shifting of the blocks.

It's a never ending process. Moving blocks so that the overall quilt top is pleasing to the eye.

I think we're done and this is the end result. It will be sewn together the next time we get together.

Champagne Quilters

The first quilt together of the New Year.

Marg and I will be continuing on with this quilt tonight. We will either leave it as is or add a small border. Then we will start on another one in the same pattern but in orange and browns. These are lap quilts for wheelchair residents of the veterans' wing of Sunnybrook Hospital.

Various things

My December installment for the mystery quilt is complete.

The pieces that were previously cut and sewn have now been made into 12.5 inch blocks. No more until January. I can now concentrate on my list of things to do.

This is a lap quilt that Marg and I are working on. We have switched our focus from baby quilts to lap quilts for the Veteran's wing of Sunnybrook Hospital. They are for wheelchair residents and are about the same size as the baby quilts we like to make. Those strips are not cut and sewn into the blocks. I borrowed a book from the library called Sliver Quilts by Lisa O'Neill and these blocks are made with her instructions. Once you cut a block to any size (in this case 9") you then iron a fold into it - right sizes together. A folded strip of another fabric is then placed into the fold and sewn in place. It's then opened up, ironed, the other side of the strip is sewn down and then the block is trimmed. We chose to trim to 8 inches. These are not completely sewn. We think we may add a small border around the whole quilt. Our next one will be in oranges and browns. 

I don't often go into Value Village but my grandsons like stamps and Luc is presently making bracelets out of colourful rubber bands. I just wanted to check it out to see if there was anything that might be useful.

I wasn't looking very hard and I certainly wasn't looking for rulers but for $2.99 I couldn't pass it up.

There was also a bag that had wool roving and needle felting supplies. Hopefully, I'll be able to find some time to play with it all.

I made 8 new hand towel bibs yesterday for the twins. They are getting so big and needed something more substantial to help keep their clothes clean. Little Teemu refuses to wear a bib.

I'm going to see if I can get a bit of knitting done now.