An oldie - Four Seasons

It occurred to me that I never got around to photographing my older quilts. I love wall hangings and most of my quilts were made for hanging on the wall, not covering beds. Most of the quilts are either still with me or have been given to family members.

I remember sewing this while my children were in school. I had randomly cut and sewn a couple of blocks by the time they came home for lunch and I asked them if the blocks looked like winter.

I made it in 1985. The navy border is a polyester gabardine fabric. I rarely use black and always try to substitute navy when I can. Most of the fabrics are cotton/polyester broadcloth because that's the only way I could use solid fabrics. Cotton solids were few and far apart and very expensive. I have never been a cotton snob and still have a lot of cotton/polyester fabrics that I use in my quilts. The binding is probably only 1.5" and I just sewed all the fabric scraps together and then cut them to the width I needed. I forgot to look at the back but it's probably a poly/cotton fabric. 

This quilt resides with one of my granddaughters and that's where I saw it when I decided I should take a photo. There are big circles quilted on it and I remember using a big round tray that I had but I can't remember if I hand quilted it or machine quilted it. I must go back and check.

I should remember to take my phone or my camera with me when I visit so I could take more photos of my older quilts.

Day after Christmas

I do hope everyone had a wonderful day yesterday celebrating with family and/or friends. I had the whole family over (except the four in B.C.) and this year we had one additional little one. Little Axis was born on the 5th so she is my 14th grandchild. It was a busy, noisy day but all the children got along with each other and played with their favourite toy (or book.) 

It's been a very busy time lately but I did manage to finish a few things. In the fall, I went to a workshop hosted by one of the quilt guilds I belong to and we were making paper pieced trees. I didn't finish many trees during the day but once I got home, I was determined to get at least a top done so I continued on making a total of nine trees. I simplified the outer border since it too was supposed to be strip pieced but I thought it might look better if the border were just one piece of fabric. 

I do have more finished projects to show (maybe not all quilt related) but now, I will have to get a bit of cleaning up done.

Have a wonderful Boxing Day and stay safe. I am not planning on going out shopping.

Baby quilts

I just found out that I will be a grandmother for the 14th time. I would like to make something special but at the moment I am in the middle of quilting a Minecraft quilt for another grandchild. My relationship with my sewing machine has not been what it once was when my Kenmore died. It's been hard to get back into the swing of things but I shall try. This may get me motivated to sewing once again.

This is the quilt I am working on at the moment. I have taken two turns so far. Once I get more done, I shall post again.

Retreat quilts

This past weekend I was at a quilt retreat. It was just about an hour and a half away. It was a great weekend and productive.

A huge room with wonderful lighting. Large windows too.

I managed to finish putting this 26" X 26" quilt top together. It was a free pattern online that finished at 13" X 13" but that was way too small for me. I am planning on hanging this on my wall just beside the front door so that it will be the first thing you see. I'm not sure whether or not I want to put a border on it or just bind it.

This is the other quilt I was working on. I was just laying out the charm squares. It did get put together but my camera battery died. I shall take a better photo of the finished top. It too is a free pattern online that uses up a whole charm pack of 42 squares.

All in all, a successful weekend. Great company but way too much food.
 

Something new

It's Row by Row time again. There aren't many quilt shops participating. In Canada there are only four provinces that are offering patterns and kits. I liked some of the patterns and decided I would purchase some kits. Here's the beginning.

Please excuse the photo. I took it outside while there was still a bit of light. I'll take better photos as I continue with the rows. Here's three rows. All machine applique. The theme this year is summertime. I have two more rows that are pieced. One is complete and the other is almost finished. The flowers and butterflies in the top row were all pre-cut so it went together quickly. That row is not fused but just sewn around all the applique pieces. The kit came with yellow buttons that are for the centre of the flowers. I will sew them on at some point. I have two butterflies that I will sew somewhere on the whole quilt but I didn't want to add them to that row. I thought it would look too busy. I am planning on quilting a butterfly or two in the empty spaces.

UFOs done

 Finally.

This quilt was a pattern in a McCall's magazine sometime in the 1980s. It was a top for decades that was sandwiched and basted. I did start to hand quilt it in the middle but that was it. I wasn't sure how I wanted it quilted and so it sat, waiting. I think it was a case of not coming with a good idea as to how to quilt it and also what colours to quilt it in. Finally, in 2017, I put it in my frame and quilted it. And then it sat - again. There is a quilt show coming up in September with one of my quilt guilds and so I decided that once and for all, it will be finished. I self bound it and it was completed yesterday. All it needs now is a hanging sleeve and a label. I still love it and it will hang in my hall soon.

This shows how I finally decided to quilt it.

I took these photos off my blog - March 2017.

Here's the other UFO that I'm working on. It's a 3D bowtie quilt. All of the bowties are made with floral fabrics and they are all different. I am having a longarm quilter do the quilting on it. Once it's finished, I shall take another photo showing the quilting. It has no border.

I'm currently working on testing a paper pieced pattern and putting together a Minecraft quilt for one of my granddaughters.

One UFO, a heart and the little ones

Here's a better photo of the quilt that I managed to put together so it's now a full top and not just pieces or an unfinished quilt. 

Working on a couple of UFOs

Instead of starting another new quilt, I decided I would sort of finish off some UFOs.

This is a big one. It was described as a modern sampler quilt called Anthologie and was a quilt along with Southern Charm quilts. She has revamped the pattern and it's now for sale. I just went with fabric that I had and it's basically peaches and greens with other fabrics and colours thrown in. I guess I should take a better photo. Perhaps an outside photo but at the moment it's -6C outside with snow on the ground.

This is the other UFO I have been working on. I added a row or two more just to make it a bit bigger. I had thought that I would just go with how many blocks I had but it seemed a bit on the small size. The blocks are 7 inches finished and they are 3D bowties. I just need to lay them out again and sew them all together. If you have never made a 3D bowtie, all you need is 5 squares of equal size. Two squares for the background and 3 for the bowtie. I cut these at 4 inches and all the blocks are made from floral fabric with no repeats.

There is a sew along on Facebook where every Friday we can obtain a heart pattern a week. The blocks are 6.5 inches unfinished. So far, it's only been week 2. Here's the link in case anyone wants to join in. It may take some fiddling with printer settings to get the blocks to the correct size but then again, close is good enough.

Just some quilting

I finally got the giraffe quilt on the frame and have started quilting it. 

I have it set up in my kitchen.

There's lots of light coming in from the window. I do use my lamp though to see where I am stitching. 

                         When I am not quilting, it is covered with a sheet.

             I really like the effect that quilting gives to something that is flat. It took me a bit of thinking to come up with how I was going to quilt the leaves but in the end, I just sat down and freehand drew a leaf with veins in each pieced leaf. I just have to figure out what on earth I am going quilt in the big sky area. Maybe some falling leaves...

New quilt

I've had my eldest daughter and her two sons visiting so I haven't been doing much sewing or doing any other needle craft lately. I managed to get a few repair jobs completed after they went home and one day, while they were out visiting, I cut and sewed this little baby quilt.

These fabrics were in a kit that one of my guilds put together for charity. The suggestion was to make either a baby or child's quilt. I stuck with a baby size and this is one of my easy, go-to patterns for a baby quilt. It's a free pattern called Star Bright Quilt from Swim, Bike, Quilt. In the same package was also solid black yardage and another piece with bright prints on a black background. I don't do black and especially not for babies or children. I plan on giving that back when someone comes to collect this quilt after it's been quilted. I am hoping to get it up on the frame soon so I can finish it and get on with other things.

An oldie

I have to make a few quilts this year but before I started something new, I decided it was time to finish something.

Once, long ago, I have no idea how many years it's been, this pattern took my fancy.

I had, and still have, a lot of green fabrics in my stash.

So, I started this quilt.

The green squares were all done and border around them had been attached. I had also cut all of those little green rectangles. 

The gray fabric was in the plastic bin too but nothing had been cut. 

I didn't think it would take long to put the whole thing together - but I was wrong.

There were 42 blocks.

That's a lot of blocks to add all that gray to - but it got done.

The light blocks are just light green. Here it is all sewn together into a top. I now have an empty bin and this top is folded over a hanger and in the closet waiting to be quilted. The blocks are 14 inches - 13.5 finished. I don't think I'll be adding a border but I may change my mind.

I have a few more bins with partial quilts that I would like to get made into tops at least but they will have to wait a bit more. I need to make a granddaughter or three some quilts. There are also a pair of almost two year old twins that don't have a quilt yet. Oh well, all in good time.

Testing, testing - again

I am a pattern tester for a few quilt designers. One of those designers, Aimee Leptick of The Little Bird Designs needed a pattern tested with a quick turnaround. It was a paper pieced pattern and since I had tested another paper pieced pattern for her, a landscape (you can find it here), I thought I would give it a go. I did have other sewing to do but I made the time to this.

This is the first part.

The pattern is 15" X 22.5" and since there are several large pieces in the pattern, I sewed a basting stitch in the seam of those pieces. As a matter of fact, I sewed  basting stitches on several smaller pieces just so things would be easier to sew together.

Here's my take on the finished block. The original pattern shows a pink truck on a background that is all one colour but since I like blue and have quite a bit of it, I made my truck blue. I also wanted it to be travelling down a road and the pattern pieces easily lent to changing the fabric evenly. I'm sure this would look great if I were to use trees as the overall background or maybe a fabric that had houses printed on it. There are loads of possibilities.

There is another version of this block that includes an evergreen tree in the back of the truck which would be perfect as a Christmas wall hanging or included in a Christmas quilt. It's a great pattern and you can find it here as a single truck or as a combination pattern which includes the evergreen tree. 

Both patterns and the bundle are on sale until the end of September.

Have fun with it.

Testing again

This is another quilt pattern I tested. It's called Bluebird Song by Phoebe Moon Designs but I don't know if she has released the pattern yet.

It was a fun block because I just chose fabrics from my scraps. They just had to be dark or light.

Some of the measurements didn't work out as you can see from the point of the ruler.

The point gets cut off but that's about the only thing that didn't work out in the pattern.

As you can see, once you put the blocks together, they make a sort of trellis. It was a fun project and the block didn't take long at all. It finishes at 18.5." I would like to go back and make more blocks but I don't have that much time right now.

Testing a pattern

I am a pattern tester for a few designers. It's interesting and my forte is editing for clarity and comprehension. In November I tested a pattern called Morning Sun by Melanie Traylor of Southern Charm Quilts. She has had a few quilt alongs and I have been working on one on and off for a while now. Morning Sun was released as a pattern on November 20th and Melanie wanted to make sure that there were no errors and that all her calculations worked out. 

This was my starting point. These are actually the outer corners.

I then added the quarter Dresden plates. My colour palette is very much different than the original.

This is the centre of the quilt.

I thought this photo would show the fabrics better. There is no central circle to cover the middle because each petal has been sewn into a point at both ends.

Here's the whole quilt put together with the border. The directions were very good and the measurements all worked out. If you want a different kind of quilt, then check out Morning Sun by Southern Charm Quilts. Check out this link to see Melanie's version. 

Using up stash

When I start a new quilt the hardest part, at times, is finding the fabrics for it. I like to use up fabrics that are in my stash, especially if I am not all that keen on the pattern or I don't know what I will do with it once it's finished. I have been working on a quilt for the past couple of weeks and I have been using up some older fabrics that I found. 

This is part of the quilt I am working on. It's actually the outer four corners and that middle fabric is a gray/blue that I found. It just so happened that I had enough of a piece to use for that L-shape.

This is the fabric I found. After cutting what I needed, I don't think there's much left.

I was surprised at this, though. It seems that this fabric has been in my stash for almost 40 years. I started quilting in 1980 and these are the kinds of fabrics that were available at that time. Cottons with small prints. A lot of the fabrics had small flowers on them. I wasn't all that keen on the prints and preferred solids to work with but cotton broadcloth was very expensive and the variety of colours was very limited. I used a lot of polycotton broadcloth and I still have an extensive supply of many different colours and shades. The quilt I am working on has a bit of polycotton broadcloth in it along with another really old bit of fabric - the navy print in the first photo.

Completed

I was working on a little sweater for my youngest granddaughter, Aurora. 

Her mom selected the colour of the little sweater.

It's a very nice mauve colour (this is closer to the true colour.) I hope it fits.

This little quilt was part of the Row by Row with the theme of music. I knew as soon as I saw it that I had to make it. One of my daughters-in-law is a Beatles fan and so I made it for her 40th birthday.

This is the back of the quilt. I used some fat quarters that I had accumulated when I was making the Row by Row. The top black fabric is just the hanging sleeve. I took this photo before I had attached a label but it does have one.

I'm off to finish a couple of things and then get them crossed off my list.

Just a little quilt

There is a little quilt that I have wanted to make for years. I'm a tad late since it's really a fall quilt.

It was in a magazine and I finally decided I was going to take the time and make it.

This is what I liked.

It reminded me so much of the time my dad took me and my brother on a drive and we stopped at a big pile of leaves that city workers had made (in the rich part of the city.) my brother and I were allowed to jump into the pile. It was so much fun - except when I lost my brand new turquoise moccasin. It took a while but we did manage to find it.

This is how they showed you could display the little quilt. I don't have a little stand like that so mine will go on the wall.

I wanted a blue sky for my background instead of some beige fabric.

There is a little bit of 3D embroidery.

The shoelaces were fun to make.

Here's my version of the finished quilt. I made the binding the same way as with the little red bird quilt - bringing the backing to the front. 

I'm on to other quilts now - and maybe some knitting.