Happy Valentine's Day

I have been busy but I did manage to put this little wall hanging on the frame and I am slowly quilting it.

Have a safe and Happy Valentine's Day with those you hold dear.

New wall hanging

I got tired of looking at my little wall hanging of a red bird sitting on a branch covered in snow and wanted something brighter and more in keeping with the summer season.

I think I started this little wall hanging in 2021 but it sat around waiting for me to decide to finish it. I found it just at the right time. It's machine quilted and now hangs in my hall. It was a free pattern I found somewhere on the internet and is 11 inches by 23 inches.

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.

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.
 

Quilt related

 Just a couple more rows for the Row by Row. 

A clearer picture or the finished rows.

I liked the look of this but the instructions that came with the kit were not very good at all. I ended up appliquing the top kite part.

This was a fun one to figure out.

 I may just use these last two as standalone quilts to put up on the wall.

The old and the new and more...

Over this past Christmas, I spent time in England with my youngest daughter and her family. Since Covid kept everyone celebrating with their own family, no one was coming over to our house so I thought I would celebrate with my youngest grandchildren, the twin boys and their 3 year old brother. I had a return ticket from my stay there last spring/summer so I surprised my daughter. They have a granny flat where I did my quarantine so it all worked out.

While I was there I came across this little quilt that I made for my youngest daughter, Ayla. The original design was in red, white and black (that is what was shown on the pattern) but both Ayla and I like turquoise. I think this may have been a kit from Connecting Threads. I didn't take note of the year that would have been on the label but it was probably less than 10 years ago.

Here's a little close-up of the quilting in the border.

Since it is now spring, I decided that my hall wall could use a bright, but small, wall hanging. I have liked this pattern for quite some time now and one clever blogger, Life in the Scrapatch took the free pattern called Pretty Posies from EQ and made it into a very easy pieced quilt. The only thing to keep in mind is which way you make the leaves. Some of them should be sewn reversed. Once I sewed the middle part together, I decided to audition a border.

As you can see, I didn't go with a green border.

I haven't had time to finish this. I was just thinking on machine quilting it so I didn't have to baste it or put it on a frame.


On a personal note: My husband passed away on May 27th. He had had emphysema for many years and only quit smoking about 4 or 5 years ago mainly because of the grandchildren. Sadly, it wasn't soon enough. My family has been a great help and they are (or will be) all here this month. I have been busy each and every day but this post has been on my mind to compose for a while.

And...

I just received my second dose of Pfizer on June 6th so my youngest daughter and I fully vaccinated. She lives in the UK so she got the vaccine earlier than we here in Canada. I can't believe how many people are not going to be vaccinated. I don't know if I want to be around them. Some are neighbours and others are friends and even relatives. All of my children have had at least one dose and are eager to get the second one when they are eligible.

Repairs

I am not a fan of doing repairs but some times, they have to get done.

This is a small wall hanging I made in 2010 as a napkin challenge that a blogger had. I liked it a lot but gave it to my middle daughter Maili.

She gave it back to me just after Christmas because little Teemu decided to play with the little beads that held the snowflakes on. The snowflakes were in a baggie and it didn't take long to re-attach them with some extra beads I had.

I did other repairs but they weren't as pretty as this. I still have to hem three skirts but I think I will put a quilt together first. It's a lap size kit that was given to me and I plan on donating it to those that have lost everything in Australia due to the fires.

Using up stash fat quarters

At the moment we have three grandchildren who live close by and we get to see them fairly regularly. My husband loves to do various activities with them like making instant chocolate pudding. We now have finger paints and paper. The little ones have always had to wear one of my aprons but they are way too big on two year olds. So, my husband requested child-sized aprons.

I made two of these little fat quarter aprons for the twins' birthday last fall. I got half a metre of the chili fabric on sale and when I cut it, because it was a half metre and not a half yard, I had enough fabric for the neck strap. The ties were made from broadcloth that I had and the bias was in my stash too.

There is one pocket in the middle made from the quarter circles that I cut for the arm sections. This pocket is doubled and then the curved part is flipped down. These aprons reside at the twins' home and I needed to make some more. 

I used the same pattern and once again, I only used a single fat quarter for each apron so that they aren't reversible. The pattern and tutorial are here.

I did wonder at first what fabrics I was going to use for the aprons but then I remembered that I had quite a few fat quarters that I wasn't too keen on using in quilts. I decided to use double fold bias binding for the ties and the neck portion. I have quite a few packages of bias binding to use up so everything came from my stash and I didn't have to buy anything for these little aprons.

Hard to see, but there are two pockets in the front. Once again, I used the quarter circle parts that get cut off the fat quarter for the arm portion. This time I folded the rounded part to the reverse of the fabric and just sewed it down so these pockets are triangles.

The colours are not true in this photo but they are close. It was fun to go through my buckets of bias binding to find the ones I wanted to use.

I didn't have enough of the navy blue bias binding to finish off the pockets but, since there was red in the fabric, I used my red bias.

I must say that these were fun to make. While I did fold up the selvage on the hem of one of the aprons, I decided to leave the other two 'as is.' Mainly because the selvages didn't have any writing on them.

I got to use up all my navy blue bias binding and all of this turquoise one too.

Here they are all together. I have no scraps left. All of the fat quarter got used up and I'm now off to do something else - like hand quilting.

This is the other end of the quilt that's on the frame.

Once these two blocks have been quilted as far as I can reach, I can take a couple of turns. I really think I should concentrate on this so I can get it off the frame and put something else on.

It's cold out and I'm staying in to put some stitches in this.

Fabric and ...

I really didn't buy much fabric on my trip but I did manage to get a bit. Remember this? I needed something a bit more oriental in flavour.

This is the beginning of the wall hanging my daughter wanted me to make. The idea is found in...

the October 2009 edition of McCall's Quilting.

Here's what other people have done with the pattern. The actual pattern for the quilt is found here.

Laila helped me pick these fabrics after I told her that I was looking for an Asian theme.

After reviewing all these fabrics, Maili decided on this.

But then when it was sewn together, she changed her mind and this is what the final quilt top looks like after a bit of reverse sewing.

She really liked the lighter blue that I had in my stash and thought that it went better as an inner frame for the photo.

This is what I bought for myself. A small piece of tone on tone brown and some blue that could pass for sky.

I also picked up an embroidery foot for my little Jenome Jem. Now I have to go and quilt the wall hanging.