My family

It was one year ago yesterday that my mom passed away. My children were all so solicitous of me and how I was taking the day. My eldest daughter in BC phoned me and my youngest daughter, who is in the UK, and I talked via skype. I saw all the others in person over a dinner of pizza.

 This is my family - minus the significant others. The photo was taken during our second Christmas in January when they all managed to be here. I received a very nice commemorative photo book yesterday from my eldest daughter so this is a photo of a photo - hence my thumb in the lower left.

 And I got flowers.

And even more flowers.

From the best family in the world.

I did not go to visit my mom's gravesite. It was freezing cold yesterday and I thought about it. I would much rather commemorate my mom's birthday which is in May, very close to Mother's Day.

One more top finished and...

Here it is, all complete. I didn't take any progress photos - just this finished one. The baby quilt measures roughly 36" X 44" now. The yellow strips are actually beige.

And we started this one. I wanted to see how big 8 inch squares were. I knew they were going to be way too big for a baby quilt but Marg thought they would be fine - until I laid them out. Oh well, this is a learning curve. We will be going a little at a time with this since the pattern this is based on it a lap sized quilt 62" X 79" or thereabouts. We will be making it more like the other baby quilts 36" X 44" or 48."

 Spring, Easter and my Peeps. I sent some to my grandsons too and there is a watermelon flavour I have yet to find.

I made a fabric basket. Actually, I made two other ones too but I forgot to take a photo before sealing up the box and shipping it away. They were Easter baskets for my grandsons. I have asked my daughter to take a picture and send it to me so once I have it, I will show you.

 This basket in the photo above started out at 18" by 15". It is big and I went with my own measurements. The tutorial/pattern is here. Super easy to make.

 This is the beginning of a change pad. Cut to size and corners rounded. I used a saucer as my template.

I had my choice of pink, yellow, green, blue or mauve to trim it in. Or white. I had lots and lots of white. Since we don't know if the baby will be a boy or a girl, a neutral colour was what I chose.

I had a big enough piece left to make three change pads. One will be used here at my house and one will be put away for a future little one and one will go to my daughter (who is due in May.)

And I leave you with this photo of my little granddaughters getting their daily exercise in. That's pops supervising. It took forever to get a good photo because they wouldn't stay still long enough.

Have a great weekend. I am off to a quilt show tomorrow so hopefully, there will be some inspirational photos coming up soon.

 Happy 2nd Birthday to Patric on Sunday!!!

Continuing on...

The Champagne Quilters met last night. I wanted to attend a guild meeting Wednesday night and asked Marg if we could meet Thursday night instead. She is very accommodating. Ann even managed to come out.

These are the bigger crazy stars that we had left. They were trimmed down to about 12.25 inches since the edges were all uneven. Since we didn't need the length so much as the width, Marg found some white on white so I added a two inch border to the sides. Next up was the frame that ended up being 1.5 inches finished. 

 Then we added this strip. Notice that it is not the same size on the ends as on the sides.

Once again we started auditioning what would come next. I'm not really a fan of this colour.

We didn't come to any solid conclusion so we decided that we would leave it for a week and decide later what we wanted to put on it next. It measures about 23 inches by 40 inches so far.

One week when Marg and I were talking about the charity that these quilts will be going to, I mentioned the little hats that I was knitting. Marg asked if crocheted hats would be okay and I said yes, of course. Well, here they are. She made five.

A lady at Marg's church brought over some fabrics (yardage, not scraps) for us and she even gave us the rubbermaid bin. One piece had a retail sales slip and the fabric was purchased in Buffalo, NY, at a Joann's in 1995. There was also a big baggie with all of this in it. Beads, eyes, long needles, bells and other goodies. Since Marg doesn't  make dolls and Ann doesn't either anymore, I took it home. There was a quite a bit of that paper ribbon or raffia looking stuff. I have no idea what to do with it. Oh well, if all else fails, I do have a Value Village just down the street from me.

I leave you with a photo of my tulips. These were a treat to myself.

I hope you all have a great weekend. 

Stay safe.

Spring?

It must be just around the corner. The clocks have been turned and there's a newness in the air. I have crossed things off my list.

This quilt, that I named Ontario Autumn, is now bound and has a label.

This quilt started as a baby quilt top that Kate North put together. She had several tops that needed to be quilted and so she offered them to her readers. Her only criteria was that they be donated to charity. The Champagne quilters got together and added a couple of rows and some borders to make it bigger - single bed size. This is now bound and has a label. Marg suggested that we donate it to a small church so that they could raffle it off.

My little flag quilt also has a label so binding quilts and adding labels are now crossed off my list.

 I needed a little bit of colour and a little bit of spring in my life.

Crocus, daffodils,

grape hyacinths and 

regular hyacinths are gracing my kitchen with their colour and scent. All for 99 cents a pot.

I started a new sweater. I shouldn't have. I need to finish a couple of little sweaters first but this is chunky yarn and won't take long to do.

We went shopping today and since strawberries were on sale, I picked up two boxes.

It was this evening, as I was cleaning and cutting up the strawberries, that I found this fist-sized berry.

Yes spring is just around the corner and for the next several days the temperatures will be climbing. I'm sure the snow will be melting and we'll have major puddles to navigate around. We didn't get as much snow as our neighbours to the south but we have had freezing temperatures for a bit too long.

I shall enjoy next week and will be crossing more things off my list.
I'm linking up to Linky Tuesday over at Freemotion by the River and
The Needle and Thread Network.

Building a quilt - Part Two

Last night we finished off the first baby quilt top.

This was where we left off last week.

The mauve borders and the rest of the small stars were added. We always audition our fabric on the floor and here we have the two pinks. I really didn't want to add yet another strip and there really wasn't much left of the lighter pink.

I thought this was much better but we didn't need that much width. So we decided to add two inch finished borders on the sides and three inch borders on the length.

Done. Finished. We are quite happy with it. I think it finished at 36" X 40."

We even managed to find backing fabric. This is actually quite a nice pink and it has purple flowers.

Next week we will be making these three big stars into a baby quilt. Those are some of the fabrics that we chose. Since the stars are roughly 12 inch squares, we will be adding a bit more white onto the sides before we start adding borders. The broadcloth will probably become a thin border just like the purple in the previous quilt. We may even use it for backing, cutting it wider so we can then bring it to the front to bind it. It will save us that one extra step of cutting and sewing on binding. We used to do it quite often in years past.