Announcing! Spinning Four Patch pattern now available!

I am very pleased to announce the release of my first pattern, Spinning Four Patch. Included are the complete instructions for a 45 1/2" square quilt.


Pictures of this quilt I made for Daniella as a baby shower gift can be seen here.
Included in this package:
- Actual photos in full colour
- Tutorial on how to choose fabric for this project
- 12 page booklet with 6 pages dedicated to detailed instructions
- Full supply list for this project

Bonus: each pattern booklet includes four identical fabric squares so you can "play" with them and rearrange them to try out the 'spinning' concept.

PRICE: $9.00 US or $9.00 CDN which includes postage.

We will be happy to ship worldwide for a small additional fee to cover postage.

Order your patterns here.

PayPal is available for your convenience.

Sheep Bags!

I went shopping with a friend awhile ago and we came across this wonderful canvas type fabric with these bright sheep on it. Here and there was a black sheep in the middle of all those bright ones. We just fell in love with the fabric and imagined the wonderful tote bags we could make out of it.

Joan and I got together one day and sewed up a storm! Check out all the black sheep bags. Joan and her daughter had started the day before and made up a couple samples from different fabric.


I finally got mine done last week. This is the back showing the black sheep:


This is the front of the bag. I added a pocket on the front of mine using bright blue vinyl:

Yesterday, I went on a day out with four friends. Three of them already had sheep bags and Joan made one more bag for the Susan. We all had matching sheep bags for our excursion to see a wedding dress display at a museum, a lovely lunch out together and a trip to the local quilt shop. We did get quite the looks walking down the street with these bright bags LOL. On Monday afternoon, I got out my sheep scraps and put together five little sewing pouches to match our bags. Here are the five pouches:



I added small blue vinyl pockets on each pouch with a seam down the middle. It will hold scissors or a rotary cutter, spools of thread and needles for hand sewing or quilting:

I also found the cutest little labels at a scrapbooking store with Pals on it. They are made by Junkitz Labelz. They are perfect for friends!


Quilters do have a lot of fun, don't they? :-)

Josh and Janneke's quilt

Today was my nephew Josh's wedding to Janneke. The wedding was very nice and the weather was perfect! This is the quilt that I made for their wedding gift. It was so much fun to make. The pattern comes from Bonnie Hunter's www.quiltville.com site. It is from the leaders/enders section. I started it in February of 2005, cutting out blue and white or cream 2" squares and pairing them together into four patches. I also cut triangle squares from 3 1/2" strips of whites/creams and blues as per the instructions on Bonnie's page. I used those pieces as leaders/enders (or thread pads as I was taught :-) for several months. I put them together into a 60" square quilt and then added 2 1/2" blue borders to frame it. I had a lot of fun quilting feathers into the light diagonals with light blue variegated King Tut thread. I quilted leaves into the border. By this time, I had done a lot of leaves and got brave enough to use contrasting thread on the blue borders! Actually, I was too lazy to look for darker blue thread :-). I was very happy with the way it turned out. Here is the completed quilt:

A closeup of the border and feather quilting:

The Feathers:

The center of the quilt:

The label:

Amazing what can be accomplished while you're working on other quilts! Thanks so much Bonnie for the wonderful inspiration!! I loved this quilt so much that I almost didn't want to give it away...solution? Start another leader/ender quilt in blue and white! Again, it is pieced and quilted on my trusty 15-88 Singer Centennial treadle made in 1951 in Canada. Did I ever mention that I LOVE this machine? :-)

Nick and Anita's Quilt

Here is the latest quilt I finished. It was for Nick and Anita, who got married on July 14th. I couldn't post the pictures earlier, because a) the quilt wasn't quite finished; b) it had to be mailed in the US and c) I didn't want Anita and Nick to see it on the blog before they actually got it! Just heard that they have received the quilt in the mail so here it is! We went on vacation (and to a sewing machine collector's gathering) in Michigan the week after the wedding, so I took the quilt along, finished hand stitching the binding and attached the label. We then took it to a Post Office we found along the way and the friendly clerk (who was born in Canada!) helped us mail out the quilt in a 'foreign' country :-). Nick is an American and they moved to the US after the wedding. The quilt pattern is from Bonnie Hunter's wonderful website www.quiltville.com. It is made from 2 1/2" strips and called "Boxy Stars". If you look carefully at some of the corners of the star blocks, they look like three dimensional boxes.

I started auditioning fabrics to blend with the border fabric from the "Giverny" line. The white with little green flowers was perfect for the background and centers of the stars.


A closeup of the border fabrics:

The quilt is entirely pieced and quilted on my trusty 15-88 Singer treadle from 1951. I quilted leaves in the sashings. The green corner squares and navy blue sashings were of leftover fabrics from Ben and Heather's quilt.

A closeup of the quilting in the block. I also got brave and did the outline quilting around the star freehand. I was happy with the results. This will greatly help quilting on a large quilt....no more wrestling with a huge quilt turning it at every corner!


It's a little hard to see, but I quilted freehand feathers in the border of the quilt. I had never done feathers before and figured this would be a good border to practise on. I'm including two pictures of it. If you click on the picture you may be able to see it better.

The label: