25 blocks for Dear Jane finished!

Just finished these two blocks tonight which gets me silver status on the Dear Jane list! Now onward ho to 50! This is E2 Merry May. The center is appliquéd and the borders added on my Singer treadle.

Block 25 is H 4 Abbey's Eyes. It is hand pieced.

Garden Fairy Pillows

I found the coolest panel of garden fairies at the Marsh Store last summer. They were perfect for making lap pillows for my friends to use for appliqué and other handwork. It raises your work surface while doing handwork and you can poke pins and needles in it as well...a giant pin cushion! The first one was for my friend Lynn for her birthday in September. The caption on the panel says "There you go again, blooming instead of aging".
Susan got hers for her birthday in November. Hers says "When you share a moment with a special friend, it becomes a lovable memory."

Amy got hers for her birthday in January. Hers says, "What would I ever do without a special friend like you".

Christine got her pillow for Christmas: "Celebrating another year as friends".

By this time I wanted a pillow too :-). There was one panel that wasn't really aimed at friendship. It says, "Gather joy - spread happiness; embrace the gift of life." So, this is the one I made for myself. I am using it a lot when hand piecing my Psalm blocks and appliquéing and hand piecing my Dear Jane blocks.

Update on Psalms and DJ blocks

I got a couple more Psalms blocks finished in the last few weeks. This one is Psalm 71 (based on vs. 14-16) and entitled Three Cheers:

Swamp Angel is from Psalm 91: 9 - 11:

Here is Psalm 27: 4 - 5 called David and Goliath. This is the block that was slowing me down; it has 41 pieces :-).

I went to a sewing retreat day with my local quilt guild and made three more blocks for my Dear Jane quilt. They are: A-8 Florence Nightingale, A-4 Courtney's Stethoscope and A-5 Cathie's Campfire. A-4 took me all morning! I must not have been awake yet and kept having to rip things out. I even forgot my stitch ripper, but my neighbour had one :-). I did get another block all ready to sew so I hope to put that one together soon.

A new Sheep venture!

My friend Joan's daughter, Christina, made a poster for Joan for Christmas with a number of sheep on it using puns for the inscriptions...a sheep mermaid was 'mersheep', etc. The sheep were the cutest, simple sheep and I immediately thought of redwork. I got Christina to draw me a couple of special 'quilters' sheep' with sentimental sayings. This is the first one she drew:


I stitched the sheep with two strands of black embroidery floss on white cotton and wrote the words on the banner with a pigma pen. I had some black and white FQ's that I picked up last year and two of them worked very well for this little wallhanging for my friend Susan for Christmas. If I do another one, I'll add some red triangles in the corners and possibly cut the white center square a little smaller. I find there's a lot of white on it. The meander quilting is done on my 15-88 Singer treadle. Here is the label that is on the back:

These sheep drawings would make really cute notecards as well. There may be more sheep coming :-).

Some more Dear Jane blocks

Here are a few more DJ blocks that I finished over the Christmas holiday. A 7 Dad's Plaids


E 10 Five & Dime:

A 1 Josepha's Jonquil:

K 7 Rose of Sharing:

Sandra's Quilt

This quilt was made for my friend Sandra. Her husband brought me a huge bag of upholstery samples from the patio furniture business they run together. He asked me to make her a quilt for Christmas. It was a bit of a challenge to put together, but it did work. I used Thermore for just a hint of batting and just simply quilted it about 1/2" from each seam. The red fabric is a wide backing fabric which worked well for the inner border and binding.

Birthday gift for Joan

Joan's birthday was December 19. Friends Lynn and Amy went to the Creative Needlework Festival in Toronto in October and found the kit for this wall hanging. They said it had Joan's name written all over it, so they bought it, sent it to me to make it and give it to Joan on her birthday from the three of us. Somehow, I think they got the easier part of the deal LOL. Joan is a knitter and dyes and spins her own yarn, so this was appropriate for her. I changed some of the colours in the kit. I did not actually knit the little piece on the toothpicks :-). I knit it on regular knitting needles and then knit the last two rows onto the toothpicks. See Joan, I DO know how to knit!!


I did not want to ask Joan for a bit of real wool or she'd get suspicious that I was making her something, so I used acrylic yarn to knit the piece since that's all I have in the house. Her first reaction was: "But, it's acrylic yarn!" I think it's definitely an acrylic sheep! LOL It is hanging in her livingroom with all the other sheep artifacts. The pattern is "Knittin' Pearl" by applepatch designs.

Senior's Dinner sewing

A friend and I got together on three separate occasions and made 44 coasters and 6 table toppers for our Church's Senior's Dinner in December. We had a great time sewing together and using up some of my long time collection of Christmas scraps. We made a paper pieced candle and strip pieced coaster set in matching colours.
Here are some of the table toppers we made before the binding was hand stitched on them:



The Seniors got to take theirs home and the table toppers were distributed to those who helped serve the dinner. I think I need many more huge banquets if I am to make a dent in my Christmas fabrics! :-)