"Baby" Clothes

It's about time to update my blog! It's been a busy Christmas vacation so far. I spent some time before Christmas making doll clothes for my two granddaughters. I bought these dolls for them last year and bought two extra ones as another granddaughter was born just before Christmas and I keep one of the dolls at home so I can make things for them. It was so much fun making these clothes for the dolls! First up was a 'sleep sack' inspired by my friend Joan. The sleep sacks keep babies nice and cozy and warm in bed! The doll pattern I had even supplied a pattern for them....doesn't she look so warm and cozy?

Fitted diapers were next on the list of 'must haves' for my 'babies' :-). The bib was a quick and easy addition (the hat came with the baby's original clothes).


I just love the cute little bum LOL!

Diaper bags to put all the new items in:

Lauren's doll carry bed:

Leah's doll carry bed:


My granddaughter Lauren with her baby things ( also added a change pad and found a couple 'magic' bottles at Walmart):


The younger granddaughter, Leah with her baby tucked in warm and cozy with the little quilt I made last year:

Basket Psalms block

I finally finished another Psalms block! This one was a lot of fiddle fussy handpiecing so I kept putting it off :-). I have three more blocks to do for this quilt and they are easier ones. I hope to finish them over Christmas. The basket is called Berry Basket and was chosen to represent the line of Psalm 145: "The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time." The front of the block:


I had a hard time figuring out which way to press the seams. Pressing them toward the dark would produce too many bulky intersections, so finally I just kind of tossed the iron at the block and closed my eyes and pressed LOL. I will have to trim the dark seams and all the points so they can't be seen through the light background.

A mini chef

My son's girlfriend asked me to make a chef's hat and apron for her little five year old cousin. We spent some time digging through my closet to find cool fabrics for the project. We made it reversible so one side could be used for crafting and the other side for cooking. It was a fun project to work on.

Quilt Guild retreat

Mary-Lou sent a few more pictures which I added just now. Thanks Mary-Lou!

I attended a very enjoyable retreat from my local small quilt guild today. We had a great day together and accomplished a lot! Our guild has 17 or 18 members and we meet at each others' homes for show and tell, brainstorming and enjoying good food and fellowship. At our last meeting, we were all paired up to get to know another member better and work on a charity quilt for chemo patients at our local hospital. Several of us worked on these quilts and others worked on Christmas gifts or other UFO's. Here is my partner, Yvonne, working on purple and blue Boxy Stars from Bonnie Hunter's great site. We chose a pansy fabric with reds, greens, blues, purples and golds for our border and started cutting strips from our stashes that blended with this fabric. Here is Yvonne working hard on her purple and blue version of boxy stars:


Pat P was working on a quilt using Australian fabrics that her son brought from Australia.

Mary-Lou's taking a coffee break while working on a stained glass applique:

Mary-Lou sent this picture of her stained glass butterfly top so far so we can see that she didn't sit and drink coffee all day LOL:


Jessie working hard on her blue and yellow charity quilt that she is making together with Chris:

Chris working hard at her machine:

Hmm...how shall we lay out the blocks? A big advantage of working on a project at a retreat is getting help and lots of opinions :-). Here Mary Lou is giving Jessie a hand:

Chris and Jessie with their finished top!

Chatting is also a big part of a retreat :-). The conversation had something to do with being short! Heather is making a point while Anne's working hard and Pat O is listening:

Anne posing between the two shorties LOL:

Heather is working on a snowman Christmas quilt using a charm pack:

Denise had 12 hand embroidered squares done by her Mother and was squaring them up to add sashing:

The blocks were awesome and so nicely done:

Denise sewed a lovely blue sashing between the blocks:

Mary-Lou sent this picture of Denise's finished top:



Cynthia taking a break from sewing very diligently on her Cobblestones quilt from a Heather Stewart workshop at the London Friendship Quilt Guild.

Carolyn, deep in thought over the next cut to make :-):

Of course I didn't get a chance to take a picture of myself working hard, but I did get lots done...here is the evidence :-). Red and green Boxy Stars with a gold center. But, when we put the original focus pansy fabric alongside the blocks for a border, it looked terrible! So, we brainstormed that these blocks would look best without sashings and I will add a small border of the background white fabric and then look for a green fabric in my stash for a border.

Mary-Lou sent this picture of me working at my station, so you can see proof that I was actually there myself LOL:

Of course, no retreat is complete without goodies. There was plenty of coffee and tea and wonderful squares, and, of course, chocolate!

We enjoyed a delicious lunch at the Wayside Inn. It certainly was an enjoyable day. Thanks so much Pat P for organizing it!

Chatelaine for Quilt Guild

I got together with Gail on Wednesday night to finally get started on our guild chatelaine. I bought the kit more than two years ago when I became a member! About time to start on it. As you can see from the photo, it's no wonder that I didn't tackle it earlier LOL...this block is the emblem of our guild and I'm handpiecing it. Some of the pieces are so small I don't think I'd be able to get them under my sewing machine needle! Easier by hand, I think. Good thing I had all that practise with the Psalms blocks and Dear Jane blocks. There are 37 pieces and the block ends up being 4 1/4"!! I have the bottom corners together. Hopefully I can show you a photo of the finished block soon.

If you wear your chatelaine to the meetings you get an extra ticket for the draw :-). That should give some incentive to finish it soon!

Large Underground Railroad Quilt

As promised, here are some pictures of the other Underground Railroad quilt I made using the 12" blocks from Eleanor Burns book, "Underground Railroad". Sorry about the poor quality of the pictures, but it was a little big for my design wall and is quite close to the fluorescent light at the ceiling. That seems to throw the colours off a bit and it's not hanging straight either! At least you get the idea! We had a huge pile of snow today, so I can't go outside and take a picture :-). Hopefully, someday I can get a better picture and I will add it to this post then.

This quilt was done as a group project with 6 ladies that I met while living in Ancaster when DH went back to University to get his BEd degree. We lived in an apartment and came home on weekends occasionally where our son was 'holding the fort' :-). I worked at the Quilt Rack in Ancaster for those two years and met a lot of wonderful quilters. Getting together to sew in the evenings was great while DH was studying and attending classes. Each of us chose two blocks and made 6 identical ones. I did the basket block and the flying geese block. We sewed the log cabin blocks together one evening and each person did their own label block. I didn't have quite enough of the border fabric so had to get creative with the corners. I ended up having to piece the last 1 1/2" tan strip as I was running out of fabric! I put a solid blue strip in the center of each border and just managed. There are many fond memories in this quilt!

I love this block! In a moment of insanity, I thought it would cool to handquilt a cable in the sashings! It took quite awhile to do this, but I really like it. But, now I really should handquilt the border too! I may quilt some feathers in the outside border.


One of the blocks that I sewed:

The label was copied onto fabric at a copy shop using the same process as printing on a Tshirt. I added leftover bits from my mini Underground Railroad quilt to make the block 12".


Picture is a bit crooked, but here you can see the corner block. The colours are much more accurate on this picture.

Underground Railroad Miniature Quilt

It's about time I update my blog! I have several projects I could post, but hadn't taken any pictures yet. Finally got around to photos of this Underground Railroad Mini quilt I finished. I started this quilt when I worked at the Quilt Rack in Ancaster three years ago. We were teaching classes using Eleanor Burn's Underground Railroad book incorporating readings from Underground Railroad history and having speakers and special guests in to augment the classes. As we made the 12" sample blocks for the quilt, I made the 6" miniature version of the blocks. I finally got the quilt finished in time for our guild show two weeks ago. However, I'm not really happy with the quilting in the sashings and I'm thinking of taking it out. And, I've finally come up with a brainstorm for a quilt design in the border, so I hope to get at that soon.


Some closer up pictures of each corner of the quilt:






The label was printed on cotton fabric at a copy shop using the same process as printing onto a T-shirt.

Becky's birthday table topper

Found this cool cat sayings FQ at a quilt shop on a recent shopping trip and bought it to make something for my son's girlfriend, who is a real cat lover. It's from a line of fabrics called XOXOXO The Cat. I couldn't decide what to do with it because I didn't want to cut up the cool sayings. But, if you leave something on your sewing table long enough, inspiration will come eventually :-). I received my package in the mail from Mr. B's Preview Pack Club. This quarterly's pack of squares feature London cats...sophisticated cats visiting London and checking out the double decker buses and other tourist attractions in London, England. I sewed an assortment of the squares around the center panel and added a navy blue border with a little motif that looks a little bit like cat's paws and made a small table topper for Becky's birthday. Here is the cat panel....if you click on the picture, you should be able to read the sayings:


The finished table topper. I quilted around the squares printed on the panel and meandered through the large squares and the border putting a cat in each corner. The cats did not show up on the picture as it was too dark :-).

E 3 Paddle Wheels

I finally got another Dear Jane block finished on an impulse this afternoon. I was cleaning out my sewing room when I came across a pattern I'd printed out a long time ago. Since my cutting table was empty and my blue and white fabrics accessible (because of the cleanup :-), I had just enough time to make this little block. It does look like paddle wheels! This makes 52 blocks out of 169 and I've got my first year in of my 10 year aim! Should be able to get the project done within my 10 year goal.

Jenn & Scott's Quilt

Jenn and Scott were married on Saturday, September 20th. I made this lap quilt for them and finished off an old UFO in the process. I had originally done these blocks for my granddaughter, but couldn't get the quilt together. I finally found the border fabric and the triangle setting square fabrics up North while we were on vacation one year and it began to come together. The fabrics are from a line called "Lauren" and they are very hard to match up with anything else. One of the pink triangle setting fabrics is a Jinny Beyer and the green narrow border and striped binding are Robyn Pandolph fabrics. The border polka dot fabric really pulled it all together. I went over to my quilt buddy, Gail's place one evening this summer and we experimented with the layout of the blocks to come up with this. The quilt is about 55" square.

I put in "lippy's" (as Lucy from the Quilt Rack in Ancaster likes to call the flat piping between seams) of dark green around the center blocks which tied the narrow border in well. The quilting in the center triangles:


The diagonal grid in the border was great since I could follow the lines of polka dots:


It was difficult to decide on quilting for the four patch blocks. I didn't want to take away from the blocks. A friend suggested a curved line. I put a dot 1" away from the edge of the block in the centers of the four sides and 'eyeballed' the curve...worked great!

A closeup of the quilt motif in the triangles:


This quilt was pieced and quilted on my trusty Singer 15-88 treadle. The free motion quilting was done on a Bernina 830 that I just picked up and had to take for a test drive :-).

I have a vintage walking foot, affectionally known as a penguin foot, for my low shank Singer machines and this foot does a fantastic job of stitching in the ditch.


Here is a side view...doesn't it look a little bit like a penguin? :-)