Callie's Polka Dot quilt

This quilt was finally delivered a few weeks ago! I managed to get it to the baby before she turned 15 :-). That was my aim and I got it there two days after her first birthday. Here is Ruth's photo of the quilt:


This photo was taken at the Parry Sound retreat in September where I finished it:

Quilting in progress at the retreat:Closeup of the blocks....it was fun collecting the polka dots for this project. I exchanged polka dot fabrics for several months by mail with my cyberfriend, Rosa, from New Brunswick. Everytime we found a polka dot, we would buy a FQ and share half of it with each other. A lot of fun mail travelled across Canada for awhile :-).
My daughter in law, Jannyne, helped me pick out the fabrics for Ruth's quilt. Here they are with the backing that Rosa also sent to me:

There are lots more polka dot fabrics for the next quilt to make :-).
I have already made another quilt with the polka dot stash for my niece, Melanie.

Christmas tree skirts

Two Christmas tree skirts were completed this Christmas. This one is for my son's girlfriend's Mom :-). Becky helped me choose the colours and pattern she wanted for the gift for her Mom from both of us. This pattern was in an old issue from Fall/Winter 1992 Traditional Quiltworks' Third Annual Christmas Special. I've used this magazine a lot...the cover's totally torn off the magazine. The pattern is called "Kaleidoscope of Stars" by Mary Jobe Mason. I'm actually working on hand piecing one just like it, but of course that one's nowhere near done :-). Maybe next year. It is completely cut out with templates and there are a LOT of inset seams. Gave me good practise.

Closeup of the border....I meandered in the green sections and quilted a five pointed star in the cardinal section.

The back shows the quilting a little better:

The center stars with cardinal fabric in the centers:

This tree skirt was from Quiltmaker's issue #76 from Nov./Dec. 2000. The pattern is by Mary B. Hayes. It is a fun pattern and easy to sew. But, placing the colours is a challenge. I made this one a few years ago for my oldest son's wife, and it was mainly done in same tones of various green fabrics and the star is not noticeable at all. The original pattern has such busy fabrics that I didn't realize there were triangle squares in it until I started cutting out the fabrics! Placing the contrasting colours in this tree skirt really made the star stand out. This tree skirt was given to my youngest son's wife and was actually her gift from last year! I did get it completed in time to put it under their tree and it looks beautiful in their front hall.

It is basically quilted with diagonal lines:

Plowing Match blocks

Deb and I got together this morning to make our plowing match blocks. The Plowing Match will be held close to St. Thomas next year and, of course, there is a quilt block competition. We made these blocks to participate, not win any competitions :-). The deadline was December 31st, so we figured we had better get moving LOL! I've only had the kit since last May or June. The fabrics are from Northcott and were included in the kit. We had to use at least four of them and were not allowed to add anything else. I ended up using all five colours and the name of this block is "noon and night".


Deb used four of the five colours in her block, Lacy Lattice Work. (The block is square! I took the photo from a slight angle :-(.

We filled out the accompanying entry form for the blocks, put them in an envelope and put stamps on it and they are in the mail! Nice to have those out of the way on time :-). Now on to other UFO's. Can't wait to see what kind of quilt they make from the winning blocks.

Jannyne's table runner

This table runner was made for my daughter in law, Jannyne. The center blocks are the Spinning Four Patch block using a kind of paisley fabric. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough length to be able to cut borders from the original fabric to fit the sides of the runner and they would have to be cut mirror image to look nice. So I decided to leave it fairly narrow and use the original fabric as the binding. This is the finished runner. Sorry for the dark photo as I couldn't wait for better light since it had to be wrapped :-).


This photo shows the exact colours of the table runner:

Closeup of the quilting in the center blocks:

Joann's table runner

My friend, Deb, was attending the Creativ Festival in Toronto, which was held in October this year with another friend. They planned to take the train and spend the day together. Joann could not make it at the last minute and insisted that I have her ticket as a gift! Deb and I got together a week or so later and raided my Christmas stash and made this table runner for her. We took her out for lunch and presented her with the runner as a thank you for this wonderful gift. I had never been to the Festival before and it was a real treat to go by train and not have to worry about traffic and parking. We left at 7:00 a.m. and arrived back home at 10:30, tired, but very satisfied with our lovely outing. Here is the finished runner. The runner was made from a pattern in a Fons & Porter magazine. I made one previously for a friend of mine.

This picture shows the quilting on the table runner. I just stippled around the antique postcards in the center panel, outlined the poinsettias in the end borders and quilted x's in the piano key borders. All the fabrics for this table runner were in my stash :-).


I had enough of the center antique postcard panel and the piano key borders to make a second runner. See the following blog post for the second table topper:

Becky's Table runner

This Christmas runner was made for my son's girlfriend, Becky. It was inspired by a pattern in a Fons & Porter magazine that used large scale prints and panels with scrappy strips. I already made a table runner last summer with this pattern and have been keeping my eyes open for other fabrics that I could use for more of these fun runners. The antique postcard fabric and the one with the large Christmas words have been in my stash for a few years. Here is the finished table runner:

Quilting in the center panel:

I did a small stipple quilting between the words in the end borders:

Stars were quilted in the piano key borders connected with loops and a striped binding cut on the bias finished the quilt off. I found the Moose print batik fabric in the clearance bin in a quilt shop in Huntsville, ON on a summer vacation a few years ago.

QUILTS FOR COLOMBIA

An ongoing project of the Mission Circle, which I belong to, has been making quilts for Word & Deed's projects in Colombia. Word & Deed has a child sponsorship program and operates many schools for children around the world. Several members of our Mission Circle have visited a home for girls in Colombia and, after hearing the stories of their visits, we decided to make quilts for all the girls in the home. Our first batch of 55 quilts was sent over a few years ago. Recently, the director of the project was speaking at a fundraising dinner in our area, so we decided to try and finish as many quilts as possible for her to take along and wrap more children with love! We spent a number of days working away and managed to get 27 quilts finished in time for the dinner. We make simple quilts by cutting donated fabric into 6 1/2" squares and laying them out in a diagonal pattern.

This bucket of squares is awaiting future quilt projects :

Once the tops are assembled, we get together to sandwich the tops with batting and backing and prepare the binding....here is the bucket of potential binding fabrics and a box of backings:


One of the ladies takes them home and 'machine ties' the corners of each square. The binding is also applied and they return all neatly folded on a hanger, ready for hand stitching it to the back (and the hangers even match!!):

A stack of quilts ready to be pinned:

My helper that day (Joan) got a little carried away by the batting and thought she might make a good Santa Claus LOL!

Margaret busily ironing the backing for a quilt:

Dora, our master binding ironer!! (hmmm, spell checker doesn't like that word :-). Dora ironed bindings all day long :-).

We do take a break for lunch and we always have a loaf of homemade bread and Alie's yummy meatball soup :-). I forgot to take a picture of the soup:

At our meetings, we work on stitching the binding down by hand while we listen to reports and letters from various missionaries around the world. (Left to right) Dora, Amanda, Margaret and Alie working hard:

Front to back; Jacqueline, Gerda, Joanne and Bertha:


Alie, Bertha, Joanne and Gerda:


Some of the quilts are also taken home to hand stitch. One of my quilt students, Corinna, even took a couple home to finish. Thanks Corinna!! And, Dora handstitched 10 or 11 of the quilts herself!! Wow, she's our expert hand stitcher!! Here Alie is getting started on one of them with a pile of totally finished quilts beside her:

Here are a few of the quilts completed or almost completed. Amazing what can be done from many peoples' discarded fabrics! There are many ugly fabrics that show up, but if you pair them with the right colours, they are wonderful.





We got this partially completed quilt from someone and had a lot of fun designing a little baby quilt with the story of Noah's Ark. Margaret stitched this quilt in the ditch around the blocks and I meandered the borders:


The back of the Noah's Ark quilt:

We pray that these quilts will share our love with these children in Colombia! If you have any 100% cotton fabrics that are lonely and need other fabrics to 'play with' or batting or backings that you want to get rid of, let me know and we can put it to very good use.

Monkey Quilt

This was a really fun quilt to work on. I collected FQ's of the sock monkey fabrics for awhile (found my first FQ's of it a few years ago while vacationing in Michigan). I only added one extra yellow with tiny polka dots, but the rest are all from the sock monkey line. I used the Crazy 8's pattern from Bits 'n Pieces. This is a quick quilt to make as there are no borders. I just meandered it all over with yellow quilting thread. Here is a closer up picture of the quilting (click on the picture to enlarge it):

The label:

The whole quilt all finished! It went to a new Mom in my Church for her little boy, Andrew Nathaniel.

Three sister's Quilts

My sister from BC visited me in June for the first time in 14 years. We had a great time catching up. I had only been quilting for a few years the last time she was here so we had a great time exploring patterns, fabric, UFO's, etc. She was intrigued with the Spinning Four Patch and when I told her I was contemplating doing a mini, she was all excited. She loves miniatures even more than I do :-). I let her loose in my fabric stash with the instruction to find a small scale busy print that she liked. She chose a pretty sea shell fabric that I had purchased for another project, but it was not suitable so went into the stash. It was perfect for this project. We cut out the squares 1 3/4". Here you see Thea playing with the layouts of the squares and coming up with her favourites.

Squares ready to sew together:

First squares sewn and on the design wall:

We had quite a few squares so decided that we would get our youngest sister, Eva, involved as well and make three little quilts. We would each choose our own colours for sashing and binding and our own layout. Thea chose her favourite colour combination, blue and yellow and decided on this layout:

Not sure if the quilting in the border shows up on the photo (click on it to enlarge it), but I quilted stars and loops in the border:

Eva chose to set her blocks on point and have hers made into a mini table runner for her patio table and chose blue and pink for her accent colours:

I quilted little funky flowers in the light blue squares:


Quilting on the back of the quilt:

I decided to make a little doll quilt for one of my antique doll beds and went for the brighter red for mine. I also set the squares on point and added a narrow gold border and used the same for binding:

I quilted pansies in the blocks and swirlies in the border:


Here are the three quilts altogether:

Now to wrap them up for Christmas and get the one for Thea in the mail :-).