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 :-).

Another cube!

I finally got to the Marsh Store on Thursday and picked up the "One block Wonders - Encore" book with the patterns for the cubes. While I was there, I found a background fabric to use in between the cubes.

I made another cube last night...the bottom right one. It's called the 'bottom slice' :-). These cubes are so fun to work on, but you do have to keep your wits about you when sewing them. When you have them close up on the sewing table, you don't get the cube look...they look like trapezoids and triangles! The center seam is not sewn yet as you have to do that last. I have another one half finished, and hope to post a few more soon.

A New Iron

I broke down Friday and bought a new iron :-). My trusty iron has been spitting and coughing for a bit and I decided it's time to retire it before I burn myself. Checked out the irons and found this lovely pink one...what fun. I haven't tried it out yet, but hope to take it for a test run on Monday. Isn't it nice and shiny? My favourite job of ironing fabric will be even more fun now.

Another UFO finished!

In November 2006 (I think that is the correct date :-), I attended an applique workshop taught by Cynthia Tomaszewski, through the London Friendship Quilt Guild. Cynthia was a delightful teacher and made the class so much fun! We learned freezer paper applique and fusible with a blanket or fancy stitch. This is her sample of the wallhanging that we made:


Here is a leaf shape that I practised on:


The fusible with blanket stitch flower:

The leaves were appliqued with needle turn around freezer paper shapes:


Center appliqued and borders on:

The completed handquilted wallhanging (finally!). I sewed buttons in the centers of the flowers.

Wow, it feels good to get this little wallhanging finished! It just kept getting shoved to the bottom of the pile and delayed in our two moves. Now to find a spot to hang it up!