Dr. Suess Quilt

When the Dr. Suess prints came out, I just had to have a bundle of them. Shirley from the Marsh Store was at our guild quilt show and I bought a bundle of FQ's. It had my oldest son's name written all over it! He has a lot of the Dr. Suess books and has many of them memorized and reads them to his kids all the time. The dilemna was whether a 32 year old guy would like a Dr. Suess quilt LOL. I made him a lap quilt this Christmas to read stories to his kids. Here is the finished quilt:

corner:

border quilting:

backing:

loop quilting in the 'thimbles'

I told Lauren and Leah, Tim's two daughters, that they could help their Dad open this gift. They loved the Dr. Suess quilt :-)

Trying out the new quilt with Lauren, Joey (cousin) and Leah:

Daughter in law, Heather (pictured in background), made all the kids a cool fleece hat for Christmas. They willingly posed for a 'funny face' photo LOL

The kids then put Josh's hat on Tim for a picture with the Dr. Suess quilt. He's nice and warm and cozy now!

I also made a little stocking for each of the 7 grandkids, plus one for the baby due in a few days. The stockings will stay at Grandma's house to be filled every year:

Grayson's baby quilt

Another first baby was born to Lynnette and Joel in July. I finally got the quilt finished a few weeks ago and delivered it this past week. This quilt is a One Block Wonder quilt and the fabric was a print with funky bugs all over it. It was so much fun to work on. Arranging the hexagons on the design wall is always enjoyable. I made a bunch of solid cubes to match the colours in the quilt and tried a few layouts:

I settled on these stepping stones so it looks like stones in a garden:

The finished quilt:

I quilted a meander in the bugs and loops in the blue border:

I found the perfect bug print for the binding and the backing of the quilt:

Some of the hexagons in the quilt:

Even if you'd be having a bad hair day, one look at these bugs would brighten your day :-). Hope baby Grayson enjoys many a giggle, checking out his bug quilt.

Stacie's Baby quilt

I finished a Spinning Four patch baby quilt for baby Stacie, a first baby for Trevor and Sarah, who are members of my Church. First babies are a great reason to make a quilt :-). I had been saving this quilt for that special baby and since Trevor is a farmer, the animals were the perfect choice! Here is the finished quilt:

The original fabric can be seen in the border:

The four patch blocks turned out really fun. This was the second quilt I had made from this set of blocks. You can see the first one here. I cut the first block too small so I only got 15 blocks out of the fabric. So, I fussy cut one sheep out of a leftover piece so I could make another quilt. I just love these animals...they are so cute :-).

The label on the back:

I found a perfect colour purple for the back and it had sunflowers on it to continue the country theme. I realized that I spelled Stacie's name wrong. It's too late to change the label, but Sarah figured that Stacie won't notice it :-).

Pillowcase Sweat shop

Our small city of approximately 40,000 has a shelter for the homeless, operated in a local Church, that runs from October to March and provides a bed and warm meal, etc. A few of us had the brainstorm last year already to make some fun pillowcases for the Inn. Since they get mostly men coming, we concentrated on more 'manly' fabrics, but we also made some others to give to Christmas Care as well. We worked over two evenings and got 21 done the first evening and by the time we finished on Monday night, we had a total of 47 pillowcases done. We think we have the pattern memorized LOL.

Cynthia, from Cherished Pieces, had a great clearance sale on and I picked out these four fabrics from the half price room. When Cynthia found out we were making pillowcases for the Inn with them, she gave me a further discount! Aren't independent quilt shop owners great?!!

Then, when I went to check out, she gave me these five BOLTS! of cotton fabric to use. We definitely put these bolts to good use! Thanks so much Cynthia and Bill for your generosity.

Gail went shopping for some floral prints for the purple bolts and we raided our stashes for appropriate trims and cuffs for the pillowcases. Gail brought her serger along and the handy snippet catcher was overflowing after our evening's work.

These were the pillowcases we finished after our first sewing evening:

The second evening we added some florals so we could use the purples for girl pillowcases for Christmas Care:

47 pillowcases finished in two nights!! We were definitely sweating :-)

A friend donated these kitty fabrics as well as the cats in the above photo (they matched perfectly with the tan bolt):

Chris ironing, ironing, ironing.....

Alice, ironing, ironing, ironing......

Jacqui, Chris and Gail after our first evening of sewing. Karen had to leave early, but she also helped with ironing:


Sleep Well!

Braeden's Baby quilt

We finally had a baby shower for my nephew Josh and Janneke's first baby, Braeden. I chose another Square Dance quilt. This is such a great pattern and whips up quickly. The zoo animal print was the focus fabric.

I had originally put some lime green prints with this, but my two sisters were over one day and they had fun raiding my stash and replacing some of the greens with oranges and blacks. The baby room walls were green, so they figured it would be safer to avoid too much green. Here they are arranging the chosen fabrics in the right order:

They did a great job of picking the colours:

It was quilted with a simple meander in orange:


The finished quilt with binding done in the original zoo animal print:

Ian's Baby quilt

Little Ian finally got his baby quilt! He was born in May and we've been trying to get together all summer to deliver the quilt. That's what happens when I miss the deadline of the shower!!! LOL I did a square dance pattern in these lovely oranges mostly from the Wee Play fabrics by American Jane. The Square Dance (and the Crazy Eights) are quick and easy. They use 8 FQ's and they are cut all at the same time. It can also be doubled for a lap size quilt.

As you can see on this photo, it was summer when I had the top done!!
The finished quilt. It actually was quilted at the end of July, but vacation and life got in the way in the fall and I really wanted to have a little visit with the new Mom. My friend Joan and I had a delightful visit with Ian and his Mom, Caroline, and he now has his quilt :-).

I tried out another new quilting pattern...baby quilts are great to try new quilting designs....if it's not perfect, the baby won't care :-).


I just LOVE this cool dog houses and cars print and it happened to be on my sewing table when I was working on the quilt and I noticed that the colours matched perfectly! I didn't have quite enough so I added a strip of the striped binding fabric down the middle.

Playing with Kaffe Fasset fabrics!

My students wanted to do a sampler quilt with 6" blocks, so I dug out the class notes for the blocks I taught in 2002. Here is the quilt I made from the my sample blocks for the original class:

I thought it would be fun to update the blocks this time for my samples and dug into a stack of Kaffe Fasset fat quarters that my friend Els from Holland brought for me when she visited in September. I had a collection of solids as well. It was fun digging through the fabrics to come up with combinations. Here are the first two trees:

This afternoon I made some houses, one with a chimney and one without; one with curtains and one without:



Here are the four blocks together so far. I am liking these wild, bright trees and houses. I don't know what I'm going to do with them yet, but I'll grow some more trees and build some more houses when the mood hits :-)