A table topper for my sister!

I just realized that I never blogged about the table topper I made for my sister for her 50th birthday.  She has her kitchen all remodeled so we waited for that to be finished before we chose colours.  Eva has a lovely old round solid table in her dining room so a round topper was in order :-).

This pattern is from one of Cheryl Phillips' books using one of her rulers.  Eva picked the focus fabric on the outside which matches her colours very nicely.  I once found that fabric at Value Village and picked it up for the rich look of the colours.  I found the coordinating colours at Cherished Pieces in Tillsonburg ON.  Here are some pictures of the finished topper and closeups of the quilting and the backing. 

(click on the photos to enlarge them)

The finished table topper

loops in the focus fabric

close quilting in the center section

wavy close lines in the center to flatten it out :-)

the backing

label (in time for her 52nd birthday :-)

table runner on Eva's table

A quilt for Leah

You can read about the beginning of Lauren and Leah's quilts here.  I have to do a blog post next about Lauren's quilt!   We had cut the triangles for Leah's quilt 2 3/4" instead of the usual 3 3/4" because the print was a lot smaller.  We did three sets of repeats to get enough hexagons for a small twin quilt for her bed.  By the time I had stitched all 29 rows of half hexagons, I was ready to be finished with this quilt LOL. 

the original fabric

Leah trying out some cubes for her quilt on the design wall

the solid cubes in the quilt were designed by Leah and carefully transported to Grandma's sewing machine on a mini cutting mat

some hollow cubes in the quilt

another cluster of hollow cubes with leftovers from cutting the hexagons

Leah's designs :-)

the quilting was done by Cathy Shepherd

the finished quilt

More progress on the Indian Orange Peel

Another step closer in getting the Indian Orange Peel finished...visited Hyggeligt in St. Mary's ON this week and found a lovely, lovely Phillip Jacob's chrysanthemum print for the back of the Indian Orange Peel and an aboriginal dot for the binding.  Now to finish agonizing over how to quilt it!!  I don't want to do too much quilting on it, but what to do?  I have some Christmas gifts to finish and can procrastinate a bit more :-). 

Backing and binding fabric

Emily's baby quilt

My niece, Emily, will be having a baby in January and we recently had a lovely shower for her.  What with modern technology, we texted pictures back and forth of fabric ideas and wallpaper and paint in the baby's room and we got a perfect match LOL.  Here is the focus fabric we picked out and some solids to frame the blocks.  The fabric was "reduce, reuse, recycle", but I fussy cut the squares so that this theme wasn't put into the baby quilt :-). 

Focus fabric with kona solids to frame

This was like making a puzzle...very fun.  The large blocks are 12" finished and the rest are multiples of that.

The quilting was organic line quilting with a variegated King Tut thread

close up of my favourite block

The finished quilt

Never thought this day would arrive.......

The Indian Orange Peel top is together!  Wow, I never thought this day would arrive.  It's been on my spare bed off and on for four years, patiently waiting for the final putting together.  I worked on it every once in awhile over the years, but went to a friend's place for a sleepover recently and decided this thing needed to get finished.  I worked on it non stop for two days and that gave me the focus needed to get it done :-).

The reason I procrastinated on it is because I didn't look forward to all those curved seams and then finally setting the center 25 block square into a border frame made up of all these odd shaped pieces.  And the pattern comes with very few instructions!  But, I must say, it came together very nicely.  The worst of it was putting the last two arcs into the corners of the border section, but even that went better than expected.  The original pattern came printed out on fairly heavy paper, but I think this is what made it come together so nicely.  It did not get a chance to get stretched.  Now to pick the rest of the paper off the border :-(.  That is the part I don't like about paper piecing.  I'll have to invite some friends over for coffee and work on while chatting...or procrastinate for another four years before it gets quilted LOL.  Hopefully not.  But, that is an interesting question...how do you quilt something like this???

(Click on the photos to enlarge them)

Getting the last two seams pinned

the finished top!!!!

Amazing how the inset corners came together so nicely

To read about my IOP journey, click here. 

Baby quilts for Sarah and Jenny

My good intentions of doing more regular blog posts have been sidetracked once again.   I completed a baby quilt earlier this summer for a young friend who moved to PEI.  We delivered it personally on our trip to PEI in July (finishing the binding while sitting at the ocean :-).   The pattern was called Shenandoah by Creative Sewlutions.  I ended up cutting it wrong, so my strips are not exactly the same width as the pattern, but I made it work :-).  (Click on the photo to enlarge.)

The finished quilt

Simple meandering lines seemed to suit this pattern for quilting it.

Found this lovely modern animal print in my stash for the backing

Back of the quilt

The white tone on tone had sea shells which was very appropriate for a PEI baby :-)

One of the girls in my Church had her first baby and we ladies had a shower for her.  I had done these One Block Wonder blocks a couple of years ago and since this baby was a boy and his mother likes bright colours, I thought it would work perfectly for little Bryce.  I added some bright solid cubes since the blocks were very busy.

The finished quilt

This is all the original fabric I had left, and since the quilt was a little short, I added it as a panel on the top of the quilt

close up of the cube quilting

some of the blocks

I used this flip flop fabric on the back of the quilt

Summer Vacation

It's been a busy summer!  Someone stopped me at a quilt show last week and mentioned my neglected blog!!  Fall has arrived, so hopefully, I can put up a few posts so you can see what I've been up to.  My policy has always been that I post quilts that are finished, but I think I have to change that since I tend to start new projects all the time instead of finishing old ones LOL.

We went to Prince Edward Island for our vacation in July and took a few days getting there and 5 days getting back.   It was a very nice and relaxed holiday.  The Row by Row quilt shop hop experience was a very handy way to drop into a few quilt shops along the way and pick up the free row pattern, check out the shop and buy a few great memories of our trip.  This year's Row by Row theme was "water" fitting well with the Maratimes :-).  I hope to make the row patterns in separate small wallhangings and find a spot on my sewing room wall to change out the different ones as I make them instead of making a large quilt out of them.  

Here are a few of the quilt shops we visited:

We saw quite a few covered bridges in New Brunswick

The Covered Bridge Quiltery close to Moncton was appropriate!  They had a lovely row pattern, but unfortunately, no kits left..but I have stash :-)

The Fabric Cupboard was also in New Brunswick

This farmhouse was just off the main highway to the bridge to PEI.  It was called "Spruce it Up quilt shop" in Port Elgin, NB.  Great place with lovely beach, bird, ocean type fabrics.

 

The Quilt shop in Charlottetown was the only PEI shop on the Row by Row.   It had lots of Anne of Green Gables kits and a nice row pattern and kit.
 

Country Crafts and Curtains was a very tiny shop in NB that we visited on the way home. 



We even popped across the border to this cute shop in Houlton, Maine, just a little bit West of Woodstock, NB.  There were some nice antique shops on the main street and a lovely stop to stretch our legs and get some fresh air.


Entrance to the shop.  They carried the metal quilt blocks in the shop, but with the exchange rate the way it is, that made them very pricey, so I left those behind.  I did pick up the row by row and a kit as well.  It will be fun making the rows over the winter months while reliving memories of a great summer vacation!

Elgin Piecemaker's Challenge

In October of 2014, all of the members of the Elgin Piecemaker's Quilt Guild, signed up for a challenge!  These are always fun to do, but can really stretch us.  We received two F8ths of Kaffe Fasset fabrics and we could add as many fabrics as we wanted, but could not purchase more of the focus prints.  The instructions were to make anything we liked, but the perimeter had to be larger than 40" and smaller than 100".  In April, we got together for the "grand reveal".  Everyone did a great job of keeping it totally secret :-).  (Click on the photos to enlarge them.)

Kaffe Fassett challenge fabrics

Exciting when my little quilt won first place

Diane's quilt received second place

I decided to make a "blooming 9 patch".  It was fun auditioning fabrics from my KF stash to make that work.  I decided to do 3/4", but I'm a little math challenged, so I cut the strips 3/4" instead of 1 1/4"!  So, the finished 9 patch blocks are 3/4"!  Yikes...this was a fiddly project!  My trusty Singer 15-88 treadle came through for me with lovely seams.

Laying it out was a real puzzle.

The inner pink was the only non Kaffe fabric. The pinks look mauve in these photos!

Quilting it was a real challenge as it was very thick with all the seams from the 9 patches.  I decided to quilt only in the alternate rows so I could avoid the thick 9 patch blocks.

Fussy cut fans in the center.

I used the lovely embroidered label we received to make a pocket to hold the original instructions for the challenge.  I added a couple of strips of the challenge fabric to frame the label.

After the judges were finished deciding on first and second place, based on workmanship, use of fabric, etc. there was a viewer's choice vote.  It was really difficult to chose which one was our favourite!!  Here are all the other challenge projects:

This was a very fun challenge and the prize?  Well, Diane and I "get" to plan the challenge for next year and be in charge.  We're going to put together a real difficult one as payback LOL.