Jolly Little Christmas sew-a-long Poinsetta

Last Saturday, another block came out for the Have a Jolly Little Christmas sew a long hosted by Lorna of Sew Fresh Quilts.  These blocks are just pure fun!  I made one block for the Christmas lap quilt that I hope to make when all the blocks are finished and also three more to make a table runner or maybe a pillow or two.  

The block on the right will go into the modern layout for a lap quilt and the other three are from the more traditional line of fabrics.

 

A quilt for Joey

The London Friendship Quilt Guild ran a row of the month project last year.  Each month, we received a Canadian themed block, representing various regions and symbols of Canada.  Cathy Shepherd designed the sashings that were added between the rows and around the quilt and a row of flying geese at each side and wrote up the instructions.  I had collected some Canadian themed fabrics and decided to make this quilt for my grandson, Joey, as his bedroom doubles as the family guestroom and he sleeps in a queen sized bed.  I asked him if he'd like this quilt and he agreed as long as it had a beaver in it!  Yes, there was a row of beavers planned for this row quilt :-).    The quilt turned out massive!  I had Julie Cassidy quilt it as I did not want to tackle that one under my domestic machine!  I took Joey to Julie's home to see the long arm machine and he got to pick out the quilting design as well as the thread colour.  The quilt is quilted with polar bears, moose and trees in a thread called "prickly pear".  It is perfect for this quilt.

I did not end up using that many of the Canadian fabrics in the front as they were too busy, so used the collection I had accumulated to piece together a backing.  The result is a completely reversible quilt!  (click on the photos to enlarge for a better view)

This was the collection of fabrics that I used for the quilt (with a few later additions).

the Beaver in the quilt was paper pieced

The inukshuk and moon over the mountain blocks were appliqued

the Polar Bears were also paper pieced

Moose quilting in prickly pear thread

Polar bear and trees quilting on the barn blocks

The finished quilt front

Finished quilt back

Sew Fresh Sew along and Canada 150 progress

On Saturday, I finished sewing the next three blocks in the Next step Design's Canada 150 quilt.  I'm happy that I am keeping up with the blocks each week.  And, a friend let me root around in her red scraps so I have some new variety :-).

Blocks 37 - 39

On Saturday the third block in the "Have a Jolly Little Christmas Quilt along" from Sew Fresh Quilts was published.  This one was a Christmas bow.  I made two bows, one for each colour way I'm using.  They turned out very nicely.  This is a really fun project!

I had to pay attention to keep all the letters going in the right direction for this one :-).

I was afraid the red dots would be too light, but I like the way it turned out

Quite a few of the blocks plus a variety of odds and ends on the design wall :-)

Selvage caddies

A few weeks ago, a friend was celebrating her birthday.  I came across these cute selvage caddies in a book (I lent the book out, so can't remember the name :-).  I dug into my special stash of Kaffe Fasset selvages and could not decide which colour I would use so I ended up making three.  I gave the blue one to my friend, and made the orange one for myself.  I decided to give the green one to my other friend whose birthday is in September.  But, I gave it to her already because by December I'll probably forget where I put it LOL.  I did sew a few dividing rows in one side of mine and stitched a row of stitching half way the middle section to stop my pair of little scissors from dropping all the way to the bottom.  The pouch on the other side holds my red clips.  It's the perfect little caddy to drape over the arm of a chair while hand stitching the binding down.

If you click on the photo to enlarge it you can see the stitched lines to hold the scissors and thread

Drapes perfectly over the arm of an IKEA chair.

Green and orange caddies.

I forgot to take a picture of the blue one so asked my friend to send me one :-)

They were a lot of fun to make.  Next time I will pay attention to make sure there are words or colour circles on the top of the pin cushion :-)