CHRISTMAS PILLOWS

Some new Christmas pillows got finished here last month.  The first one was on a panel I received from a friend a few years ago.  I did not know what to do with it - make a quilt?  I got it out this year and found a lovely dark green batik that matched it perfectly.  When I measured the wreath, it was 24" and that gave me the idea of doing a pillow.  I had purchased a 26" pillow form at a yard sale at our guild meeting in October.  The grand kids love to grab a large pillow for back support while sitting on the floor ☺. 

There were also 6 hexagon shaped motifs on the panel so I made them into coasters for the coffee table.

I did quite a bit of free motion quilting around the motifs which was good practice again.  There were subtle stripes in the background, so I just echoed those a bit.

My daughter in law just refinished my coffee table for me, so these will be great to protect the new table!

 

I used the covered zipper tutorial from s.o.t.a.k. which can be found here to add the zipper on the back. 

The newly refinished coffee table

 

In October, Jaybird Quilts hosted a free stitch along for her letter blocks.  There will be a sew along in January for her book on letters.  My friend was over from Holland in October so we sewed up the JOY blocks together.  She made them into little hangings to decorate her livingroom at home and I turned mine into 16" pillows.  It was a lot of fun rooting around in the Christmas scraps and doing this project together.

JOY pillows

I used leftover winter fox fabric that I had used on the back of a Christmas lap quilt I made a few years ago and also inserted the covered zippers.

 

Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt - Chilhowie

After some pondering, I've decided to join the Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt again this year.  It is called Chilhowie this year. The first post on the mystery can be found here. This post gives information on the colours and amounts of fabric needed and the first clues will be up the day after American Thanksgiving.   I had a good time this week digging through my scraps and stash finding colours.  I will add and remove from the stash yet as I go along I'm sure.

I had this Ana Maria Horner wide back on the table for another quilt.  Doesn't it look great with the colours?  But, this backing is meant for another quilt :-).

Here are the possibilities so far from my stash.  There is definitely enough to get started on the quilt. The pain chips are clipped to the baskets.

Quilts for Ukraine

 Since April, we have been busy making quilts for Ukraine refugees.  A friend of mine was collecting quilts to send to a local Ukrainian center and my grandkids came over several times to make a quilt top.  We raided my extensive I spy squares and made disappearing 9 patch blocks.  The kids had a lot of fun and it was amazing what they came up with!

 Kara and Aiden can over first.  Aiden had fun choosing the prints and coloured blocks and Kara sewed up the 9 patches.  Grandma did the cutting and the quilting.

 

Charity and Benny came a week later and made another top.  Benny learned how to press with a real iron and Charity was already experienced at the sewing machine. 

Kara was in grade 9 and earned some High School volunteer hours required for her diploma. To earn your High School graduation diploma in our province, you need 40 hours to graduate by the end of grade 12.  Kara had some friends that needed hours!  So, on Easter Monday, 5 girls came over for the day!  Wow, did they work hard.  They designed, cut, pressed and sewed up two complete quilt tops.

Emma also needed a few more hours for her diploma so she came over on a Saturday and Kara came again and earned some more hours!  I can't find a picture of that finished quilt, but here is the top.

One of the girls that helped in April with the quilts was in grade 8 and couldn't start collecting hours until July 1st.  In August the 5 girls came over again and finished two more quilt tops!  This time we used a more controlled solid colour which really changes the look of the quilts.

For some reason this photo will not rotate!

The quilts were all delivered to the Ukrainian center and we hope and pray they will bring some comfort to children coming to Canada.

 

Tilda Windy Days Quilt

While browsing quilt ideas awhile ago, I came across this quilt by Tilda called Windy Days.   I sent the link to my daughter in law as it had my granddaughter Eleanor's name all over it! She could definitely be described as a little whirlwind ☺.   I collected fabric over the next few months to match her bedroom and had a lot of fun with this pattern.  Eleanor loved the quilt and even got to come along to my neighbour across the street, Chris, who quilted it for me on her long arm machine.  Eleanor got to see the big machine and help choose the pattern for quilting and the thread colour.

The peach houses and florals were the focus fabrics for the quilt.

One of nine blocks.

The finished quilt.

There was enough left of the peach houses and floral to piece a backing for the quilt.

The lovely quilting Chris did on the quilt.  It really added to the "Windy City".

The quilt fit perfectly on the bed.

Miss Eleanor with her new pet rabbit that comes with the quilt ☺.  Her nickname is "Bunny".

A different challenge - a Pandemic Quilt

 In December of 2020, Rachel Hauser, of Stitched in Color" posted on her blog with a challenge to join her in making a quilt to reflect the many emotions of that year and presenting it to someone special.  Here is the initial blog post of the sew along she proposed:

 https://www.stitchedincolor.com/blog/2020/12/4/-healing-art-for-2020

Since we were in a pandemic and had lots of time on our hands, and I had lots of fabric, I thought I'd try my hands at this and make the quilt for my daughter in law, Becky, who works in a nursing home and has certainly dealt with many challenges!  At our ladies Bible study at Church, we were studying Nancy Guthrie's book, "Looking for Something Better" which is a study of the book of Hebrews. The first task was choosing fabrics for the various rows.  These were my final colour choices:

I didn't have quite enough of a few of the fabrics but a quick online purchase remedied that!

The final quilt.  It was presented to Becky in the summer of 2021.  I had taken pictures and couldn't find them back so finally got a few news ones!

The backing is a Kaffe Fasset print which I have had in my stash for awhile.

My friend, Chris Bogart quilted it with an angel wings pantograph which really suited it.

This photo shows the colours a bit better.

The label on the back of the quilt.

Pin Cushion Frenzy

Summer has begun officially and school's out so we are in the garage fixing and testing sewing machines.  We haven't been able to ship out any sewing machines for charity for two years now, so we had quite an accumulation.  We decided to start with servicing and testing those machines as we met a lady who has connections to ship them out to developing countries!  Jake serviced a good dozen machines and I tested 11 of them so far.  I decided to make some pin cushions as that's a great small project to tackle different machines that have various presser feet sizes.  So, my pin cushion jar is full again!  Here are the pin cushions I made: 

These three pin cushions were in a magazine I bought earlier this year.  I had the tops completed but finished them finally this week.  These are quite large so they hold a lot of pins.  We were given some emery shavings and I googled that for use in pin cushions.  Two of these have emery in them.  We'll see if the pins get sharper or not ☺!  It makes for a very heavy pin cushion!

Some selvage pin cushions were in order for Canada Day yesterday.

Canadian houses

I had a baggie of small scraps in these vintage florals...such happy pin cushions!

My huge glass canister is filled up again!

I might have room for a couple more ☺.

 

Prairie Children and Their Quilts

 I found this blog post in my drafts yet waiting for my sister to receive her little quilt in the mail!  And promptly forgot to write it up!!  I'm woefully behind on blogging.  

I started these two little quilts from a book Prairie Children and Their Quilts, many years ago and finally got them finished earlier this year.  I made two at a time and sent one little quilt off to my sister in BC and kept one here.  They are the perfect size for the American/Maplelea 18" dolls.

My sister's quilt

I used this vintage print for the back of both of the little quilts.

I kept this quilt.  Nice to get another UFO completed!

 

Senior's Quilts Progress

Two more seniors' quilts were finished in January and I had a lovely visit with the two ladies when bringing their quilt over.  I found a panel depicting old hymns at the fabric shop in Stratford last fall.  This was a perfect jumping off point for the seniors' quilts.  The pattern is adapted from "Panel Pizzazz" by Patti Carey of Patti's Patchwork.  Click on the photo to enlarge to see the hymn panel.

 

Margaret's Quilt

Ruth's Quilt

 As I was making a list of the next senior quilt I want to make, I realized I hadn't  posted a quilt I gifted to Bertha after she moved to a new apartment in 2021.  So, here is her quilt and it also finished up an old UFO that I had done for a class sample many years ago.

Bertha's quilt

Another Senior's quilt

 My aunt Mary is moving to a new apartment at the end of January, so this was a perfect time to make her a quilt to take along.  I was shopping with a friend of mine and we came across this panels with sheep in the colours that Mary loves. I added the borders to it and quilted it mostly along the images in the panel.  

I used a pattern called Gathering by Sugar Pine Quilt Designs, Bonnie Bechtol, adapting it to the size of this panel.

motifs quilted in the 'mountains'

I love these sheep and the comforting Bible verse on this panel

It was quilted around the trees and fence