Alex and Jack's Bed Quilts

 Over the years, I've been making a bed quilt for each of my grandchildren.  Jack was my youngest grandchild (although I now have two more and most likely another one!).  Jack is 8 years old and shares a room with his brother so I wanted to match the quilts somewhat.  I have a lot of blue, red and black fabrics, so I decided to do a plus sign quilt in those colours.  

The finished Quilt.  I did not have to purchase a single fabric ☺.

Some close ups of the blocks.  Jack loved all the prints featured in his quilt.

These sheep were in honour of his other Grandma who dyes wool and does a lot of knitting and weaving.

Jack's giraffe which came with the quilt.

Chris Bogart did the quilt and put some dog paws on the quilt ☺

 

 Alex's Quilt

So, I realized as I was writing about Jack's quilt and putting a link in for reference to Alex's Quilt that I'd never blogged about his quilt!  Yikes.  I finished this one in April of 2021!  Better late than never I guess.  I did a One Block Wonder pattern for Alex using this fabric: 

 

It had words, diagrams, receipts, etc. on it which was quite fascinating.  I had purchased with the idea of doing a OBW - one of those "I wonder if this would work" types of fabrics.  It worked very well and produced some very interesting blocks for the background.  I made large cubes for this quilt and used Kona Pacific blue for sashings and borders using some of the original fabrics in panels at the top.

 

One of the large cubes

Backing

The Puppy that was included with the quilt.

The Finished Quilt

 

 

By Annie Bags

After making the Mixer Cover, I took a look at more patterns from ByAnnie!  There are some really interesting bags done by her.  And when you buy the pattern, you also get a $5.00 coupon which is good for access to a video which shows the steps to make the bag.  They are well done and help when you get a spot that doesn't quite make sense.  I went on the July Shop Hop which takes place for the month of July in 13 different Quilt Shops in Southern Ontario, Canada.  This gave me lots of temptation to look at other patterns!  And a few came home with me plus a few other supplies.  I got together with a friend and made the bag, "Open Wide 2.0".  This comes in three different sizes.  I made the large size.  I dug into some of my Tula Pink fabrics for the occasion.  Here is the finished bag.  I just love the rabbits on the fabric.  Inside the bag there are several pockets.  I hope to use the bag to take things along to our next quilt retreat.

I had a fun zipper in my stash and used it in the bag.

Group Challenge

Finished Challenge Quilt

A year ago, in early May, my small quilt guild held a retreat and each participant received a bundle of 10 fat eighths.  The challenge was to make something with the F8ths.  We could make whatever we wished and could add fabrics from our own stash to it.  I pondered the options for awhile and then came upon the brainstorm to try out some blocks from a book called, "Just Plain Nuts".  This is the second book by the same author, Liz Lois.  The first one is entitled, "Nearly Insane".   The books just have a diagram of the block with no instructions.  I had to measure each of the sections and add seams and cut out the pieces.  I made 9 six inch blocks and then added sashings, corner stones and borders.  The last border worked well with a piano key design using up all the scraps and bits and pieces of the fabric bundle.  It was a fun project and I finally got to using some of the patterns which have been on my shelf for many years.

I quilted the quilt myself doing each block differently....whatever came to mind.

Some of the pieces were crazy tiny!

Below are some photos of the blocks before putting into the quilt.  They are 6 1/2" unfinished. 

 At the retreat at the end of April this year, we had a parade to show everyone at the retreat what we made with our bundles.  Amazing how different everyone's projects were.