Elephant baby quilt

As usual, I'm behind in my blogging LOL.  This quilt was made for a shower a few months back for my niece Becky, who was having a baby girl.  Since our town is known for Jumbo, and Becky was born there, it was appropriate to make an elephant quilt.  this pattern is adapted from Sew Fresh Quilts sew along from a few years back. 

The finished quilt

Mommy and Daddy

..and baby

Found the perfect backing in my stash 😀

Celebrating a new Grandson

In May, we officially welcomed a new grandson into the family.  He's been with our daughter's family as a foster child for three years and was formally adopted a few months ago.  He is 7 1/2 years old.  It was his turn for a quilt for his bed and he chose foxes :-).  We adapted Sew Fresh quilts fox baby quilt pattern and enlarged it to fit Benny's bed.  He was thrilled to get a new little stuffed fox to go with the quilt as well!

Here are the rows lined up on the design wall....it took a little math to get all the pieces to come out the same length 🙂

Orange binding worked well to frame the quilt. 

It was quilted with a lovely cabin in the pines motif by Chris Bogart

The colours were chosen from this wonderful fox print for the back

FOUR BABY QUILTS

Once again, I'm woefully behind on my blog, but I've been sewing a lot! Our Church has been having a baby boom in the last year and we host a shower for the Moms who have their first babies.  I try to make a quilt for each of the babies.  Here are the four quilts:

This was a really fun quilt to make.  Emily's baby, Sawyer, has an elephant print in his room so this was the perfect fabric for his quilt :-).

I couldn't decide on which colour to bind it with so I used both colours.  I just did a simple straight line quilting to give it a modern look.

I didn't have enough elephants to do the back so used the rest of the blue as well.

This quilt was for Esther's baby, Mika.  It is a pattern by Christy Marnell of Blue Underground Studios, Inc. called, Posh Tot.  I thought it would be a great pattern to practise some free motion quilting and ruler work.  It took quite awhile, but was fun to do. 

I quilted 5 different motifs in the squares and repeated each one three times.

Again, I had to piece the back as I didn't have quite enough of the Lotus leaf print from the Kaffe Fasset Collective.

This quilt was so much fun to make.  It's a pattern from Lorna McMahon of Sew Fresh Quilts.  It was made for Teresa's new baby, Spencer.

Fox block #1

Fox block #2

I almost had enough of this cute fox print for the back so another pieced backing.

Unfortunately this photo is a little washed out.  It's the same pattern as the first quilt above.  I've misplaced the pattern and will update the information when I find it!  This quilt was made for Lisa's new baby girl, June.

I quilted this one with a feather flower pattern with pink thread.

The backing and binding coordinated perfectly with the Kaffe Fasset Lotus Leaf print.

A new grandson!

This morning at 4:11 a.m. a new grandson was born in our family :-).  His name is Jack William and he weighed in at 10 lbs. 4 oz!  That makes 13 grandchildren - 6 boys and 7 girls.  Fortunately the giraffe building was finished on time and all I had to do was fill in the label.  Love this pattern from Lorna McMahon of Sew Fresh Quilts. 

Aren't these the cutest little giraffe's?

The backing that inspired the colours for the giraffes

Two granddaughter quilts finished!

I have been working on quilts for all my grandkids for a couple of years and it was Charity and Katie's turn for a quilt for their bed.  They are 7 years old and born almost exactly a month apart.

This is Charity's quilt.  The pattern is "I used to be a layer cake" by Black Cat Creations.   I made a quilt using this pattern for Charity's older sister Kara which you can see here.  I had a layer cake with the same type of bright colours so we used that one for Charity's quilt since they share a bedroom.  They have bunk beds so it's a little hard to get the size right so I made a pillow case to make up for the lack of length.  (Click on the photo to enlarge it for a better view.)

The finished quilt

Love finding the exact match for backing in the sale bin :-)

pillow case to match

I have a collection of soft, fuzzy stuffed animals and each of the grandkids gets one to snuggle with together with the quilt...here are the two little doggies that are living with Charity and Katie now :-)

another view of the finished quilt.  I quilted it myself on my Bernina 830 with diagonal wavy lines right through the borders and through the corners of the bargello pattern in every other row using a walking foot.

Katie's quilt is a design by Lorna McMahon of Sew Fresh quilts.  She posted a note on her blog a year or so ago what we would like to see her design next.  I emailed her that I needed a quilt with flowers for my granddaughter.  She designed a wonderful quilt and I was totally in love with it.   I found this fabric in a quilt shop and that became the focus for finding the colours.

the focus fabric

The finished quilt

It was quilted by Julie Cassidy, a local long arm quilter.  We chose butterflies for the flower garden using turquoise thread.  It was perfect for this quilt

Since I only ended up using one of the focus fabric line in the front of the quilt, I pieced the rest of the fabrics for the back.  That plaid fabric was supposed to be for binding, but the quilt was bigger than I thought so I put it in the back and used 12" lengths of all the colours in the front of the quilt for a pieced binding.

It was a lot of fun piecing all the flowers!

close up of the butterfly quilting - that colour should be light blue :-)

Love the butterfly!

finished quilt

A Cardinal

Last week, Sew Fresh Quilts posted the next pattern for the Have a Jolly Little Christmas sew a long.  This was another one of those blocks that has lots of little pieces and angles and seams that need to be matched precisely.  So, I decided to only do 1 block!  Wow, can't believe the self discipline LOL.  Once it was done, I was already sorry I hadn't done a second one, but I can always do one more later, "when I have time", right?  Hmmm...I'll bet that'll never happen!  Here is the cardinal...it also had an eye that required cutting a 3/4" square.  Good practise for precision sewing for sure :-).

Love this cardinal.....the greens are off on the colours..they are much prettier in real life.

I find it a lot easier to lay out all the pieces on a small cutting board as I cut them.  I also press the squares in half and lay them out properly to get the right angles.  This helps a lot when sewing them together and you don't have to label all the pieces with the proper size.  I can then carry the board to my sewing machine and stitch it together.  Works for me :-).

Partridge in a Pear Tree

Saturday morning arrived with the uploading of the next block in the Jolly Little Christmas Quilt a long.  My husband was away for the day so I sent off an email to my friend Deb, who is also working on these blocks, and invited her over to sew a long :-).  We had a fun day together.  It took awhile to cut all the patches for these partridges.  There will definitely not be 8 of these blocks in my future anytime soon :-).  But, we valiantly cut out two blocks each. 

I finally got the blocks finished this afternoon after a lot of "reverse stitching" and careful pressing and pinning.  The eyeballs of the partridges (hard to see on the photos) are 1/4" finished!!  You can hardly hold these pieces to sew them together LOL. I made a mistake on my polka dotted pear and had already trimmed the triangles off when I realized there were only supposed to be two triangles, not four.  I didn't have enough fabric left to cut out another square, so I had to piece it....so there is a blemish on my poor pear.  As my husband said, "It's patchwork"!  I do love the way they turned out. (Click on the photos to enlarge.)

Deb's partridge pieces

My set up for sewing.  I've used this trusty Singer 15-88 treadle machine to piece all my blocks :-)

Deb getting ready to sew

my more modern partridge

the more traditional partridge

...with a few of the other blocks

....with a few of the modernish blocks

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 :-)