Braeden's Baby quilt

We finally had a baby shower for my nephew Josh and Janneke's first baby, Braeden. I chose another Square Dance quilt. This is such a great pattern and whips up quickly. The zoo animal print was the focus fabric.

I had originally put some lime green prints with this, but my two sisters were over one day and they had fun raiding my stash and replacing some of the greens with oranges and blacks. The baby room walls were green, so they figured it would be safer to avoid too much green. Here they are arranging the chosen fabrics in the right order:

They did a great job of picking the colours:

It was quilted with a simple meander in orange:


The finished quilt with binding done in the original zoo animal print:

Ian's Baby quilt

Little Ian finally got his baby quilt! He was born in May and we've been trying to get together all summer to deliver the quilt. That's what happens when I miss the deadline of the shower!!! LOL I did a square dance pattern in these lovely oranges mostly from the Wee Play fabrics by American Jane. The Square Dance (and the Crazy Eights) are quick and easy. They use 8 FQ's and they are cut all at the same time. It can also be doubled for a lap size quilt.

As you can see on this photo, it was summer when I had the top done!!
The finished quilt. It actually was quilted at the end of July, but vacation and life got in the way in the fall and I really wanted to have a little visit with the new Mom. My friend Joan and I had a delightful visit with Ian and his Mom, Caroline, and he now has his quilt :-).

I tried out another new quilting pattern...baby quilts are great to try new quilting designs....if it's not perfect, the baby won't care :-).


I just LOVE this cool dog houses and cars print and it happened to be on my sewing table when I was working on the quilt and I noticed that the colours matched perfectly! I didn't have quite enough so I added a strip of the striped binding fabric down the middle.

Playing with Kaffe Fasset fabrics!

My students wanted to do a sampler quilt with 6" blocks, so I dug out the class notes for the blocks I taught in 2002. Here is the quilt I made from the my sample blocks for the original class:

I thought it would be fun to update the blocks this time for my samples and dug into a stack of Kaffe Fasset fat quarters that my friend Els from Holland brought for me when she visited in September. I had a collection of solids as well. It was fun digging through the fabrics to come up with combinations. Here are the first two trees:

This afternoon I made some houses, one with a chimney and one without; one with curtains and one without:



Here are the four blocks together so far. I am liking these wild, bright trees and houses. I don't know what I'm going to do with them yet, but I'll grow some more trees and build some more houses when the mood hits :-)

Spinning Four Patch Quilt

This summer Jake and I enjoyed a wonderful two week vacation in BC. We were invited to stay in a lovely little home on the property of friends of ours. It was so nice to have a little home away from home to have as our home base. This quilt was made as a thank you gift for them. Our daughter in law boarded with them a few years ago, so I picked her brain to come up with colours that would work in their home. I decided to try a Spinning Four Patch quilt with this classy navy and gold fabric. It wasn't the perfect spinning four patch fabric as the repeats were too small and too symmetric, but it did turn out nice. I added the narrow border of a Japanese fabric around the blocks as it would have been too dark with the navy blue batik. I totally forgot to take pictures of this quilt before I gave it to them! Thanks to their daughter, Corina, who was over visiting my daughter in law for taking the pictures for me. This is the back of the quilt:

The front of the quilt:

One of the blocks:

The quilting in the blocks (this was close to the true colour of the quilt):

Colours are somewhat off in this picture - there were gold flecks in the fabric making it very difficult to get a good photo:

The finished quilt:

Thanks Wout and Addy for letting us stay in your wonderful little home!

Mouse Pad production!!

The son that just got married is a computer guy so they decided that for wedding favours they would make mouse pads. Becky bought five or six different Japanese fabrics to stay with her theme for the wedding and we got some felt type batting. We cut these 8" x 9" and the backing 10" x 11". After layering them, we stitched two lines 3" in from the size to 'quilt' them and hold them together and then folded the backing to the front to form the binding. They turned out nice and work great. They rolled them up with a rubbery square to keep the pad from sliding on the computer table and wrapped a nice thank you label around them. I went over to Becky's house for a couple days last week and we set up a sweat shop and sewed 89 of them altogether! They really looked nice on the tables. The first picture is a bit washed out - the colour is probably between the two photos. On the second photo you can see the quilted lines a little better. (These would make great mug rugs too.)

One Block Wonder done!

Our son, Eric, got married this past Saturday. We had a lovely day with him and his bride Becky and our families and friends. I made a One Block Wonder queen sized quilt for them. Becky and I went shopping together to choose the fabric. She loves Japanese designs so I took her to the Marsh Store in Coldstream, ON since Shirley has lots of choice! It took us awhile to come up with something that would work in the colours Becky liked. We weren't sure if this black and white fabric would work for a OBW. I can't find a picture of the original fabric and can't find any larger leftovers at the moment, but this picture should give you a bit of an idea of the original fabric:

Becky chose and assortment of red, gold and purple FQ's for the cubes. My daughter in law, Jannyne, helped me with arranging the hexagons once I had them all sewn together and some cubes made. We decided to add strips of black batik to make the quilt large enough and to add some interest. It ended up looking like a Japanese screen (that was not intentional!). After the first black batik borders, it needed something. I tried adding scrappy triangles, but that didn't really work. Adding the original fabric into the border and another simple black border finished it off nicely. Here is the finished quilt with Eric and Becky. I gave it to them at the rehearsal dinner (the light is not great).

The happy couple :-)

Opening up the quilt so Becky could finally see it finished :-)

I finally found the perfect backing at Creative Sisters in Kitchener. Bonus that it was a wide backing and I didn't have to piece it:

Close ups of some of the hexagons:

It was amazing how much shading there was in this black and white quilt:

The top center finished; trying it on my queen sized bed for size :-)

Here you can see the lovely leaves that Tim from the Marsh Store quilted into the border. I am very glad that I didn't have to sew black leaves on black batik :-)!! Thanks so much Tim!!! I also added a red 'lippy' (flat piping) in between the binding.

Tim quilted a lovely design in the black and white areas with variegated black and white thread:

Becky and Eric on their wedding day!

A Dear Jane block - Finally!

Last week my Dear Jane internet friend Els, who is from the Netherlands, spent a week with me hanging out in my sewing room, going on quilt shop hops and visiting one of my quilt guilds. We had a wonderful time. Els has already completed her first DJ quilt and is working on her second one! She definitely inspired me to get back at my quilt. So, Monday afternoon, I decided to do another block. This one is Cabin Fever A 9. I used my stitch ripper a few times to get the colours right! I should have checked the original block out closer! But, I got it finished and am happy with it. Hopefully, I can keep up with my 1 block a week goal again. This is my 59th block of 169 center blocks. Then I have to decide if I'll do the triangles or not :-).