Kathy Wagner workshop

I had the wonderful privilege of taking a workshop on Miniature Quilts taught by Kathy Wagner yesterday. What fun we had. I'm looking at garbage in a whole new way. I actually saved the trimmings from my tiny half square triangles and am looking for a glass jar to store them in. Wow, are we crazy or what eh? I will say with McDonald's "I'm lovin it" LOL.

Kathy had suggested bringing along scraps leftover from another quilt. What a great idea. I will be storing some of my leftovers in ziplock baggies. Maybe I'll find a pretty basket to store them and keep it beside my sewing machine for instant mini gratification when I need something fun and small to work on.

I actually took Kathy's class about 7 years ago when I lived in Hamilton for a couple of years when DH went back to school to get his B Ed. degree. These are the four quilts that I made after that workshop:

This one was done with strip pieced paper piecing:

This is the same block, but arranged differently:

Here is Kathy starting us out with instructions and hints on sewing with these tiny pieces, thread to use, needles that work, etc. We also got a thick stack of pages of web sites, patterns and ideas to take home. My head was spinning with new ideas. I love making mini quilts and this is only going to make it worse :-).


I decided to challenge my self and make 6 mini tulip blocks consisting of 16 tiny little 1/4" finished squares, some of which are half square triangles!! They were made with 1 1/4" squares and then trimmed down to 3/4"..wow, those were tiny! And, that produced the trimmings which are going into the above mentioned jar :-). Here are my pieces all marked and lined up to start sewing:

You can hardly pick up these pieces!! Tweezers may have come in handy:

The first half square triangle:

Voila...by the end of the day I got three little blocks done, the pieces cut and all the half square triangles made to piece the last three:

And, I thought my 2" one block wonder hexagons were small to work with!!!

One of my quilt students dropped by this morning and I showed her the three little tulip blocks on my wall I made yesterday. Her response: "Why?" Now, that's a really good question Danielle, and it kept me pondering all morning while I was doing my housework. Why do we do these crazy things? I can think of a few reasons:

#1 It's good to challenge ourselves to think (and do) outside the box.
#2 It keeps me off the streets and out of mischief :-)
#3 Kathy dared us!
#4 It's just plain fun to see if something can actually be done.
#5 The actual little quilt (when I get it finished) will look very cute somewhere in my sewing room.
#6 .......I'm sure there are more reasons.......

In Memory of my Mom

It's been awhile since I updated my blog. On January 19th, at 8:15 in the evening, we received one of those dreaded calls....my Mom was being transported to the hospital as she wasn't feeling well at a meeting she was attending at her Church. She suffered a stroke and bleeding and passed away at 6:00 a.m. on January 20th. It was a great shock to lose my Mom so suddenly as my Dad passed away just this past September. Mom was doing very well and in excellent health. We got to the hospital right behind the ambulance and she was already non responsive. It was very difficult not being able to communicate with her at all anymore.

Adriana Willemina Groeneweg
March 14, 1930 - January 20, 2012

We miss her very much! It still doesn't seem real that she is gone. She was a blessing to many people..her specialty was writing cards of encouragement to everyone who came across her path. She had a deep faith in God and shared freely her stories of God's guidance throughout her life through the difficult days of World War 2 in her native Holland, her immigration to Canada in the 1950's, the financial hardships she faced and the joys of her family of five children and her extended family. We are thankful that she didn't suffer. She was a simple woman, but her life touched many, many people. The pastor called her an extraordinary, ordinary woman.

I've been slowly trying to get back into 'normal' (whatever that is :-). I got back into some sewing this week. A fellow quilt guild member received over 100 of these small braids, sewn with 1" strips (1/2" finished!). I got to take them home to see what we could do with them to make a quilt for the chemo unit of our local hospital. This layout had possibilities:

I tried a block with a 6" center square...it would be cool to quilt daisies into the square possibly:

6 Squares finished:

I think I'll put 2" red sashings in between the blocks so the braids appear to float. We should be able to make 25 squares which should work out to a nice sized lap quilt. I'll post another picture when I get more blocks finished.

Progress.......and ripping :-(

In 2007, I finished my first Leaders/Enders quilt from Bonnie Hunter's website. I had so much fun doing these units that I started another one using beiges/creams and browns/greens. I also did other four patches in between. I've had more than 50 of them completed for quite awhile.

I use my trusty Singer 15-88 for most of my piecing and usually have a stack of 2" squares ready to use as leaders/enders:

I sorted out all the blocks and organized them this week and have 90 blocks finished. I think I have enough HST's and four patches ready to assemble the last 10 blocks. I may use this setting again, but will experiment with a few other ideas before putting the top together.

Progress is being impeded, however, with the discovery of 7 wrong blocks :-(. I will have to get my 'best friend', the stitch ripper out!

Meanwhile, I've been sewing a LOT of four patch blocks together and have quite a pile accumulated. I'd like to do a quilt with them, but can't come up with a brilliant idea? Set them on point with black squares and setting triangles? Putting them together as just four patches makes a checkerboard which isn't too exciting.

Dr. Suess Quilt

When the Dr. Suess prints came out, I just had to have a bundle of them. Shirley from the Marsh Store was at our guild quilt show and I bought a bundle of FQ's. It had my oldest son's name written all over it! He has a lot of the Dr. Suess books and has many of them memorized and reads them to his kids all the time. The dilemna was whether a 32 year old guy would like a Dr. Suess quilt LOL. I made him a lap quilt this Christmas to read stories to his kids. Here is the finished quilt:

corner:

border quilting:

backing:

loop quilting in the 'thimbles'

I told Lauren and Leah, Tim's two daughters, that they could help their Dad open this gift. They loved the Dr. Suess quilt :-)

Trying out the new quilt with Lauren, Joey (cousin) and Leah:

Daughter in law, Heather (pictured in background), made all the kids a cool fleece hat for Christmas. They willingly posed for a 'funny face' photo LOL

The kids then put Josh's hat on Tim for a picture with the Dr. Suess quilt. He's nice and warm and cozy now!

I also made a little stocking for each of the 7 grandkids, plus one for the baby due in a few days. The stockings will stay at Grandma's house to be filled every year:

Grayson's baby quilt

Another first baby was born to Lynnette and Joel in July. I finally got the quilt finished a few weeks ago and delivered it this past week. This quilt is a One Block Wonder quilt and the fabric was a print with funky bugs all over it. It was so much fun to work on. Arranging the hexagons on the design wall is always enjoyable. I made a bunch of solid cubes to match the colours in the quilt and tried a few layouts:

I settled on these stepping stones so it looks like stones in a garden:

The finished quilt:

I quilted a meander in the bugs and loops in the blue border:

I found the perfect bug print for the binding and the backing of the quilt:

Some of the hexagons in the quilt:

Even if you'd be having a bad hair day, one look at these bugs would brighten your day :-). Hope baby Grayson enjoys many a giggle, checking out his bug quilt.

Stacie's Baby quilt

I finished a Spinning Four patch baby quilt for baby Stacie, a first baby for Trevor and Sarah, who are members of my Church. First babies are a great reason to make a quilt :-). I had been saving this quilt for that special baby and since Trevor is a farmer, the animals were the perfect choice! Here is the finished quilt:

The original fabric can be seen in the border:

The four patch blocks turned out really fun. This was the second quilt I had made from this set of blocks. You can see the first one here. I cut the first block too small so I only got 15 blocks out of the fabric. So, I fussy cut one sheep out of a leftover piece so I could make another quilt. I just love these animals...they are so cute :-).

The label on the back:

I found a perfect colour purple for the back and it had sunflowers on it to continue the country theme. I realized that I spelled Stacie's name wrong. It's too late to change the label, but Sarah figured that Stacie won't notice it :-).

Pillowcase Sweat shop

Our small city of approximately 40,000 has a shelter for the homeless, operated in a local Church, that runs from October to March and provides a bed and warm meal, etc. A few of us had the brainstorm last year already to make some fun pillowcases for the Inn. Since they get mostly men coming, we concentrated on more 'manly' fabrics, but we also made some others to give to Christmas Care as well. We worked over two evenings and got 21 done the first evening and by the time we finished on Monday night, we had a total of 47 pillowcases done. We think we have the pattern memorized LOL.

Cynthia, from Cherished Pieces, had a great clearance sale on and I picked out these four fabrics from the half price room. When Cynthia found out we were making pillowcases for the Inn with them, she gave me a further discount! Aren't independent quilt shop owners great?!!

Then, when I went to check out, she gave me these five BOLTS! of cotton fabric to use. We definitely put these bolts to good use! Thanks so much Cynthia and Bill for your generosity.

Gail went shopping for some floral prints for the purple bolts and we raided our stashes for appropriate trims and cuffs for the pillowcases. Gail brought her serger along and the handy snippet catcher was overflowing after our evening's work.

These were the pillowcases we finished after our first sewing evening:

The second evening we added some florals so we could use the purples for girl pillowcases for Christmas Care:

47 pillowcases finished in two nights!! We were definitely sweating :-)

A friend donated these kitty fabrics as well as the cats in the above photo (they matched perfectly with the tan bolt):

Chris ironing, ironing, ironing.....

Alice, ironing, ironing, ironing......

Jacqui, Chris and Gail after our first evening of sewing. Karen had to leave early, but she also helped with ironing:


Sleep Well!