Denise and Dan's quilt

High time to update my blog!  I've been sewing up a storm and haven't had time to post anything on the blog :-).  Denise and Dan's wedding quilt was at the Shedden Quilt show, which was the same weekend they got married.  It took a few weeks before we could connect and bring over the quilt.  Then life got busy (May and June are write offs when you're married to a teacher LOL).  I just realized that I hadn't even posted a note about this quilt yet.

This quilt was called, Modern Maze and was featured in a fairly recent quilt magazine.  When I find the magazine, I'll add the details to this post :-).  Here is the finished quilt:

I quilted it with an allover meandering with a variegated King Tut thread:

The original quilt in the magazine was done in black and whites with lime green as the accent, but this colour fit right in with Denise's livingroom.

Kit goes for a Sleepover

My American Girl doll, Kit Kittredge, went to my granddaughters' home for a sleepover!  Lauren has a 'just like me' doll that she named Sarah and Leah just got Ruthie (Kit's best friend from the historical doll series) for her birthday.  So, Kit got to go to Leah and Lauren's for a few days and even got to go to a birthday party with Lauren :-).

Here she is waiting to be picked up for her sleepover.  Her dog, Grace, got to go along.

 Kit with her best friend Ruthie (Leah's new doll):

 Ruthie and Kit having fun with Sarah (Lauren's doll):

 Tucked into bed together (bed made by Leah and Lauren's Dad):

Aren't they cute when they are sleeping? 

 

Kit wearing her birthday dress that she got for my birthday :-)

 

Kit is back home again waiting patiently for the some friends to come over and play:

 

Insanity revisited....

After finishing my mini tulip quilt a few weeks ago, I had a couple of friends over to sew together.  They wanted to try one too!  I was going to stick to my resolution to work on UFO's and besides, I had vowed that I would never do another mini tulip quilt!  When I had posted that sentiment on face book, my sister commented "Oh dear, I was hoping for one in red, yellow and blue!"  Amy and Lynn really wanted to try these little tulips, and Amy reminded me that I could do a little quilt for my sister and join them.  Since my sister had her birthday on May 13th, I succumbed to peer pressure (yes, at my age!!) and decided to join them.

All our mini tulip blocks

blue border.?

or red border???

Blue border won out and since I couldn't decide which colour lippy to go with, I added one of each :-)

The little quilt measures about 5" x 7"

My sister was 'over the moon' with her little quilt.  It was worth it :-)!!

Batik daisy mania....

We went to a Quilt show in Shedden ON and were inspired by a table runner made by Pat P on the welcome table.  We bought some batik from one of our favourite vendors and Alice and I got together to make a table runner.  Chris came over and dropped everything and made one too.  We were having a surprise house warming party for another friend, Cathy, so we got together on Thursday to make one for Cathy as a gift.  Alice also made a second one for a friend's birthday.  Here are the table toppers that we made.

 This is the table topper that I made for myself; it is being quilted on my vintage Bernina 830.

 I quilted little leaves and cirliques in the background with variegated thread.

 I used a variegated King Tut thread by Superior and it made these cool striped edges along my daisy petals :-).  I quilted a spiral in it, but I wasn't really happy with it as it bunched up just a little bit and looked a little "thin".

Quilting in the border:

Alice took my finished table topper home and hand embroidered the center and added a bead.  Perfect!!  Thanks Alice :-).

 I bought an antique table a few weeks ago and it looks great on it behind the love seat in the livingroom:

Front of the table....it has a drop leaf and also pulls out to accomodate three leaves:

It fits nicely on the table:

Here is Chris' version of the table topper:

This is the topper we made for our friend Cathy's housewarming party (Alice added embroidery on it later as well):

 

Here is the one for Alice's friend:

 

Spring mug rug!

I taught a class on paper piecing this week and made myself a little mug rug for Spring out of my tulip :-).  It definitely is vibrant LOL.  If the coffee doesn't wake me up, the colours will!!

Mini Tulips Finished

I just realized it's been way too long since I updated my blog.  That's because I've been busy actually finishing projects.  We had a local quilt show last weekend which gave the push to finish things.  


The little mini tulips quilt that I started in the workshop taught by Kathy Wagner is finished.  It was a challenge working with such tiny pieces.  I should have located my scrapbooking tweezers to help pick up the pieces :-).  While assembling the tiny blocks, which are composed of 16 squares and half square triangles that measure 1/4" finished!, I aimed them at my trusty Singer 15-88 treadle and hoped they came out the other end sewn together!  Sorry about the upside down measurements on the photo, but it gives an idea of the size: 

 Here is the finished quilt, complete with binding AND a label!  The label took up half of the back.  I should have just made a large label and used it as backing LOL

 

Kathy is a real enabler!!  I am actually saving the trimmings from these little blocks as well as cut offs of other blocks and bought two more small glass jars like this one at the local thrift shop on Saturday so I can store the different colours in pretty glass jars!!

 The scraps do look very pretty in the jars, especially the bright coloured ones.  When I have the jars filled with some colour, I'm going to go to Kathy and get instructions on what to do next :-)

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.......