Becky's Table runner

This Christmas runner was made for my son's girlfriend, Becky. It was inspired by a pattern in a Fons & Porter magazine that used large scale prints and panels with scrappy strips. I already made a table runner last summer with this pattern and have been keeping my eyes open for other fabrics that I could use for more of these fun runners. The antique postcard fabric and the one with the large Christmas words have been in my stash for a few years. Here is the finished table runner:

Quilting in the center panel:

I did a small stipple quilting between the words in the end borders:

Stars were quilted in the piano key borders connected with loops and a striped binding cut on the bias finished the quilt off. I found the Moose print batik fabric in the clearance bin in a quilt shop in Huntsville, ON on a summer vacation a few years ago.

QUILTS FOR COLOMBIA

An ongoing project of the Mission Circle, which I belong to, has been making quilts for Word & Deed's projects in Colombia. Word & Deed has a child sponsorship program and operates many schools for children around the world. Several members of our Mission Circle have visited a home for girls in Colombia and, after hearing the stories of their visits, we decided to make quilts for all the girls in the home. Our first batch of 55 quilts was sent over a few years ago. Recently, the director of the project was speaking at a fundraising dinner in our area, so we decided to try and finish as many quilts as possible for her to take along and wrap more children with love! We spent a number of days working away and managed to get 27 quilts finished in time for the dinner. We make simple quilts by cutting donated fabric into 6 1/2" squares and laying them out in a diagonal pattern.

This bucket of squares is awaiting future quilt projects :

Once the tops are assembled, we get together to sandwich the tops with batting and backing and prepare the binding....here is the bucket of potential binding fabrics and a box of backings:


One of the ladies takes them home and 'machine ties' the corners of each square. The binding is also applied and they return all neatly folded on a hanger, ready for hand stitching it to the back (and the hangers even match!!):

A stack of quilts ready to be pinned:

My helper that day (Joan) got a little carried away by the batting and thought she might make a good Santa Claus LOL!

Margaret busily ironing the backing for a quilt:

Dora, our master binding ironer!! (hmmm, spell checker doesn't like that word :-). Dora ironed bindings all day long :-).

We do take a break for lunch and we always have a loaf of homemade bread and Alie's yummy meatball soup :-). I forgot to take a picture of the soup:

At our meetings, we work on stitching the binding down by hand while we listen to reports and letters from various missionaries around the world. (Left to right) Dora, Amanda, Margaret and Alie working hard:

Front to back; Jacqueline, Gerda, Joanne and Bertha:


Alie, Bertha, Joanne and Gerda:


Some of the quilts are also taken home to hand stitch. One of my quilt students, Corinna, even took a couple home to finish. Thanks Corinna!! And, Dora handstitched 10 or 11 of the quilts herself!! Wow, she's our expert hand stitcher!! Here Alie is getting started on one of them with a pile of totally finished quilts beside her:

Here are a few of the quilts completed or almost completed. Amazing what can be done from many peoples' discarded fabrics! There are many ugly fabrics that show up, but if you pair them with the right colours, they are wonderful.





We got this partially completed quilt from someone and had a lot of fun designing a little baby quilt with the story of Noah's Ark. Margaret stitched this quilt in the ditch around the blocks and I meandered the borders:


The back of the Noah's Ark quilt:

We pray that these quilts will share our love with these children in Colombia! If you have any 100% cotton fabrics that are lonely and need other fabrics to 'play with' or batting or backings that you want to get rid of, let me know and we can put it to very good use.

Monkey Quilt

This was a really fun quilt to work on. I collected FQ's of the sock monkey fabrics for awhile (found my first FQ's of it a few years ago while vacationing in Michigan). I only added one extra yellow with tiny polka dots, but the rest are all from the sock monkey line. I used the Crazy 8's pattern from Bits 'n Pieces. This is a quick quilt to make as there are no borders. I just meandered it all over with yellow quilting thread. Here is a closer up picture of the quilting (click on the picture to enlarge it):

The label:

The whole quilt all finished! It went to a new Mom in my Church for her little boy, Andrew Nathaniel.

Three sister's Quilts

My sister from BC visited me in June for the first time in 14 years. We had a great time catching up. I had only been quilting for a few years the last time she was here so we had a great time exploring patterns, fabric, UFO's, etc. She was intrigued with the Spinning Four Patch and when I told her I was contemplating doing a mini, she was all excited. She loves miniatures even more than I do :-). I let her loose in my fabric stash with the instruction to find a small scale busy print that she liked. She chose a pretty sea shell fabric that I had purchased for another project, but it was not suitable so went into the stash. It was perfect for this project. We cut out the squares 1 3/4". Here you see Thea playing with the layouts of the squares and coming up with her favourites.

Squares ready to sew together:

First squares sewn and on the design wall:

We had quite a few squares so decided that we would get our youngest sister, Eva, involved as well and make three little quilts. We would each choose our own colours for sashing and binding and our own layout. Thea chose her favourite colour combination, blue and yellow and decided on this layout:

Not sure if the quilting in the border shows up on the photo (click on it to enlarge it), but I quilted stars and loops in the border:

Eva chose to set her blocks on point and have hers made into a mini table runner for her patio table and chose blue and pink for her accent colours:

I quilted little funky flowers in the light blue squares:


Quilting on the back of the quilt:

I decided to make a little doll quilt for one of my antique doll beds and went for the brighter red for mine. I also set the squares on point and added a narrow gold border and used the same for binding:

I quilted pansies in the blocks and swirlies in the border:


Here are the three quilts altogether:

Now to wrap them up for Christmas and get the one for Thea in the mail :-).

Another cube!

I finally got to the Marsh Store on Thursday and picked up the "One block Wonders - Encore" book with the patterns for the cubes. While I was there, I found a background fabric to use in between the cubes.

I made another cube last night...the bottom right one. It's called the 'bottom slice' :-). These cubes are so fun to work on, but you do have to keep your wits about you when sewing them. When you have them close up on the sewing table, you don't get the cube look...they look like trapezoids and triangles! The center seam is not sewn yet as you have to do that last. I have another one half finished, and hope to post a few more soon.

A New Iron

I broke down Friday and bought a new iron :-). My trusty iron has been spitting and coughing for a bit and I decided it's time to retire it before I burn myself. Checked out the irons and found this lovely pink one...what fun. I haven't tried it out yet, but hope to take it for a test run on Monday. Isn't it nice and shiny? My favourite job of ironing fabric will be even more fun now.

Another UFO finished!

In November 2006 (I think that is the correct date :-), I attended an applique workshop taught by Cynthia Tomaszewski, through the London Friendship Quilt Guild. Cynthia was a delightful teacher and made the class so much fun! We learned freezer paper applique and fusible with a blanket or fancy stitch. This is her sample of the wallhanging that we made:


Here is a leaf shape that I practised on:


The fusible with blanket stitch flower:

The leaves were appliqued with needle turn around freezer paper shapes:


Center appliqued and borders on:

The completed handquilted wallhanging (finally!). I sewed buttons in the centers of the flowers.

Wow, it feels good to get this little wallhanging finished! It just kept getting shoved to the bottom of the pile and delayed in our two moves. Now to find a spot to hang it up!