Leaders - Enders

I've been using leaders/enders for a few years which I learned from Bonnie Hunter's fun site. I started with the quilt which she made under her instructions on her website for leaders/enders and made a blue and white quilt using scraps collected from years and years of sewing. Here is a picture of the first quilt I made:

I loved these units for leaders/enders so kept on cutting using beige and green scraps this time. Here is my trusty Singer 15-88 treadle with lots of beige and green 2" squares for the 4 patch units:


I organized my disaster in the plastic tub where I keep this project and pressed all the 4 patches and half square triangles that I had completed.



I have 44 blocks completed (the blue and white quilt used 100). By the time I have all the subunits put together I'll probably have at least 50 blocks, so I'm halfway:


This strip is leftover from my curved log cabin quilt's piano key border and the star is made from the cut offs from a 12" block I made for a guild project years ago :-). I've kept both these items in the bucket and hope to incorporate them somewhere in the finished quilt..kind of a cool, unexpected surprise somewhere. It'll be sometime before I get to laying this quilt out :-).

Found another picture on my computer of some of the green and beige squares up on my design wall. I forgot I had this picture :-). This is the same layout as the blue and white quilt, but I think I'm going to do something different with the layout for the green and cream/brown quilt.

Some nostalgia

Putting away my Christmas decorations today produced some warm fuzzy feelings of nostalgia :-). I thought I'd post a few pictures of this special table cloth that my Mom made for me years ago; I think the first year I was married, which would be 1978. I remember it on the table in our first home, so it was definitely around that time. My Mom is an accomplished seamstress and learned some nice handwork at school in her native Holland. Her education was interrupted by World War II, but she did end up going to a special school where they taught homemaking. It was called "Huishoudschool" in Holland. She still has her notebook with paper tea towels, complete with coloured stripes on them, folded 'properly' and put into her notebook. Her mother also did a lot of needlework and I have several table cloths that she made as well. My Mom learned embroidery and sewing at a very early age from my Oma and my sister and I learned from my Mom when we were very young.

I really like this table cloth which my Mom made for our round pine coffee table. It comes out every year.


Here is a closeup of the embroidered poinsettias and the pretty edge at the hem. It's all done by hand and is as nice at the back as at the front!


This is a table topper that I made when I first began to quilt in 1989. This is probably made then or in 1990. Shame on me, I didn't put a label on the back!! I had taken a log cabin quilting class and did a lot of log cabin projects those first years. I still use this table topper every year and can really see my progress in my quilting :-). It is quilted by hand.


Here is a close up of the corner and binding. This was in the days when I did my binding by machine!! I always do it by hand now as I like the look a lot better even if it takes longer. My Mother's teaching is rubbing off on me :-).

Here is the old Christmas tree skirt that I made the same year. The table topper was made from leftover fabrics from the tree skirt. The reason I put the darker side of the diamonds in the center was because I had a rust coloured carpet so I wanted to keep the red away from it a bit :-). I handquilted this one in the ditch around each of the diamonds and did one row each year until they were all finished. I think I'll quilt a star in the center of the blocks one of these days yet.

Callie's Polka Dot quilt

This quilt was finally delivered a few weeks ago! I managed to get it to the baby before she turned 15 :-). That was my aim and I got it there two days after her first birthday. Here is Ruth's photo of the quilt:


This photo was taken at the Parry Sound retreat in September where I finished it:

Quilting in progress at the retreat:Closeup of the blocks....it was fun collecting the polka dots for this project. I exchanged polka dot fabrics for several months by mail with my cyberfriend, Rosa, from New Brunswick. Everytime we found a polka dot, we would buy a FQ and share half of it with each other. A lot of fun mail travelled across Canada for awhile :-).
My daughter in law, Jannyne, helped me pick out the fabrics for Ruth's quilt. Here they are with the backing that Rosa also sent to me:

There are lots more polka dot fabrics for the next quilt to make :-).
I have already made another quilt with the polka dot stash for my niece, Melanie.

Christmas tree skirts

Two Christmas tree skirts were completed this Christmas. This one is for my son's girlfriend's Mom :-). Becky helped me choose the colours and pattern she wanted for the gift for her Mom from both of us. This pattern was in an old issue from Fall/Winter 1992 Traditional Quiltworks' Third Annual Christmas Special. I've used this magazine a lot...the cover's totally torn off the magazine. The pattern is called "Kaleidoscope of Stars" by Mary Jobe Mason. I'm actually working on hand piecing one just like it, but of course that one's nowhere near done :-). Maybe next year. It is completely cut out with templates and there are a LOT of inset seams. Gave me good practise.

Closeup of the border....I meandered in the green sections and quilted a five pointed star in the cardinal section.

The back shows the quilting a little better:

The center stars with cardinal fabric in the centers:

This tree skirt was from Quiltmaker's issue #76 from Nov./Dec. 2000. The pattern is by Mary B. Hayes. It is a fun pattern and easy to sew. But, placing the colours is a challenge. I made this one a few years ago for my oldest son's wife, and it was mainly done in same tones of various green fabrics and the star is not noticeable at all. The original pattern has such busy fabrics that I didn't realize there were triangle squares in it until I started cutting out the fabrics! Placing the contrasting colours in this tree skirt really made the star stand out. This tree skirt was given to my youngest son's wife and was actually her gift from last year! I did get it completed in time to put it under their tree and it looks beautiful in their front hall.

It is basically quilted with diagonal lines:

Plowing Match blocks

Deb and I got together this morning to make our plowing match blocks. The Plowing Match will be held close to St. Thomas next year and, of course, there is a quilt block competition. We made these blocks to participate, not win any competitions :-). The deadline was December 31st, so we figured we had better get moving LOL! I've only had the kit since last May or June. The fabrics are from Northcott and were included in the kit. We had to use at least four of them and were not allowed to add anything else. I ended up using all five colours and the name of this block is "noon and night".


Deb used four of the five colours in her block, Lacy Lattice Work. (The block is square! I took the photo from a slight angle :-(.

We filled out the accompanying entry form for the blocks, put them in an envelope and put stamps on it and they are in the mail! Nice to have those out of the way on time :-). Now on to other UFO's. Can't wait to see what kind of quilt they make from the winning blocks.

Jannyne's table runner

This table runner was made for my daughter in law, Jannyne. The center blocks are the Spinning Four Patch block using a kind of paisley fabric. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough length to be able to cut borders from the original fabric to fit the sides of the runner and they would have to be cut mirror image to look nice. So I decided to leave it fairly narrow and use the original fabric as the binding. This is the finished runner. Sorry for the dark photo as I couldn't wait for better light since it had to be wrapped :-).


This photo shows the exact colours of the table runner:

Closeup of the quilting in the center blocks:

Joann's table runner

My friend, Deb, was attending the Creativ Festival in Toronto, which was held in October this year with another friend. They planned to take the train and spend the day together. Joann could not make it at the last minute and insisted that I have her ticket as a gift! Deb and I got together a week or so later and raided my Christmas stash and made this table runner for her. We took her out for lunch and presented her with the runner as a thank you for this wonderful gift. I had never been to the Festival before and it was a real treat to go by train and not have to worry about traffic and parking. We left at 7:00 a.m. and arrived back home at 10:30, tired, but very satisfied with our lovely outing. Here is the finished runner. The runner was made from a pattern in a Fons & Porter magazine. I made one previously for a friend of mine.

This picture shows the quilting on the table runner. I just stippled around the antique postcards in the center panel, outlined the poinsettias in the end borders and quilted x's in the piano key borders. All the fabrics for this table runner were in my stash :-).


I had enough of the center antique postcard panel and the piano key borders to make a second runner. See the following blog post for the second table topper: