Squirrel pillows

Before Christmas I made a squirrel wallhanging for my friend out of a panel.  There were two panels in there that were perfect for making a couple of pillows for Christmas for my son and daughter in law.  Eric always says, "Go nuts" so that one needed to go to him.  And, the "Head up" panel was perfect for Becky ☺.  The back of Eric's pillow got a train print since he collects model railroads and Becky got a print called, "full moon" featuring cats.

Pillow fronts

Pillow backs with zippers

Three Baby quilts finished

Last month there were two showers for new babies.  I was only able to attend one of them, but passed on the other quilt to the new baby's aunt to add to the gifts at the shower.  

The first baby quilt was for Allison and John's new baby, Taylor.  I had picked up a kit at The Quilt Kitchen in Exeter in the spring.  I had to cut the striped fabric along the short side of the FQ's to make the stripes go across the strips instead of lengthwise.  I did have more fabric of three of the stripes, and managed to make the fourth one work with leftover pieces.  It love the way it turned out...happy 😀.  

The finished quilt

I quilted this one with diagonal lines along the seams

Found a Tula Pink backing for it which had all the colours in it.

The second quilt was the last of the One Block Wonder quilts using the Dr. Suess book panel.  The other two quilts can be seen here and here.  This one was for Leda and Mike's baby, Colton.  Leda can read Spanish so I managed to find "Green Eggs and Ham" in Spanish to add to the gift.

 

The original panel

The finished quilt

This one was quilted with straight lines across the quilt

Loved the individual blocks that came out of the hexagons

Backing

The last quilt was for Caroline and Kyle's baby, Callie.  I had this top finished already.  It was a free pattern off the internet and I've made it a few times and went back to credit the pattern designer and cannot find it anywhere.  I tried searching by photo and it matches colours of the fabrics, but not the pattern.  If I ever find it again, I will add the credit!  If you purchase enough length of the two solid fabrics, you can make two quilts at a time...bonus.  You can see the opposite quilt, plus another colour way of the same pattern here.  

Finished quilt

I quilted it all over with a floral pattern on my vintage Bernina 830.

Backing with a matching Kaffe Fassett fabric

Good Fortune Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt finished

The Bonnie Hunter mystery from 2018, Good Fortune, is finished.  I got it finished before the new mystery started, but I'm going to pass this year although the colours were very tempting 😀.  But I am resisting so I can get back to working on ufo's again.  

This was a fun mystery which is made entirely from my neutral and Kaffe Fasset stashes!  And, that didn't put a dent in either stash yet. I was a little worried using the large scale prints, but they worked well.   I am very happy with the way it turned out.  

(Click on the photo to enlarge for a better view.)

Finished quilt

The perfect striped binding was in my stash too and I was one strip short and my neighbour had the exact fabric!!

Close up of the blocks

Here you can see the beautiful quilting my neighbour Chris did on her longarm quilting machine

The label and Kaffe Fassett backing.  It was a little more pink than I wanted, but it was in my stash so I used it up.

Backing

June 29, 2022 Granddaughter, Lauren, chose this quilt for her graduation from grade 12 gift :-).

SQUIRREL and Jacquie Gering walking foot class

In September, I was able to take a class with Jacquie Gering on quilting with the walking foot.  Her book, "Walk" has great ideas and tips, but actually doing the quilting under her watchful eye is really helpful.  We had an enjoyable day trying out different techniques and making samples of many designs.

I took my older vintage Bernina 830 along and it worked very well with only a little wrinkling.  I could not figure out how to reduce the pressure on the presser foot on this machine.  When I got home, I thought it would be fun to try a little quilting on a few small pieces.

My friend, Mary Lou and I love to get each other sidetracked with new projects all the time.  Everytime we come up with a new idea, we will email it to each other with Squirrel in the subject line.  The friendly competition has resulted in both of us getting into squirrel mode and starting a new project before all our other ones are finished! 

In our small quilt guild, we make quilts for our local hospital's chemo unit.  We received a donation from someone with 2332 squares that are 1"!  Our President challenged us to make a quilt with at least that many squares.  She was sort of joking, but 15 of us jumped right in to try that.  Mary Lou was NOT going to do that!  Too time consuming.  I kept bugging her and sending her fun pictures of beautiful quilts made with 1" squares.  And, then one day, she told me she had found some 1 1/2" strips in her stash and started sewing them together "just to see how long it would take" LOL.  Before long she had a top done and quilted!  She is now working on her second one!

I was shopping with a friend of mine and we were teasing each other about all the 'squirrels' we were tempted with when the shop owner asked why we kept saying "squirrel".  We explained that it's like taking your dog for a walk and how he darts off when he sees a squirrel.  "Oh" she said, "Have you seen the panel in the sale bin?"  The squirrels on this panel were so adorable and for $5.00, who could resist that?  I immediately thought of Mary Lou and when I got home, found a bunch of 1 1/2" strips in my stash that matched one of the squirrels in the panel and stitched a border around it.

I decided to try quilting it with the walking foot as Jacquie had instructed.  I drew a wavy line from corner to corner going both ways and got about halfway finished when I took a good look at it and realized it was very very crooked.  Here you can see how crooked it was! (click on the photos for a larger view)
 

the very crooked quilting!

 I could not live with this!  I picked all the stitching out again and basted it carefully.  Meanwhile, I mentioned to my husband that I couldn't understand why you couldn't loosen the pressure on these machines.  He told me that you could!  Wow, I've only owned this machine for 20 or so years and now finally find that out!  He helped me loosen the pressure a lot and I re-quilted it...much better!

All fixed up!

Quilted with the walking foot with 1/2" lines

Mary Lou with her Squirrel

The rest of the panel - aren't these squirrels adorable? 

A huge thank you to Jacquie Gering for her wonderful class!  I'm excited to try some more quilting with my walking foot!

Another Peaked insert quilt

Forgot that I hadn't blogged this peaked insert quilt either!  I made this one for a friend going through some health issues back in April!  She loves flowers so I found this 'panel' in my stash and cut it and added a purple sashing to make it big enough to equal a panel.  It really turned out like "spring" 🙂.

 (click on the photo to enlarge)

Single panel...they were printed two beside each other which was the perfect size.

Finished quilt

I quilted this one overall with a funky flower pattern

Found a fun polka dot with all the colours for a backing and a perfect stripe for the binding. Amazing what's in the stash 😀

Farm panel comfort quilt

Last year, a friend in one of my quilt groups experimented with a way to use some of the many panels that have been donated to our small quilt guild.  We all loved the results and got her to demonstrate it at a retreat and then to come and teach it to us a couple of times.  These are addictive 😀.  I've already made a few (first one here) and finally got this one completed and off to the hospital. 

(click on the photo for a larger view)

Original farm panel

Finished quilt

Quilted this one with loops all over

Found a fun iris fabric in the sale bin for the backing

Comfort quilt

I'm woefully behind in my blogging again!  But, I have been very busy sewing up a storm! This summer I worked on quilting up some tops for our comfort quilt project for our local hospital.  I belong to two small quilt groups and we make lap quilts for the chemo unit of our local hospital.  

This quilt was put together with green and pink scraps that we had in the donated stash (along with a few others from my stash to get enough for the top).  This was a fun quilt to do.  I just quilted it myself with large loops down each row. 

(click on the photo to enlarge.)

quilted with large loops in each row

We had a lot of one floral fabric and used it for borders, but it needed a little more width, so it got dark grey half tumblers and also grey binding around it.