Bethany and Mark's quilt - Pat Sloan workshop

Earlier this year I participated in an online workshop with Pat Sloan on the internet. We had to choose fabrics from our stash that we wanted to use up; basically 2 1/2" strips and 10" squares. We posted pictures on a flicker site and everyone helped with suggestions on what would work for the project. Pat gave suggestions for colours as we did not know which block we were going to do. A few days before the start, she posted the pattern and we got organized to start sewing on the weekend. I started on Friday morning around 11:00 a.m. and by Saturday afternoon had the whole top together. I decided to use red because we were invited to a wedding in April and red was the bride's favourite colour. Since the groom has a great sense of humour, I thought I could add some fun novelty fabrics. I thought I had taken photos of the completely finished quilt, but I can't find them anywhere on my computer. I will add them later if I find them!

Here are a few photos of the various fabrics that are in the quilt (those 'octopus' looking shapes are actually funky chickens :-):

Spider webs, music notes, blackbirds, names of flowers....

I found a great Jinny Beyer black with a small gold dot for the border and binding. Other than that, everything else was out of my stash:

All the blocks ready to sew together into a star:

I quilted it on my Bernina 830 using an all over meandering pattern. The backing fabric is a really cool tree stump fabric that I found in a clearance bin:

Here you can see the awesome variegated YLI thread that had all the colours in it, including a purple, which is in the basket and hearts fabric:

Hopefully, I'll find the pictures of the completed quilt and post them later.

Kit gets new pyjamas

On Wednesday, I received a really fun package in the mail from my sister in Victoria, BC. She has a number of American Girl dolls from the Pleasant Co. and I have Kit, who represents the 1930's. Years ago, I gave my sister a piece of 30's print and Thea made a pair of pyjamas for Kit. Here she is proudly modeling her brand new pj's. Hmmmm..wonder if my Mom is up to knitting a pair of little slippers for Kit? :-)

Thea also took home some of the fabric from the three sister's quilts that I made for all us sisters last summer when Thea visited. She made a little pillow of the leftovers to match my quilt. I still need to stuff it. She also tossed in a little needle book, a lovely blue fat quarter (I'll make a DJ block from this!) and the sweetest little set of sewing themed cookie cutters complete with black and gold sugar to decorate the sewing machine. How fun is that!! Here is a closeup of the cookie cutters and the tape measure ribbon used for the bow:

Here are the shapes in the set. The 'moon' shaped piece is the insert for the basket handle :-). I will have to make some of these for a quilt guild potluck. Too much fun.


My sister works at Creating Occasions in Victoria, BC where they sell these cookie cutters and does some of the displays there. She is just getting into making child and doll aprons. Her displays are so fun. This photo shows one of her Winnie the Pooh displays in the shop. Her American Doll, Kirsten is on the right and her old teddy bear she received from our grandparents in Holland when she was a child is on the left:

Don't you just want to join the tea party here?

A 12 year old UFO FINISHED!!

Yes, you read that correctly :-). I started this quilt 12 years ago. The blocks are my demo's for a sampler block of the month quilt that I started teaching 12 years ago to some new students. I had two classes going so made two of ten different star blocks. I chose a fabric with antique sewing items as my focus fabric. The intent was to make a quilt for my own double bed. However, this was in the days of still having teenagers home and the blocks were set aside. I took them along when DH went back to school to get his B Ed degree in Hamilton in 2004. I did get the black sashings sewn on at that time. However, we were not sure where we would be living after this and wanted to get a queen sized bed if we had room. So, the quilt was put away again. We finally did get moved last year and in the fall found the queen sized bed. In February, a friend and I got together to work on our bed quilts to spur each other on to finally complete our quilts! I did not want to quilt this large quilt myself on my domestic machine so I had it quilted by Tim Bobier of the Marsh Store. He did an awesome job of the quilting! Here is the quilt on the bed:

Closeups of some of the blocks and the lovely quilting (you can see the focus fabric in the center of the left block):

Unfortunately, the variegated thread colours don't show up on the photo since I have to resize the pictures for blogger. The thread has pastel colours matching the focus fabric perfectly. It is one of the King Tut threads.




I didn't have enough of the black border fabric to make the quilt large enough and that would have been very dark as well. A few years ago, I found the exact fabric in the cream background in a sale bin and bought a couple of metres. It worked well to make the border large enough:

In order to make the quilt large enough for the new queen sized bed, I added a scrappy border of 2 1/2" squares using all the fabrics in the blocks.

The backing of the quilt:


Now I can finally make the curtains for the room and decide on pictures for the walls!

Christening gown

I took a break from quilting to sew a christening gown! My daughter, Amanda, asked me to make it for her third child and second daughter. The first two kids wore the dress I made for Amanda when she was born. She figured that Kara would like to keep that one herself and it would be fun for Charity to have one to keep as well. So, I delved into patterns and garment sewing! That was a bit of a challenge as I haven't sewn clothing for a lot of years. I took my time, but did have to do a bit of ripping out. We used leftover lace from Amanda's wedding dress over the bodice and sleeves.

I was originally planning to use the rolled hemmer on my Bernina 830, but was a little afraid of the slippery fabric. I took a look at the instructions in the manual and there were great directions for sewing a lace edging. It worked slick.

The ribbon is just pinned in place. I'm not great at making pretty bows so this basic one is all I can come up with :-). Back to quilting! That's more in my comfort zone LOL

Dick and Jane baby quilt

My new granddaughter, Katherine Anne, was born on Feb. 22, 2010 to my son Ben and his wife Heather. Heather shares my love of Dick and Jane readers and has quite a collection too. I've been collecting the Dick and Jane fabrics for awhile and promised that the first baby would get a quilt made with these fun fabrics. Here is the quilt which was actually finished before the baby was born since she was two weeks late :-).

The quilt was machine and hand quilted:
The centre pinwheel:

This border print is just so much fun!

One of the larger squares. The pattern is from Quilt's #78 Patchwork Quilting magazine from summer 2007.

My own bed quilt, finally!

In 1998, a few friends asked me to teach them how to quilt. We did a few smaller projects and then decided to do a block of the month sampler quilt as they are a great learning experience using various techniques. We chose stars as they would also make nice table runners for those that just wanted to join a few of the classes. I did not have a quilt for my own double bed, so decided to use my samples to make a quilt for our double bed.

Fast forward to 2010! and the quilt top is finally finished. But there are reasons why it took so long :-). Here is the finished top. It is at the Marsh Store right now where Tim Bobier is quilting it for me on his long arm machine. I will take a better photo of it on our bed when I get it back:

For the class in 1998, a focus fabric was chosen first and prints were purchased to blend in with that print. I chose this antique sewing themed print for my focus fabric:
We did 10 different star blocks and used quite a few different techniques for constructing the blocks including one paper pieced block. There were two classes and I did a sample for each class to make a total of 20 blocks. Here are the blocks with the black sashings and corner stones of the focus fabric designed to fit a double bed:

I still had four teenagers in the house and was doing the Mom's taxi routine, so the blocks were patiently waiting. My husband went back to school in 2004 and we moved to Hamilton for two years while he obtained his B Ed. degree. During this time, I put the sashing around the blocks, but because we were not living at home, I couldn't measure it on the actual bed. When we returned to our own home, we were contemplating moving at some point and thought we might get a queen sized bed if we had room in the new house. Because of the busyness of life, we did not move for several years. We built a new house, lived in another place for 6 weeks, began the huge task of unpacking and organizing, and finally found a queen sized bed that we liked in the fall. A friend of mine is also working on a quilt for her bed and we decided to get together a few weeks ago and get these quilts finished and on our beds. Thanks, Deb, for the inspiration to get it finished!

I added a border of 2" squares all around the quilt to make it bigger. The black focus fabric was too dark around that black, and I had the lighter version of the same print which worked well in between:

Here is a close up of the border fabrics:

I should be getting the quilt back in a couple of weeks and then I just need to add the binding!! Can't believe this quilt is actually almost finished and that I still love the print after 12 years!!

Snow day production

Jake has a snow day today, so we're in a bit of a relaxed mode. I was going to go to one of my favourite quilt shops today and roam around in London, but the weather is not good for that, so I'm staying home. Cozy inside with the snow blowing around and the wind howling around the house! Sounds like a blizzard out there, but we're not getting real major amounts of snow.

Jake put the coffee on, grabbed the ladder and decided this was a great day to get our family blocks up to date. Our youngest son, Ben, started this tradition years ago and kept it updated with current girl/boyfriends and new babies. When he married 2 1/2 years ago, he continued the tradition in his own home. When one of the girls was expecting, he would add Baby in non coloured letters until the baby was born, when the blocks would be replaced with the name in coloured letters. A fun tradition. This is also how we found out they were expecting their first child when he added 'baby' at our house :-).

Here is Jake preparing for the job:

My task was to organize the leftover baskets of blocks and pass proper letters to him through the railing. This is a two person operation :-).


Do you have another E for me??

Arranging the blocks neatly in order, adding the two newest grandbabies and updating the year:

Note the convenient spot for Jake's coffee cup :-). This is when you find out things about the construction of the house...the coffee cup does not fit between all of the railings LOL.


Have we got everything correct:


The completed, updated blocks:

We ran out of the letter e so I scrounged around til I came up with Quilt til you Wilt for the sewing room window sill:

That oughta inspire us to quilt in that sewing room :-)!