Another Senior's quilt

 My aunt Mary is moving to a new apartment at the end of January, so this was a perfect time to make her a quilt to take along.  I was shopping with a friend of mine and we came across this panels with sheep in the colours that Mary loves. I added the borders to it and quilted it mostly along the images in the panel.  

I used a pattern called Gathering by Sugar Pine Quilt Designs, Bonnie Bechtol, adapting it to the size of this panel.

motifs quilted in the 'mountains'

I love these sheep and the comforting Bible verse on this panel

It was quilted around the trees and fence

 

Scrappy Brightness

There were still a lot of Kaffe Fasset scraps in my bins everywhere so last summer I got them sorted into a couple of baskets and came across a photo of this quilt on the internet.  I had lots of 1 1/2" strips leftover from another project so I pieced them together and cut into 1 1/2" segments and sewed them as leaders/enders into rows.  At the end of the rows (left side), 2 1/2" squares are added and every second row more are added until 10 rows are complete and you start adding 4 1/2" squares.  It was a great way to use up lots of scraps, but I still have lots left!  I can easily start another quilt ☺! This turned out to be a riot of colour and really makes me happy!  It was beautifully quilted by my friend, Chris Bogart.

(Click on the photos for a larger view.)

The finished quilt

The 1" finished block corner

Label

Two more Dear Jane blocks

I finished two more blocks in the last month or so.  Happy to make a bit of progress again.  I am now finished 82 blocks. Both of these blocks were paper pieced.

C 2 Streak of Lightning

C 4 Tic Tac Toe

 

Dear Jane progress

 The London Friendship Quilt Guild started up a Dear Jane support club last week and I got a chance to work on some Dear Jane blocks again.  The first one was done awhile ago, but I finished the other 5 blocks since last Wednesday!  Prepping blocks ahead of time is the key.  I need to take some time to prepare some more blocks again.  We'll see if the momentum remains :-).

 

B 6 Wild Goose Chase

B 9 Tinker Toy

B 10 Jud's Trophy

B 11 Melissa's Cross

B 12 Starflower

C 11 Soldiers and Sailors Monument

 I'm working on filling in the missing blocks in order or rows now.  I almost have rows A & B complete.  I now have 73 blocks completed of the 169.

 

 

Placemats

Our local small guild committed to making two placemats a month for our local VON for meals on wheels recipients for Christmas.  I used up some cut offs from a quilt which I made for my niece in 2013.  There were a lot of cut offs so I made flying geese units and pinwheel blocks with them as leaders/enders for quite awhile.  I then assembled them into placemats using up leftover strips from the quilt as well as some solid green.  The backings were done with some fall fabrics.  I was happy to get those leftovers used for something useful.

 

 

An International Joint Project

 Ten years ago, I met my friend Els, from the Netherlands, in person after being internet friends via the Dear Jane quilt project for several years.  Our friendship has blossomed and we have been to visit one another quite a few times.  Els does beautiful applique and posted a picture of the quilt below on face book a couple years ago.  My daughter commented and tagged me on the post that she would like a quilt for her bed like that.  Not in a million years would that get finished!!  But, Els didn't have anyone in mind for this top and gifted it to Amanda!  Wow, what a great gift that was.  The next problem, however, was to make it big enough for their king sized bed.

The original quilt top was the size of a lap quilt or wallhanging.

Amanda and I went shopping and she found this lovely print at Hyggeligt in St. Mary's to use as border fabric and a focus for the colours to finish the quilt.

I removed the pink border and we started playing with ideas on how to enlarge the quilt.

Many ideas and diamonds later, this is the basic layout that emerged.  You will notice that there is no applique happening in those triangles between the pieced ones ☺!

Some closeups of the lovely quilting by Julie Cassidy

The backing shows the quilting quite nicely too

The finished quilt finally.

On the bed!  I used a wool batting for the quilt so it's nice and fluffy and warm in winter and cool in summer.

Wool Applique project

 On January 18, 2014, I joined a workshop given by the London Friendship Quilt Guild taught by Jill Buckley on wool applique and embroidery embellishment.  This was a really fun workshop.  I finished the top and all the embroidery and beading a long time ago, but every time I dug it out of my ufo bin of items to be quilted, I froze and couldn't decide how to quilt it.  A couple of weeks ago I had it in my hands again and made myself put the needle down and step on the pedal of my sewing machine and get it done!  It only took a few hours!   It really is true that you just need to start sewing and something will happen ☺!  So happy that it is finished finally.  I hope to hang it in my sewing room. 

(click on the photo to enlarge for a better view)

I quilted it on my Bernina 830 vintage machine

I found a few filler ideas in various machine quilting books.

The batik insert looked a little puffy when the dense quilting was finished in the black area so I hand quilted along some of the lines and added beads to the darker areas.

The finished wall hanging

The whole class with our projects (photo courtesy of Gail McHardy-Leitch).