Two Jelly roll race quilt finishes

Finished quilt top

A few years ago, I used up a lot of batik strips to try a larger jelly roll race quilt.  It made a large top so I cut it in half and had two nice lap size tops.  I quilted it a few weeks ago and gifted it to a friend who lost her husband in September.  

 

I used up a lot of batik strips from my 2 1/2" drawer

I quilted it with a variegated King Tut thread and a funky flower pattern

My friend, Chris across the street, who has a long arm quilt business, was all caught up on her Christmas quilts so managed to squeeze this jelly roll race quilt top in before Christmas!  I sewed this one last Christmas using a stack of turqouise, red and green fat quarters I picked up at Cherished Pieces a few years ago.  I love the modern look of this one.  This will be my own Christmas lap quilt.

I've had this fun fabric for a few years waiting for a special quilt to make with these cute foxes. 

Beautiful snowflake quilting by Chris Bogart

Another long overdue project finished :-)

 I worked in a quilt shop in Hamilton for almost two years when my husband went back to University to obtain a teaching degree. One of the classes taught was a quilt as you go table topper.  Backing and batting were cut a little larger than the finished size and then a center square chosen.  Each border was added and stitched through the batting and backing forming the quilting as if it was stitched in the ditch.  I made this topper as a Christmas gift for my Mom.  After she passed away, I got it back and thought it needed a little more quilting.  I quilted a design in the center and then got sidetracked and did not get it finished.  A few years ago I did the outside border and one other border.  This year I finally finished all the borders.  It is a great memory of my Mom as well as of my time working at this quilt shop ☺.  (Click on the photo to enlarge.)

I used a stencil to draw a motif in the center block and filled it in with lines.

Straight lines in the green borders and the red border has snowflakes which are hard to see on the busy fabric

The outside border got some feathers and the white border some simple loops

 

A quilt for my brother

This year I made a jelly roll race Christmas quilt for my brother out west.  Last year I finished one for my other siblings.  These are so much fun to make.  And they use up some stash :-).

jelly roll race quilt for Jim

Found this lovely bright poinsettia print for the backing

My friend Chris who lives across the street quilted this with a new Christmas tree pattern she got.

Lots of fun prints....they are like an "I spy"

Siblings Christmas

My sister from BC came to visit for a family wedding in November and we decided to get the house decorated for Christmas early and have a siblings Christmas on December 9th.  I have never had my Christmas tree up this early ever!  We have not celebrated Christmas together for many years, so this was the perfect opportunity.  

The day before the party, we picked up three of my granddaughters from school and they helped us decorate the tree and put up our village and playmobil Christmas sets. (Click on the photos to enlarge for better view.) 

Three granddaughters, Lauren, Leah and Kara, decorating with Aunt Thea

We enjoyed supper together and played a game and brought them home again.

On the morning of the day, my sister and I got the turkey dinner all prepped and wrapped up lots of gifts to place under the tree and set the table with our late Mom's china dishes.  We also had lots of candles and pretty Christmas napkins.

The china that my Mom and Dad received as an engagement gift in 1954 is still being used.  Here is my sister, Thea, getting the table all nicely set.

The Christmas village

My Mom embroidered this table cloth for me for Christmas probably 40 years ago.  The log cabin table topper was one of the first things I made when I started quilting in 1989. 

The stockings were hung to be filled later for the grandkids

Gifts arranged under the tree

Even the weather was picture perfect with a pretty layer of snow!

Last year I got together with a couple of quilt friends and we exchanged 2 1/2" strips to make a Christmas jelly roll race quilt.  You can read about that here.  When we decided to have Christmas together with my siblings, I started to think about a gift for them and the thought of a quilt crossed my brain!  A couple more friends wanted to make jelly roll races this year and I again joined in thinking I could make one as a gift for someone.  When we finished cutting strips, there were enough to make two quilts.  But, I needed three!  I remembered the top from last year which had not been quilted yet and ran over to my neighbour across the street, Chris Bogart to see if she could quilt three quilts in the next week!  She is a long arm quilter.   Yes, she was game and told me to bring the first one over.  She quilted all three of them in short order and I sat down to hand stitch binding in between all the other busyness of Christmas.  It was so much fun surprising them with their very own quilt this year!! 

This is the quilt for my brother Bas.  I chose the darker strips for his quilt.

This is the backing for my brother's quilt.  It was quilted with a beautiful snowflake pantograph

Close up of a few strips

This quilt was for my sister, Thea.  I added bright lime green squares between each square when sewing them together.

Close up of the strips

It was quilted with an awesome mittens and skates pantograph

The quilt for my sister Eva

Close up of the strips

This one was quilted with a holly design as she is an avid gardener.

All in all, it was a very memorable and relaxed Christmas.  I now need to make another Christmas jelly roll race for myself and maybe one for my other brother who also lives a long ways away and could not be with us.

Jolly Little Christmas Quilt along finished

In January of 2017, Lorna of Sew Fresh Quilts hosted the "Have a Jolly little Christmas" quilt along and I made lots of blocks and completed a lot of projects last Christmas as documented in this blog post.  My own lap quilt top was finished last Christmas, but I didn't get to quilting it.  I decided to send it out for quilting in November to my neighbour across the street, Chris Bogart.  Time to get it done.  She did a fabulous job on it with a snowflake pattern in a light green thread.  I got the binding done before December and enjoyed it on my couch during the Christmas season together with the matching pillows I made last year.  I will leave it on the couch til the end of January to enjoy it a little longer. (Click on the photos to enlarge for a better view.)

Finished quilt

Lorna provided a "Sinterklaas" option for those of us with Dutch heritage.

Chris Bogart quilted it for me on her longarm machine with a snowflake pattern.

Jelly Roll Race Christmas Friends Quilt

A few weeks ago, three of us decided to make a Christmas jelly roll race quilt.  We got together one morning with all three of our stashes of Christmas fabrics and cut off three strips; one for each of us.  We ended up with 54 different strips.  One of us left out the black prints strips and added a couple of blues but we basically used the same strips.  Interesting how they all turn out differently :-).  This was a really fun project to do with some friends.   Great memories of fun times spent together and amazing how our stashes blend LOL.  The 54 strips resulted in a quilt top that is approximately 62" x 74" which will make a great Christmas lap quilt.

This is my quilt top

Sandra's quilt top

Sharon's quilt top

Sharon, Jacqui and Sandra with out matching quilts

Free motion practise with Lori Kennedy

Free motion quilting is one of those skills that needs practise, practise, practise which is boring :-)   There are always so many things that need to be done.  I keep procrastinating and trying to get motivated.  Excited to report that I've discovered the solution to that problem by coming across a blog by Lori Kennedy called The Inbox Jaunt.  Lori suggests using squares of solid coloured cotton and quilting practise motifs and then binding them and using them as vase quilts or mini wall hangings or just collecting them :-).   This has just motivated me to actually get around to trying these wonderful ideas.  (She also suggests making up a whole bunch of little sandwiches in various colours, but I haven't gotten quite that organized yet LOL.)

Every Tuesday she posts a tutorial on a new design or an adaptation of one of her earlier ones.  I decided to jump in and find a piece of green Kona cotton and to make a 12" square doodle piece of a Christmas tree and then I could possibly use it in my table top hanger which I want to rotate seasonally and on special holidays.  I really just slapped this triangle onto a 12 " square of cotton and started at it.  My original idea was to quilt straight lines up and down the tree and fill in with different designs.  However, I should have used a different angle ruler, so I drew two lines and started doodling!  The two lines helped get the angle I wanted.  I just got Angela Walter's new book and it showed the design that I used in the center to fill in a triangle - perfect!  I used variegated King Tut thread , but switched to green for the background.  I was trying to make snowballs LOL.  I should have drawn my grid lines a little closer together, but "finished is better than perfect", the Dear Jane quilters would say.  (Click on the photos for a larger view.)

The tree before binding.  I am still debating quilting something in the strip under the tree, but not sure what.  Can always add that later :-)

With binding and hanging on the table top stand. 

The backing - a Jason Yenter print

Lori also instructs you to doodle a lot on paper to get the hang of a design.  That definitely does help.  I started a notebook to practise and keep it by my computer so I can doodle various motifs that she suggests.  Onward ho to a poinsettia. I did doodle a lot of poinsettia's before getting the hang of them.  The colour in these pictures is way off....no idea where the orange comes from!  The piece is actually dark red more like the bottom photo!!

the center poinsettia

this orange peel motif was very fun

Finished little quilt bound and ready for the table

Thanks so much Lori for the motivation to get me going on this!!

Table runner mania!

The year 2013 is rapidly drawing to a close and I am way behind on my blogging!  I'll squeeze one more post in before we welcome 2014.  One of my quilt students is always encouraging me (rather forcefully!) to get my UFO's finished LOL.  She is making an impact though and I have actually finished a number of projects off this year.  I do also confess to starting a few new ones as well.  When the new magazine came out from Fons & Porter, featuring the Missouri Star Company patterns, I did have to drop everything and make a few quick and easy projects.  But, they did not turn into UFO's as I have them all done.  I managed to get 8 table runners finished before our get together with our kids and I numbered all the runners and laid them out on the living room floor.  My daughter and my three daughter in laws each got a piece of paper and had to write down their first three choices.  Miraculously, everyone chose a different one.  Interesting to see which ones they chose.  Here are all the runners (click on the photo to enlarge):

Heather chose this runner which I made at least a year ago as a sample.  It will fit very nicely on her hexagon shaped coffee table. 

Becky picked this runner which is from the Missouri star company magazine from Fons and Porter.  I did make it smaller using 3 1/2" strips instead of layer cake squares

This was done with a Cheryl Phillips Gem Thirty ruler and was quick and easy.  I had leftover Kaffe Fasset fabrics from several projects and they matched beautifully :-)

The center is fussy cut from a different fabric than was used in the topper

I bought this older KF fabric in a sale bin at a quilt shop in Ottawa when we visited there four or five years ago.  It worked great for the backing.

These were leftover squares from a spinning four patch quilt I made with a KF fabric.  I added these shot cottons to make a table runner and quilted it using a King Tut variegated thread and organic line quilting

Here is the finished runner

I bought this as a kit at Quilter's Nine Patch in Elmira/St. Jacobs area.  It was a fun quick runner.  I quilted around the shapes and added flower petals just to the lime green hexagons.  Jannyne chose this runner

This modernish table runner was also in the Missouri Star company magazine. It was a nice quick project.

close up of the straight line quilting in the trees

I bought one of the new Moda Scrap bags and a Jaybird Quilts braided table runner pattern at the quilt shop in Waterford.  I got just enough strips from the scrap bag to make this braided runner.  I quilted it with red thread and organic line quilting and my daughter, Amanda chose this one for her table.

This is also an old sample of a twister done in a wreath shape with borders added.  One of my students did this one and added a gold shiny pinwheel to the middle bottom which really looked nice.

Now that I'm on a roll on these UFO's, I may just finish the Indian Orange Peel this year :-).