Mug Rugs

I needed a shower gift to go with a couple of cookbooks for my niece and her fiance and made these mug rugs for them out of coffee themed scraps from some table toppers. These mug rugs are fun and quick to make:

I found the perfect mugs to go with the rugs:

I even snuck some selvages into the mug rugs :-)

Table Runner Mania

It's about time I update my blog again. I've been working on too many projects at once and not getting anything completely finished! Here are some twisted pinwheels that I've been experimenting with. A table topper with 7 pinwheels:

Another spring table topper with 5 larger pinwheels. I got the main fabrics in a bundle from my daughter in law for Christmas:

This will be a little doll quilt once it's quilted. I have cool striped fabric for the binding in perfect colours :-). This is done with a charm pack:


Here is the beginning of a hexagon shaped table topper in Christmas fabrics. I'm doing the math on cutting it in the right shape and Math is definitely not my strong point :-):

I also did a spring table topper using a FQ and a metre of striped border fabric. This turned out really cool and I tried out a new quilting design in the center:

The finished topper...the colours are like the above photo, not the bottom one!

From the cut offs of the mitered corners a hexagon mini table topper can be made using a 60 degree Clearview ruler. And, from the little leftovers, I managed to get two coasters...how fun is this?

The mini table topper fits beautifully in the center of the large one. I need to quilt it yet. I hope to use it on my round glass table on our deck outside when spring arrives.

Colton's baby quilt

In February, we had a baby shower for my nephew and niece, Jon and Megan. My sister said they liked zoo animals, and I had the perfect fabric in that theme and decided to do a spinning four patch. This is the original fabric:

Four identical layers are cut and pinned and squares cut. The four squares are laid out forming a kaleidoscope (there are four options for each set of squares making it fun to play with the possibilities). This was part of the tiger:

Oops..forgot to crop that photo :-)...you get the idea:
Here is the finished quilt:


And here is sweet little Colton enjoying his quilt and resting on a matching pillowcase that Megan made herself to go with the quilt :-):

I found a little bit of giraffe fabric in the perfect colour to do corner squares:

Closeups of the rest of the blocks on the quilt:

Progress on a few projects....

I made some progress in the sewing room in the last two days. I had the blocks on the design wall for the selvage cubes and the One Block Wonder. I had bought an audio book last week and plugged that into the computer and listened to it as I sewed the rows and background together. That made a somewhat boring job a lot more enjoyable. Here is the selvage cube top so far. I decided to go a little bright with the background since it's going to hang in my sewing room. The next step is to make a selvage piano key style border around it and then a 2 1/2" orange border and then I can get it quilted and hung up!  Update:  The finished quilt can be seen here.

My daughter in law came over Tuesday afternoon and we did the final arrangement on the One Block Wonder. As soon as she left, I started sewing the hexagons and cubes together in rows then started sewing the rows together. This morning I finished sewing the last few rows and trimmed the bottom edges. I'm really liking this project. I hope to pick up some of the navy blue on Friday for a border around the whole quilt. I'm thinking of a gold lippy between the navy border and navy binding. I think that would frame it nicely.

Indian Orange Peel class - part 2

On Saturday, we got together for our second class on the Indian Orange Peel taught by Heather Stewart. You can read other posts on this class by clicking on the tab on the right to see progress to date. We had a great time and crammed a lot of information into our brains in short order. You can see how focused we are as we listen to Heather (second from left) giving us instructions on how to sew the arcs to the four patch blocks:

Aren't we a serious bunch eh?

The first thing we had to do was pair off with another quilter and lay out our four patch blocks on the table alternating warm and cool colours. Then the arcs had to be arranged in a pleasing colour order, paying attention to lights and darks and creating a movement for the eye to follow and watching warm and cool colours! Deb and I worked together and there were times that we were wondering if we were going crazy, but we did manage to get it all laid out in good order.


After laying out my quilt, we carefully transferred it to the floor with the four of us:

Now there is room on the table for Deb's quilt :-). Joanne, Marylou and Roxene can be seen in the background working on their quilts. Here we are getting ready to arrange Deb's warm and cool 4 patches:

All the arcs were labeled on the back with numbers corresponding to a diagram just in case we get mixed up:

That does really explain my major muscle pain this weekend lol:

Pat and Marylou are busily sewing:

Chris and I were nice and cozy as we forgot to bring an extension cord and borrowed a short one that someone else had as an extra. Thanks Anne for letting us use your cord. I took my new to me Centennial Featherweight along and she sewed like a charm once again. We had a lovely bright room in a local Church.

Here are my blocks and arcs ready to sew together:

Here is Kathy's layout...she also chose bright colours in batiks. It was interesting how many shared prints we all had in our stashes! We did trade strips, but there were a lot of fabrics that several of us had in our quilts.

Yvonne was sitting on the other side of me and did a really scrappy one with some really fun novelty prints.

Chris, Pat and Anne's quilts:

Another angle of the same quilts. The colours really look awesome when you take a picture:
We also had to sew one block together to make sure we were doing it correctly. These were a challenge to get just right and most of us were making liberal use of our Best Friends (aka a stitch ripper :-). Heather assured us that these would get easier and easier, the more we did them.

One block finished, 24 to go:

Gail has more photos on her blog. We need to reconvene our support group to keep sewing these blocks together and paper piece the border. The arcs were a piece of cake compared to the shapes of the border pieces lol.

Shattered Angles class that wasn't :-(

I was supposed to go to our guild's workshop on Friday, called Shattered Angles, taught by Susan Purney Mark. She spoke at our guild meeting on Thursday evening and I was really looking forward to taking that workshop. I was all packed up and ready to go. However, when I woke up on Friday morning, there was a major snowstorm and I could not get to London for the class :-(. Fortunately, I had purchased the book on Thursday evening and Susan had this sample at the trunk show (it is called Shattered Garden):

Since I had everything packed up to take the class, I set up in my sewing room and figured I'd see if I could figure it out. I studied the photograph of the sample on the webpage and had the basic cutting instructions. I used the new to me FW that my hubby fixed up just for me!

I chose colourful strips 1 1/2", 2 1/2" and 3 1/2" as per instructions from my drawers under my sewing table. I cut and sort my leftover fabrics as Bonnie Hunter of www.quiltville.com has on her website and just had to pick out colours that would fit my plan. I didn't have to buy any fabrics so it was a great stash buster.

I sewed the strips together with varying widths totally 6 1/2". They are then cut on a 45 degree angle in various widths and black strips sewn between.

Here are the 42 blocks that I have finished so far. I'm still debating if I want to make it bigger, or add a black border and then a piano key border with the leftover strips. It was a really fun project and I love the stained glass effect. I still have to rearrange the blocks to balance them properly.

More hexagons

Just realized that I haven't posted anything on my blog for awhile!

I've been playing around with some more hexagons this evening and thought I'd try cutting some from this bug print...the repeat is only about 9" so can't get too many blocks out of it. But, there should be enough to make a baby quilt, perhaps with a few cubes added into the mix. I bought some colours to go with this print last week. Here is the original fabric:

The cubes that I have put together so far...the center seam is not yet sewn together as that is done when assembling the half hexagons in rows to avoid inset seams :-)

Some close ups of some of the blocks:




I could get addicted to these fun blocks :-). I have some hot air balloon fabric to try too someday.