Playing with Kaffe Fasset fabrics!

My students wanted to do a sampler quilt with 6" blocks, so I dug out the class notes for the blocks I taught in 2002. Here is the quilt I made from the my sample blocks for the original class:

I thought it would be fun to update the blocks this time for my samples and dug into a stack of Kaffe Fasset fat quarters that my friend Els from Holland brought for me when she visited in September. I had a collection of solids as well. It was fun digging through the fabrics to come up with combinations. Here are the first two trees:

This afternoon I made some houses, one with a chimney and one without; one with curtains and one without:



Here are the four blocks together so far. I am liking these wild, bright trees and houses. I don't know what I'm going to do with them yet, but I'll grow some more trees and build some more houses when the mood hits :-)

Spinning Four Patch Quilt

This summer Jake and I enjoyed a wonderful two week vacation in BC. We were invited to stay in a lovely little home on the property of friends of ours. It was so nice to have a little home away from home to have as our home base. This quilt was made as a thank you gift for them. Our daughter in law boarded with them a few years ago, so I picked her brain to come up with colours that would work in their home. I decided to try a Spinning Four Patch quilt with this classy navy and gold fabric. It wasn't the perfect spinning four patch fabric as the repeats were too small and too symmetric, but it did turn out nice. I added the narrow border of a Japanese fabric around the blocks as it would have been too dark with the navy blue batik. I totally forgot to take pictures of this quilt before I gave it to them! Thanks to their daughter, Corina, who was over visiting my daughter in law for taking the pictures for me. This is the back of the quilt:

The front of the quilt:

One of the blocks:

The quilting in the blocks (this was close to the true colour of the quilt):

Colours are somewhat off in this picture - there were gold flecks in the fabric making it very difficult to get a good photo:

The finished quilt:

Thanks Wout and Addy for letting us stay in your wonderful little home!

Mouse Pad production!!

The son that just got married is a computer guy so they decided that for wedding favours they would make mouse pads. Becky bought five or six different Japanese fabrics to stay with her theme for the wedding and we got some felt type batting. We cut these 8" x 9" and the backing 10" x 11". After layering them, we stitched two lines 3" in from the size to 'quilt' them and hold them together and then folded the backing to the front to form the binding. They turned out nice and work great. They rolled them up with a rubbery square to keep the pad from sliding on the computer table and wrapped a nice thank you label around them. I went over to Becky's house for a couple days last week and we set up a sweat shop and sewed 89 of them altogether! They really looked nice on the tables. The first picture is a bit washed out - the colour is probably between the two photos. On the second photo you can see the quilted lines a little better. (These would make great mug rugs too.)

One Block Wonder done!

Our son, Eric, got married this past Saturday. We had a lovely day with him and his bride Becky and our families and friends. I made a One Block Wonder queen sized quilt for them. Becky and I went shopping together to choose the fabric. She loves Japanese designs so I took her to the Marsh Store in Coldstream, ON since Shirley has lots of choice! It took us awhile to come up with something that would work in the colours Becky liked. We weren't sure if this black and white fabric would work for a OBW. I can't find a picture of the original fabric and can't find any larger leftovers at the moment, but this picture should give you a bit of an idea of the original fabric:

Becky chose and assortment of red, gold and purple FQ's for the cubes. My daughter in law, Jannyne, helped me with arranging the hexagons once I had them all sewn together and some cubes made. We decided to add strips of black batik to make the quilt large enough and to add some interest. It ended up looking like a Japanese screen (that was not intentional!). After the first black batik borders, it needed something. I tried adding scrappy triangles, but that didn't really work. Adding the original fabric into the border and another simple black border finished it off nicely. Here is the finished quilt with Eric and Becky. I gave it to them at the rehearsal dinner (the light is not great).

The happy couple :-)

Opening up the quilt so Becky could finally see it finished :-)

I finally found the perfect backing at Creative Sisters in Kitchener. Bonus that it was a wide backing and I didn't have to piece it:

Close ups of some of the hexagons:

It was amazing how much shading there was in this black and white quilt:

The top center finished; trying it on my queen sized bed for size :-)

Here you can see the lovely leaves that Tim from the Marsh Store quilted into the border. I am very glad that I didn't have to sew black leaves on black batik :-)!! Thanks so much Tim!!! I also added a red 'lippy' (flat piping) in between the binding.

Tim quilted a lovely design in the black and white areas with variegated black and white thread:

Becky and Eric on their wedding day!

A Dear Jane block - Finally!

Last week my Dear Jane internet friend Els, who is from the Netherlands, spent a week with me hanging out in my sewing room, going on quilt shop hops and visiting one of my quilt guilds. We had a wonderful time. Els has already completed her first DJ quilt and is working on her second one! She definitely inspired me to get back at my quilt. So, Monday afternoon, I decided to do another block. This one is Cabin Fever A 9. I used my stitch ripper a few times to get the colours right! I should have checked the original block out closer! But, I got it finished and am happy with it. Hopefully, I can keep up with my 1 block a week goal again. This is my 59th block of 169 center blocks. Then I have to decide if I'll do the triangles or not :-).

Kara Abigail's I spy Quilt

The fourth of my grandchildren started Junior Kindergarten this September. Can't believe how quickly these kids grow!! They seem to grow up faster than my own kids did :-). In June, Kara came over for a day and we planned out the quilt. Of course, we had to start off with 'coffee break'! We stopped at the store on the way home and Kara chose chocolate cake for snack. That is right up her chocoholic Grandma's alley!


The next job was putting all the chosen I spy squares on the design wall until we had enough that she liked. We then chose sashing colours and backing.


Inspecting the possible options for backings:

I chose a disappearing 9 patch setting. In order for all the directional I spy fabrics to appear straight up in the final setting, you need to orient the blocks properly. Check out the tutorial here for the directions. You then cut the 9 patch block exactly in the center both ways.


This is a great way to sew up a setting with sashings and corner stones very quickly. After you lay out all the squares, you need to sew one side row and a bottom row of white rectangles and pink squares to finish it as seen in the second photo below.



The final quilt, bound with striped fabric. I did not add a border since the quilt was plenty large for a little JK student :-).

The back of the quilt matches the doll bed that I made for Kara a few years ago for Christmas:

I tried out a new quilt design for this quilt from my new book: "Machine Quilting Solutions" by Christine Maraccini. It was a lot of fun and looked nice on the quilt. Of course I used my favourite "King Tut" variegated thread :-)

The quilting:

Elna days in the garage....

We spent some time at the end of July working on some Elna sewing machines in the garage and getting them up and running. It took a little bit to get used to sewing on these since they have a knee bar control instead of a food pedal. Then when I went back to sewing on my Singers, I kept trying to push the non-existent knee bar :-). First they go to Jake's side of the garage to get a complete cleaning, oiling and testing:

Then I get the fun job of testing them on an actual project. I take a small piecing project into the garage since it's not very clean in there :-). I worked on a One Block Wonder quilt I'm making for my son and future daughter in law for their bed:

The case of this machine opens up flat and there is a cut out (where the latch closes) which slides right over the free arm of the machine forming a large sewing surface. It is very smooth, so the fabric slides nicely over it:

Check out the perfect stitch:

A great machine dating back to the late 1940's. When we first started collecting sewing machines, we missed a few of these as they look like ammunition boxes when the case is closed.

These machines are nicknamed the "Grasshopper" with the green colour and the position of the knee bar when it's ready to put into the case :-).

This is a later Supermatic that takes decorative cams making some lovely embroidery stitches. The earlier Supermatics were green or beige. These blue versions were a little later: