Christmas Gifts

I made this table topper for my SIL for Christmas. After making it, we found the little teapot and cups in the perfect shade of blue to match the table topper. We also bought her some Youthberry tea--she liked her gifts!

The next time I am at her house, we are going to have some tea together!

I made my MIL this table topper. Her father was a bee keeper and the green fabric has bees on it. I finished up the hand stitching on the binding on our way to their house on Christmas day!

I made everyone in the family pillow cases. My neices' pillow cases had mittens on them. I made one like this for my daughter too.

These ones are for my husband and I. I purchaed the Gnome Santa fabric from Mad about Patchwork.

The top pillowcase is for my FIL. He is still in the hospital. The nurses liked the pillowcase and so did he! The tractor pillowcase belongs to my father. He worked on a farm when he came to Canada over 60 years ago. My brother received the golfing pillowcase and the last two, also made from the Santa Gnome fabric are for my BIL and SIL.  My MIL's pillowcase missed having its picture taken! Everyone was pleased with their gifts.

We spent the last few days spending time with family. It was a very snowy drive home tonight. Tomorrow will be a quiet day at home.

I am hoping to finish up some sewing projects after the holidays. I hope you and your families had a wonderful Christmas and wish all of you health and happiness in the new year.

Ready for Hanging!

A few minutes ago, I finished sewing the button eyes on the cardinals...

 and the button mouth on the snowman...

I even embroidered a chain at the top of the birdhouse so that it is now hanging from the snowman's arm rather than dangling in mid-air!

I have not done any embroidery for many, many years (that is a longgggg time!), but I did remember how to do this stitch.  Maybe embroidery is like riding a bike...you never forget how to do it!

So, here is the finished wall hanging:

I hope to have it hanging in my family room sometime later this week.

Christine and I got together this week to work on some Christmas gifts. Christine also worked on her hourglass and nine patches for the LFQG mystery quilt.

I did the binding on the snowman wallhanging by machine and the gifts which I can't show you in case people are peeking.

Sorry I have not been blogging much lately. I have been spending a lot of time visiting a sick relative over the past several weeks and there has not been very much sewing time.

 

 

I Quilted til I Wilted...

Saturday was QTYW day for the London Friendship Quilters' guild. Christine, Cathy and I sat together and sewed and sewed...

Christine was working on a Christmas quilt and hopes to get it done before this Christmas...

Cathy is making I spy quilts for her grandchildren for Christmas. She finished piecing one quilt and started the blocks for the next quilt. Cathy had a very productive day!

 

There are lots of fun fabrics in this quilt!

 

The second quilt started out with stars with an I Spy novelty print in the centres.

 

 

The star blocks have an interesting secondary pattern going on!

 

Cathy likes to sew in her sock feet--there is a downside to this...

 

 

I worked on an old UFO--I bought the kit to make a snowman wall hanging many years ago and about 5 years ago, started to make the wall hanging at a QTYW day. I had not touched this project again until Saturday when I finished machine appliquing the pieces on the quilt, quilting it at the same time. I also quilted a cross hatch design on the background. By the time supper was served, I had this project completed to this point.

I hope to get the button eyes and mouth done on this week along with the binding. I will be hanging this wall hanging in my family room this winter.

After supper, I added the final borders to my Swoon quilt top so it is ready to be quilted now--I just have to piece the backing.

I will post a picture of the completed snowman quilt as soon as it is done.

All in all, Saturday was a great day--sewing, time with friends and lots of inspiration to be had as I wandered around the room to look at everyone else's projects.

Sewing Night with Christine

Christine and I got together tonight to do a bit of sewing. I used the cut-offs from my Swoon blocks to make these pinwheels earlier this week...a good use for the bonus HST's!

Tonight, I trimmed 4 of the black ones to 4.5" and used them as cornerblocks for the white sashing on the Swoon blocks.

The London Friendship Quilters' Guild is having a Quilt 'til You Wilt day on Saturday so I will be adding the final white borders to this quilt top then. I have purchased some backing fabric but it will need to be pieced before I can take this quilt to the long armer's house for quilting. This quilt will be put to use on our guest room bed in the summer months. I have quite a few projects that are nearly done so I hope to have lots of projects done by the end of the day Saturday.

Christine worked on some blocks for an "Apple Crisp" quilt that she had cut out over a year ago and is now putting together.

I love the colours.  My stash has many fabrics in these colours.

Christine also made two blocks to send to Erin at My Patchwork Life for her Hurricane Sandy quilts.

I should have more to share after Saturday!

Sewing for Others

Erin at My Patchwork Life is working on disappearing 4 patch quilts for victims of Hurrican Sandy and has asked her quilting friends to give her a hand by making some blocks and mailing them to her. I decided that I could help and these blocks are already on their way to her mailbox in Virginia!  If you would like to help out by making a few blocks, post a comment on her blog and she will email you with her address!  Erin has a fun blog filled with quilting projects and stories of her work and family. Thanks, Erin, for spearheading this project!  She has already received many blocks and has some friends helping her to sew them together into tops and quilt them.

The London Friendship Quilters' Guild members make placemats each year for our local Meals on Wheels office to give to their clients at Christmas. I used two orphan blocks to make these placemats this week.

 

The heart block came from a swap a few years ago and the basket block was made by a member of the Elgin Piecemakers Guild.

 

 

Soon, several friends and I will be getting together for our annual pillowcase making bee. We have done this for the last couple of years. The pillowcases we made last year were given to our local Christmas hamper program (Christmas Care) and Inn out of the Cold (a shelter for the homeless). 

 

We had some frost one day last week and I took a few pictures in our backyard.

 



These geraniums were grown from seed by my FIL. They are still blooming!

 

The water droplets on these leaves were actually frozen but melting quickly.

 

Before raking up the leaves last weekend...

 

I may try to do a bit of sewing later today. I have not had much sewing time lately. We have a family member in the hospital again and have been spending lots of time there.

 

 

Swoon Blocks Done!

I finished off my last Swoon block tonight.  9 blocks done and ready for sashing and borders!

I am linking this post to Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times, except I have a design floor and not a design wall.

I had to purchase some more Kona white fabric to use for the sashing and borders. It is now washed are ready to be cut into strips. If you have been watching my blog, you will know that I also have blocks done for a Great Granny Square quilt which also needs sashing and borders. I hope to get these two quilt tops done soon.

Kathy at Kathy's quilts has a weekly link up for hand-stitchers. My hand stitching project this past weekend was sewing the binding on this Quilt of Valour made by members of the London Friendship Quilters' Guild. Several quilts will be presented to a representative of Quilts of Valour at our December meeting.

The fabric in the hexagons was donated by guild members.

Keep checking back for more progress on my projects...

I have not forgotten how to Swoon!

I had some time to sew yesterday aftenoon and put two more swoon blocks together.

 

 

 Only one more to go! I am going to do it now and may have another picture to share soon.

I worked on sewing binding onto a Quilt of Valour last night while I watched Julie and Julia. I had seen it in the theatre but enjoyed it the second time around too.

Quilt Show Photos

My friend, Karen, and I took our husbands out for dinner last night and then we all went to the London Friendship Quilters' Guild "Harvest of Quilts" show at Rowntree United Church in London.  It was a cold, wet night but the quilts were warm and cheerful!

Several members made the "Stars for my Friends" mystery and finished their quilts in time to hang them in the quilt show. Each one looked very different even though the same pattern was used for each one.

M added an extra row of frendship stars at the top to make it rectangular.

This one was made from batiks.

I like the extra star blocks in the corners!

 

I like the scrappy majestic mountains on this one.

 

This quilter likes to make smaller quilts and stopped at the snowball border before adding her own borders to frame it.

 

There was at least one more mystery quilt there made by my friend Jacqui but I did not get a picture of it.  :-(

 

Charlene made this charm quilt. It took a while to collect all of those fabrics.

 

This wool penny rug quilt was one of my favourites!

 

This quilt was displayed in the vendors' area. Do you recognize the blocks?  They are all the blocks that my husband and I saw on our Middlesex county barn quilt tour a couple of weeks ago.

 

The quilt show is still on today from 10-4 so you still have time to go over and see the quilts. The 9 vendors would be happy to have you visit them as well. I lightened my wallet a bit at the vendors' mall...

 

It is rainy and cold today. Clean up jobs to do this morning and then some sewing this afternoon...

 

Have a great weekend!



Getting Ready for the Quilt Show

I have been sewing binding on my flannel quilt and adding hanging sleeves to my quilts for the London Friendship Quilters' Guild Harvest of Quilts show this weekend. After several hours of hand-stitching, I am done.  I am going to add this post to Kathy's Handstitching Sundays post.

My flannel quilt was long armed by Cathy --she used a pattern called Northern Stars which I picked out from a website where Cathy purchases patterns.

I finally had a sunny day and two quilt holders available yesterday! My daughter is home for a few days from university and she held one end while her Dad held the other end.

I am looking forward to having this cozy flannel quilt on my bed this winter!

I made this quilt for the LFQG challenge a few years ago and recently donated it to a fundraising auction at Camp Kintail. Our family attended family camp at Camp Kintail for many years and my daughter worked there as a counsellor for a few years.

The challenge fabric was the Laurel Birch fish fabric.

I did the quilting with straight lines myself.

I hope the new owner enjoys my fish quilt and that the Camp was able to raise lots of money for the camp through their silent auction fundraiser.

At our last London Friendship Quilters' Guild meeting, we had a speaker that showed quilts she had made from feedsacks. This cross stitch block was part of one of the quilts. It reminded me of my daughter--she is not a morning person!

Happy Sewing!