The Gifts of Christmas

I would like to introduce you to my "Peeps"...that's me (a quilter), my husband (a model railroader) and my daughter, who just finished her university degree in business. I have a friend who makes these little wooden figures and ordered "Peeps" for all my peeps for Christmas.  I sent her pictures of everyone in the family and she custom painted each figure.

Here are all 10 Peeps--my dad plays the violin, me, my daughter, my husband, my MIL who likes to garden, my SIL who likes to take pictures, Skye the dog, my BIL who likes to play baseball, my niece who likes to read and her sister who likes to sing. 

Everyone was very pleased with their "Peeps".  Thanks, Toni, for a job well done!

You may remember that I made quilts from my FIL's shirts last Christmas, our first Christmas without him. The quilts were for my husband and his sister, the three grandchildren and my MIL. This year, I made my BIL a pillow from the shirts.

I used organic quilting.

 

 

I found some perfect shirt fabric for the back of the pillow.

Here it is, all done.  My BIL was pleased with his pillow. It will have a place of honour in his office or in their family room.

As you know, my husband is a model railroader.  We were in a model railroad store before Christmas picking up a train engine that he had ordered and I happened to find this:

 

Doesn't every model railroad need a house with a quilt on the front porch????  They even had it in "N" scale, the gauge my husband models.

I made a feather pillow for my daughter for Christmas. The pattern, by Anna Maria Horner, is for a queen sized quilt, but I decided to just make a pillow to try out the pattern before committing to a big quilt. I used a Kaffe Fasset charm pack that was in my stash for the feathers.

 

I paper pieced the feathers so each one would be different.

 

 

Lots of straight line quilting...



 

The finished pillow!

 

If I was making a pillow from this pattern again, I think I would have less background material between the feathers...

I am happy that my homemade gifts were well received this year! 

Starting a New Project

Since all my Christmas gifts are made, and as of last night, wrapped, I gave myself permission to start a new project when Christine came over to sew tonight.  I had pulled these fabrics out of my stash a couple of weeks ago for a baby quilt. Once again, I am not using a pattern for this project...I am just making it up as I go along.

The baby will live on a farm so this fabric will be perfect for a baby farm-girl or a baby farm-boy.

My husband bought me a fat quarter bundle last year for Christmas and this is the perfect project for it.  I added the solids from my stash.

I do not intend for this quilt to be for the baby's bed...I hope that it will be used as a playtime quilt.

 It could even be used for a  game of "I Spy..." with all of the different fabrics.

I have an idea for the next border, and the border after that... 

Stay tuned...

Snowmen Runner DONE!

I finally got around to finishing off my snowmen runner this week!  We had some company all weekend so there was no sewing happening around here until everyone went home.  I finished the big stitch quilting using pearl cotton threads and added 6 different snowflake buttons--I had those in my stash...

I then added a stripey homespun binding  and hand stitched it down.

These happy faces make me smile!

I shared my runner at show and tell at our guild meeting tonight. Many of the guild members read my blog and several came up to me at the end of the meeting to say that they did not realize this runner was so small.  It measures 9" by 27".  The original pattern/kit did not include a border but I thought it needed a border and I just happened to have some appropriate homespun border fabric in my stash... ;-)

I have the perfect spot to put this runner. I just have to do some cleaning up first...

Abby Has Her Quilt

A few months ago, a friend asked me to make a t-shirt quilt for his daughter, Abby.  Abby has Rett Syndrome. You can read more about Rett Syndrome here.  Each year, Abby's family participated in the Run for Rett, a fundraiser for research about Rett Syndrome.  The t-shirts were from the various  runs.

 

 

I purchased some background fabric and dove into my stash for some colourful fabrics to add to the quilt and started sewing.  It was fun to figure out what to do next as I went along.

 

On Sunday, my husband and I delivered Abby's completed quilt to her and her family.

 

 

They all loved it!!!!  We wrapped the quilt around Abby and I sat beside her for pictures.  She was tired and snuggled right into her quilt and almost fell asleep in my lap!

 

 

When Abby went to bed that night, she slept under her quilt.  It is quilted with an angel pantograph.  Three of the t-shirts say "I helped silent angels."  Girls with Rett Syndrome cannot talk. Abby has a very nifty computer that tracks her eye gaze and talks for her.  At supper, she asked about our names and birthdays and told a few groaner jokes!  She also read "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" to us.

 

 

  I just know that Abby will have pleasant dreams while sleeping under her quilt!

 

 

Guild Sewing Day

This morning, I set off with a suitcase full of fabric and supplies for a full day of sewing with other members of the London Friendship Quilters' Guild. I am happy to tell you that I have finished off almost all of my Christmas sewing!  I have one more small gift to make which should take about 1 hour to do.  Since most of the things I made today are gifts, I cannot show very many pictures.

I can show you the placemats I made for Meals on Wheels. This is an annual project for local seniors who have a meal delivered to them on Christmas day. Last year, members of our guild made about 200 placemats for this charity. I made two placemats today and handed them in to the community outreach committee chair person.

The backs are the same snowman fabric as on the fronts.

This picture was taken before the binding was added. I did the organic quilting.

I had a small accident this morning while working on one of the gifts I made.  I tried to quilt my finger into the quilt. I now have a hole in my nail, right through the other side of my finger. I spent the rest of the day with a sore finger covered in a bandaid...but don't worry, I did not get any blood on my project!  My sore finger made hand stitching the binding an interesting experience...

After Christmas, I will have to do a blogpost about all of the gifts I have made this year.

Building a House

This month, each member of the Elgin Piecemakers will be making a house block for our charity chemo quilt. I built my house tonight using a liberated method--no pattern. I looked over some ideas from Gwen Marston's Liberated Quiltmaking book and then made my block. I would love to just sit and make a bunch of these house blocks.  This one is 12.5" square.  I had so much fun making the house block that I decided to make a tree to go beside it...

I may make an evergreen tree too sometime...

I can't wait to see everyone else's house blocks at our meeting later this week!

I have been doing some big stitch quilting on the snowman runner...

I think it is coming along nicely!

Until next time...

Slow stitching on a Sunday

I have two hand stitching projects underway this weekend.  I am doing the hand stitching on the binding for Abby's t-shirt quilt. Cathy at Eagles Wings quilts quilted this quilt on her long arm machine and I got it from her on Friday. I love the angel pantograph...

Saturday, my husband and I were out doing some Christmas shopping and I did some binding in the car on the way to and from our destination. I am over half way around the quilt now and hope to finish it off later Sunday.

While out on Saturday, we dropped into Cherished Pieces and I bought some threads to use for quilting my snowman runner.  I did not have the runner with me but I think the thread colours I purchased will work out just fine for this runner.

I have a charity quilt block to make for the Elgin Piecemakers this week so there should be another blogpost later this week.

Have a great day!

Snowmen Runner Progress

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned that I needed to find some snaps in my sewing room to use for face parts for my snowmen runner.  I remembered that I had been given an old sewing box that used to belong to my husband's great aunt so I decided to look in there for some snaps.  I found a full card of snaps, never used, purchased many years ago for 29 cents! 

Today, I added the rest of the eyes and mouth parts to the remaining snowmen on my table runner.

Buttons for the eyes and snaps for the mouth!

Snappy eyes...

 



 



Two smiley faces...

Three more happy snowmen...

Those snowflake buttons will be added to the two black strips.  I have decided to do the quilting first and then add the snowflakes.  I have pin basted this little runner and will be hand quilting it. I still hope to have it done in time for Christmas decorating in a couple of weeks.

This afternoon, my MIL, my SIL and I went on a Christmas tour of homes.  One of the older homes on the tour had a carriage house out back. I loved the greenery decorating the carriage house.

We were not allowed to take any pictures inside the houses, but I did take a couple of pictures outside.

 This puts me in the mood to get my urn put together and onto my front porch...  This will be a job for this week.  We stopped at the garden centre on the way home and I purchased some greenery. I will take a picture and post it next time.

Quilt Show Awards

Almost a month ago, the London Friendship Quilters Guild held their biannual quilt show. I was asked by the organizing committee to make the awards for the winning quilts in each of 5 categories for the show. The design was up to me and I took my inspiration from the advertising shown above.  Earlier in the year, each member of the guild was asked to make a 9" London Roads block for a quilt which would be raffled off to raise money for our Outreach Projects.

I decided that I would make a smaller version of this block for the awards.

I made these during a Saturday sewing day with some friends but was not allowed to show them as the prize design was to be kept a secret...  I used a different red fabric in each of the blocks.  I found the fabric in my stash.

At the time, I could not remember if there were 5 or 6 categories, so I made 6 blocks to be on the safe side.  Another member of the guild with an embroidery machine was asked to do the next part of the awards.

 

 

This past Thursday night, at our November meeting, the awards were presented. I took some pictures of the awards before they were given out at the meeting.  The guild blogger will be posting pictures of the quilts that won in each category on the LFQG blog. You can get to the blog on my sidebar.

Here are the quilts that I entered into the show:

My pinwheel table runner is on the bottom left.  (The quilted pumpkin won in the other quilted item category)

My wonky house was in the miniature category.

The liberated squirrel quilt was in the wall-hanging category.

Another wall hanging--the red and white round robin quilt.

I had a few quilts in the bed-sized quilt category including the Lazy Sunday Mystery,

 

Swoon,

 

 

The 9 patch mystery,

 

 and Great Granny's Stash.

 

My "Sewing Baskets" selvage quilt was also in the wall hanging group.

 

 

I did a demo on the Saturday Morning of the quilt show on making quilts with selvages. I had over 20 quilters watching the demo and asking lots of questions. They were shocked at the size of my selvage collection...I need to make another selvage quilt, obviously.

 

I am in full Christmas gift making mode now so I won't be able to show the things I am currently making until after December 25th.  I have two gifts made and 3 more to make. I hope to have some time this weekend to work on my snowman runner too.

 

Until next time, happy sewing!