2015 Summary

I can't believe tomorrow is the last day of the year already!!!  Where does time go???  It is time to look back over the last 12 months to see what I have accomplished this year with my sewing projects...

January:  A Gift for my aunt...

 



February:  I finished a UFO... a wool applique wall hanging.  I hand appliqued and hand quilted this one.

 

 

March:  A baby quilt for my husband's cousin's baby.

 

 



 

I also completed an improvisational piecing project started at a Jacquie Gering workshop in the summer of 2013.

 

 

 

April:  Another baby quilt--this one was made with Cat in the Hat fabrics.



May:  I made this purple quilt for the chemo unit at our hospital with some fabric donated to the Elgin Piecemakers along with some of my own fabric.



July:  I put together this quilt top for an adult chemo patient at our local hospital.  It has been quilted and bound but I don't have a picture of it all done yet.


I also made a scrap vortex quilt in July...Here is the flimsy but I never did post a picture of the completed quilt on my blog.



November:  I finished off a baby quilt in waiting.

I also made a table runner for my MIL for Christmas.





And I finished cross stitching the Frank Lloyd Wright "Tree of Life" window.


I made two placemats for Meals on Wheels.



In December, I made a few Christmas gifts... a friendship bag:



A Prairie Point star ornament for my friend, Julie.



I made this hot pad for another friend, Pat.



I still have quite a few workshop UFO's to finish off in 2016.  Here's hoping that I will have some time in the sewing room to work on them!  The London Friendship Quilters Guild will be having their biannual quilt show this fall so I want to have some quilts done to enter into the show.   I need to get sewing!

Modern Quilt Guild Gift Exchange

 

The London Modern Quilt Guild met in mid December for a fun meeting of food and games!  We had decided that we would do a gift exchange at the November meeting. We each had to make a small Friendship bag from the pattern on P.S. I quilt and then put something in the bag of our choice.

I decided to use black and white selvages and some fun checkerboard fabric to make my bag.

I quilted it organically...

and used this cute red, black and white Argyll fabric for the lining.

I added some cards made by a local photographer.  We played a game in which we passed the parcels around the table to the left and right, and across the table as someone read a story to us. 

I received this pretty purple batik bag with a cute fat quarter inside! 

It was fun to see all the bags and the treats that they held!

Peppermint Star

Christine and I got together to sew this week.  I had found a pattern for a Christmas ornament on the internet so we decided to make one each and then do other sewing. I decided to use 16 different red and white fabrics for my project, hence my name for my ornament...Peppermint Star.

We were so engrossed in sewing that we did not take any pictures as we sewed!  The silver button adds just a bit of shine and hides all of the points in the middle!  

If you would like to make an ornament like this, you can find the pattern at Super Mom, No Cape.  She calls it a "Prairie Point Star".  I think I would like to make another one as I will be giving this to a friend who does not read my blog for Christmas.  

I found a kit in the sewing room...

I am in the process of cleaning out my sewing room.  When we finished our basement several years ago, we had a smallish sewing room made which I used for a little while. It does not have a window and I felt isolated from the rest of the family when I was in there, so I started sewing on the dining room table instead.  A few weeks ago, we cleaned out what used to be the home office and bought new custom sewing furniture for the new sewing room.  You can read about my new furniture here.  I am slowly cleaning up the old sewing room to make it into an organized fabric and sewing supplies storage area.
Here is a "before" picture...not a pretty sight...

Great progress has been made but I still have a ways to go.  I go at it in 15 minute intervals, maybe once or twice a week. It is slowly becoming a more useful space. The shelves actually have bins of fabric on them now...

This week, I found a bin of UFO's and kits waiting to be made.  One of the kits I found was for a hot pad.  The fabric and pattern were all in a little bag.  When Christine was here earlier this week, I worked on the hot pad while she pieced a backing for a new Christmas quilt.

There are 28 5" squares of fabric in this hot pad! 

Tonight, I hand sewed the points of each folded square down and did the binding.

Here it is with all the points sewn down:



The binding is cut on the bias so that it will go around the curve smoothly.



Here is the back.

This hot pad is a gift for someone who does not read my blog. I hope she likes it!

I am linking up to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching.

Christmas Table Runner

I made this table runner last Saturday at our guild's annual quilt 'til you wilt day.  It is a Christmas gift for my MIL.

I have made several table runners for her over the years.  She always has one of them on her dining room table.  I made a winter table topper for her a few years ago. A couple of weeks ago, she mentioned that she would like a Christmas runner as well,  I plan on giving her this gift a bit early so she can use it before Christmas. 

My MIL is a kind and generous person and it is always a pleasure to make things for her.