2018 Roundup

Here we are on the eve of a new year and it is time to look back over the past year to see what I have accomplished.  There seemed to be a lot of babies being born this year so many of my finishes are baby quilts, most of which have been given away.

January

This quilt top, Fancy Forest, was made in 2016 but it took me a while to find the right backing, so I got it back from the long arm quilter in January 2018 and added the binding.  This one is staying in my my quilt stash. 

March

I spent a lot of time the first few months of 2018 looking after my father who passed away in April.  I worked on my snowmen counted cross stitch project while I sat with him as he slept, and finished this old UFO in March.  It is still waiting to be framed.

I attended a Libs Elliott "Embracing the Chaos" workshop in March and made this little wall hanging at the workshop. 

April

I made this I Spy baby quilt for my cousin's new grand-daughter, her first grandchild.  I needed a simple project after my dad passed away to get me quilting again. 

June

I had three finishes in June.  This quilt was started at a Shannon Brinkley scrappy appliqué workshop in May.  

The second June finish was another baby quilt, this time for my husband's cousin's baby.   I used a charm pack to make this quilt. 

And, another I Spy baby quilt for another cousin's first grand baby.  I used Bonnie Hunter's bricks and  stepping stones pattern for this quilt. 

July

I participated in a swap at the London Modern Guild and made this sewing machine quilt for my swap partner in the Ancaster Modern Guild.  You may remember that my husband thought it was a hat...

August

The baby boom continued.  This quilt was made for a colleague at work's baby girl, born in September.  It is the only baby quilt I made all year that was done before the baby was born!

October

When I was gathering things up for a retreat in October, I found this quilt top, finished years ago, but not quilted.  I quilted it at the retreat and donated it to a fundraising auction for Camp Kintail.  I hope whoever purchased it is enjoying it!

This mini quilt was made with a package of 2.5" squares that I received at the 2017 modern guild retreat.  

December

I had a lot of finishes in December including some Christmas gifts and a new single bed quilt for the bed in my daughter's old room. I worked on the blocks for my Foothills Quilt-Along quilt all year and finally finished the quilt in early December. You may remember that I made this quilt from my husband's discarded shirts.  This is the only bed sized quilt I made all year. 

I made a few pincushions this year...here is a sampling.  The top 5 are mine and the others were made by my friend, Christine. 

I made this zippered pouch for my friend, Pat, for Christmas. 

Finn, the grand-dog, received this quilted crate liner for Christmas. 

I made Christine and I matching "Bountiful Boughs" wall hangings for Christmas.  The first one is mine. 

This one is Christine's.

I made my mother a small table topper for the little round table in her kitchen. 

I have one more gift finished but not gifted yet, so you will have to wait to see it.   I hope to deliver it later this week so check back for a blogpost about it. 

I also finished my Frank Lloyd Wright Fountain Glass Window counted cross stitch picture in December.  I had been working on it since April.  I have three counted cross stitch pictures which need to be framed and hope to do this in January. 

All in all, it was a productive year in my sewing room and I look forward to more finishes in 2019.  

Foothills Quilt DONE!

I have not completed a bed sized quilt for a couple of years and I am very happy to finally have one finished and ready to share!  The above picture shows off the oak leaf quilting that I chose for Cathy at Eagles Wing's Quilts to use for my quilt.  You can read more about why oak trees are a special part of our family story on this blogpost from 5 years ago.

I had the binding all made before I took the quilt to Cathy's so I would be ready to sew it one as soon as I picked up the quilt.

The binding is the same navy blue Kona cotton as the sashing and borders.  I made just the right about of binding!

There was a bit of a breeze when I was trying to get a picture of the back of the quilt today.  Besides the navy fabric, all of the rest of the fabrics in this quilt came from my husband's discarded shirts.  I pieced the shirt backs together to make the back of the quilt.

Another shot of the quilting, taken outside today.

And, here is the completed quilt!

This will be going on the single bed in my daughter's old room.  

This quilt was made during a quilt along with Mary Elizabeth Kinch over the course of several months earlier this year.  It is based on an antique quilt that she showed on her blog last Christmas during her annual 12 days of Christmas quilt show.  The original quilt was 5 X 5 blocks but I decided I wanted a bed sized quilt rather than a square quilt.  The piano key border was added to make it big enough for the bed...I think it frames the quilt nicely!  The original quilt had some quirky piecing and so there are a few quirks here and there in my piecing as well. They are not mistakes...just an attempt to match the flavour of the original quilt.

Today, my husband and I went to the annual Christmas Carol service at the Old St. Thomas Church.  I love to kick off the season by attending this service.  It was a beautiful day with the sun streaming in the windows.  The Salvation Army band played and there were church shaped cookies and mincemeat tarts, and hot apple cider for everyone.

This church service has been held annually for the last 27 years and we have attended it most years since it started.

I will be doing another blogpost about the London Friendship Quilter's Guild sewing day later this week.

Pincushions, NYC, Frank and Some Binding

Christine and I have been making some pincushions recently.  I had to buy more stuffing for mine so even though I made them a couple of weeks ago, they did not get stuffed and the openings sewn up until this week. The top 5 are mine and the two in the bottom of the picture are Christine's.  I would like to make a few more and, goodness knows, I have lots of scraps to use to make them!

My daughter recently finished her New York City counted cross stitch picture.  The background is white, like the other ones that she has made.  She went to the store today to buy more floss for her next projects, although she is not sure which city scape will be stitched next.

I did a lot of hand stitching this week...I spent three evenings hand sewing the binding on my Foothills quilt.  The binding is navy blue to match the sashing and borders.  You can see in this picture that the backing fabrics are also shirts.  I will do a blog post about the finished quilt later this week after I get some pictures in better light.

I am very close to finishing off my FLW counted cross stitch project...I worked on it a few days this past week and finished off the second last section from the bottom and started on the bottom section.  I am almost out of thread on the first spool of silver metallic thread but I bought two so there is no need to panic!  I don't want to get into a running out of thread situation again like I did with the grey thread earlier in this project!

It is harder to get a good picture of this these days since I do my stitching in the evenings and it is dark so early this time of year.

Today was Quilt 'til You Wilt with the London Friendship Guild ---I was there by 9am and wilted about 8pm.  I will do a blogpost about my accomplishments later this week.  I will link up with Kathy and her gang of Slow Stitchers in the morning.

Foothills Quilt Flimsy DONE!

I have been working on this quilt for several months now as part of a quilt-along with Mary Elizabeth Kinch. The block pattern came from an antique quilt that she showed on her blog last December and so many people liked it, Mary Elizabeth decided to offer a quilt-along so others could make the quilt. I started making blocks back in February and gradually, the design wall filled up with 25 blocks.  The original quilt had 5 rows of 5 blocks which resulted in a square quilt.  At the last minute, I decided to make my blocks into a single bed sized quilt with a 4 X 6 layout and a piano key border.

It was not quite big enough for a single bed without the extra borders.   The fabrics for this quilt all came from shirts that my husband was not going to wear anymore after he lost some weight (on purpose).  The sashing is navy blue, although it is hard to tell in the picture above.

I made hourglass blocks for the corners.  Believe it or not, I still have two bins full of shirt fabric.  I have cut out the backs of several shirts to piece the back of the quilt.

I added a final 2.5" navy border this afternoon and my husband held up the quilt for the first picture in this post when he got home from work. His arms were not quite long enough to hold it from corner to corner. I'm very happy to have this flimsy done!  This is the first bed sized quilt I have made in a few years and it will look great in our guest room.  I'm aiming to have it quilted, bound and on the bed by Christmas.

Foothills Blocks DONE and more FLW

A few stitches here and a few stitches there, and progress is made towards the finish line. I just have a few more borders to do at the bottom of my Frank Lloyd Wright cross stitch picture and then on to the outlining. With any luck, the cross stitching will be done in the next week or two.  When I get this close to the end, all I want to do is finish it! When this picture is done, I will have three completed pictures to take to the framing store to have them stretched and framed.  It would be great to have all three on the wall by Christmas time. Maybe that is a good attainable goal...

On the quilting front, I am nearing the end of a quilt I started in February...the Foothills quilt along organized by Mary Elizabeth Kinch.  I used my husband's discarded shirts as my fabric source for this quilt and have been working away for months now on the 25 blocks.  This past week, I finished the last of the blocks and purchased the sashing/border fabric.    Here are my last 5 blocks:

The brighter green rectangles were actually from one of my shirts--the rest of the shirts were my husband's.

The above block involved some ripping and in the end, I still ended up with all the geese going one way...I am fine with that...it will make the quilt more interesting to look at.  I intentionally made some of the blocks with the HST's oriented differently in regards to where I put the light and dark fabrics.

This quilt allowed me to play with different value and colour combinations that I have not tried before.

Most of the fabrics were thread dyed checks or plaids but there were also a few solid colours as well.

You might think that with all these colours and different shirts in one quilt, it would not be cohesive, but somehow, it is.   Here are all my blocks.

The flying geese took the longest of all of the parts of the blocks.  There are 150 flying geese in these blocks.

I grew rosemary, thyme, oregano and parsley in pots on my patio and I have decided to try drying them in brown paper bags.  Here is what the rosemary looked like when I picked it.  I will see how it looks in a week or two.  I have not done this before.  (I know, I should have grown sage instead of oregano and channelled Simon and Garfunkel, but I digress...)

With this picture, I am a day late and a dollar short--Kathy asked the slow Sunday Stitchers to show their favourite stitching spot and here is mine--in the gazebo in my backyard.  This picture was supposed to be shown last week or the week before... Oh well...now you know where I like to sew!

I will be linking up with Kathy on Sunday morning.

Guess Whoooo is Here?

A colleague at work is having her second baby any time now and her last day of work is tomorrow.  I started this quilt last week and finished it up on Tuesday night.  I brought it to work today to give it to her.  I included washing instructions!  Mom was thrilled with the quilt and promised to send me pictures of the new baby and her big sister with the quilt.

The name of the quilt, "Guess Whooo is Here?" came from the owls on the white fabric.  The quilting is a wavy cross hatch.  I used some solid yellow for the binding and a soft flannel for the backing.  All fabrics were in my stash...

I don't think there are any more babies coming soon so I will take a hiatus from baby quilts for now.  I did find another charm pack in my sewing room that I will likely use for the next baby quilt...

I will be working on the last 5 Foothills blocks this next week.  I finished two more last night...

I am so close to having all of the blocks done.  I have started the last 5 blocks and just need to make the geese and the HST's for the remaining blocks.

I will be linking up with Kathy and the other Slow Sunday Stitchers on Sunday Morning.  I love hand sewing the binding on a quilt!  I will be working on my Frank Lloyd Wright counted cross stitch this weekend...no progress so far this week but I hope to get lots done this weekend.