Birthday quilt

I am still working on my MIL's birthday quilt. Her birthday is this weekend, but the family party is not until the first weekend in June so if you know her, please don't tell yet!!!

Here are some pictures of the whole quilt, and details of the blanket stitch (by machine) that I am adding to the flowers and leaves. The vines are hand appliqued and the sheep, leaves and flowers are fused applique.


I still have two flowers and 12 leaves to go... I'm hoping to be at the quilting stage by the weekend. Stay tuned for a picture of the finished product.

Many years ago, I spent a lot of time doing counted cross stitch pictures--mostly as gifts for others, but some for myself as well. Here is one of the pictures I did with a quilty theme.

I will post a photo of the other picture later.

Feeling Sheepish

I spent much of the day adding applique sheep to my MIL's wall hanging. I still have vines, leaves and flowers to add to the border.


Tonight, I am working on the top stitching on the Pentecost banner for my church. I hope to finish it tonight so I can take it to church tomorrow morning.

An Evening of Sewing

I spent last night and tonight working on 8 sampler blocks for my sampler quilt (Claudia's scrappy sampler) and starting a wall hanging for my MIL for her birthday. (If you know my MIL, please do not spill the beans!!! Her birthday is later this month.) The sampler blocks are "square in square".


I sewed all of the background pieces together for my MIL's wallhanging. Next, I will do the applique pieces. There is a plaid sheep for each block as well as a vine and flowers for the border and corner blocks. She loves sheep and I think she will like this wallhanging.


It looks like it will be good sewing weather this weekend. It is going to rain and I can't do my gardening!

Scrappy Sampler Blocks

Tonight, my quilting friend and I got together for 2 hours to work on quilting projects. This is not nearly enough time to get something accomplished, especially since I kept making mistakes and had to "unsew" parts of my blocks (more than once!!!). I finally managed to finish the blocks in the picture below for my Scrappy sampler (from Claudia's quilts website). Next time, I am going to read the directions more carefully before starting to sew...

Happy Mothers' Day

Today, we went out for dinner for Mother's day with my in-laws. We gave her a calendar with pictures of our family taken over the past 12 months. We have done this every year since my daughter was a baby. Grandma loved her gift as usual and already has it hung up in her kitchen where she can look at the pictures each day. My Mother died a couple of years ago but I still have a calendar made for my Dad's enjoyment.

My daughter gave me a wonderful bag for carrying my quilting things to my guild meetings, shop hops and workshops. I love it! It is so much more stylish than the canvas bag I have been using!


I also wanted to show you a picture of the first Pentecost Banner that I made for my church. The pieces are fused on and I will be machine sewing around each piece later this week.


Again, Happy Mothers' Day to everyone!

A Splash of Colour

The London Friendship Quilter's Guild meeting was last night and all of the guild challenge quilts were on display. They gave out prizes (gift certificates for a quilt store!!) at the end of the night to the top three quilts. The winners' quilts were amazing works of art and pictures will be posted on the guild website (The link is in my sidebar). Although my quilt did not win any prizes, I am very pleased with how it turned out and I will be putting it into our guild quilt show in the fall. Here is a picture of my quilt and the label I made for the back of it:


My teenaged daughter came up with the name of the quilt: "A Splash of Colour".

I also made some postcards from the extra fabric and fish:

I am now working on my next project, Pentecost Banners for my church. The first one is fused but not sewn yet. The sewing part will happen next week. The banner will be in the church this Sunday. I have another banner to make as well. Next week will be busy!! I will put a picture of the banner in my next post.

Quilting show in St. Mary's

This past Saturday, my quilting friend and I went to St. Mary's for the Piecemakers Quilt show at the local community centre. We spent quite a while looking at all of the quilts, followed by a one hour talk by a quilt historian and appraiser about dating and preserving old quilts. We had lunch in the tea room and then did a little stash building at the vendors stalls. We had to vote for our favourite full size and small quilts. Here are pictures of our favourites:


This was my favourite small quilt. It was made with scraps from a full sized quilt that was also on display.
This one was my quilting friend's favourite full sized quilt. She hopes to make a log cabin quilt sometime soon.

This was my favourite full sized quilt. Very eye catching!

I ran out of memory on my camera to take a picture of the small quilt she liked the best.

An update on my guild challenge project. I finished quilting it last night and will put the binding on tonight. I will be glad to take this off my UFO list! Next, I will be making a Pentecost banner for my church and then a gift for my MIL for her birthday at the end of the month. After that, I need to make some quilts with some of the beautiful fabric that I have purchased over the past few months. I have been looking through my quilting patterns and have picked one that uses mostly fat quarters...

Working full time means a lot less time for hobbies!