The Last Gifts of Christmas

My friend, Cathy, is heavily into English Paper Piecing...you should see what she has been working on all year!  I call it the "Monster".  She has been enhancing her stash a lot this year with fun fabrics that she can fussy cut for her project. 

 

 

For Christmas, she made me this EPP pincushion.  Isn't it cute???





 

 

I love the little heart buttons!  You can't smell it from where you are, but I can tell you that it has some lavender in it and smells heavenly!

 

 

 

Thanks Cathy!!!!  I love it!

 

 

Speaking of pincushions, here is one I made for Roxene at the Elgin Piecemakers Guild.  Each year, we pick names and exchange small gifts.  Roxene loves Churn Dashes and makes them almost every month for our charity quilt projects.  I decided she needed a church dash pincushion. 

 

 

 

This is a chunky churn dash! The fabric was in my scrap bins...

 



I found some green fabric for the back and some green buttons for the middle on the top and bottom.  I filled this pincushion with plastic beads--no lavender for this pincushion.

 

 

I also made Roxene a friendship bag with a churn dash on the front.  (I actually made two of these bags and the other one was given to Karen.)

 

 

Organic quilting with green thread:

 

 

Two friendship bags...

 

 

...with green dotty fabric for the lining!

 

 

 You have seen all of the quilty gifts I made for friends and family now.  Next up...I need to finish off the two quilts for the Syrian Refugee families.

Quilts for a Syrian Refugee Family and a Stash Report

Like many people, I have been moved by the plight of the thousands of Syrian refugees who have had to leave their country in search of a safe place to live and raise their children.  Several local Presbyterian churches, including my church, are sponsoring two families to come to Canada. A few weeks ago, I spoke to the representative of my church that is on the organizing committee and offered to arrange for quilts for the members of the two families.  I asked our London Friendship Quilters' Guild president what she thought of this idea and she jumped right in and made some quilts for the first family who should be arriving sometime in January. I had a quilt top in my stash that needed to be quilted and it will be given to the youngest child--a girl.

I am still in the process of quilting it and it should be done soon. Once this quilt is done, we will have 5 quilts ready for this family--2 parents and 4 young children. 

We do not know much about the second family yet but I decided to get started on a quilt for the parents using fabric from my stash.  My friend, Christine, found a pattern in a magazine that was simple and quick to make. 

I cut out the large squares a couple of weeks ago and found the sashing fabric in my stash.  I don't have quite enough of it but found a solid yellow colour that is very close to the sashing fabric to use as well. 

Christine and I made most of the star blocks last week when we got together to sew and I finished up the last few stars on Monday this week. 

I started sewing the blocks together on Monday as well.  It is coming together nicely and I hope to have the top completed soon so that it can be taken to the long arm quilter for quilting. 

Several members of the guild have offered to help make quilts for the second refugee family as well. We may do a sewing day to put a few more tops together once we find out more about the children's ages, etc.

I encourage others reading this post to make quilts for refugee families who may be making your community their new home. A quilt is a wonderful gift to welcome newcomers to our country.

I have not done a stash report for ages.  I am ending up in the red this year.  There has not been enough sewing time this year for many reasons and I hope to return to the black for 2016.

Fabric used since my last stash report: 42.3 yards
Total fabric used this year: 62.9 yards
Fabric added to the stash since my last report:  31.5 yards.
Total fabric added this year: 70.75 yards
Net fabric added this year:  7.85 yards

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.