Appliquéd machine wall hang

I've been busy this weekend.  Very busy with my mom's place, quilting the navy blue and cream quilt, a quilt show in Oshawa and the Creative Needle and Craft show.  In between all of that, I decided to pull out my appliqué machine wall hanging.

I haven't worked on this project for a long time.  It's not a large project, just a small wall hanging.  Not quite sure why this got put aside, but like everything else one thing leads to another and things happen.  I put this on my list of 12 that ended up being 18, because I want to see this done.

This was a gifted kit from one of my previous client's husband.  He wanted to thank me for finishing his wife's last quilt, when she passed away.  The quilt really meant something to him.  It was very thoughtful of him.  I will always remember his wife every time I look at the wall hanging.  She was a very nice person in all ways.

This is where I left off, before I put it away.  I was working on the burnt red ribbons.  Now all but two of them at completed.  The last two have to wait, until I have other parts attached.

Here is another section complete.

I figure I will keep everyone in suspense for a little while.  I will show you the pattern later, once I am done.  This way, I will keep you guessing.

Have fun everyone and be happy.  It is a conscious choice, so choose to be happy!!!

Started assembling the 16-patch pinwheel quilt

I started assembling the 16-patch pinwheel quilt.  Shortly after I finished all the pinwheels I started to lay it out on the design wall.  That is when I realized that I had seven blocks spinning the wrong way.

Instead of fixing them right at the moment, I decided to use them as my leader/ender for assembling the quilt top.  I have the first four rows assembled and only five more pinwheels to fix.  You can see the places that are missing the pinwheels on the bottom right hand side of the picture below.

I like this quilt.  My daughter liked it too, so she made one.  Hers was finished and quilted some time last year.  Even though we used a lot of the same fabrics they both still look different.  I haven't decided yet, what kind of a border I will do, but that usually comes to me while I put the quilt together.

I've also been using my drunkards path quilt block parts as my leader/ender.  Below is the nice pile of parts completed.  In this picture, I just finished trimming them square.  That was before I realized, I should be working on the last main work quilt, from my list of 12 that turned into 18.  

I will show pictures of that quilt later.  At this point all I've done is take the quilt pieces out to look at them.  I do have a bunch of blocks already assembled for it.  I think around nine of them.  If memory serves me there are five red and four black blocks.

Tomorrow I am heading to the Creative Needle and Craft Show at the International Centre on Airport Rd.  I am hoping to see lots of stuff, but especially the APQS Millennium long arm quilting machine. I am really itching to get my hands on one and take it for a test drive.  I am so close to making the plunge into the long arm world.  I will let you know how it goes.

I am also heading to the first quilt show, that I have been able to attend, in Oshawa.  Look forward to that too.  I like seeing what everyone else is up to.  There is usually a lot of inspiration at a show.

I have an exciting day tomorrow!  

Carol's current project

One of my friends, Carol, at the quilting bee brought in what she is currently working on.  This was a quilt started by her friend who passed away.  Carol was finally able to take it out and work on it.  

It is a beautiful piece.  The pattern came out some time in 1999 and was started by the friend as a block of the month, through the quilt store.  All the fabrics were provided with each block.

Carol has decided to complete this quilt in a quilt as you go method, as the quilt itself is a big one.  This will make it easier for her to manage the quilting of the quilt.  The pieces that I have pictured here, are of the middle panel.  There are two other panels, one for each side.

This panel has four blocks all together.  This first one features a bird surrounded by a flowered vine.  The appliqué is very detailed with layers upon layers, like the red trim on the wing and the wing on the body of the bird, which includes smaller feathers beside that.  Many, many pieces and some of them are barely a 1/4".  Do you see those tiny blue circles at the top right hand corner?  This would not be for the novice or the faint of heart.

This next block features a spider's web.  The spider is still in need of being attached.  It will be cute when it is done.  Do you see the little yellow butterfly at the bottom right hand side?

This third block features a four layer flower.  This block alone has 56 pieces.  There are those tiny little blue circles again.  Even as tiny as they are, Carol has managed to make them so accurate in their shape as well as their size.  Amazing Carol, your friend would be pleased.

Lastly, we have the fourth block from this panel.  This one is of different types of flowers plus a butterfly.  I think I took the picture of this block upside down.  Sorry.  This block has over 90 pieces in it.

My hat goes off to Carol who is finishing the work of another fellow quilter and one of her friends.

Sewing like mad

I have been sewing like mad around here these past few days, whenever possible.  I finished the entire centre of my spools quilt and have it hanging on the design wall.  I love how this turned out.

Now I am thinking about what to do with the borders.  I am leaning toward making a scrappy border for this one.  A little bit of extra scrappiness before I put a regular border on. I find this quilt a bit small right now.  Initially it looked ok, but when I started assembling all the spools together, it was amazing how much the quilt top shrunk.

While assembling the spools quilt centre, I was also working on the leader/ender project.  The pinwheels of the 16-patch pinwheel quilt are now all done.  With the amount of assembly for the spools quilt, these pinwheels were done in no time at all.

The blocks don't look like much, but when put together with the 16-patch blocks, the quilt as a whole looks nice.  The two blocks together make a secondary design.  I will show you that in my next post.  I have laid out all the blocks on my design wall and other than about seven blocks that I have to undo and redo correctly, I am ready to start assembly of the rows.

I am making progress!!!

**Progress on my top 12 list (which turned out to be 18 instead)**. 

Work in progress:  

4. Quilting - Navy blue & cream quilt (my own)..........finished quilting in the ditch

7. Main work - Spools quilt (my own)..........finished sewing the centre, now working on borders

8. Leader/ender - Mel's romance & roses quilt (family)..........moved this to leader/ender category
9. Main work - 16-patch pinwheel quilt (gift to friend)..........laid out ready to be sewn together
10. Handwork - Reconstructed Dresden plate quilt (my own)...........9 full blocks left to do

11. Quilting - Lise's Dresden plate quilt (family)..........waiting to be quilted

12. Handwork - Machine wall hanging (my own)

13. Paper piece - Pineapple quilt (my own)..........these are put on hold again for a bit

Total number of quilts completed - 10
Total number of quilts left to be completed - 8

Completed quilts:
1. Quilted Flo's hexagon quilt (commissioned)

14. Sabryna's 16-patch pinwheel quilt (family)

16. Reversable crazy quilt & matching doll quilt (charity)

15. Log cabin quilt (my own)
18. Small wonders quilt (charity)
17. Scrappy stripes quilt (charity)

2. Michelle's midnight flight quilt (family)

6. Jean material quilt (charity)

5. Midnight flight runway quilt (charity)

3. Quilting - Lise's hexagon quilt (family)

Started assembling the rows for the spools quilt

I started back on the spools quilt.  I had rows one and two together.  Now I have rows three and four assembled and also assembled to the first two rows.  I forgot how much I enjoyed working on these spools.  It was a trip down memory lane.  Each fabric is different with no repeats.

As I was making this, I was getting offers of bits and pieces of more different fabrics, so that I could continue the theme of no repeats.  I have fabric from my mom, my daughter and some friend's stash.  I love it!

While I was working on the spools quilt, I was able to finish the 16-patch blocks that were in my leader/ender box.  All seven of them are done, for a total of 97 blocks.

I also got nine more pinwheel boxes done, for the same 16-patch pinwheel quilt.  I will have to make a total of 98 pinwheels to finish all the blocks.

I really like the leader/ender system.  It takes the pain out of making the same block, over and over again.  That is how I started the spools blocks, as leader/enders.  Once they were done, I put them into the assemble as a main work project pile.  

It took me a while to make them all, but I really didn't notice how long, because it was all done while working on other things.  I like doing it this way, so much, that I look for things that can be made using the leader/ender system.  Thank you, Bonnie Hunter for sharing your methods with us.

Working on the navy blue and cream quilt

I am still quilting my navy blue and cream quilt.  So far, I finished quilting everything in the ditch.  Once I finished to this point, my umph to finish this quilt disappeared.  So, I rolled it back up and will tackle it another day.  I am now in the mood to do some piecing.

I found the magazine that was the source of inspirations for this quilt.  The pattern comes from a Better Homes and Gardens magazine, called American Patchwork & Quilting.  Issue number 21 dated August/1996.

The pattern is on page 34, called Stars Ablaze, designed by Jill Reber.  I am making a duplicate of her quilt.  This quilt was the second quilt that I started to make, way back in 2003.  At the time, I had little quilting experience and little imagination, when it came to redesigning a quilt to make it my own.

Besides, I liked it just the way it was.  At the time I thought it was a good pattern for a male, as it didn't use floral fabrics.

The quilt pictured with the words of wisdom below, is another good quilt for a male.  I am making one of these using only men's shirts.  The pattern and the quote below come from Bonnie Hunter's blog called Quiltville.

Words to live by.  If everyone viewed it this way, wouldn't it be a much better world.

Finished quilting my daughters quilt

Almost forgot to share this finish.  I finished it before I started quilting the navy blue and cream quilt.  This was made with donated fabric. The pieces were fabric sample swatches approx. 9" square with holes at the top where they were held in a book form.  We got a lot of them.  My daughter chose the beige samples with some added pinks and some light blues.

We were able to get four 4 1/2" squares out of each swatch plus two skinny rectangles.  It turned out nice.  Different than what we've made in the past.  One of my friends said it has an oriental feel to it with the large prints.  

I quilted a simple grid design along the edges of each block and on the first border, and did stippling on the last border.

Wouldn't you know it, I thought I was doing well when I was using my 15 minute break to attach the binding this afternoon, however just as my timer goes off, to signal the end of my break, I realize that I am 1" short of binding to finish.  Add in the 2 1/2" needed to add on the next piece and another 2 1/2" to attach the two ends together, making me 6" short all together.

Good thing I had some binding fabric left.  During my last break of the day I cut another piece of binding and added it to the last length of binding.  Once I finish this post I will finish attaching the binding so that it will be ready for hand stitching.

I love this saying, posted by Bonnie Hunter from her blog Quiltville.  It makes me laugh.  It is similar to my favourite mug, the one my daughter got me for Christmas last year, which says "Be happy, it drives people crazy" (as my daughter can attest to).

It is amazing how many people get pissed off when they are mad or upset, but someone else is happy.  They seem to go out of their way to try and make everyone else miserable.  When people are like this I get even more bubbly and cheerful and sing out GOOOOOD MOOOORRRNINGGGG!  They either start realizing how rude they are being and stop or they start to see red and start ranting harder, all the while I look at them straight in the face with a big huge smile.  The longer they go, the more likely it will turn into an even bigger smile with teeth and all.

I finished quilting the Sunshine quilt

I finished another simple baby sized quilt.  This one measures approx. 40" X 50".  The fabrics for this quilt came from my friend and quilting bee member, Carol.  She was clearing out some stuff and gifted it to me.  I make charity/give away quilts.

Within the fabric, I got one piece of yellow linen fabric.  I've never used linen before and to be honest, I don't think I would use it again.  This particular piece of linen was soft, but didn't stay put.  I even tried starching the linen to see if that would help.  It did a bit, but I had to really watch how the blocks went through the machine, otherwise nothing would match.

Even though I had a hassle of working with the linen, in the end, once in the quilt top and quilted the linen didn't cause any more problems.  It looks so cute up close and personal.  It is also so soft.

This little quilt used the whole piece of yellow and everything of each of the alternating fabrics too.  They all fit into this quilt with no material to spare and no shortage of fabrics.

Here is a close up of some of the fabrics I used.  With this quilt I did a simple straight line sewing along seams on both sides, both horizontally and vertically.  This simple quilt didn't need anything more.

Last night while having a movie night with my daughter, I managed to finish the rest of the binding.  Another quilt ready for Project Linus.

Amish style sunshine and shadow quilt

Today, I was off to a late start.  I just did not want to get out of bed.  I had a late night at my mother's new place doing some renos and Maddie, my 11 mth old puppy was up at 5:00 am getting sick.  Once everything settled, I lay down with her on her large doggie bed and we both fell asleep.  Come 7:30 am my son came to take over.  From there it was a quick shower and clean up the kitchen.

All I wanted to do was play in my quilt room, but some things just need to be done.  Later in the morning I took a break with a cup of tea in my quilting studio.  I am seeing bits and pieces of things that need to be done here, but again, all I want to do is play.

So......what do you think I did.  Not really a difficult question to answer, is it?  Of coarse I did some playing.

Some time back in April, one of our quilting bee members gifted me with several UFOs that she had decided to have someone else finish.  One of them was a bunch of strip sets in solid colours.  Once I cut them up, I had enough to make 30 half squares.  Today, that is what I pulled out to play with.

It's a cloudy day here today, with on and off rain.  A perfect day to settle in the quilting studio and sew.  I cut and sewed on a black half square to the strip set half squares to make the sunshine and shadow block.  I set the squares in the traditional layout.  By 3:00 pm I was done the top, borders and all.  The finished top measures 50" X 57".  A nice size for a charity/give away quilt.

While I was working on the Amish style sunshine and shadow quilt, I worked on my pinwheels from my leader/ender box.  I got 9 full blocks done.  Yay!

So, even while playing, I did get some stuff from my list done.  This way I don't feel so bad.

**Progress on my top 12 list (which turned out to be 18 instead)**

Work in progress:  

4. Quilting - Navy blue & cream quilt (my own)..........finished quilting in the ditch

7. Main work - Spools quilt (my own)..........first row done, on hold to work on quilting

8. Main work - Mel's romance & roses quilt (family)
9. Leader/Ender - 16-patch pinwheel quilt (my own)..........stated sewing the pinwheel parts
10. Handwork - Reconstructed Dresden plate quilt (my own)...........9 full blocks left to do

11. Quilting - Lise's Dresden plate quilt (family)..........waiting to be quilted

12. Handwork - Machine wall hanging (my own)

13. Paper piece - Pineapple quilt (my own)..........these are put on hold again for a bit

Total number of quilts completed - 10
Total number of quilts left to be completed - 8

Completed quilts:
1. Quilted Flo's hexagon quilt (commissioned)

14. Sabryna's 16-patch pinwheel quilt (family)

16. Reversable crazy quilt & matching doll quilt (charity)

15. Log cabin quilt (my own)
18. Small wonders quilt (charity)
17. Scrappy stripes quilt (charity)

2. Michelle's midnight flight quilt (family)

6. Jean material quilt (charity)

5. Midnight flight runway quilt (charity)
3. Quilting - Lise's hexagon quilt (family)

Played with my leader/ender quilt

Yesturday I did a lot of quilting on my navy blue and cream quilt.  I finished all the in-the-ditch sewing, all four ways (vertically, horizontally, diagonal to the right and diagonally to the left).  Just as I'd hoped, some other quilting design ideas came to me for the various areas of the quilt.

I am trying to keep it simple on this one.  I have two more areas to workout, but different thoughts are coming and going for them.  Next, I will start quilting some of the areas of the cream, the ones that I know what I want to do with.  Pictures to follow when I am complete.

So.....in the meantime. Check out what else I have been playing with.

The other day after pin basting all of the quilts for quilting, I sat at my machine and contemplated what I was going to do next.  That is when I turned my head and saw my leader/ender box almost empty.  It got me thinking, I must be getting close to finishing my blocks for my leader/ender quilt.

Above is the container of blocks.  These are all the 16-patch blocks.  I only have seven more of these left to do.  I start assembling the pinwheel blocks for this quilt.  I have just this one block below done.

I have all together 98 pinwheel blocks to do.  Half of the blocks will spin one way and the other half will spin in the other direction.  When they get laid out alternating with the 16-patch blocks, the pinwheel blocks make a secondary pattern of a diagonal box surrounding the 16-patch blocks.

While I had the parts out, I counted what I had and noted that I only have 9 more HST (half square triangle) left to do.  That got me excited.  I ended up playing with my HSTs for a while.  I sorted them out onto sets of four to make the pinwheels, without having any repeat fabrics within a pinwheel block. 

I have to say that in this quilt there are a lot of different black HSTs, and as you can see in the picture below, there are some fall and Halloween fabrics mixed in too.

Now my box of leader/enders is full, or should I say overflowing with stuff to sew.  In the box, I also added some drunkards path block parts too.

The one good thing about this leader/ender is that it is one of the quilts on my list of 12 that ended up being 18.  Maybe there is hope of finishing this quilt before the end of the year, or at least finishing the top?  I would be happy with the top finished too.

I washed a very old quilt

Today I had a day at home to take the time and wash a very old quilt.  This quilt was made in the 1940s.  It's the Diamond Hexagon quilt.

I finished the quilt a while ago, but didn't have the time to wash it.  With very old quilts 70 to 80 years old you have the day to day accumulation of dust and dirt that has made its way into the fibre of the materials.  However, the worst enemy is the fabric dye fastness.  In other words the worry is that the dye colour will run.

A lot of the older fabrics were still not stable during those times.  Their dye ran constantly.   Even now we have some manufactures who may have a particular line of fabric that is not colour fastness.  Most of the time, now a days, you would more so worry about a red colour.  Of any of the colours, red seems to be the one that you really want to test out, before you use it.

The picture above is of the quilt, before I washed it.  I laid the top white hexagon row on top of the backing fabric.  Of the two rows of hexagons laying side by side, the left hand side is the newer fabric of the backing and the right hand side is the older fabrics of the top of the quilt.

By the time I am done washing the quilt, I am aiming for the top fabrics to be almost as bright as the backing "off white" fabric.

Above is the clean bathtub water with a T.S.A. soap in the water.  The T.S.A. soap is to help the fastness of the colour dye and help set the dye.  When I use this particular soap, I am hoping to remove the excess dye from the fabrics and set the dye, to prevent any further running of the dye colour.

As you can see with the first wash, we removed most of the dust and dirt, and a lot of the excess dye.  I continued to wash the quilt a few more times, until the water ran clear.  I proceeded to rinsed the quilt a few more times, trying to get all the T.S.A. soap out of the fabric.

By the time I finished washing the quilt, you could see the colour of the fabrics through the off white backing material, however it was only the yellow fabric that dyed through.  At this point, I decided to treat the yellow fabric with a stain remover and wash the quilt once more.

I am grateful that it is only the yellow fabric, that has dyed the quilt!  Now, I have to cross my fingers that during the drying time, while the fabrics are still wet, that some of the other colours don't choose to dye too.

Started quilting my navy blue and cream quilt

I finally started quilting my navy blue and cream quilt.  I pin basted this quilt yesturday.  I was anxious at first.  This quilt is my oldest UFO (Un Finished Object), quilting wise anyways.  The reason it hasn't been quilted yet is because I never knew what to quilt on it.  I still don't, not really.  But I finally figured if I don't just jump in and get started, it may never get done.

I've decided to quilt in the ditch for now.  It's a place to start.  I'll tack everything down and work from there.  Hopefully something will come to me.  If not, well.....in the ditch will just have to do.  The way I plan to stitch in the ditch will exceed the minimum requirement for the batting.  Nothing fancy though.  On the other hand, if the quilt is going to a boy or man, they my prefer simple.

Stay turned for the finished quilt.  I will let you know what I settled on, once I know myself.

For today, I am off to work at my Mom's place.  Still trying to get things done there.  So no quilting for me today.  But I do see some quilting time tomorrow, while I soak and wash a very old quilt.  I am looking forward to seeing the diamond hexagon quilt completely done.  Once it is washed the white will be lighter and the colours will be brighter.  It will look like a completely different quilt....almost.

A way to use up scrap strings

Today, I have had a very productive day.  After we said good bye to our grandkids and their parents, we all settled back into things.  The kids caught up on their homework, and I took a pile of quilts to the basement to iron and pin baste them.

Poor Maddie, our puppy, crawled under the blankets and pillows that the grandchildren and their parents used.  I really feel she misses them already.  Other than coming up for lunch and dinner, she spent most of the day down there.  We did get her out to play for a bit, but once we came back in, you could find her here.

I spent the day with her here too.  I stayed with her and worked on ironing some quilt tops and quilt backings.  I managed to pin baste one of my oldest UFOs (Un Finished Objects), my navy blue and cream coloured quilt.  I started this quilt back in 2003, finished it a bit later, but there it sat, waiting for me to come up with a quilting design.  I've decided to just start quilting it, in the ditch and see where it leads me.

Than I move on to enlarging the backing to fit a donation quilt called Grandpa's Stars quilt, a pattern from Bonnie Hunter.  Once I was done that, I continued onward to pin baste the quilt.  After that was done, I worked at making a backing for one of the quilt tops my daughter made.  She makes them and guess who ends up having to quilt them.....  I actually got this one pin basted too.  Like I said, it was a very productive day!

When I am not making quilts or quilting them, I am usually reading about them.  I came across one of Bonnie Hunter's quilts, that I wanted to save for a possible further quilt, that I want to make, to use up the strings that keep multiplying.

Imagine taking the flying geese and the other odd shape out (ie the sashing, from the string blocks).  You would get the strips connecting.  The blues would all be making short strips across the blocks and the yellows would be making long strips across the whole row of blocks.  That might be cool, in any colour way one chose to do.  

I would suggest leaving the placement, of the current blue, as the dominant colour, of the two, when remaking it.  As they are short strips it would draw more attention to them and help them stand out.  The long strips that run across the whole row already draw the attention, so you don't want to make that the dominant colour.

Just a suggestion for a future quilt I may want to make down the road.  For when I am trying to use up all my strings.  Bonnie Hunter is a fountain of information and ideas. I am VERY grateful to her and all the other scrap users out there!!!

More leader/enders

I've been working on a few things here and there now.  During working on other stuff, I still work on my leader/enders.  This time though, I just wanted to sew something simple and picked up these two monkey wrench blocks.  They were already cut in sets sitting in the leader/ender pile.

While sewing the monkey wrench blocks, l worked on the 16-patch blocks as my leader/ender.

Two main blocks done and three leader/ender blocks done.  Not bad.

My stepson, his wife and my two young grandchildren went to a wedding this afternoon.  My husband and son just got back from my Mom's place for thanksgiving dinner.  Hope everyone is enjoying their thanksgiving.  Don't forget to count all your blessings.

Tomorrow we say goodbye to my stepson, his wife and my two young grandchildren.  They are heading home to New Brunswick.  We will all be sad to see them go, even our puppy Maddie.

Whirlwind quilt

This was another quilt I spotted while at the Antiques Warehouse the other week.  I am always looking for a quilt pattern that will use up some of my odd shaped scraps.

This block is called a whirlwind block.  It is a bit difficult to make out as the medium blue used does not stand out much, so you cannot see the actual block itself.

As this next picture is of the side, I thought it would be easier to see the actual block, but in this case not really.  The blocks are large.  To make them you would make a scrappy 4" stripe with one corner cut off.  Once this is done you attach the short side of a triangle to the small side of the strip.

I am sure there is a better way to explain the construction, but it is not coming to me.  This one is probably best shown with diagrams. 

I am working on some quilting today and will be able to share some stuff with you shortly. 

In the meantime, I am sending out my good wishes to everyone to have a good thanksgiving weekend. 

Advent calendar wall hanging

I was asked by one of the quilting bee members to quilt up this little Christmas wall hanging.  It sat in my quilting room since late June, waiting for some time to be able to quilt it.

Here is the advent calendar before I did anything.

My friend basted the quilt layers with thread and tacked down the pockets, that are part of the calendar. 

In order for me to quilt it though, I needed to remove the pockets.  This way I didn't get caught up in the pockets, while trying to quilt a part of the design on the wall hanging.

Here is a picture of the advent calendar after I did the quilting.

For the quilting on this wall hanging, I mainly stuck to outlining the different shapes.  The angle, the hanging ornaments and the gifts.  I re-attached the pockets along the way.  Now the wall hanging is just needing the binding to be attached to call it complete.  For my part it is complete.  This is yet again another thing I can move up my list, to the completed section.

I am hoping the momentum keeps going.  I am a bit behind on my list of 12 that turn out to be 18, and I still have another quilt I want to quilt before getting back to that list.

Snowmen A to Zzzz.... Letters K and L

Snowmen A to Zzzz.... Letters K and L.  K is for Kris Kringle and L is for lights.

This is the last block for this pattern.  My daughter has been working on these blocks on and off for a couple of years, maybe three.  She has been working on many things in between though too.

She has done a fabulous job with her very tiny stitches.  I need my glasses on, in order to actually see the individual stitches.  Oh....to have young eyes again.

All of the blocks are from a pattern called Snowmen A to Zzzz designed by ?????.  They are sewn together side by side and than a fancier stitch is used to sew along the seams, bringing them all together.

My daughter though has decided to use her blocks in a different way.  She wants to use them in a random way, with different types of pieced blocks between them or along side them.  Vary much like my flower garden quilt.  The design is still to be finalized, so it may be a while before we see this quilt done.

In the meantime she started some more hand embroidered blocks.  Instead of Winter with the Christmas theme, this new project is more Spring with flowers in baskets.  More on that later......

I want to end with a clip from Bonnie Hunter's blog:

A good reason to wake up each morning and face the days to come! Just look for the rainbows, they are out there!!

Flo's second hexagon lap quilt

I have been working on this quilt for a few months.  Due to my schedule and lack of enough time in the day, this quilt kept getting delayed.  I did finish it about a little over a week ago.

On Sunday, while I was taking a break from some long over due, major house cleaning, I took care of all the ends in the back of the quilt.

This quilt is pretty.  It's a Christmas gift for the maker's daughter.  Good thing she got it to me some time in June. 

Here is a close up of the grandmother's flower garden block from the back.  This way you can really see how it was quilted.  You don't see too clearly the feathered wreath design I quilted from the front, as it fades in and out on the different fabrics used to make the block.

I can move one more quilt up my list, to the completed section.  It is not one that is on my list of 12 that turn out to be 18, but it is on my list of things that need to be done.  Next on my list of things to be done is a Christmas advent calendar, for one of the other quilting bee members.

Stay tuned for that one a bit later......

**Progress on my top 12 list (which turned out to be 18 instead)**

Work in progress:  

4. Quilting - Navy blue & cream quilt (my own)

7. Main work - Spools quilt (my own)..........first row done, on hold to work on quilting

8. Main work - Mel's romance & roses quilt (family)
9. Leader/Ender - 16-patch pinwheel quilt (my own)..........on hold to work on quilting
10. Handwork - Reconstructed Dresden plate quilt (my own)...........9 full blocks left to do

11. Quilting - Lise's Dresden plate quilt (family)..........top is done, waiting to be quilted

12. Handwork - Machine wall hanging (my own)

13. Paper piece - Pineapple quilt (my own)..........these are put on hold again for a bit

Total number of quilts completed - 10
Total number of quilts left to be completed - 8

Completed quilts:
1. Quilted Flo's hexagon quilt (commissioned)

14. Sabryna's 16-patch pinwheel quilt (family)

16. Reversable crazy quilt & matching doll quilt (charity)

15. Log cabin quilt (my own)
18. Small wonders quilt (charity)
17. Scrappy stripes quilt (charity)

2. Michelle's midnight flight quilt (family)

6. Jean material quilt (charity)

5. Midnight flight runway quilt (charity)
3. Quilting - Lise's hexagon quilt (family).   

Cute child's quilt

While I was at the Antique Warehouse in St. Jacobs, I came across this cute little child's quilt.  It only measured approx. 40" X 50".  Each block had an animal sitting in a box.  There was a dog, cat, lamb, duck, horse, teddy bear, rabbit, mouse, and a monkey.

All of the animals were hand embroidered and the whole quilt was hand quilted.  The quilt is simple and pretty.  Here is a close up of the hand embroidered horse.  

This next block is the hand embroidered duck.  I just realized that all the animals are in the box which is decorated with blue flowers and each of them is also wearing a blue coloured bow tie.

Lastly, I took a picture of the mouse.  I didn't think of taking a picture of the monkey, though I thought he looked very cute.  Take a minute and enlarge the quilt picture above.  See if you can find the monkey.  Am I right?  Doesn't he look really cute?

Hand embroidered quilts come and go in and out of fashion all the time.  Some times you see them everywhere and other times you rarely see them.  I think everyone should take the time to make at least one hand embroidered quilt in their lifetime.  An applique quilt too!  It gives you more of an appreciation for them, when you realize just how much work goes into them.