Three NICU quilts now complete

I am up early this morning.  I am excited!  Today is the first day of the quilt store shop hop in and around our area.  There are eleven stores participating.  All the way to St Catharine's, St Mary's (Perth South), Mount Bridgewater and coming backwards to Hamilton, Stratford, Tillsonburg, to Woodstock, Shakespeare, New Hamburg, and ending in Georgetown.  Obviously not all in the one day...lol.  

This shop hop is happening in the month of July, so my mom and I are planning on hitting them all, over the coarse of the month, every Saturday.  Good thing we have 5 Saturdays in this month.  We are both giddy with anticipation.  We haven't done any backroad country driving in a few years.  This will be fun!

I've got my list ready of stuff to look out for, as I visit each place.  Similar to when the kids and I did the road trip about 5-6 years ago (at least), I would like to find a focal fabric for an appliqué quilt I am planning and pull colours from it to purchase fat quarters along the way.  Did I tell you yet that I am sooooo excited!!  Lol...like a child at Christmas time.

In recent finishes, here are a few NICU quilts.  These are quilts that go on the incubators at the hospitals, for the babies, to help with reducing the harsh overhead lights.  This first one is rows of scrappy flying geese.  I've had these sitting around for a while.  So when I unpacked them, I decided they had to be gone.  So into a NICU quilt they went.  This will add some cheer to the incubator.

This next NICU quilt was part of a challenge.  Some of use were given some donated fabric, with the challenge to be creative and use it up.  This is one of the three that I made with the various fabrics, so far.  The others will follow at a later date.  My mom did this cat and sunflower embroidery and I bordered it with a cat fabric.  This fabric is now all used up.  All but a 2" piece.

This last NICU quilt for today is one of 6 hexagon stars that I unpacked.  My daughter, Sabryna, one day decided to make a hexagon quilt.  The pattern was a bunch of stars, like the one below, plus triangle units.  The quilt was stunning, however my daughter did not like her colour choices, so abandoned the stars.  She gave me permission to do as I please with them, so I am making 6 NICU quilts with them.  This is the first one.  I appliquéd the star to a plain white background fabric, added a small yellow border and made a scrappy string border to finish it off.  I think it turned out cute! 

My plan with the other 5 hexagon stars is to continue making NICU quilts, but I challenged myself to not repeat the same borders.  I am going to have to be creative...but I am up for it and actually looking forward to the challenge.  I have a few already figured out, just have to get to them.

Enjoy your weekend everyone, I know I will.  Take care and have fun!

Two donated quilts for Quilt of Valour

Happy Canada Day!

Here are two more quilts that I recently finished.  This first one was originally intended for someone.  However these fabrics are not my colours and I kept dragging my feet to try to finish it.  I started it in Nov/2014, almost 8yrs sitting mostly in a container.  I had to do something to get this one done.  This is not the original layout, but when I unpacked this container I had to be true to me.  To be truthful, I really don't like this colour combination.  I don't mind the red squares that make a chain throughout the quilt, but that taupe/beige I just cannot handle.  Here in the picture it looks lighter and not bad, but the true colour it's pretty drab.  I know that a lot of people may like it, but I just could not handle sewing so many block with it.

The original design was to have double the black blocks and they were to be the alternating squares, instead of the plain taupe squares seen here.  There was to be another border in the same taupe which had appliqué flowers in the corners and along the sides, surrounded on each side by black squares on point.  However, when I opened the container, I decided that this person that it was intended for, is going to have to get something else.  I couldn't finish it.

So, being someone that does not waste, I looked at what I had already done, and tried to come up with something fast and easy that I could get this done.  Part of the reason I also didn't like it, where this was going, was because the person that requested her quilt, asked for something feminine.  The flower appliqué border would have helped, but I don't know, I guess I felt the recipient wouldn't like it, that it would not be what she intended as feminine.  There is nothing worst than doing all that work, for it not to be liked, even though these were her wedding colours and the taupe her neutral that she used in her home on the walls.

Either way it got changed into this version and is being given to Quilt of Valour (QOV). I have this picture, but forgot to take the completed quilted picture. 

This second quilt, came about to use up the batiks I had accumulated and some I just recently received from a donation box.  I love batiks, but for some reason, I don't buy them.  Based on my calculations and the size of quilt I needed for QOV, I knew I needed a few more though and a background fabric.  I went out and purchased a few 1/2 meter pieces plus the light batik for the other half of the log cabin block.  

I like how this quilt turned out.  The colours are a bit brighter than what you see in this picture, that was taken in my basement.  I'll have to remember for future pictures that, those taken in the basement do not turn out well and washout the true colours.  It too was not quilted when i took this picture and I forgot to get a picture of the finished quilt.  Just so that you can understand how off the colours are, the first small border is the same red colour as the center square of the log cabin block.  Here it looks magenta.

 

Two more down and a bunch more to share with you soon.  Now before I share this next bit of information, I am going to ask you not to judge me, because as I said in a previous post, I do tend to be all over the place and work on many things at once.  

Some stats:  

I started the year Jan/2022 with 24 UFOs (quilts started and waiting to be completed).

So far this year from January to July 1st/2022, I started 28 new quilts (mostly small NICU quilts).

Which brings me to 52 items on my list.

Of those items, I have completed 19 so far.

Which leaves me now with 33 left to complete.

Lol...so yes, I am kind of going in the wrong direction.  I should be going down instead of up, but the year is not done yet.  I would like to end the year with no more than I started, or even better, with less...

The reason I have so many new starts is because of my goal when unpacking.  There were at least eight that came from stuff my daughter was trying out, that didn't turn out and got abandoned.  When I unpacked them, she gave me permission to use the parts to make NICU quilts to donate.  Some stuff was due to being part of the guild with the BOM samples and the 30th anniversary quilt.  And...well...I can keep going on about why so many were added, but I won't...it is what it is...and I am ok with that. 

Have a great long weekend everyone!  Enjoy your Canada Day and catch some fireworks if you can!

Monkey wrench quilt

When I moved here and started unpacking the boxes, in August/2021, I told myself I needed to finish things.  I've had a crazy, mixed up 2 1/2 years of major renovating two homes, on the tail end of renovating my mom's home for the previous 2 1/2 yrs of weekends as well, with only bits and pieces of quilting when I could fit it in between working full time and my longarm quilting business.  I want to finally get things in order.   I didn't want to just put things away for an eventual day to work on it.  I am determined to get things done.  I wanted to be ruthless and was determined that, when I unpacked it, I was going to deal with it and finish it, instead of storing it away.  This is why you will be seeing many finishes from the past few months, that I will be posting in the next few days.  I am not saying that I followed this determination 100%, but I made a good dent with my UFOs and I will continue to do more.

This is a quilt that I had a lot of fun making.  These blocks are called monkey wrench, amongst other names, and I love making them, especially with the funky fabrics from scraps given to me by friends along the way.   I will, down the road, make another larger one for myself.  It was that much fun.  Stretching the limits with fabric pairings.  Different genres, colours, some new stuff and some older.

I started this quilt some time in mid 2017, as my leader/ender blocks.  I just kept making them between my other projects.  I had no plan for the layout or how many I was going to make.  My only goal was to not use duplicate fabrics, similar to what I did for my Spools quilt.

Somewhere along the way I had a crazy idea to make the block in miniature.  The main blocks that make up the quilt, finish at 5" and this block below finishes at 2 1/2".  Lol...yes, I know...crazy.

Well I made four of them before I stopped myself...lol.  I have to admit though that they are very cute.

Here are the two sizes together in a picture so that you can see the difference.  Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of the funky fabrics, but let me tell you, some of them were wild.

I am glad that I made this quilt and it went to Project Linus, but I am also longing for the monkey wrench blocks.  Don't be surprised if I start another one, again as a leader/ender.  This one will have to be king size now, as when we moved here we had the room for the king.  Lol...at 5" finished blocks...that makes for A LOT of monkey wrenches...lol.  And I may be crazy enough to add in a few half sized blocks too...lol.

I have been procrastinating with the work I have planned for today...  Now that I have this post done, I have no more excuses.  Enjoy this beautiful day.  Get out and catch some sun.

Celebrating with Party Hats

Now that our last guild meeting of the year has past and the quilt has been revealed, I can share this with you.  Hope you like it.

The Halton Hills Quilter's Guild celebrated our 30th anniversary just as covid hit, so we weren't able to gather together to celebrate in person.  It is quite a milestone and we didn't want to just let it go by without doing something to mark the date.  

One of the executive members, Susan, suggested that we make these party hats as a group and make a quilt with them.  I thought it was a great idea and agreed, as did several others.  I did the mistake of saying, oh, that is great and I know just the right pattern to set the blocks...which was followed by Susan saying great so you can make the quilt and present it to the guild at the June meeting...lol...I guess I just walked right into that one...lol.  Anyways, I was good with it.  I enjoy do what I can to help.

Here is one of my blocks that I made using the paper piece pattern that went out with our newsletter in October.  We asked all the members if they could make a hat or two to help us celebrate out 30th anniversary.

From this, I added a 3" white strip at the peak of the hats, added a puff/pompom/tassel or whatever you call those things, to help the hat look a bit more festive.  As the members made them and sent them to one of four drop off locations, which were delivered to me, I worked on the finishing touches to the hats.

When I had enough, I started to assemble the quilt in vertical rows separated by a 2" sashing.  My mom also belongs to the guild, so for her hats, I asked her to add large pieces of white fabric to the sides of the hates (untrimmed).  This way I could cut the blocks on an angle.  Can you find the three misfits in the quilt?  Ok...lol...so I got a bit carried away with that part.....I was having so much fun and thought it was a cute touch.

There is not one hat alike, everyone used their own stash to create their party hat.  I think they turned out lovely.  Can you see one of the three tilted hats below?  I quilted this quilt using Becker's Whirligigs from Urban Elementz.  It reminded me of those festive twirly things or those sparklers that the kids enjoy during fireworks, that get lite and the kids twirl them around.  My mom tacked down the binding.

I hope you like it.  I had fun making this one.  It was with little effort considering all the blocks were made.  Thank you to everyone who participated.  The quilt will be given to our Outreach, to be giving to some charitable organization or cause.

My quilting rhythm

A few days ago, I told you a bit about myself.  Yesterday you learned that I love most things scrappy, and today I wanted to share just a bit more about me and my quilting rhythm.  This is more from the same post that I wrote about a few days ago.  

If you are reading this post, I would guess that you are into quilting and so you would know that the process of making a quilt can take a long time, depending on the pattern and size that you are making.  I am usually all over the place with my many quilts on the go.  I rarely work on one quilt from start to finish, all in one go.  There are times that I work on many things at once, because I need variety in my quilting, just as we do in life.  Other times I have the concentration to do the one project for a long time.  It changes all the time.  The reason I say this is so that you won't be surprised when I show you different parts of  various quilts at different stages of completion, from one day to the next.   I tend to go with the flow and whatever the mood dictates, unless I have deadlines that is.  It helps me get more done.  Nothing worst than doing something you don't like or don't want to do.  

So there you have it.  Me and all my quilting quarks...lol.  I know that I am not alone.  I think it comes with a creative brain, that never stops wondering what if...

Today I am back at the kitchen backsplash tiles.  Likely no quilting for me today, but soon.  I am really looking forward to the upcoming Shop Hop starting on Saturday.  I will be working hard all week and come Saturday, I will take time to play and fondle fabric...lol. 

Back in time to Sept 3rd/2019:

This is when I was practicing my free motion quilting on a Bonnie Hunter pattern called Carolina Chain.  This was done completely scrappy, and to be honest, a bit too scrappy even for my taste.  I quilted twirls in all the chain squares, ribbon candy in the sashing and lines using rulers for the rest.

I enjoyed making the blocks and using all the funky fabrics.  I think I may make this one again, but next time I'll tame it down with a consistent sashing.

Back to work for me.  Take care and enjoy your day.

Halton Hills Quilter's Guild Spiderweb quilt workshop

Today was very productive with my renos, installing the marble tile backsplash in the kitchen, in a herringbone pattern.  It was so labour intensive, because every single sheet had to be cut, either on the sides or top and bottom and often both.  In the kitchen there are lots of outlets, counters and cupboards to work around.  I got only about 2/3 done today.  I had to stop by 6:30 pm for the guild zoom meeting. Tomorrow I want to finish it.  There will still be some major cutting to do, with only one row of tile sheets from ceiling to floor that will not have to be cut, aside from the first and the last sheet, but it is looking good so far.

Not to bore you anymore with my renos, let's get right to the back in time to Nov 2nd/2019:

Back in Nov 2nd 2019, I co-hosted a paper piece spiderweb workshop for the Halton Hills Quilters Guild with the Outreach coordinator Vivian.  During one of our executive meetings, we were talking about combining a workshop with people volunteering to help make a quilt for the Outreach program.

I suggested the Spiderweb paper piece pattern because it lends itself very well to being scrappy and when many hands are involved in making blocks, paper piece usually gives you better success with the sizes of the blocks coming out the same.  

In August, I was given a bin from the guild, of men's fabrics to go through, to see what I could come up with.  Being a scrap enthusiast, I had no problems taking out many different fabrics, because really, the more the merrier, when it comes to a spiderweb quilt.

Here are some precut pieces with a mixture of fabrics ranging from blue, green, burgundy, browns and beiges.  You name it it was in there, and there were definitely some unlikely matches.  The only consistent was the light beige wedge.

I roughly cut out enough pieces and parts, to make a complete quilt top.  I packaged them with the paper piece pattern, as seen below.

All ready to take to the workshop scheduled for Nov 2nd/2019.

I had to laugh when the women opened up their package and gasped.  The look on their faces was priceless...and the comments...lol...I can't sew this together with this...or can I get another package, this one doesn't do it for me...lol.  The faces were hilarious and I laughed out loud, told them that they know I am a scrappy quilter and they saw the spiderweb quilts that I brought in to show for this workshop and that they just had to trust me on this.  

They did proceed to sew the blocks together as we went through the tips and tricks of doing paper piecing.  It is a good technique to know.  It started to become somewhat of a joke on who has the ugliest combination, and I reassured them that they were all pretty much completely a mish mash of fabrics.

But do you know what happened when they started to place the completed blocks down on the design floor...I heard many gasps from many of them, but this time they were different gasps.  They were surprised and shocked how it was coming together, they couldn't get over how the blocks, as a whole, were turning out to be something, not half bad...lol.  The remarks later were more along the lines of, I am definitely going to do this pattern again...lol.  

I took the blocks home and put them together, added the two borders, also fabric from the guild bin, and quilted it the following weekend.  I think it turned out pretty good for a bunch of misfit donation fabrics, that were just sitting around.  What do you think?  Was it a success?

Here are all the wonderful ladies that came out to the workshop, or most of them.  I believe a couple of them had to leave earlier.  We had 20 in attendance, which is good considering we are not a large guild.  I really enjoyed this workshop, and I am sure many of them did too.  They are all a bunch of great women.  The comradery that day still sticks in my head today.  Thank you so much ladies for all the laughs!!!  I am hoping that some day soon we can do another workshop together.

Enjoy what is left of your day, I am turning in to rest for yet another busy day tomorrow.

You know you're a quilter when...

You know you're a quilter when you are always drawn to patterns that resemble quilts...lol.  As mentioned yesterday, this week is my vacation from my full time job, and the goal this week is to finish my kitchen renos.  So I split up all the tasks I have to do, per day, to make that happen.  I took it easy yesterday figuring I would work up to the tedious stuff.  My only task was to find my backsplash tiles and pick up all the materials I will need to do the work.

At one point, I was thinking to do the large white subway tiles, however the larger the tile the more accurate your wall needs to be, and parts of my kitchen walls are older and imperfect.  I though I could go with the smaller white tiles, but I was holding out until now, because something was telling me subconsciously that I wanting something more.  I love the marble tiles that Sarah Richardson used in her kitchen on the island home, but thought maybe that was a bit too busy for my place.  

I took my daughter with me and we went tile shopping.  We automatically landed in the marble section...fate...I don't know, but it is exactly where we saw these tiles and I knew right away that this was it.  I didn't need to look any further.  It's a herringbone pattern.  Can you see the quilt...lol

My job today is to get the small stuff done in preparation for the tiling that will be happening tomorrow (Monday).  I have a window to trim and frame out, stove wiring to relocate and baseboards to do.

But enough about the work I have to do, enjoy the back in time to Aug 7/2019:

This is a small NICU quilt my mom made that I quilted for her.  Somewhere, possibly on the Guild's free table, my mom picked up the left over pieces of someone's finished quilt.  She took those pieces and made this cute little NICU quilt.  NICU quilts usually measure 26" square.  They go on top of the incubators to protect the newborns from the harsh hospital lighting.  My mom and I make a lot of these smaller quilts and give them to the Project Linus group in our area.  They distribute them to the hospitals.

Here is the profile of the quilting.  I quilted this in Painted Daisies from Urban Elementz.

You'll have to stay tuned for my post tomorrow, where I talk about a spiderweb quilt that we collectively made at the Guild workshop.  I bring that up here, because as I was going through the bin of fabric looking for suitable scraps for that quilt, I came across some 6 1/2" blocks of a toil fabric, seen below.  Someone was going to make something with them, or maybe they were the leftovers, but as they were just sitting there in the Guild bin, I couldn't just leave them there...so this is what I made with them.  Measurements approx. 58" x 70".

At the bottom of the bin, there was a piece of solid red fabric that I used to make the alternating nine patches with some cream fabric I had in my stash.  I also found in my stash the medium red fabric for the inner border, followed by the solid red fabric from the bin.  And there you have it, a quilt was born.  The pattern I used in making this quilt is called a single Irish chain.  I didn't quilt this quilt until later when I was given some batting and backing, but I guess I forgot to take pictures of the finished quilt.

Here are two close up pictures of the toil fabric.  They were all pretty, romantic scenes, of men and women with their grand dresses, hats and men's tailcoats from days gone by.

Hope you enjoyed the quilts.  I am off to get started on my renos.  Take some time to enjoy your Sunday.