Kathleen's quilt

I am so excited to finally be able to show you Kathleen's quilt.  Kathleen asked me to piece and quilt a fantasy quilt for her little daughter. She gave me some guidelines (her daughters initials within a circle on a plain band  and two bands of colour at the top) but basically left the quilting up to me. Because I have some material left I am making two pillow shams.

I incorporated a bunny, house, umbrella in the rain, and a kitten into a pattern of swirls, bubbles, flowers, leaves, and feathers.  The top border was swirls and the bottom border had a large pattern similar to one I saw on Angela Walter's blog.  

All the material is cotton. The batting is a cotton-poly and I used so-fine thread throughout. I backed it with a soft beige/brown Minky.  I bound it with the same material as in the stripes and I think it adds just the right extra pizzazz to the quilt. 

I love how the name band and bottom border turned out! 

Here is a picture of the centre panel.  

And another of how the panels look together.  

The back is beautiful too!  

I washed it and it looked wonderful but when transporting it it got creased.  I am hoping that with the next wash the wrinkles will hang out. 

Thank you Kathleen for allowing me to do this for you.  

My son's mystery quilt is morphing

Well I have been talking and showing you a few WIP pictures of my son' Christmas quilt.... Well just as a good mystery takes the reader through a series of clues to tease and misguide you, I am not sure  I will be ablle to complete this story until I actually have something bound and under the tree!  The newest clues to the final outcome are...1) I am running out of time and 2) the improperly cut star material has worked out fine for the star itself but not for the background pieces...I see a trip to the LQS in my future...but in the meantime I don't have enough material to replace the background. 

But, I have enough of another material for a chevron... 

Mmmmmmm... 

So here is what I have come up with as it is laid out on my design floor. There was more than enough material and it's all cut correctly ( so much better than the earlier fiasco! ) I see at least one piece that is out of place but that will be fixed soon enough.  I've got my fingers crossed. 

So this weekend it's all about Kathleen's quilt which I won't show you just in case she is peeking :-)  and putting this chevron together.  Despite the small frustrations I am loving every minute of "my son's quilt from ...." struggle.  The star quilt will still get done and I already have a taker or two for it, so all is not lost. 

Stay tuned for more highlights in my journey to uncover my son's real quilt !  

My son's quilt from ......

I designed his quilt, bought the material, and then cut all 600 pieces.  Everything good you say? That's what I thought but then two things went wrong. First I didn't buy enough material of one colour and so after I started cutting I decided to make the quilt pattern smaller. I was going to just take out a row and a column because the original was quite large. Some how I switched the size of the block as well, changing how everything fit together. Second error, I started putting it together but soon realized that half of the pieces that required the most material (same colour) was supposed to be cut on the reverse side of the fabric (similar to stars). Ahhhhhhhhh. 

So I changed the quilt to a LeMoyne star and am using what material I can and adding to it. It will be a similar size and similar colours. So then, I have never done a Lemoyne star before....you see where this is going?  I cut parallelograms rather than breaking the shapes into squares and triangles and had a terrible time with the first five stars until I watched a Craftsy class and figured it out. So now I have nice neat and clean points (not all perfect but getting there) and they even lie flat!  

So lessons started but obviously not learned...did I tell you I was trying to use as much of the cut pieces from the original start?  

Well here's what I have so far. I need 30 stars of three colour combos.  

On the plus side I am getting better at bringing the points together and ending up with flat stars...now I have to see if I can piece in the dark green background from the original or if I have to change it to another colour...white?  But that doesn't suit his life style. So it might be off to the fabric store..a 200km drive.  Black?  Mmmmm...I have enough white, black, or burgundy brown. 

What do you think?

QUILTY weekend

Well I started out he weekend with two things on my list.  One was a quilt for my son and the other is a custom quilt for a friend of my daughter.  Although I don't want to post pictures of them yet they are going well.  But in between working on them I needed the odd break and so I cut and pieced together two little quilts...one is all stitched and ready for quilting, the other is still on my horizontal design wall... The floor :-)  I quite like the look of both of them.  The pink one has lots of room to add some quilting detail.

On the topic of my son's quilt... My son's quilt has been the quilt from......well, you know!  That's another post.....

 

Saturday at home

My work is taking me away from home at least two days a week these days.  The one thing I hate is to come home after a 200km drive and then have to think about whats for supper.  So I thought I would get in front of things and prepare some freezer meals.  I made chili, Spanish chicken (omg so good!) ,

  

 

chicken soup, apple crisp with loads of cinnamon on top (can't you imagine whipped cream or vanilla ice cream melting in pools on the top),  

 

bumble berry pie,

 and corn and bacon quiche (a personal favourite), 

 

to go with the veggie soup already frozen.  So now we are set with about 11 single meals and 14 or more double meals. And dessert to boot!  

And between dishes I fooled around with some tumbler shapes, cutting them up and stitching them together in different ways (so much for the size of my baby quilt - not sure what it will turn into. ) but it has been fun. 

 

Tumbler Lap Quilt

Although I don't usually like following other people's patterns I fell in love with a lap quilt kit I saw at the summer quilt show in Regina. Quilt Patch from Moose Jaw had a booth where they displayed several beautiful quilts and an assortment of their patterns. Among them were these beautiful little brown lap quilts with fuzzy backings.  They looked so warm and cuddly that I kept going back to the booth until I finally gave in and bought one. 

The kit called "Gezebella" came with an assortment of browns material and I added a bit of green to the mix and an extra two rows to make it a little bit larger. I quilted it freehand with a gorgeous gold thread in an overall leaf pattern.  I think it will make a great little Christmas present. 

Playing with flannel

I decided to play with some flannel that I had in my stash (even though this project is not on my goal list).  I know that flannel doesn't tend to wear well but this stuff is so soft and beautiful that I really wanted to make something out of it. 

I bought all the flannel at the same online store so was surprised when some of it was quite a bit thinner than the rest (not a good omen for wear) and even when piecing it it was fraying a lot more than I expected. And, none of it was cheap!  It's a lesson learned!  

I designed this little quilt on a little app on my iPad called Quilt Studio. I played with the colours for quite a while before deciding on this arrangement. I was pleasantly surprised when all the measurements for material and sizes worked out. 

The finished square blocks are 12" and so the quilt is approximately 60x72 inches. I am going to back it with the herringbone brown and quilt it simply.  I think I am going to use wool batting to make it even softer.   I am very pleased with how it looks so far!  

As soon as I quilt it I will post more pictures.