Polar Fleece for Streets Alive

Date:  November 2012

Reason:  I found some forgotten about polar fleece that would be easy to get out of my house by making it into a quilt!

Thoughts:  This quilt will be donated to Streets Alive.

Flamingoes and Kittens and Chicks, Oh My!

Date:  Feb 2012

Reason:  I love eye spy type fabrics and wanted to experiment.

Fabrics:  Nearly all my eye spy fabrics were given to me.

Thoughts:  I was just finishing this up when my sister's third baby arrived, so this went to her.

Lori's Gift #1

I find myself with many quilting faeries.  I am grateful.  It means that I can make lots of quilts for people that need them.

Most of the fabrics in this quilt is from Lori.  Kath also gave me some of the fabrics as well as the fill.

I did this as a quilt as you go.  As you can see, it is as out of square as you can get.  I haven't a clue  how I managed that.

Kath and I had a good giggle over my squaring issues - I gave it to her to distribute.  It either went to Mexico or MCC, I don't know.

The Colour Garden

I have this thing about scraps.  I can't toss 'em.  Until they are less than 1½" square, they are stashed by colour into a fabulous 6-drawer plastic organizer I found at Canadian Tire.

The problem with this system is the drawers get full.  A couple years ago I started sewing those scraps together by colour and cutting them in to 6½ squares because that's the ruler I had available at the time.

I also used blocks that I had made out of curiosity and practice.

This quilt was a UFO for a long time until I decided how to sew them together.  Then the call came in June - what can you do for us by September?  This was one of three.  I wish I took a better picture of the finished product.

The quilt was unveiled in a hospital room in Edmonton.  Everyone was pleased. *whew*

I should start a new scrap quilt.  I feel that this one was a success!

Lessons Learned:  I need to make note of the thickness of this fill.  It was too thick - although it made for a cozy quilt, it was difficult to put through the sewing machine.

Purple

Date:  July 2012

Reason:  My sister's wedding

Inspiration:

Lessons:  I'm just starting to machine quilt, so this quilt clearly shows my progress.  I think I found the idea tension for machine quilting . . . once I was 90% done.  C'est la vie.

Thoughts:  I love this technique so much I have two baby quilts started using the same style.

This quilt also displays a lack of wavy edges!  Yahoo!!

Tipsy Topsy

Date:  July 2012

Reason:  I needed a test quilt for new fill I am trying out.  A baby-sized quilt seemed the way to go.  Also, I saw Leah Day's modern quilt technique and thought it would be fun to put a "twist" on these traditional 4-patches (haha).

Special Fabrics:  Five of the blocks are from dozens and dozens that my grandmother has given me over the years.

Lessons Learned:  Finally, I think it's been established WHY I had such wavy edges.  Leah cautioned against putting too much strain on the edges and I've realized that I practically play tug-of-war to bind my quilts because I'm so close to done I can taste it.  When you add the fact that two of my waviest quilts had double machine sewn bindings, it's no wonder they looked rippled.

Tipsy Topsy looks much better.  Thanks so much, Leah!

Thoughts:  Although I didn't do the fabulous quilting method that Leah is teaching for this quilt, I definitely want to try it out because it looks amazing.

I'm already getting bored of the straight stipple so I need to think about how I can incorporate an all over quilt method to enhance the blocks, not just stitch over them randomly.

Also, I think a larger stipple would have looked better on this quilt.

Pink Baby

Date:  June 2012

Size:  30 x 30

Reason:  I took some pretty pinks from the blocks my grandma gave me because I knew they would make a cute baby quilt.

Fabrics:  Scraps from my stash, my grandma's blocks and a baby blanket of my daughter's.

Lessons:  My machine quilting is getting better!  Although I'm not doing Leah Day's tutorials per se, most of my quilting information comes from her blog:  http://freemotionquilting.blogspot.com.  She has oodles of videos.  My opinion of machine quilting went from "pshh, not happening" when I saw her first video to "I could try it once" to "wheeeeee" after my first quilt.

On the half square triangle centre, I did a loopy style of stippling to hopefully emulate the flight of the butterflies that are appliqued in the centre.

Thoughts:  I still need to learn what I am doing wrong or how to fix my wavy edges.  Is it a quilting issue?  Am I a bad measurer?  Do I need to square my quilts better?  Probably it's all of the above.

I used a baby blanket we no longer needed.  I kept the 'satin' binding from the blanket to use on the quilt.

I traded this to a co-worker for some NuCerity.

Dominic in the Dell

Date:  May 2012

Reason:  I have collected a lot of eye spy fabrics.  I wanted to put a little boy's quilt together.  I was also secretly hoping it would tickle the fancy of my friend who has a little boy.

Fabric:  I've been collecting fabrics from so many sources for so long.  Many of them have been precut to 4" squares for ease of use later on.

Lessons:   This is only the second piece that I've machine quilted using a darning foot.  I need to remember to keep the needle in the down position when shifting the quilt and to hold the quilt firmly in place when starting again to make sure it doesn't move.  There are a lot of little jaggedy lines that I'm sure will go away with practice!

Thoughts:  I love machine quilting!!  Must do more!!

Apple Box #6

Last fall I was given three large apples boxes full of heavy cottons.  I immediately started cutting:  6½" squares, 4½" squares and 2½ x 6½" rectangles.  This gave me the most out of the pieces of fabric without much waste.  I am trying to make each quilt at least 60 x 80

There are 6 quilts in the works (so far) from those boxes, well 5 now that the one I designated #6 has been tied and will be send to the MCC thrift shop for sale.

My quilt group Little Bits of Comfort ( www.lbcq.blogspot.com ) tied this quilt at a bee last weekend.

God's Promise: The Rainbow Effect

This quilt is made up of 121 4½ inch blocks, one 1½" black border and one 5" border.

Each block is made up of (4) 4½ x 1½ strips for a finished block size of 4".  This is a total of 484 strips.  Strips are put together within the block from dark to light.

You will need the following quantities of blocks:

1-  Black or very dark violet block
2-  Dark Purple Blue
3-  Purple
4-  Lighter purple
5-  Light purple with blue tones
6-  Medium/Dark Blue
7-  Blue
8-  Light Blue
9-  Medium greeny-blues
10- Dark Green with blue tones
11- Dark Green with yellow tones
10- Medium Green with yellow tones
9-  Light yellowy greens (army tones)
8-  Light yellows (perhaps with a little green)
7-  Strong yellows
6-  Golds
5-  Orange
4-  Pumpkin
3-  Reds w/ orange tones
2-  Deep reds
1-  Burgundy

Sew your strips together dark to light, four strip to one block.  I found it necessary to lay all the blocks out so I could arrange and rearrange until I was happy with how they looked.

Cut your black strips:  2 at 44½, 2 at 46½ and attach.

I used two different batiques for my outer borders to mimic the rainbow and I mitred them to continue the diagonal feel of the quilt.

Since this is the first time I've ever mitred a corner, I'm not going to try to tell you how to do that.  This is the video I used to learn the technique.  After that all that's left is to quilt and bind the quilt as you see fit.

Best Buys:  My Aunt chose the backing fabric, a cute purple wavy stripe with a gold tinge.  It was on sale at Fabricland for $5/meter!  The rest of the fabric was gifted to me.  Yay for shoeboxes full of scraps!

Lessons Learned / To Learn:  My edges are wavy and I'm not sure why.  I'd love to figure out what went wrong so I can avoid this for the future.  I haven't decided if I am going to wash this quilt.  I'm planning to hang it.