Benny & The Jets, er, Quilts

I want to share two beautiful quilts with you that my sister, Dori, recently finished but as I was cropping the images a certain someone (a.k.a. Benny) seemed to figure prominently, so I decided to try and give him his 15 minutes of fame too. I guess she'll just have to share the limelight.

The first one is a baby quilt that she made just before Christmas and donated to a women's shelter near her - it looks absolutely gorgeous against that red chair.

Lots of different scrappy strips sewn in 4 varying widths - simple, graphic and beautiful. Dori is a graphic designer too (I'm surrounded by them!) and always has a keen sense of colour and design in her work.

Here's where Benny makes his entrance, helping to stretch things out before it gets quilted - aren't those just the best ears?!

It is machine quilted in sets of diagonal lines. The backing is a window pane check and a nice contrast to the deep colours on the front. Great binding.

She received a lovely thank you note from the mother who is originally from Kenya; she said the colours reminded her of home. Apparently she is expecting another child in May so maybe there's another quilt on the horizon too...

The second one took her considerably longer to make, about 5 - 6 years. It's a beautiful two-tone Burgoyne Surrounded done in celery green and white. Look at all those tiny pieces (5,000+), and that border is to die for! This was just before she basted it for quilting.

She finished quilting it during the men's gold medal Olympic hockey game so she feel's it's a podium finish and I'd wholeheartedly agree. Benny got to break it in with a little snuggle....M

It's A Start

All my blue and whites are washed and ironed and the HST blocks are now sewn for Jean's Broken Dishes baby quilt.

Most of them still need a good pressing and trim but I just had to lay out a few and see how it was going to look.

Cute.

Even better when there's more variety.....M

Bringin' It Home!

To say that we are a nation that is hockey obsessed, especially during the Olympics, is a bit of an understatement, so you can imagine the state of bliss across the country when not only do our women defend their gold medal from Vancouver earlier this week, but this morning the guys did the same (sort of like being given free reign to play in not one, but two of your friends' fabric stashes). Yup - they're bringing home the gold.

Not exactly a quilting post, but who can quilt at a time like this? Yay Canada! What a great showing by all the athletes - love the games!....M

I Need To See It

Because I fret so much about how to quilt my quilts I tend to need to draw out the stitching pattern before making my final decision, so Sunday was spent with pen and paper in hand.

This is the final plan. Most, but not all of the pieces in the block will be outlined with a 1/4" quilting line then I'll stitch right next to the block's edge. For the alternating 4-piece blocks I'm going to stitch vertical lines 1 1/2" apart.

There is a nice picot border in pink & cream so I'll stitch on the cream just where the pink & cream meet and then run two lines of stitching from the base of each picot to the edge of the quilt. I always think of this as a small quilt but it's 82" x 94", so it's no shrimp.

It's all marked now so the gals will get a call today and hopefully they are happily stitching later this week....M

Sunday Sewing

We're into the dead of winter and the gals at the church are chomping at the bit for a quilting project so I'm going to get them to quilt my Goose Tracks.

I've washed the backing and now need to get it sewn together. As is always the case for me, there is a little wringing of hands as to how to quilt it, but I think I'll go pretty traditional - a quarter inch line around the pattern, maybe cross hatching in the alternating squares and then a diagonal line around the border that ties in with the saw tooth border.

I've also picked up quilting on Stephanie's Confetti again and would like to buckle down and get the stitching done on it sooner than later. It's cold out today so maybe the time is right to sit by the fire with needle and thread in hand and a warm quilt draped over my lap.

I might need to dig in to the decadent Valentine cupcakes that Julia made for the Official Cookie Tester and I to keep me going - that is if he doesn't beat me to the punch!....M

Let Me Call You Sweetheart...

It's Valentine's Day and little hearts are popping up everywhere.

This beautiful garland was given to us at Christmas by our niece Julia and I've been patiently waiting to be able to use it. I think that it will become a permanent fixture in my sewing room.

She inspired me to try making my Valentines this year. Three hearts are sewn to card stock and all are now in the mail. I think one or two might be a little late in arriving, but the thought is there. :)

Wishing you a sweetheart of a day...M

Little Boy Blue

Remember my friend Jean who bought my two Neighbour's Fence quilts a while back? One was for her and another for a special niece that was getting married. Well, the niece is obviously very happily married because now there is a request for baby quilt. They are expecting a little boy so Jean says she's going to be 'brave' and go with blue and white :). Actually, the mom has Dutch heritage so it will be a nice tie in to that as well.

I'd like to quilt this one on the machine so we, including the mother-to-be, looked at several options and decided on this one - the pattern is called Broken Dishes. I love the blue & green combo with a hint of grey but it should look great in lots of different blues as well. It will be roughly 40" x 48" rather than square so that they can get as much use out of it as possible as the little one grows.

Curiosity got the better of me and I started pulling fabrics to see what I might have that would suit. I'm big on blue and white so there was lots to choose from - there are 26 fabrics so far. Now to decide on the size of the blocks and get cutting....M

Ch-ch-ch-changes...

I've been laying out some of the larger Minnie diamonds to start getting them sewn together and its been fun watching the look and feel of the quilt change. Now it's starting to resemble the photo that I've been working from, which is pretty exciting.

While I was Pinning the other night I came across two new images of the original quilt and a little more info about it on the Peoples Collection Wales site. I hadn't realized just how scrappy it was (luv scrappy) and not nearly as colour coordinated as I had thought. It was a bit of a relief because now I think I could include just about anything in it and it would still work.

The part that freaked me out a bit was discovering that the original had well over 17,000+ hexies. Eeek! This could take longer than I thought.

I guess it's no big deal though because I knew I was in for the long haul with this one and it will be finished when it will be finished.

And speaking of finished...I noticed that one corner that I thought was finished is not. I'm missing a hexie on one of the larger diamonds. Whaaaaat? Only goes to show that sometimes we see what we want to see....M

Several Steps Closer

I've been working on my Spring Garden borders and am loving every bit of it.

I brought it upstairs to give everything a good pressing and to get a few photos where the colours are more true than what I get when I take pics down in the sewing room.

It's a very straightforward pattern but because I'm designing the quilt as I go, my ripper has come out on more than one occasion to help me adapt previous decisions.

All 4 borders are complete now and half of them are sewn to the centre panel so the plan is to finish it off this weekend and, with any luck, also attach the final floral border....M

Cheers!

Quilt Canada is coming to Ontario this spring, Brock University in St. Catharines, to be specific, in the heart of our beautiful wine country. The organizing committee is busy with prep and plans and if you want more information check out their blog for all the latest. One of the things that they are doing is inviting quilters from across Canada to create wine gift bags for the Saturday banquet guests. It seemed like a nice way to help out so I decided to make a few.

I've had this grape & vine print for years and several times have been tempted to pitch it or give it away because it really isn't me (not sure why I bought it), but this project seemed made for it.

They've provided a pattern but are open to you using your own ideas and pattern if you prefer. I made 4 in total - one solid and 3 with coordinating cuffs.

Bags are being accepted til the end of March so there's still about 2 months to whip up a few and send them off if you are so inclined. Mine all came together in about 2 hours. If I hadn't bothered with the cuffs it would have been a little faster but I didn't have quite enough fabric to make them all out of the vine fabric, and I wanted to use it all up, so it was worth the extra little bit....M

Touchdown!

It's Superbowl Sunday and it sounds like NYC is just a buzz of excited football fans and players. We'll be watching the game tonight, and I'll be cheering for Payton Manning & his Broncos, but before that I'm celebrating a win of my own. All of the rows of my Candied Hexagons quilt are now together.

Luv...

luv...

luv it.

Now to get to work on the setting triangles for two of the sides.

This is what I am planning to use, but I might just take another look at the shelves and see if there is a large floral, or maybe several different florals, that would work instead. I just love the hexies of large florals that have been dropped in throughout the pieced hexies and I've been thinking that it would be a nice way to enjoy a few more of them. Stay tuned.

Oh ya, GO BRONCOS!...M