The 12 Days of Christmas - A Treasure

Large, fluffy flakes are drifting to the ground, making the world outside a snowy winter wonderland, a welcome change from the wild weather that much of North America experienced just before Christmas. A calm has descended. These days between Christmas and Little Christmas (January 6), also known as the 12 Days of Christmas, are one of my favourite times of the year, with much of the hustle and bustle behind us. And I feel that they will hold a special place for Betty in the years to come as she has just finished up a beautiful appliquéd throw by the same name. It's been in the works for a number of years, since before Mom passed away, so it's been a while, but so worth the wait.

As far as we can remember, Mom had been commissioned by a friend to make a Christmas quilt inspired by this Twelve Days Treasury designed by Jodi Warner. All of the elements of the song are in it, from the partridge in a pear tree to maids a milking and lords a leaping. 

Betty opted to design her own rendition of the elements, creating rows for each one in the shape of a Christmas tree, and that's what Mom made, on a green background.

Then they decided to make a second version for Mom on a cream background. If you look closely, it is appliquéd overtop a bare deciduous tree, though my photo doesn't do that justice.

There's five gold rings interspersed with a few little blue birds...

ten lords a leaping...

and eight pairs ballet slippers for the ladies dancing. You get the picture.

The partridge in a pear tree anchors it all rather than sitting atop the tree.

Beautiful beads, trims and silk ribbon embroidery embellish the elements throughout, as in these pipes for the pipers.

She hand quilted around each of the elements with red and then the balance of the background is randomly stippled in a soft gold...

resulting in a spectacular overall texture. It's backed with a piece of cream wool and she's mitred the corners.

The wool is wrapped around to the front to create a wide binding and finished off with a blanket stitch. She's going to commission a young local gal who has her own knitting and crochet business (Dame With a Hook!) to make four large tassels for the corners.

So much love and attention has been incorporated into each and every step of the process, resulting in a beautiful, sentimental work of art. Betty is thrilled and Mom would be too. 

I hope that you enjoy these next 12 days of Christmas too....M

A Pair of Hearts and Lots of Goodies

Well, my second appliqué heart has now moved over into the finished column. They are really sweet, either together or separately. I think with some old lace and a few embellishments they would make great pillow covers so I'll need to do a little thinking on that.

And, because we celebrated my birthday recently, there have been a few other little bundles of love showing up. Anne discovered a new quilt shop in Combermere recently when she was out touring with Jane so she bought me this little selection of pin dots with Minnie in mind.

She also gave me a bag of ground walnut shells for stuffing pincushions and the Ultimate Marking Pencil for Quilters & Crafters. I've not seen these before but it reminds me of a technical pencil that I had years ago when I took a few night courses.

If the back of the package is to be believed this is one amazing pencil...

And it all came bundled in with one of Linda's beautiful cards.

The Official Cookie Tester also got in on the quilting theme and gave me two of these great bags from Piece O Cake to move my projects around. I just love the pattern on them and particularly like that they zipper close. Guess now I need to transfer the projects that I've had in my LCBO bags into these :). (For those who don't know, LCBO is our government run of liquor stores - they have great bags and, in addition to using them for my quilt projects they are my go-to bag for grocery shopping.)

He also bought me a pair of cycling shorts so I'm thinking that it's a hint that I need to move away from the needle and sewing machine a little more often and get some exercise. Wise man.

I'll leave you with the sentiments from my beautiful card and a good reminder for all of us (though if you are quilting, you have a good start on the life that you've imagined)....M

A Second Heart Ready To Go

My second yo yo heart is all prepped and ready to be appliquéd.














 

I had toyed with making two smaller hearts side by side on the same piece (it's the last piece of backing that I have) but opted for one larger one instead, so I made a few more yo yos and then glue basted things into place. Isn't it amazing the difference is colour when photos are taken at night, with the lights on?

It looks like it's going to be a beautiful weekend so this will give me some stitching to do (like there isn't already a list!) and time to enjoy the last of my peonies.

They have such a heady fragrance!

Love, love, love peonies....M

My Foray Into Appliqué

Given that today is Canada Day I thought I'd try and be a little patriotic with my quilting and pull out something red and white to work on. So, cast your mind back to August 2013 if you will and this little yo yo heart project that Jane and I started at the cottage.

Originally I thought I was just going make more yo yos so I started digging through the reds. But a quick count confirmed that I had more than enough to work with so I thought I'd bite the bullet and attempt my first bona fide appliqué project.

A little more digging was required to find my grey linen, and in the process I pulled two other pieces to audition because I didn't think I was going to find the linen and was keen to make sure that I didn't stop. Any of them would work but I opted for the grey with a tiny white vine.

You could play with the placement all day long so I cut that part short and moved on to the heart of the project, so to speak, so that I wasn't just finding reasons to procrastinate.

Once everyone was in place I wanted to make sure that they didn't move as I worked on them, so that meant bringing out all the weapons tools. I was taking no chances. I'd bought a tube of Roxanne's Glue-Baste-It a while back to try on another project so I started with that.











A couple of tiny dabs on the back of each yo yo was enough.

Not having used it before, I was concerned that the yo yos might pop off as I worked with the piece so I went for re-enforcements and used my Clover appliqué pins as insurance that everyone stayed on. I think it might have been overkill, but it worked beautifully.

A deep breath and I was off and running. You can see from the back that it took me a bit to find my rhythm - the bottom left yo yo was my first and I was figuring things out - but things fell into place fairly quickly after that. The one white circle is for the white yo yo - I didn't want red thread showing.

So there it is and I'm pretty darned happy with it. The yo yos are an inch in diameter so the heart is about 6 1/2" x 5 1/2". Not sure what it will be when it grows up - maybe a pillow, maybe the centre of a medallion quilt, or maybe I'll just frame it - but the important thing is that I know that I can do it. Who knows, maybe I'll become an appliqué fiend! There's one more piece of that grey and white backing so maybe I need to make another one :).

From our house to yours, happy Canada Day everyone!....M

Piling On

The weather has taken a definite turn to the chilly side. For the winter we switch our bedding covers from a quilt to a duvet but in the interim I've just added a (third) quilt to the bed. Turns out it is one that mom made 30 - 35 years ago - beautiful pink appliqué tulips.

It's frayed a bit at the edges in spots but the memories that evokes are as strong as ever. Always resourceful, she used the backs of a stack of men's white shirts for the blocks. She did beautiful hand work.

You can see where it has worn through in places on this block - not sure why this particular one is so beat up because the others are still in good shape.

The green border is a Laura Ashley print - I seem to think that Dori bought it specially for her when she was a nanny in Montreal one summer as a teen.

This quilt been around for seemingly ever, and, despite a few frayed edges, still has lots of wear left in it. There's snow and rain in the forecast today so it's earning its keep. Where better to bundle up and wait for the gentle breezes and flowers of spring than under a bed of tulips?....M

Between The Covers

A very special friend celebrated a milestone birthday recently so a small group of us met for lunch last week to fête her and I decided it was the perfect excuse to make a journal cover. She's a quilter and likes batiks so even if she never writes a note in it she will have some lovely fabric to look at :).

It's been a while since I have put one together so I needed to get my brain thinking the right way again, but it kicked in eventually. I did have to dig up the tutorial once it got to sizing the batting, but after that it was sort of like riding a bike - once you know how it all comes back with a little practice.

I'm getting smarter about cutting and laying out all my strips before I sew and it makes things go a lot more quickly and smoothly.

It seems a shame not to include a little colour on the inside flaps so I added a few there as well to make things interesting.

When it was all wrapped and ready to go I couldn't help but think that this pattern would be lovely to appliqué some day. There's inspiration everywhere.....M

The New Neutral

Here's another project that Linda was working on at the cottage - a quilt for her youngest daughter Allie and her husband Corey who just got married two weeks ago.

The background is a collection of wonderful grey prints, or, as Linda refers to them, the new neutral. I thought I had a pic of several of them together but I guess I got so busy fondling them that I forgot to snap a pic! Bold, bright floral flowers and vines will be appliquéd over top and you can see how fabulously well it all works.

I think that all of the leaves are basted now so she started working on the circles for the flowers.

All of the 9-patch strips are pieced with wonderful, rich batiks and interesting prints...

Love this combination. You can see some of the great grey prints that she is using alongside these blocks too.
















Here's a few more...

and this. Luv, luv, luv....M

A Very Special Gift

A week ago I spent the afternoon stitching with my friend Linda M. I had taken my Spot blocks with me and she was busy working to deadline - her granddaughter Aowyn is celebrating her birthday this week and she had some quilting to do to finish up a gift that she was making.

It's a darling creation of flowers and bugs inspired by Aowyn's love of both with patterns pulled from two differnent books. One had lots of flower designs; it's from Kim Shaefer's Flower Festival book...



















... and the second had lots of great bugs. Love the bumblebees...

So she selected the blocks that suited best and came up with this lovely design. She had to adapt the patterns a bit because they were designed for machine appliqué and she did her appliqué by hand.

I don't know if you noticed or not but Aowyn is feaured front and centre in the quilt.

And here is the birthday girl herself showing off the fruits of her labour. Linda had given her sunflower seeds in the spring to plant and they are coming along gangbusters. Linda's pretty sure that her choice of flowers and bugs are a good match for Aowyn's taste, and I couldn't agree more....M