Rail Fence Quilt - finished!

As I've talked about the process of making this quilt quite a lot, I'm going to mostly show you photos (of course mostly, you can't expect me to actually be quiet for a whole post, can you?)

This quilt makes me happy for a few reasons. First: its been sitting in pieces for almost two year nagging me, and I finally pulled it out and just finished it.

Second, I love the quilting I did on it. It pulls the quilt together beautifully (if I do say so myself) and its my first time free motion quilting where the back didn't get all messy.

Third, I love that I had the backing in my stash and its one of my favorite prints and I got to use it large scale.

Fourth, I had forgotten what I made this tiny-ish quilt for, and then once I was finished I remembered it was supposed to be for the stroller. Although I also like to use it to keep my legs warm when I'm sitting on the back patio.

And I love all these prints. Each of them seperately makes me happy. Together they sing me a happy song every time I see this quilt. How much better can it get than that?

Well, lastly, I love this quilt and I actually get to keep it. I mean, don't get me wrong, friends, I love all the quilts I've made for you guys. But I never get to see them or touch them or think, "Damn, I'm good" (though you all know I do just that every time I visit someone with one of my quilts). I'm just happy to have made a quilt for me!

My Tax Dollars at Work

That's what they put on signs in Canada when you're driving into a big glut of road construction. Like its supposed to make you feel better about having to stop ten times on the drive between Wawa and Thunder Bay on a hot August day when the regular drive time is 8 - 10 hours already.

Now, here is a better example of my tax dollars at work.

Yes, Canada is the kind of country that pays to have artists play with geometry and music in a studio all day long.

The little film I linked to, "Quilt fever" also defines part of why I love the quilt. The dizying play of patterns and the endless possiblities of simple shapes just blows my mind. Funny how I was so bad in geometry, but I love quilts, isn't it?

Afternoon Tea Quilt finished!

And photographed in on my lovely new front porch. I had been hoping to finish this quilt in time to give it to baby Clare as I drove through Winnipeg. Unfortunately, as things went crazy in that last week or so, I didn't get the binding done. So now it will have to be tucked in the mail. 

On the back is a gorgeous brown print from Moda's Art Nouveau, and a big swathe of these lovely Tina Givens' birds. I'm kind of regretting the pink binding, since I realized after I sewed all the binding on that I would have had enough fabric to use just the grey, which would have been a little less eye popping.

Free motion quilted in BIG swirls for speed and softness. How much do I love this brown and these tea cups (oh, and all the other fabrics in this baby). I know its going to a good home, so that makes it easier to send it off. I'm sure Clare will drag it around for years to come and have lots of tea parties on it!

Starting Young

So, I'm just about finished the last quilt I will sew in this house. It is a baby quilt for a new little girl called Clare. As you can see, my little night owl decided to "help" me baste it so I could get it done on time.

I don't know what it is about girl quilts, but they always seem to be a little more unorthodox than my boy quilts. This one started out with a bunch of bright orange, green and brown fabrics. But I kept looking at it an thinking it wasn't quilt right.

So I would switch out one set of squares for another fabric that I would pull out of my stash. And I kept switching fabrics and cutting more squares, until eventually I only had two of my original fabrics left in there.

So instead of being a cute little baby quilt with giraffes and elephants and owls, I've ended up with a ridiculous quilt featuring birds and tea cups. Because, you know, every baby needs to start in on the caffeine as soon as possible.

Anyway, its still cute, and I love it, even though its not really a typical baby quilt. Actually, I love it so much I really want to keep it. Fortunately I've got enough of that tea cup fabric left to do something else (albeit scrappier) with the remainder.

Twin Quilts

One of our oldest friends -- a friend of mine from band and ISCF in highschool -- has nobly kept in touch with us for years and years. He is in Fort McMurray now, and has a lovely wife, two older boys and recently . . . identical twin boys!
I decided that identical twins don't want identical quilts. The funny thing about twins is that they are genetically identical, but they are never the same.

I think it is because our personalities are this amazing mix between our biological make up and our soul. So, identical twin have one part the same, and one part different. With that in mind, I made these quilts sort of the same, but not.

Most of the fabric is from "On a Whim 2", along with some co-ordinates that came in a couple of Fabricworm.com baby quilt kits. I bought the dino fabric and the blue and yellow dots separately when I thought I had more time to make the quilts, and had a more complex plan. The first quilt is a little darker and possibly more expressive.

The other is a little quieter, and possibly more reflective in nature. It also has a David Walker fat quarter I had drifting around.

Two little play quilts for two little babies. The backings (as you can see above) are tone on tone birds from the On a Whim collection in two different colour ways. The darker quilt has a light beige, while the lighter quilt has a dark brown for contrast. I was in a hurry, so they are pillowcase flipped and then quilted in straight lines. Because they were already bound, this created a little bit of puckering at the bottom. Next time I think I will do what I did here and make the quilt the right size to just wrap the backing over and bind it on the front.

Anyway, they ended up at about 32" x 44", a nice little play quilt size. I think they're pretty happy and cute. I really do love this simple quilt layout -- these are my third and fourth quilt using this simple plan, and I think I'll be using it again in the future. It is such a nice way to display cute novelty prints and play with fabric.

Emma's Quilt update

So, in the end I decided that the magentas were too busy and not matching enough with the front of the quilt. There is so much going on in all the lovely blocks in the front that I didn't want to take away from it. I'm sure Emma has years of magenta sewing requests ahead of her, so I'm not too worried. Instead, I opted for using big cuts of three fabrics:

The green is my favorite print from the Lantern Bloom collection, and this is the only metre I have. The purple is by one of my favorite designers, Tina Givens, and I can't remember the name of the collection. I actually ordered this piece to make a purple, tuquoise and green picnic quilt, but I loved this fabric so much I opted to keep it instead. The pink butterflies are from MoMo's Wonderland. I have a few half yard cream cuts, and this is one of my favorites. Anyway, it is still bright and colourful, but it works better.

I had a few thoughts about quilting this. First I thought I was going to follow some of the squares in each block, but so many of them are wonky (at my request) or pieced out of lots of lovely little bits, that I decided against it. Then I was going to machine quilt it in straight, narrow lines, but again, I didn't want to take away from what's already there. So I've opted to hand quilt it -- my second attempt ever. I tried it for part of this quilt way back in my early quilting days, but it took a long time to hand quilt around all those fish, so I haven't tried again since.
I chose this nice, bright blue thread. This colour looks great on Emma, and it really pops against the oranges and pinks in this quilt, which I think is fun. So far the hand quilting is half-done. I'm quilting this to Victorian-themed movies. Last night was Alice in Wonderland, tonight (or possibly tomorrow night) is The Young Victoria.

Speaking of which, why is Victorian England so cool all of a sudden? Not only those two movies, but also Sherlock Holmes this year in the movies, plus Steampunks, and all those ruffles and high necklines drifting around . . . I wonder what is resonating with people about Victorian England? A return to propriety? A fun era to make films about subverting authority and structure? Cool fingerless gloves? The last era where men looked really dapper? A flowering of arts and technology? Is Victorian England pre- or post-industrial (I can't remember)? What do you think?

Blogger's Quilt Festival -- Star Play Quilt

Hi! Welcome to the Blogger's Quilt Festival! If you've made it all the way to my post -- number six hundred and something -- your fortitude is amazing (and you should probably go to bed now)!

I'd like to show you all my favorite quilt of the year -- this star quilt.
This quilt started as a test star block for a virtual quilting bee. I hung it on my inspiration board and looked at it for three or four months. I loved the colours and the pattern, so eventually I decided to gather some of my favorite scraps and make some more.

I worked on the star blocks in between other projects, pieced here and there over about two months. I really liked this quilt by Jaquie and so I framed my blocks with some lovely chandalier fabric I had been saving for something special. Then I was at an impasse:

What to do next? Lay them next to each other? Put more brown and yellow around them? Sash them in blue? White? Straight? Wonky? I put the call out on Flikr and a few of my Flikr friends chimed in. I decided to lay them unevenly and sash them in white. Then I added the borders -- I didn't have enough to use any one print for my borders, so I improvised and made a double thin and thick border in a log cabin style. I didn't realize when I cut this out that this would involve some tricky set in seams, but I thin it was worth it for the effect. That red peony fabric is one of my favorites ever, and I used up all that I had to make the border.

This quilt is special to me for several reasons. It is my most original, improvised large quilt so far. I usually just play with mini quilts for swaps, but do simple, safe designs like squares or rectangles for my larger quilts. This was my first time taking a lot of inspiration from different sources and making them my own, and I am so happy with the results.

The other reason this quilt is special is because I did most of the stitching during the last three months of my pregnancy with my daughter. I made this for us to snuggle under during late night nursings on the couch and for her to play with on the floor. I finished it about four days before I gave birth to her, so the timing was perfect. All through the long winter when the sun is low and cool in the sky, this quilt kept me feeling warm and cheered.

And this quilt has been our living room quilt, making it the go to quilt for everything. As I was looking through my photos of the last year to choose a quilt for this quilt festival, this one kept appearing everywhere:

We all use it every day. And that is the main reason why I enjoy quilting. I like to make quilts for my family and friends (and once in a while even for me) that can become a part of the fabric of their daily lives. Quilts that will bring warmth and joy into people's lives. I want to make quilts that they will use until they are threadbare and well worn.

So that is my favorite quilt of the year. My happy quilt. Hope you like it as much as I do. To see over 500 other great quilts, go here:



Enjoy the rest of the festival, everyone!

I-spy quilt

I finally finished Aaron's quilt! And I must say I am rather proud of it.
Here it is decorating the tree house. Aaron really loves this quilt. He just found the jungle print and the owls on the back:

which led him to exclaim, "Oh, I like you Mom. I like you most of all. Thanks for stitching everything together on my quilt mom. I like it. I like you the most." This was accompanied with many hugs and face pats. That stripe is from Heather Ross' famed Lightening Bugs fabric line. It is ridiculously soft and light, and I picked it up before everyone started going crazy for this fabric on clearance for $4 a yard. The jungle fabric was snatched in a quilting shop closeing sale for the same price. (Although there is nothing more depressing than discovering the most awesome quilt shop on the prairies two days before it closes). Anyway, I had been saving them for this quilt back for a long time, and I'm glad I did because they are a nice mix of cute and soft and snuggly.

It is 5" finished squares laid out in diagonal rows, inspired by this lovely quilt on Flikr. I was a little worried about the lack of red squares, especially since there was so much red in so many of the fabrics. Binding it with red seems to have been the perfect solution -- it really makes the red in the squares pop, but did not require the accumulation of lots more red fabrics or a change in the layout of the quilt.

It is 60" X 75" and will be just the right size for quite a while. It is also the right size to share with all your friends while watching a movie, even if your mom isn't quite finished binding it yet.
Boy, its nice to finally have this one done! I love the satisfaction of making things for my own family.

This and that

Well, there haven't been many craft photos recently, because I'm sort of in the middle of several big projects. The first is this quilt of Aaron's. You see, every time I've finished a quilt for the last eight or nine months, he's asked, "Is THIS one for me, mom?" And I've had to say no. So after Olivia's quilt, I promised him that the next quilt I finished would be his quilt. Of course, I've also been playing around with Emma's quilt, and I also promised my friend a picnic quilt in time for the nice weather (that would be last week) so I've gradually piecing that one, too. So instead of working on one or possibly two quilts at a time I find myself working on three quilts plus quilt blocks for my quilting bee, plus curtains. This means when I go down to sew in my precious few moments of sewing time, I spend about 20 min. deciding what to work on, about 10 min. sewing, and then the baby wakes up / gets bored / a fight breaks out / someone gets hungry or has an accident and that's the end of my sewing time.

Fortunately, Aaron's quilt now looks like this:
All basted and half quilted. In fact, last night I finished the quilting, so I just have to bind it now. This is such a cute, cheery quilt and he loves it and keeps asking, "Can I sleep with it now, Mom?"

I'll show the picnic quilt when I'm done it (only ties left to do now), but the other things I'm slowly tinkering with is putting a back together for this:

Isn't it a beauty? Made by the ladies of the Stash Busting Bee International. I was supposed to get 12 blocks back, but a lot of generous people sent two, so I was able to make it 4 blocks by 4 blocks and even had to leave one out (sorry, Shannon, but I included your funky 5-sided one) and I shall use the extra block and scraps to make a doll quilt.

I think I'm going to try hand quilting it, so I can have a pick-up-and-put-down project upstairs (and also because I think season 6 of Project Runway must be out of video by now and so its time for another PR marathon). So I've been playing around with what to put on the back. I had a selection of nice soft, cute pinks and greens and browns picked out, but I decided to get Emma's opinion.

So I brought her down to the ironing board and showed her the fabrics, hoping she would grab at a few and give me a hint. She completely ignored them. Not even a glance. She was more interested in my Ikea mini-drawers. So we went over and looked at those, and then I started thinking about something else I needed for a different project and I pulled out one of my bins and the moment I did she reached out a grabbed . . .

my pink and purple Good Folks. And Amy Butler (which didn't make the cut in the end). The girl has a mind of her own and vibrant, expensive taste already. Which is okay, even though I JUST found those Chocolate Lollipop purples (the pink and purple swirls at the top and the big flowers at the bottom) and those Mendoccino prints are highly coveted and out of print. Because I'm trying to be all about using my fabrics, right? Didn't I buy them to use? Isn't a quilt we use every day a better place for them than a bin where they just get patted and then carefully folded away again?

Its just that once you use something it no longer has all the possibilities . . . and I do so love possibilities. Oh well, there will be scraps. And it will make a fun, if mis-matching back for Emma's quilt. And she was cooing and chattering away while riding on my back as I put these on my design wall, so me thinks she will like it.

And I do need to use up some fabric so I have room for all these:
because I have 3 baby quilts I've like to make (twin boys and a mystery baby) so of course I need new fabric. Isn't it ridiculously cute?

Psst . . .Giveaway! Giveaway!

Okay, so I can see none of you went and commented on our Clever Mamas giveaway . Lucky for you, there is still a day and a half left. Go now. Then come back and read the rest of this.

Well, if you're not interested in that, you might be more interested in the give away they're having over at a new, snazzy blog based on the terribly wonderful Quilting Bee Blocks Flikr Group. Go check it out here and if you're not already in half a dozen, you might want to join a Virtual Quilting Bee, too. They're fun. Trust me.

Quilt Bee Update

You want to see my last few quilt bee blocks? Of course you do!

My first Quilt Bee -- Threads Together -- is over now. It took a while for all the blocks to come in, and some are tragically lost in the mail, I'm afraid, so I'm just going to have to work with what I have when I get over the loss. I really loved that fabric and had been hoarding it for a long time, so I was a bit miffed. But I did receive 12 wonderful blocks which I will show you when I pull them all out again.

My second Quilt Bee -- International Stash Busters -- has been buzzing along wonderfully well. November was my month, and I beleive I showed you the fantastic blocks I received already here .

We took December off.

January we made warm wonky log cabins for Mimi Park. I really loved this colour combination so much that I may have to make some for me:


February we made I-spy blocks for Marlyn's new grandsons. Since I had all my I-spy stash out for Aaron's quilt already, I made two:



March was a big block for Quilting Barbie. We made these scrappy blocks. I really like this block, and may have to play around with this and my polka dot stash some day.


April is postage stamp blocks. We're supposed to do a 12" block with 1" finished squares, but I have received a new mom dispensation, and I am only going to do two smaller, 6" blocks, and another Bee member is going to spell me off by doing the other half of my block, sewing two extra 6" blocks. Thanks again, Mimi Park!

Free Motion Quilting is Easier . . .

when you stop trying to use your zipper foot . . .
and get yourself a darning foot.

Oops. I guess that's what happens when you lose your sewing manual and don't have any real life quilting friends. There's no one there to say, "You're trying to free motion quilt with THAT? You do know that one's for zippers, don't you?" Um, nope. I had forgotten, due to extreme zipper anxiety. I finally got over it when I agreed to sew a couple of sleep sacks for a friend by copying one she already had. I started to work out a way to put velcro on them and realized that it would be about 5 times more complicated that just taking a deep breath and sewing in a zipper.

For those of you who are non-sewers, the thing is that you need to be able to move the quilt around under the needle to free motion quilt. And a zipper foot, as it turns out, is made to hold the fabric in place so you can sew straight along a zipper.

Did I Ever Show You What I Did With Those Rail Fences?

No? Oh! I made this lovely little quilt for fellow Clever Mama , Kris. We have this funny habit of bearing children within months of each other. All of our kids have been born within 3 months of each other. Her little girl, Olivia, was 5 weeks premature, and she was in and out of NICU for quite a while. Since she lives so far away, I couldn't do anything to help, so I decided that what I could do was sew a baby quilt and send it as soon as possible. Sew I sewed away, sewing my prayers for Olivia's health and Kris' family's well-being into it as I went. And here was the result. I must say (I know, I almost always say this) its one of my favorite quilts so far. I'm glad I know it went to such an appreciative home.

Here it is all folded:
Here's the back, made in a moment of inspiration on a particularly dull snowy day :


The full view of the front.
Here it is all crinkled up. This is my first time free motion quilting a whole quilt -- finally worked out what why I was having so much trouble with free motion quilting (but that is for another post). I think it looks great -- just don't look too close, the stitching is a little uneven.


And the binding. It took me a long time to figure out what to bind this in, because the front and back are so different. I ended up choosing these oranges, which looked great, especially when contrasted with these brilliant purples and pinks.

This quilt also fits in with my new year's resolution. I took courage and cut into a bunch of my new fabrics that I had just bought for Christmas, along with some older fabrics I had been hoarding for a long time. And I used a simple pattern that I could finish quickly, instead of getting too complicated, trusting that it would still be loved, despite its simplicity.

So there you go. The quilt arrived at Kris' house pretty quickly, but I didn't hear about it for a few weeks (since the Thank You card, ironically, took 3 times as long to get back to me -- must have got caught in a snow storm). By the time I found out they had it, it had been so long that I never got around to blogging about it.