Finished Quilt

My sister and I joined forces to make a baby quilt for our nephew's baby who will be born in February.  My sister sewed the quilt top from a kit from Cherished Pieces and did a great job. When I did the pin basting it laid completely flat which doesn't often happen with my quilt tops!

I free motion quilted vertical strings of hearts in the centre panel. The stitch length was an issue since I was quilting too fast (as usual) because it was fun!

I quilted simple straight line Xs through the border squares. The fabric was so adorable and I had warm fuzzy feelings the whole time I worked on this quilt.

We were pretty excited that the quilt was actually finished in time for the baby shower! We also put the book that inspired this fabric line into the gift bag with the quilt.  We are all so excited for this baby to come and I am predicting it will be born on my brother's birthday in February. We shall see!

This is my first finish of 2023! Woohoo! 

Finished size: 40" x 50"

Linking up to Alycia's Finished (or not) Friday

September UFO

My UFO of the month is called Home Grown. It is one of Nancy Halvorsen's wonderful patterns, and it was made from a kit by Cherished Pieces. I just can't say enough about how wonderful the kit was. I don't usually sew quilts from kits but I fell in love with this one. It was beautifully organized, and even though I made several cutting errors, there was plenty of fabric to not have to worry about having enough. If you've ever made a quilt from a bad kit, you will know exactly what I'm talking about!

The machine quilting was so much fun. Quilting with all the colours is like being in kindergarten again and painting with ALL the colours. Why use a neutral thread when you can use yellow, aqua, salmon, and navy?!? So fun! I free motion stitched around most of the flowers with a coordinating thread colour. You can read more about the quilting here.

In the border I quilted a free motion feather design using white thread on the solid white border and blue thread on the outside print. It's such a was fun and fast way to quilt a border. See the free motion foot? It's 25 years old - the same age as my sewing machine and even though I have acquired several new feet over the years, it's still my "go to"!

I love how the quilting looks from the back too.

This photo shows the feather design on the border quilt well. 

Finished Size: 41.5" x 52"

It was a windy day when I finished the quilt and tried to get some photos. I love this quilt just as much as I did when I saw the sample in the quilt store window!  I will be giving this quilt to my sister for her 50th birthday and I hope she will enjoy having it in her home.

If you would like to have my copy of the Home Grown book that this pattern is in, just leave a comment and I'll draw a name and mail it to the winner. It's such a lovely book, but I know I will never make any of the other patterns so it should go to live with someone who might! I did a quick search and it looks like you can still get the panel for this pattern at several shops.

Linking up to One Monthly Goal and Finished or Not Friday.

Finished UFO!

My April project was a relatively new UFO. It was started in August of 2018 which means this quilt was finished within 2 years. That is quite a miraculous happening in my quilty world!

Anita's Arrowhead

These blue arrowhead blocks are 9" and the most fun blocks to sew. The free pattern can still be found here. I like making this block so much that I am also making a scrappy miniature arrowhead quilt using 3.5" blocks.


All the quilting was done with the walking foot. 
Boring stitch-in-the-ditch. Boring. 
Vertical, horizontal and 3 diagonal lines in both directions across every quilt block. 
Snore. Boring. 

I know some people really enjoy straight line quilting, but I do not. However, this quilt was very happy with it and it turned out to be an effective choice for this quilt. And maybe it was the perfect pandemic activity when my brain is tired from trying to learn so many other things in this new reality.

I used the 6" ruler with painter's tape so I could easily line up the diagonal on the ruler with the border seam, draw the 45 degree angle extending the quilting line into the border, and then stitch to the edge. 
I did that 112 times!

The binding was made up of leftover backing scraps plus one blue FQ that I scavenged from "the twist" mystery project. These black gold Clover needles are my favourites, but a needle threader is an essential tool since the needle eye is so small.

Here is how the quilt looks from the back. The fabric is called "Bella Suede" from P & B Textiles.

Pretty cool quilting design!
Finished size: 55.25" x 79.75"

quilt finished as the forsythia blooms

Proudly linking up to One Monthly Goal, Favourite Finish at Meadow Mist, and Alycia's Finished (or not) Friday.

Gifting Quilts Dilemma

Since reading recent thought-provoking blog posts by quilters Audrey and Julie, I have been really thinking a lot about quilt gifting.

To give or not to give a quilt ... that is the dilemma. 
I no longer care if the quilt will be liked by the new owner, if it matches their home decor, or will be put into "deep storage" as something they either don't like or like so much that they want to "save it"/not use it. I give it because of the joy of giving away something special that I have made. 
All quilters know how long it takes to make a quilt. To select a pattern/design, to find the right colours and fabrics, to cut and sew the quilt top, to purchase the correct type and size batting, to complete the machine or hand quilting, and then finish the whole thing with a binding. It's a large investment of my finances, my energy and my time.

And if I gift that investment to a person or organization, I do so because either I want to donate to a worthy cause or because I love someone enough to want them to have quilt I have made, to provide comfort and warmth, and to be a tangible reminder of how special they are to me and much I love them.

However, having said all that, I'm going to bravely talk about my dilemma of giving quilts to a certain person in my family. In the past I have given quilts to my children because of course the children of a quilter should be surrounded by quilts! 
But here's the problem - my sweet 4 year old Granddog Max loves quilts too. I have written about him before (read it here). More specifically he loves to cuddle up in and consume quilts. It really is his favourite thing to do. 
Here is the most recent casualty. Can you see all the holes in this quilt where the sun can shine right through?!?

"Mom can you fix this?"
What should I say/do?
There are a few other quilts at my house that Max has chewed holes in, and I have repaired them and then placed them out of his reach. But this one was at his house. 

Binding edges!

I guess I either have to be fine with having holey quilts, or not give any quilts to stay at Max's house. 
Should I put the time and effort into fixing this one? And then let it go back to his house for further ravaging?

Max's quilt... long gone!

In case you are wondering, I did make Max his very own baby quilt. And he chewed on it until it was just a pile of threads. I thought he would outgrow that when he outgrew his puppy stage, but that didn't happen.
Ideas are most welcome!!

Friday Finish!

The robins have returned to town. Finally.

Usually I post about their return in mid March, but today was the first day I saw one in the yard and ran to get the camera. It's always a good sign that we all made it through the winter!

Another good sign...I already have finished a project his month!
I finished hand stitching the binding on the spring tablerunner in time to give it to my Mom for her birthday!

Here is the runner on her table with the potted tulips we gave her. I thought it was such a clever "springy" gift, but found that other people had exactly the same idea!
We must all be feeling a little desperate for spring to arrive!

Here is a portion of the flowers she received! Now Mom has a whole flower garden to remind her that she is loved and that spring is on the way!

Quilting Through Loss

My daughter and my brother

It has been over 6 months since my brother died. My family misses him terribly and after a loss like this, we all know that nothing will ever be the same. We know that we just have to find a way to live on without him and deal with it however we can.  

And quilters cope by quilting.
I have bags of my brother's clothes that might become quilts. For now, most of the clothes have been sitting in bags in a closet, because the energy was just so powerful and the feelings so overwhelming that I could not even open the bags. 

Last weekend I made a little start. I washed all his shirts, even though the labels say 'dry clean' and 'do not tumble dry'. I did both of these things, because a quilt has to be washable. The shirts came out fine, but being made from 100% cotton, they did shrink some.

My brother had his dress shirts custom made when Maxwell's Clothiers came to town. They would take his measurements, and he would pick out his fabrics, shirt style (ie. cufflinks which he liked for dress shirts, or buttons) and a cuff monogram design.
Then his shirts would be taylor-made and mailed to him. They are beautifully constructed, personalized garments made from top quality cotton fabrics.

Garments that I am now cutting up into pieces, deconstructing and returning to yardage.
It's jarring, and sad, and brings back so many memories. 
The fabric on the bottom left was the shirt he wore to his first chemo treatment. He still had his hair, and still had hope that he could beat cancer.
I know the only way to deal with grief is to power through it. There is no short cut, or way around it.
This will be a project that I can only work on in small blocks of time, because it's emotionally exhausting. So, every once and a while whenever I feel strong, I will visit with his shirts, and cut up the fabrics, and put the buttons in a jar. And I will cry, and listen to his CD, and remember him. And hope that I will be able to reconstruct all these pieces into something less painful, and maybe even comforting. 
If you are interested in reading more about using quilts as part of the mourning process, you can visit one of my favorite websites - Womenfolk.

Baby Quilt Finished

A universal truth = every new baby needs it's own quilt.
My daughter's new fur baby needed me to produce a jiffy quick quilt. I found some perfect fabric in my flannel scraps bin which was leftover from a flannel dog quilt I made for my nephew many years ago.  Isn't it just perfect for a new fur baby?!?!

I just pieced the scraps, used the pillowcase method  to join the layers, and did two lines of SITD quilting.  
Easy peasy baby quilt! 

OMG Max is so sweet!

I am a proud puppy Grandma!

This is the adorable backing I found in the flannel scraps - snuggly bears for this little fluffy bear cub.

Remains

When someone dies, there is a lot of work to do. 
There is the emotional mourning, the painful and invisible grief work, that seems to take much longer than you wish it did. And there are all the decisions to be made about dealing with the remains of a life. 
First you have to decide how to deal with the physical remains, a body or cremated ashes. These are hard decisions and become more complex when the family is a large one with varying opinions.  I think my family did an amazing job of working through these decisions when my brother died. This is the beautiful location of my brother's physical remains. A perfect decision.
But what about all the other remnants of a life...all the things that he owned, collected, saved and cherished? 
What do you do with all the "stuff"? 
You want to have enough to still feel connected to a loved one and to be able to emotionally connect with your memories. But what do you need and what do you do with all the other treasures?!

Pam had a very interesting blog post on mourning jewelry made from the hair of the deceased as a souvenir and reminder of their loved one - click here to read her post.  That is a lost art of being able to turn human hair into a treasured piece of jewelry. 


This is some of my brother's stuff that came to live with me. My brother's canning jars (he loved to garden and make soups and jam) and of course, some of his clothing. I am going to make quilts for his boys for Christmas. 
Notice that I didn't say which Christmas! First I have to be brave enough to open the bag! 

How long do your quilts last?

Do you ever wonder how your quilts will hold up to years of constant use, daily snuggles, and regular washing? 
Last week I slept under (well, partially "under" since my feet were sticking out the bottom!) an old quilt that I made for my nephew when he was born. 
I should mention that I started it when he was born, but he didn't get it right away! *LOL*
Here is a bad old photo of me with my nephew and son. He looks so happy about his quilt! And I look so young in my velour outfit ...and so much a red head (which regretfully, I never was!) LOL
Anyway...this same nephew is now a young man and has just completed his first solo flight...yes, in an airplane! 
BY HIMSELF!  So that tells you how old this quilt is. 
This is a "classic Kathy" quilt...scrappy, fun, personalized and full of love. I was delighted to see that although it is quite faded and the binding is very worn, the hand embroidery is still holding up great! And the memories haven't faded one bit!

Tidings of Comfort and Joy

It's Quiltarama!
Many of my nieces and nephews were together last weekend for a family celebration, which is the perfect opportunity for a quilt airing. The kids could use sleeping bags for "stay awakes" (we used to call them "sleepovers", but changed the name because not much sleeping goes on!) but it's not nearly as much fun as getting out all the quilts. Pass 'em around and snuggle in...so fun! This photo brings me great comfort and joy!

And speaking of joy, I'm hoping over to see the newly released clue #3 for Quiltville's mystery project. Hope we get to sew some aqua and green this week!
Are you joining in the fun?!? 

Finished Tshirt Quilt

The giant Tshirt quilt is finished! 
It was a marathon effort, even though I didn't finish it in time for my nephew's birthday.
As experienced Tshirt quilt makers know, it is really tough quilting soccer jerseys...
the fabric is thick and slippery, and your machine puts up a fuss! But it is finished and I am happy with how it turned out. The size is 65" x 95", so that was 316" of binding that was sewn during olympic viewing this week...
that's a gold medal effort I'll tell ya!

Even though the quilt was large, I managed to push it through my Brother 1500 before my machine died...it gave a valiant effort for it's last quilt!            

I machine quilted some free motion loops and stars (that I practiced in March's Free Motion Challenge) in the sashing and border.


I finished it off by quilting my nephew's name on the bottom corner. 

I enjoyed revisiting the memories of his childhood, the times he wore these shirts, and the fun things we did together....he was a real cutie. Here he is on the left in this old photo, sitting with my daughter, his older brother, and my baby boy...good times!
I hope he likes his quilt and uses it until it's threadbare. After all, quilts don't provide comfort and warmth sitting in a bag in the closet, right?!? 
And meanwhile...my trusty sewing machine is having a few issues, so it's in quarantine at the repair shop...cross your fingers that it can be fixed!
I didn't have a chance this week to work on the scrap challenge, but you can hop over to SoScrappy and check in on what the other quilters have been up to.

Design Wall Monday #29 - Tshirt quilt

There has been a box of my nephew's old shirts sitting in my cupboard for a couple of years. His Mom kept saying there were more shirts to add to the collection, so I didn't even open the box until this summer. I realized there were enough shirts for more than 1 quilt in that box already!  
My goal was to finish this quilt for his birthday at the end of July, but that was not possible. I did make lots of progress on this quilt including...
*washed and deconstructed the shirts, 
*bordered and/or pieced together the smaller shirts, 
*ironed a fusible knit interfacing to the back of each shirt  
*cut all the shirts to 13". 

Apparently I didn't trim this shirt to the correct size, because it refused to lay flat. There's no way that bump would "quilt out", so I had to unstitch that block, resize, and try again.
I needed to purchase a lot of yardage for the backing, sashing, and binding, and finally found a perfect blue fabric. The next steps are to finishing piecing the sashings to the shirts, sew all the rows together, add the border, pin baste, machine quilt and bind. No one except a quilter understands how many hours of concentrated effort that list of steps will require!!
Usually I enjoy the quilting part, but my machine is acting up (the hand wheel is slipping, and the bobbin is having trouble winding) and my trusty repair man is on vacation! I will be on his doorstep on his return, and hoping that my machine is not going to need palliative care!
To see what other quilters have on their design walls this week, hop over to Patchwork Times.

Merry Christmas!

It's 1:30 in the morning here and so I can wish you a Merry Christmas! I will soon be falling into bed for a few hours of sleep before heading into a very busy celebration tomorrow. But before I do that, I wanted to quickly show you the gifts I made for Christmas.
These are the 22 photo calendars (which have at least 12 photos each) using a total of more than 260 photographs that I have taken throughout 2010. There are 2 for my parents, 1 for my mother-in-law, 2 for my kids, 1 for my daughter's boyfriend, 12 for nieces and nephews, and 4 friends!

And here are my 3 finished quilts before they were wrapped! Well, the one on the left is not exactly "finished". It still needs the binding hand stitched on the back, which will be done in the car on the way to the festivities. The quilt on the right has already been delivered to it's new owner, my Aunt Eleanor, and the other two are going to my 2 sisters-in-law.

I also made 8 mug mats for the older nieces,  the girlfriends of my nephews, and my siblings. I was planning to make them all oven mitts, but I struggled so much to make the first pair, and then the second pair was a total disaster, so I gave up on that!

Then I remembered this great tutorial on how to make cute little mug mats. Jennifer's measure 7.5" x 9.5" and mine are a little smaller at 5" x 6". In the pockets are a tea bag, a little spoon, and a tiny packet of sugar. Also wrapped in their packages will be Tim Horton's gift certificates (a favorite place to buy coffee around here).

And guess what?! I made up a little gift to give to one of my blog readers...I couldn't leave you out! I cut up a kit of pieces for you to make this Ho Ho Ho wallhanging for next Christmas. I'm also adding a Ho Ho Ho decoration, a box of smarties, and you'll get your very own mug mat too! Everyone who left a comment on my blog this week automatically gets entered (and thank you for all your encouraging words to help me believe I could accomplish all the tasks I set out to do) and if you leave a comment on this blogpost, I'll throw your name in the draw for the Christmas package. Merry Christmas!