A Finished Quilt!

Since the pandemic it has taken me longer and longer to finish a quilt. I just seem to move slower, start more projects, and do more crafts. Have you experienced the same thing or is it just me?

Anyway, I finally  finished this quilt while visiting my sister at her cottage this summer. 

The Princess Charlotte quilt top was finished on Feb. 15, 2021.  This might have been the fastest mystery quilt top I have sewn in all the years of doing Super Bowl mysteries with Kris of Scrapdash. 

This is a close up photo that shows the "lazy quilters way" to make faux mitered corners which I like to do. 

The long arm quilting was done by Quilting By Design in New Hamburg. They give you a discount if you are donating your quilt to a charity and this quilt will be going to the community outreach program at  my local quilt guild.

Finished size is 50" x 62".

2 Finished Quilts

Today I want to share about the journey of 2 finished baby quilts. 

My sister and I have developed a tradition of making a quilt when our nieces and nephews announce they are expecting a baby. Usually my sister begins the process, finding a pattern and buying the fabric, then she sews the quilt top and I do the machine quilting and binding.

When my nephew announced he was having twins this spring, my sister jumped into creative overdrive. She made 2 quilts tops that were similar yet different - just like twins! Both quilt tops use bright fabrics with elephants (a childhood fascination for our nephew). Here is my sister working on the layout on the design wall when we were at retreat.

I basted the quilt tops using my favourite method with curved safety pins and the Kwik Klip tool. While I baste a quilt, my mind conjures up possible quilting designs for the quilt. I decided to do the same thing my sister did in finishing the quilts -make the quilts similar yet different. I used the same Tula Pink backing fabric and same solid green binding fabric on both quilts, but quilted them diffently.

One quilt was straight line quilted using the walking foot. I used the hera marker to mark the lines to stitch on (you need really good lighting to use this method). This method is relaxing and easy, and the resulting quilt is lightweight.

This is a photo of the quilt before it was sent off to the parents-to-be.  You can see some of the line quilting extending into the borders. Very simple quilting, yet it does the job.

The second quilt was densely free motion quilted and there are no photos of it in the quilting stage. I tend to "get in the zone" when I'm free motion quilting and don't take photography breaks! This is the finished quilt before it headed out the door. It was a heavier and less drapey quilt due to the intense quilting.

Maybe you can see the quilting design in this photo of when I was binding the quilt? This is my favourite meditative stage of the process in quilt making. I think about the parents of the babies, send positive loving thoughts for their safe arrival and recovery for the Mom, and say prayers for the family for a long and healthy life together.

And this is the photograph every quiltmaker waits for... to see the new owners using their quilt!

These sweet babes had a hard journey to the world, with an early extraction, health challenges, cardiac surgery, NICU stays, and finally both arriving home safely!  They are doing very well now and is it too presumptious to believe the quilts provided the safe, healing comfort from which to heal and grow?!?!? 😁 💖💖

A finished quilt!

It's not very often I get to celebrate a finished quilt since I have so many projects in various stages of completion. But today I have a special finish to share!

This is one of Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilts called Chilhowie started in November of 2022. It was during the throws of covid lockdowns when this project was started and I did not want to shop for any of the fabrics. So I used scraps from my stash and sorted them by value (not colour).

I finished my quilt top in September 2023 and then it sat in my UFO closet. My friends Annie and Lynn finished their quilts and donated them to my guild's community comfort project and they are gorgeous quilts.  Annie made her quilt the size that the original pattern was with 16 blocks, and Lynn made hers a bit smaller with 12 blocks. My version is even smaller using 9 blocks, and the finished size is 59" x 59".

It's always amazing how quilts can be made from the same pattern and yet look so different!

This is a photo of one of the blocks in my quilt. The predominant red fabric is an old Kaffe Fassett fabric called Millifiore and I barely had enough of it to finish the 9 blocks and have a bit left for the corner pieces and some of the binding. You can see how scrappy the blocks are! When I was sewing the blocks together I called it "the hot mess express" wondering if this was even worth the effort to sew! But it magically turned out to be a great scrap quilt!

My quilt top was donated to the guild and was quilted by Becky Fiedler on her domestic machine using a fun swirly design. Can you see the quilted circles and the texture it has on the back of the quilt? So fun!

Then I happily received the quilt back to put the binding on and I had the opportunity to revisit the wonderful variety of scraps in this quilt as I stitched on by. Those border blocks used up sooo many scraps!

Can you see the variety of reds in the binding? It was such a pleasure to use up so many scraps and to see this quilt to the finish line! It has inspired me to move more projects toward completion before I start the guild's summer mystery project (and maybe I should finish last summer's mystery first?!?!) 😜