My Current Project

This is just the latest project I'm quilting. I have a few other things like another hat to knit and a cross stitch project.

Here's a corner of the baby quilt I'm trying to finish. I love the way the stitching/quilting shows up. The scallop looking quilting is from a template that my late friend had made.

Getting closer

 ...to the end.

This is all that I have left to quilt. I'm trying to think of how to bind it - meaning what colour.

Butterflies and leaves are what I finally decided I would quilt in the big open sky area.

And when I'm not working on the quilt, I'm making more hats.

This is with the flash on my little camera. The green isn't a lime colour.

This green is closer to the colour but it's still not this bright - photo without the flash. My two little granddaughters need new hats so these are just trials. Pink and purple are this years colour so I shall see what I come up with. I will probably try a few different patterns too. There's bound to be someone who fits whatever size I make. I have a bench in my hall that has storage and so I keep hats, mitts, sweaters and masks in it for the little ones. They come in handy at times.

Just some quilting

I finally got the giraffe quilt on the frame and have started quilting it. 

I have it set up in my kitchen.

There's lots of light coming in from the window. I do use my lamp though to see where I am stitching. 

                         When I am not quilting, it is covered with a sheet.

             I really like the effect that quilting gives to something that is flat. It took me a bit of thinking to come up with how I was going to quilt the leaves but in the end, I just sat down and freehand drew a leaf with veins in each pieced leaf. I just have to figure out what on earth I am going quilt in the big sky area. Maybe some falling leaves...

A new baby quilt and baby knits

I belong to two quilt guilds and during the pandemic, the meetings have been online. Both guilds have kits that members can take and make into quilts which are then given to various charities. The quilts vary in size. Even though I had my own quilts to make, I decided to take on a baby quilt. The fabrics in the kit were all bright and it was fun thinking about what pattern I could use for the fabrics.

I quilted it in my new kitchen since I had the room and knew that it wouldn't take too long.

There was enough of the yellow fabric to bind the quilt.

I happened to have some fabric that was perfect for the backing.

This is a little hat that I managed to knit. It didn't turn out as I had hoped.

Here's the latest rainbow blanket. I used a light gray for the background this time and I think it's quite delicate looking.

A bit of hand quilting

 I have been busy this week hand quilting a little 48 inch square baby quilt.

I started with a package of charm squares that my daughter picked and she arranged them the way she wanted them to look.

I had some solid cotton that was a perfect colour to frame all the four patches with. When I purchased the fabric, I thought it was gray but the lighting in the store obviously distorted the actual colour.

This was the finished top.

I made the border smaller at three inches to match the sashing instead of five inches that the pattern had. 

This is all I have left to do.

I didn't put much quilting in it. The middle of the four patches will have a heart quilted on it.

I just kept it simple. Once it's bound, I'll take more photos.


That's it for now. Have a lovely week. Our temperatures will be in the double digits for most of the week. With the sun shining, it should warm up the ground and maybe the bulbs will start appearing.

(I noticed when I went to 'Preview' mode that the alignment was off. I try to centre all my little descriptions but if it looks off, it's bloggers fault, not mine.)

I'm linking up with the Needle and Thread Network so pop on over to see what other Canadians are up to.

Row by Row Experience 2019

The theme for this year's Row by Row was "Taste the experience." I was late in getting my top done and then I was late in getting it quilted. Once I saw the blocks that the quilt shops offered, I noticed that there were a lot of blocks that were 18 inches square. Once I thought about a quilt, I decided to just use the 18 inch block size totally. After some more thinking, I realized that since I hadn't yet made a shadow block quilt, I could very easily do one now. There weren't many winners this year. I think a lot of people weren't too keen on the idea of a quilt that was food based. I didn't care because I figured it could very well be used as a lap quilt to keep someone warm.

Here's my finished quilt. I bought no fabric because all of it came from my stash.

Some close-ups of the blocks I used.

This block was from Thimbles and Things in Orillia. I think I used up one of my red fabrics.

There were four quilt shops offering a version of this pattern. I didn't venture out to get the peach or the plum. This pattern came from Threads That Bind in Maxwell. For some reason, the four quilt shops offered this pattern as a 12 inch by 18 inch square. They did indicate that one could make a placemat from the pattern but none of the shops mentioned that the pattern actually should have been an 18 inch square. I just added an extra row.

This one was a hit with my middle daughter and also my son-in-law's grandmother. I had won the pickle fabric and the raspberries in a previous row by row. The plum fabric was a remnant I picked up in my travels to collect the row patterns. The Pantry Shelf was offered at Feathering Quilt Shop in Dundas, Ontario.

There were a lot of ice cream themed blocks. This one came from a Len's Mill Store in London, Ontario.

A cute birthday cake. The green fabric in the cake stand came directly from my scrap pile. The pieces were cut from odd lengths. The same fabric is in the block above. I don't know if there are any pieces left. I doubt it. Len's Mill Store in Waterloo is where I picked up the pattern.

I liked this pattern. It was simple but there was just something about it that appealed to me. It came from another Len's Mill Store - this time from Cambridge. They had moved since I was last there. Luckily, there were addresses to all the shops and with GPS, we didn't get lost.

Country Concessions in Cookstown came up with this block. Their version had a cupcake in the middle with the words "Eat dessert first." In my version, I decided to call it "eat your vegetables." I just happened to have that veggie fabric lying around and thought it was perfect. I don't know if you've noticed but my colour palette has included quite a bit of lime green. I thought I would stick with the same colours throughout so that my quilt didn't look too scrappy.

This ice cream cone version came from Quilter's Nine Patch in Elmira, Ontario. That pink ice cream drip was supposed to be a 3D flap but since I knew I was going to be hand quilting it, I just appliqued it on. Making it as a separate flap was too much work. You can see some of my quilting designs. I just used a couple of stencils and mainly just parts of them - not the total design.

I thought that quite a bit of work went into designing this one from Ye Olde Fabric Shoppe in Stratford, Ontario. That's where I brought in my winning quilt. While making the ants, I thought I could use a white gel pen but after going to a local art supply shop, the young lady there told me that it would wash out when I told her why I wanted a white pen. She then showed me two paint pens/markers that could be used on fabric and would be permanent once they were ironed. I was allowed to try them both out and I settled for a Uni Posca marker. I like how the ants turned out.

Now you can see what has been keeping me busy these summer months. 

Oh yes, I also went to England in June for two weeks to visit my youngest daughter and her family. The day after I came home, my 10th grandchild (little Aurora) was born on Father's Day. Then my eldest and youngest daughters visited in the beginning of July with their families to see the latest addition to our growing family. After checking our schedule for the summer, my husband and I decided that we could go to British Columbia with our eldest daughter and her two boys to help with harvesting some of their summer garden produce. Her husband was out of town finishing up his schooling. Once we came home, we looked after some of our grandchildren while they were on summer holiday. 

So I did manage to get this quilt done and now I'm trying to finish up a few other things. 

Sneak peak

With the approach of summer, I get geared up for road trips. For four years now I have taken part in the Row by Row Experience. This year's theme is Sew Musical. I had been hesitating this year as to whether or not I should participate but once I heard what the theme was, I was all in. The quilt would be finished and gifted to little Teemu who loves music and has several toy musical instruments. He recently graduated to a big bed so it just seemed appropriate. So that's one reason I have been so quiet on the blog this summer.

Here's one of the rows. It's the regular, or classic, 9 inch by 36 inch (finished) row.

The row above was offered at The Hobby Horse Quilt Shop, in Georgetown, Ontario.

Some of the others are 18 inch squares. The Row by Row team announced that this year the sizes of the 'rows' would be changed to include the 18 inch square, a 12 inch by 27 inch rectangle and a long 54 inch by 6 inch row. I have yet to see the long row offered.

The little birdies above was designed by Quilt Junction in Waterford, Ontario. 

This summer we've had a little visitor in our backyard.

Bunny has made our backyard a tempting home.

We saw one, then two and then a baby one. I think this is the baby one.

Unfortunately, my husband has seen a hawk or falcon around and one landed on our verandah railing less than two feet from him when he was feeding the little sparrows some bread. We haven't seen our little bunnies since. I hope they've just found more fruitful yards to visit.

I'm off now to do more quilting on my current Row by Row quilt.

Another sneak peek

I have been diligently putting in hours hand quilting this quilt that's on the frame.

This is how much I have left to quilt.

Some of my 'tools.'

I'm hoping to have it all finished this week - fingers crossed.

I'm linking up once again to The Needle and Thread Network. Pop on over to see more of what Canadians are up to this week.

New quilt - sneak peek

I finally got the top of a new quilt put together. 

It's on the frame and I am hand quilting it.

Here's just a couple of hints and sneak peeks for now.

We had a lovely long weekend. I have so many things on my 'to do' list right now but I'm just going to concentrate on one thing at a time.

Charity recap

A couple of weeks ago Marg and I got together to package up all of the baby quilts and baby hats that we had made to deliver to a lady who is connected with the Silent Children's Mission. Here's a visual list of the quilts.

One of the few pre-printed panels we have.

Easy peasy squares.

This star quilt is a free pattern from Swim, Bike, Quilt blog.

I'm sorry you can't see the teddy bear that Marg quilted in the star.

The second star quilt.

One of what I call 'the ice cream quilt.'

The second 'ice cream quilt.'

The refreshing gingham quilt.

The ducky quilt.

That's it for this year. I didn't count the hats but there may have been about a hundred of them.