Creating

On my list of projects for this year was the line "sewing for babies".  It's taken a while but at long last I finished a baby quilt for Peyton and gave it to her this weekend.

It's a strip rag quilt with 3 flannel patterns on the front.

I love how the seams opened up and almost look like little ruffles.

It was my first time sewing minky, that lovely thick plush fabric that is found in so many baby quilts.  It's good to be challenged and learn something new, right?!  The #1 thing I learned was to pin, pin, pin and pin some more when sewing with it.  But the end result was so worth it - a quilt back with the most wonderful feel and texture.  I just wanted to keep smoothing and stroking it!  I think the back is softer and cuddlier than the front.

Here's the dedication panel, my favourite addition to the back of every quilt that I've sewed.

I'm so happy to have made this.  I hope it will be a reminder for our granddaughter that she is loved and cherished so very much.

Five on Friday

1.

“Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future. ”

Deepak K. Chopra (born 1946); physician, writer

2.  There's a little quilt store in the village where one of our children lives and the little ones love to pop in with me and see what's new.  Today they had some gorgeous fabrics on sale for $5 per metre and some beautiful pink and brown prints that two of us fell in love with!  I love that this small  community has a great local business like this one!

3.  Costco on Friday afternoon at 4 p.m.??  Nuts!  You couldn't even navigate the main aisles with a cart but luckily there were no lineups in the checkout area.  

4.  I judged at a local fair today and enjoyed seeing all the beautiful things that people make and display.  There were 10 kinds of dilled vegetables (including radish pods which I've never seen before!) and 10 kinds of jam - lots of taste testing.  The best entry, in my opinion, was a jar of locally grown Evans cherry pie filling.  It was just perfect in every way!  It's inspiring to spend a few hours doing this.  

5.  We are so excited to welcome Malachi John Green to our family!  He was born early Friday morning and weighed 6 lbs. 7 ozs. .  I'm going next week to help and be with Samuel - but this little one decided to come early.  Mom and babe are both doing fine.  We now have 4 granddaughters and 4 grandsons :)

Creating

My beautiful niece, Jen and her husband, Will are expecting their first baby in December.  Her sister, Mel, hosted a baby shower a few weeks ago and I made a rag quilt for her gift.  This is the second one in a month and I used the things I learned last time to make this one better :)  Naomi helped me pick out the fabrics and Jen said it matches what they've done with the nursery - yeah!!

The front

Closeup

The back where I pieced in some prints

Label on the back

(a local quilt store gives one of these panels 

with your order sometimes)

I'm so happy I could make this little one a special gift!

Creating

Good friends of ours welcomed their first grandson into their lives this summer and on Sunday there was a baby shower for little Ian and his parents.  I had seen an idea online at Do It Yourself Divas for a baby rag quilt and thought I should be able to make one like it.  So in between the last of my canning, I sewed this sweet little project together.  

It ended up being 40" wide and 55" long, a perfect size for a floor or grass playtime quilt.  I can see more of these in my future :)  I hope it will get used alot!

Sewing Links

My goal to sew something every week has taken a backseat to life these last 6 weeks.  Sigh - - -
But I have still been watching lots of other people sew and so I thought you might like to see a few amazing projects today.  These are definitely bookmarked for my future!

1.  Rachel at Stitched in Color is doing an amazing project called Bottled Rainbow.  I love how she's using scraps within colour families and doing it one block at a time.  I would need to collect alot more scraps to be able to do this.

(photo from Stitched in Color blog)

2. This beautiful Sweet Divinity Diamond Quilt by Amanda at The Quilted Fish is wonderful.  I love the angles and the white sashing.

3.  Colorful and bright flowers make Dahlia just perfect for spring, I think.    Sherri over at A Quilting Life does beautiful custom quilting - so intricate and original.

I love looking at fabric art - it's so beautiful and always makes me want to jump up and get sewing.  Thanks for looking!

A Little Treat

My friend Lisa told me about a quilt shop that was close to Fairmont so the day we left I stopped by for a quick look.  It was an absolutely gorgeous shop with wonderful samples hanging everywhere!  I was in awe!

Everything in the store was on sale - how convenient!!  So I got a selection of Christmas flannels that will make a wonderful quilt,

a kit for a Christmas runner,

2 stacks of fat quarters for nothing particular yet (the color is off in this photo - it's really a combination of orange, green and tan),

and a Christmas idea book for inspiration.

Purcell Mountain Quilting Co. was a great quilt shop - I'll definitely be going back next time we are in the area!!

Sewing Projects

Last week I saw this great idea for a quilted table runner made by Jennifer and featured on the Sew, Mama, Sew blog.  I took the idea and adapted it a bit to make one for a square table.

It's definitely Halloween colors but the prints are autumn designs so I think it can be used from September through November.

The four squares on the back make it reversible - a nice little bonus.

You can see the stitch in the ditch quilting lines that show through on the back.

  I had a great time creating this and will definitely be making more in other sizes and colors!

Creating

We had a wedding to go to over the weekend and about two weeks before the date, while mulling over what we could give the couple as a gift, it suddenly dawned on me that a quilt would be perfect.  I guess in the busy-ness of summer with silaging and preserving keeping me occupied, I hadn't even thought of making one!  So, with two weeks to go, I started assembling fabric and cutting squares.

Ryan and Brittany, for whom I was making the quilt, are committed to recyling, reusing and reducing - in a big way! - so my goal was to use only fabric that I already had on hand.  

And here is the way it looked at 10:30 a.m. the morning of the wedding!  It still had to be washed and dried, and thankfully one of our neighbors offered to do that for me.  

I almost like the back as much as I like the front!  I was 10 squares short of solid fabric so I did some piecing of remnants, which adds lots of interest.  This side was not planned out at all!

You can see the random bits here.

Here it is, on a bed, all washed and dried, ready to be given - with lots of love!  This is only the second quilt I've made and I felt the same way with the first - do I really have to give it away?!    I think it will make a great picnic blanket or cover for guests to sleep under.  I'm so glad this was what we decided to give as our gift.   Now - who else would like a rag quilt?!!

Sewing Projects

When we drew names for this year's Christmas gift exchange, the decision was that gifts had to be handmade or repurposed.   It quickly became evident to me that the person I was creating for would love a handmade quilt (having given away all 3 that she'd made herself!).  I already had a stack of cotton Christmas squares purchased a year ago in Pendleton, Oregon and so the decision to sew was  a very logical one.

I called a friend of a friend, spent a day with her -

came home with a stack of quilted squares -

and started sewing squares together -

and then rows of squares together -

and pretty soon I had a great big bunch of cloth on the side of machine -

and a beautiful Christmas rag quilt was sewn!!

(front)

(back)

Heather was absolutely surprised when she opened it on Christmas Day - and Silas cuddled right into it!

It was my very first quilt and it turned out just the way I hoped.  I called it "Wrapped In Love" and it really was inspired by Heather and her example of sewing for her sisters and brother.  And I agreed with her sentiment of "I really wanted to give it but I really wanted to keep it too!!"