baby quilts

It's fun to make quilts for friends who have babies! The first baby quilts I helped make were for  three women who quilted with our group. The babies who received these first quilts are no longer babies!

This one of the first baby quilts I made on my own, for a friend.


This baby quilt was made 10 years ago for my niece. I made my sister dig it out of storage and took this yesterday!


I made two exactly the same for my twin nephews. They arrived a month before their due date so in this photo they are on one of the quilts. They are almost 7 now.

        This quilt was made for my cousin's daughter.

      This one was made for a friend's new baby son.

This is one was made for a cousin's son.

 

I made this for a neighbour's son and his wife who recently had a baby boy.

I realized when I was gathering these photos that there are lots more that somehow I managed not to take any photos of! Oh well, lesson learned.

giving and receiving

I just spend a couple of hours trying to find all the photos for this post, I sure need to get better at organizing my photos! These are a few of the quilts and wallhangings that I have made as gifts. I realized that there are some wallhangings that I never took photos of unfortuantely.

 Taylor and I made this triangle quilt for my mom for her 80th birthday. Taylor picked the design and we both sewed! If you look closely you can see the matching pillow my mom is holding.

This is a quilt I made for my mother-in-law when she moved into her new condo. It is so simple but it is one of my very favourites.

 I made this twin size quilt for a friend who was ill, she lived out of town and I wasn't able to visit her during her illness and wanted it to be like a big warm hug. I used some of the scraps from my mother-in-law's quilt.

I made this lap quilt for a friend who was having chemo, she was able to take it with her for her treatments.

 This quilt was made from Amy Butler fabrics I purchased in Vancouver, It became named the Amy quilt. I took this photo on my bed when it was completed. It wasn't intended to be a gift quilt, but my daughter saw liked it and asked if she could have it. So this is how it looks on her bed. Barry and I made the headboard for her bed this spring.

 I made this wall hanging for my friend Mona a couple of Christmases ago. Two of the purses have have vintage rinestone pins on them that she can wear.



These are two beautiful wallhangings that Mona has made as gifts for me.

What it says is very true!

I love teapots so this was a perfect gift. Mona crocheted the lace doilies.

I made this little wallhanging for my niece when she got married New Year's eve. Her theme was wintery outdoors, including birch trees.

quilt retreats at gimli

s we started tp plan for our Quilt Retreat for 2008, someone realized that this was our 15th year of quilting together. Normally we quilt at the community centre, the women are all great cooks so we plan out the meals and everyone brings something. The food is as much fun as the sewing. But the preparing and clean up takes time so we decided we would celebrate by letting someone else do the cooking. We went to resort in Gimli, Manitoba, right on the beach. They gave us a large conference room with nice window to use for sewing, brought us coffee and snacks and at breakfast, lunch and supper we just walked down the hall and enjoyed the food. We thought we would do this just once but we've been there 4 times so far, this fall will be the 5th.

At the retreat in 2008 I spent the weekend cutting and sewing the coloured blocks for this quilt, which I call Beach Glass.

In 2009 I bought all the fabric for this quilt in Vancouver and made this wall hanging. It's called Noriko, the middle name of a friend. I especially love the border fabric.

I had enough fabric left to make a second one, something I've never done. This time I only used 3 fabrics in each square.

In 2010 I decided I'd better sew all my squares together for my Beach Glass Quilt, so I bought white fabric with green dots and sewed it all together.

It's a really simple pattern but it turned out to be one of my favourite quilts. I had someone do the machine quilting and if you look closely you can see the flower pattern.

In 2011 I cut the fabrics out before retreat so I could get more done and I acually managed to sew the tops of a wallhanging and a lap quilt.

I call the wall hanging Amish lava lamps, since th Amish quilt mostly with solid colours.

This is the lap quilt, it is not named yet. I used fabrics from a collection called moonlight garden so that might become the name.

      I decided to free motion quilt this myself, as you can see it's far from perfect but not too bad.

These are some of my quilting friends at retreat.

                          

a day at the fair

Hi, my best friend Mona came in from Vancouver with her sister last week to visit their dad, who lives 3 houses down from my mom, that's how we became best friends! Anyway, besides the visit, she also came to enter some items in the St. Vital Agricultural Fair, which has been going on for over a hundred years. You can enter all kinds of things, vegetables and flowers that you've grown, baking and all kinds of handicrafts. So the three of us, plus a good friend entered some things and all four of us actually won some ribbons, and a little cash!

I won first place in the wall hanging category for this felt quilt.

I won second place in the fancy cushion category, you can see part of my friend's sunflower cushion which won third prize.

I won third prize in the watercolour category for this columbine that I painted last summer at Clear Lake.

Mona won first prize in the applique quilt category. When I took this photo she told me it better not end up on by blog, but the quilt is so beautiful it had to!

Mona's first prize quilt block, mine didn't win anything! Her's was much better.

Our friend's first prize cake in the cake decorating category, looks good enough to eat!

Mona's sisters honourable mention watercolour!

block of the month group

Many of the women I quilt with at our quilt weekends live in the same neighbourhood that I do. We had enjoyed getting together more often when we made the mystery quilt so we decided to each make a block of the month sampler quilt. In the fall of 2006 we got together at someone's home and they showed us how to make a block of their choice. We didn't sew that evening, but had some great refreshments. All of the quilting women happen to be great cooks and bakers! The next month we'd go to someone else's house, bring the square we had completed to show everyone and learn the next square. There were twelve of us so in a year we had enough squares for a wall hanging, or by adding borders, making a lap quilt. Everyone chose a completely different colour scheme.

This one is done by paper piecing.

I added a lace doilly to the "shelf" on this one.

The finished wall hanging! I entered it in the St. Vital Agricultural Fair last year and won first prize in the small quilt category! The square shown below was the hardest one, each petal of the hydrangea was folded and stitched on.

The following year we decided that each month the hostess would teach the group a square and then give instructions, and sometimes the fabric so that each person would make them a square or two. The wall hanging below is a version of the New York Beauty. Each quilter made me two of the inside squares and one border square. It is made from all batik fabrics and is one of my favourite quilts. It would have never gotten made without all the help! 

The following year I got them to hand applique this one, first I had to teach myself, though many of the group already knew how to. I bought the background fabric and each person used their own fabric for the flowers. I love this wall hanging, too and of course I would have never done all of these myself!

I machine quilted this wall hanging, using free motion around the flowers and leaves on the border.

 The next year we had about 16 quilters so it took us a year and a half to get everyone's squares done. I haven't finished sewing this one together yet. I found a photo of this quilt in a quilting magazine but couldn't find the pattern, so I make my own paper pieced pattern, bought the fabrics and some of the group made more than one of these for squares for me.

After we finished this year many of the group decided it was time to do something else, but we haven't decided what yet. Several of the women have moved out of the city and some have gotten too busy to get together once a month. Each month several women brought completed quilts to show us, which was very inspiring. These are photos of our windup brunch.