... and a quilt for my Mother-in-law!

First of all, I want to show you the completed quilt top I made for my father-in-law, with the borders added. When Barry and Connor held it up in front of the window, it had a great stained-glass effect! I think it turned out well -- FIL seemed happy with it -- and now it's just a matter of getting it quilted. I have to pick up some batting and backing this week, and the machine quilter has promised me that she can get it done in late May, so that's exciting.

Next, it was time to finish up the quilt I'd planned for my mother-in-law, who is also turning 70 this spring. I wanted to use pinks, purples and blues because I understand those to be her favourite colours, so I had my son Scotty come with me to the local quilt store to pick out some batiks. He knows that Grandma likes gardening, so he looked for batiks that had flowers in them, and we decided to go with curved piecing, to suggest a bed of pretty blooms. What do you think? Does it look like flowers popping out all over the place? Or maybe moons in the garden?? 

Because our house is currently under construction, I ended up doing a lot of sewing in the classroom of my local quilt shop. It was amazing how many people, upon seeing the blocks go up on the design wall, said to me, "Wow, you must really love your mother-in-law!"

This quilt is also due to be quilted in late May, and I'm glad both MIL and FIL will have their quilts before summer.

Deep breath, stretch... and on to the next project!

A quilt for my father-in-law

Behold! Here is a quilter in her natural environment -- a quilt shop. See me, enraptured by the bolts and fat quarters, inspired by the shop samples, seduced by the promise of another exciting workshop!

To tell the truth, I'm actually on the job, gathering info for the store's quarterly newsletter. It's kind of fun to write it, because I get a sneak peek at all the latest products and upcoming classes. But I have promised myself, I am not buying more fabric, kits or patterns until I have finished up the many projects I have already half-completed, and/or used up my bulging stash.

So when I decided to make my father-in-law a quilt for his upcoming 70th birthday, I turned to my stash. There, I found a gorgeous jellyroll of autumn batiks, purchased quite some time ago simply because I loved the warm colours. Time to turn them into something charming and masculine.

I played around with ideas for a while, skimming the Internet for inspiration, and came across a photo of a pattern much like this, which was described as "keys". I think it looks like puzzle pieces. Another quilter at the retreat said the blocks look like capital F's. Whatever you want to call it, the blocks were easily constructed using jelly roll strips, although I had to add in other fabrics from my stash in order to make enough blocks. One jelly roll is not enough to make a quilt. You really need two, or preferably three jelly rolls. In which case, you might as well just buy yardage. But anyway.

I pieced the individual blocks (ie, each pair of interlocking pieces) at home, then brought the blocks to the retreat, where I laid them out on my friend's design wall, worked hard to "randomize" them, then sewed them together. I had to buy some fabric to add borders -- I didn't have enough of anything that went with the quilt -- so in the next few days, I need to finish the borders off... by the time this post is published, it should be his birthday and he should have opened it! I will try to remember to add a pic of the completed quilt top.

Unfortunately, after he receives it, I'll have to take it back for a while -- I couldn't get a date to have it machine quilted before the end of May. But I hope that in about a month and a half from now, he'll be napping happily under it!

And I can feel good that my long-hoarded autumn batik jellyroll has been put to a good use. One more thing that has graduated from stash limbo to the paradise of completion. One step closer to being able to buy new fabrics again!

Sweet Retreat: Part III

 Here's another quilt that sat for ages in my cupboard -- the pattern is called "Grandpa's Best" (I think), and I made the centre part of it at a workshop that was supposed to teach speedy cutting and piecing. Unfortunately, it didn't teach speedy finishing, and it took me years to finally add the two borders to finish it off.

To be fair, for a long time I had the idea that I would do some sort of fancy applique on the gold border -- I was going to cut it quite a lot thicker, and maybe add vines, grapes, leaves, pears, etc. But finally I decided I just wanted it FINISHED, so I decided to attach the borders and get it quilted. Perhaps some nice quilting in the border will finish it off -- I'll see if the machine quilter has any ideas.

I've always thought this quilt would make a great Christmassy wall-hanging, so if I hurry up and get it quilted this summer, it can deck my halls come December!