Cool Melon

I am following Stitched in Color for a while now. I do love the way she has with colours and the quilts she makes are just wonderful.

When she offered the opportunity to play around with fabric and colours I could no longer resist. You go to the fabric online store and pick the fabric that represents „cool melon“. I even figured out how to make a Mosaic tile. Yay! Please go to her website for the instructions and also to see what other came up with.

I started off with the obvious colour scheme thinking of Italy and juicy red watermelons in their vibrant green skin. I do want summer to come early.

I had certain colours in mind but you are limited to the fabrics you can find in the online store. Nevertheless I truly enjoyed „hunting“ the right fabric.

Then I thought of the Golden Watermelon we had the last time we went to British Columbia. I do want to go back and eat my way through their Farmers Markets.

Birdie is a huge fan of watermelons and eats them all year round. Preferably when the watermelon costs more than 5$ during the wintertime. We have to forgive her since she does not yet understand the concept of money and fruits in season.

So here is my second version:

It was so much fun playing around with the mosaic maker while Birdie was watching Monster High – win-win!

Voting with start May 9th 🙂

 

 

 

Plus Quilt

I made this quilt for me! Yes, finally a quilt for myself. I saw the tutorial on In Color Order and fell in love with it.

When I started it was fall and I picked my colours according to my mood at that time. I had this Kaffe Fassett fabric and used it as my starting point to pick the rest of the fabric colours. I love how colourful it is without being in your face :-). All squares were sewn together by hand! I had a quiet time at work and was able to do a lot of sewing in my lunch hour.

My poor husband had to hold it up. It was so sunny that day that you can almost see through it. I picked an orange and pink chevron pattern fabric for my backing and even though I was doubtful I think it works.

It now lives on my bed and makes me smile every time I see it. Mission accomplished.

Sesame Street Quilt

My colleague at work convinced me to start a project I would not have done otherwise. I have very little applique experience but she said she would do that part if I take on the quilting part.

Our Quebec colleague was close to her Maternity Leave and we decided to make her a Sesame Street Quilt. My favourite is Cookie Monster- what a surprise 🙂

We had a lot of fun pulling all our fabrics out and brood over colour combinations in our lunch hours.  Look at this cookie fabric- my colleague is one clever cookie lol.

We chose our 6 favourite characters and went to work. Once we had the blocks done we decided to give them a black sashing. This way they looked like „pictures“ within the quilt. Since it is a baby quilt we did not want to leave it at that and added a cheerful yellow- Big Bird style, don’t you think?

I went out of my comfort zone and quilted it on my home machine with stars and swirls in yellow. 

It is already nice and crinkly because we washed it before we sent it off.

For the backing we used this cute Scotch Dog Fabric. My colleague and I then decided to cut out the same shape again and have everybody in our office sign the quilt.

Our colleague burst out in tears when she opened the parcel 🙂

We could not have asked for a more rewarding response!

Hungry Little Caterpillar

This is one of my UFO’s that I started for Birdie.

The sashing was quite large and when I looked at it I had no idea how to quilt it. So I put it away.

Then the Sparrow Studioz in Edmonton offered unlimited quilting hours for 200$ in the month of March. I finished the backing one night and brought it in for quilting. I used all the Eric Carle fabric I had hoarded for this project. A the studio they were super helpful and helped me remember all the details from the rental course I took over a year ago. I loved it!

I picked a leaf design that was not overly hard and had no circles in it. I knew that I would not be able to pull those off without a lot of practice. One step at a time.

I finished 4 quilts that month and apart from one that I have to bring back and redo three rows I finished them all. More of that later since I still have to do the binding haha.

Pillow Swap

Hm, it looks like I never uploaded the pictures of the wonderful Pillow cover I received. The Edmonton Modern Quilt Gild had a swap organized with the Maritime Gild and this is what I received. It was a draw and I was very happy with mine. There were a lot of „Ahhs“ and „Ohhs“ when every member opened up the mystery bag 🙂

It fits so nicely in with the rest of the furniture!

Since then I started cutting and collecting selvages, haha.

 

And this is the creator of the pillow cover. Which reminds me that I definitely have to work on my labels. My number one quilting goal for 2016.

Birdie’s Dress

Wow, it only took me 8 months to finish it. Not because it is so difficult to do, quite the opposite. I started it when Ronny began developing the basement. Then summer came and we were so busy with everything….basement…fence…garden..enjoying the sun.

Well, today I sorted my enormous fabric-stash and found this dress again. The only thing that had to be done was to hem it.

I am serious. The hem.

Since I always have to fiddle around with my designs I just had to add the border. I got it from Value Village in a gigantic bag and finally I knew what to do with it. Hmm, great, ignore the thread that is hanging out, it has been removed haha.

I am quite happy with the dress and truly love the fabric.

I can only hope that Birdie still fits in it 🙂

Mandy’s Tasche

I finally finished the bag I promised Mandy months ago….

She wanted the colours beige, grey and or blue. I really liked this fabric and just added a bit of brown at the bottom. I really need to take better pictures. I literally had a couple of hours before Oma and Opa had to leave for the airport.

The batting was a thick sheet I got from Oma a while back. I thought it very fitting to use it in this project.

The lining is a cute beige star fabric and since Tante Mandy has a star tattoo on her foot it was what I chose. I got this fabric from Connecting Threads and love it. I am very tempted to make one for myself. Mandy said she would use it to store her yarn in. She is great at crocheting and knitting. It all looks so effortless. I tried to crochet a scarf and it was so screwed up that Birdie’s plush dog got it haha. And that was the second attempt. Sometimes three-year-old’s are the best.

Happy Labour Day!

Fox Quilt

My little sister Clarissa’s totem is the silver fox and when I found this grey fabric with little swirls in it, I knew it was and still is perfect. It was my first attempt at Applique with a sewing machine! I had no idea that maybe choosing a thread that fits the background or the colour of the object would have been better, I chose pink. It didn’t turn out super perfect but I still love that little fox.

Then I gathered pink/red and black fabric from my small stash that I had at that time. My stash has grown since then but back thenI still had to order fabric for a project.

I did not want this to turn into black and pink only so I added a bit of soft teal to it.

Clarissa told me that she puts it on her bed every day and when we went to Germany the last time I could see that it as true 🙂 Magically it also fits exactly onto her bed even though I had not exactly measured the whole quilt when I made it. I am bad that way!

Big hug to my little sis! We miss you and hope to see you soon!

Irish Theme at the Modern Quilt Gilde

This was quite some time ago but I finally found a minute or two to upload pictures and write something. The summer has been somewhat crazy in a good and bad way. Today we are expecting 32C in Edmonton so I like to look at pictures in which I am wearing a hoodie :-). I am not complaining but my body is not made for 32C. I am perfectly happy when the temperature is around 20C.

Back to the topic at hand. We had picked the Irish Theme at our Modern Quilt Gild Meeting and this is what I made. I found this wonderful and cute little bag online on the Spoonful of Sugar  website and I loved it. I made one trial bag that got immediately snatched away by my daughter. I later found it stuffed to the brim with My Little Pony items. I am ok with that because it gets used.

See the little tag in rainbow colours? Yes. It is the end of the rainbow and inside the bag I hid some gold coins aka chocolate coins.

The recipient loved it by the way.

The mug rug itself was inspired by Jacquelynene Steves and I could not stop making them. I made Valentine versions in red and cream. I gave several away…and forgot to take pictures of course. Some days I am glad that my head is attached to my shoulders….

 

On my way to the Gild Meeting already running late my husband shot one more picture. Birdie playing in the background with the trial bag and wearing a ponytail. A rare occassion and worth a picture.

Ta-ra..I am on the hunt for the gold pot at the end of the rainbow. See you soon.

 

Mug Rugs

I am either waaaaay behind or waaay early- I let you decide. These are the mug rugs I made for Valentine’s Day. One in small and one slightly bigger. It was nice to finally use my red fabric haha.