Emily's 3rd Birthday

A third birthday for my granddaughter Emily.  At that age it seems that all little girls are into pink, lilac and princesses.  My daughter, Suzie helped with the design of this cake and also provided the pretty model of Princess Sophia.  It's all very well to model bubble guppies or lego men, but getting princess's faces and fingers looking just right is important, and Suzie understood.  

The cake was really pretty, mainly due to the backdrop of the castle, which is a story in itself.  Through my cake club, CSSA in Toronto, we were very lucky to attend a cake decorating workshop by Ruth Rickey from the USA.    

Here we are, my friend and cake partner Verdie, Ruth, and me with our class samples.

Ruth's class was called Japanese Kimono Embroidery.  The technique lent itself perfectly for the castle on the birthday cake.

Birth Day and Birthday

This little sweetie arrived on May 30th, a bit ahead of schedule.  He is Samuel Stephen and is my daughter and husband's new baby.  He has two big brothers, Josh and Elijah, 4 and 6, and a sister, Lauren, 2.

Just a couple of week's before Samuel arrived we celebrated Lauren's second birthday.  Lauren's favourites are the Bubble Guppies, so Verdie and I made the little characters to order.

Good to the last crumb.

My nephew's friend Alison made this neat baby stroller for a  family get-together to welcome my new great nephew James. 

Emily's CQJP2014 block finished

I was lucky to have a lovely crochet doily in variegated lilacs that I cut in half for this block.  I am making good progress on this year's journal project.  This is the sixth block finished out of 20 for the project.  I need to do almost two blocks a month to finish by the end of the year.    

This is Josh, my next block to work on.  

CQJP 2014 Next Naked Block

This is Emily, Suzie and John's daughter and Jack's younger sister, and one of my three grand daughters.  The block is mainly lilacs and already there are a couple of areas that were already embroidered:  the pansies are from the corner of a hankie, and the bottom left fabric is a sheer net embroidered with lilac flowers.

I still have more than a week left of my vacation and I'm hoping to finish this block and one more.  

CQJP 2014 May's Block finished

This was such a lot of fun to work on.  Because the photo and frame took quite a bit of room on the block, each seam and area of fabric patch was short and small.   So I was continually changing stitches and threads.

This little spray was a surprise to me.  I'm not good at drawing or designing this type of thing.  But this one began with just one big cross drawn on the fabric.  The centre button stands out and then, as you can see, I added some bits and pieces, embroidered some leaves, and it looks pretty. 

Here's some of the Kiko flowers that Sharon B. taught us in Connecticut a few years ago.  

The hankie formed the frame for the picture, and because it was so delicate, I didn't want to overly embellish it.  I left it to the very last and in the end used every single fresh water pearl I had in my "brought to Florida" stash and it looked just right.


I do have my next block pieced together and photographed, but I have a Mac laptop now and my photo is on it, but I haven't figured out how to get it to this screen.

April's Block but really only February's

Moving right along with the blocks for the 2014 CQ Journal Project.  

The finished quilt will have 20 blocks and I'm hoping to have it finished in the 12 months of 2014, which means I need to do 1 2/3 blocks per month.  

That is a daunting thought!  So far I have finished  4 blocks (4 x 3/3 is 12 thirds) and that is the equivalent of January and February (5/3 + 5/3 = 10/3) and 2/3 of this block to go towards March's block.  

Maybe that's altogether too much math.

This is my daughter Suzie as a baby.  The block is a bit wild, but it does go with her red dress!

The next block is Heather, my younger daughter.  I had this wonderful old fine lawn hankie edged with tiny rosebuds.  I didn't want to cut it up, so I laid the photo on top and folded the hankie around to make a frame.  I am without sewing machine while on holiday, and these blocks are all hand sewn, so they all look a little bubbly. 

CQJP 2014 March block finished

This is March's block and these are my grandparents on my mother's side.  The block turned out rather fancy, but I don't think that my grandmother had many beaded or sequinned clothes, they were very much from the working class.  She worked very hard to giver her four daughters a decent education and a chance for the future.

April's naked block.
This is Suzie, my eldest daughter at about 10 months old.  I remember making her the red dress for Christmas.  

Wedding Cake

As much as I don't like moths or butterflies, I think this cake looks very pretty.  The bride provided them and added them to the finished cake herself.

It was a real surprise to the guests when the cake was cut.   

Each colour strip was about 2" high.

March's CQJP Block

This is my mother's parents.  I met my Grampa many times, but my Grandmother died tragically when my mum was about 11 years old. 

I've also been working on other projects to do with my Crazy Quilt class running at the local quilt store.  I made this small drawstring bag as an end product sample from two small blocks.  

The pink side, with pretty simple stitches.  The basic block construction from the middle out.

Under the Sea side which is a bit more challenging and is put together as a scenic block.

I've had the class for over a year now.  It runs in 4-month sessions, and I have a couple of students who are now on their 5th session.  

I've been making a fabric book of samples of the things I teach and as more inspiration.  The "pages" are 12' X 7" and fold in half.  I wanted to be able to add stitching to the pages at any time, but wanted to hide the back also.

Some fool's gold work

Folded and gathered flowers and different kinds of leaves

This page is mostly simple silk ribbon

One of the stitch pages - feather and cretan

Silk ribbon flowers.  

I've added metal eyelet holes.  I'll use two rings to hold everything together.   I have 12 pages made so far and I'm finding it really useful.  I'm also working on an instruction book to go along with each fabric page.

CQJP 2014 - February's Block

This is my second block in the CQJP 2014 challenge which is  to finish one block or item a month for a year, and then make them into something.  

This is the naked block with a few pieces of lace added.  I'm trying to use more lace than I usually do.

Here it is finished.  The centre photo is of my parents at the beginning of their honeymoon on Jersey.  This was just two days before World War 2 began.  On their second day, my father was recalled to his RAF unit.  

 I'm doing a series of blocks that represents my grandparents, parents, siblings and my children and my grandchildren.  A total of 20 blocks.

Ribbon roses.   Above the roses you can see a piece of lace where I added a small piece of orange satin under the lace flower.

I added a lot of beads and stitching to the two rows of lace trim and I like the effect. The centre bead began as a small white glass flower and changed completely with some gold thread.

This was in my stash, and isn't it lovely.  A crochet flower with variegated thread gives a nice pattern.

A little patch of roses.

 

My sister Helena is here visiting again, and guess where she quickly landed....on the floor with the fabric!

Within a few days of her arrival, we were out shopping and one of the pieces we found was an exquisite child's top.  We couldn't bear to cut it up and after some discussion decided that it would make a lovely cushion to go with other beaded cushions on my couch.

Here it is with the shoulder straps turned under, laying on dark brown fabric.    Anyway, from this idea, my sister made the easy move to arranging fancy cushion fronts from my large selection of beautifully beaded, sequinned, embellished stash.  Click on the pictures for close ups.

Hot Pink, the first one completed 

All the pinks

Gorgeous green

A very beautiful brown and beige

This is a close up of the main sparkly piece in the brown/beige photo.   

Stunning orange

Turquoise.

These will be going on e-bay next week.

So this is just the start of Helena's fabric explosion.  She's here for three more weeks!

January's CQJP2014 block

I love it when I have a project that I don't want to put down.   January's block was like that, and is pretty well finished I think. 

 

There is an empty piece of pink satin at the bottom, but I may use that space to embroider the name of the person (me) there, maybe using waste canvas.  I haven't decided whether to put the names on the block, on the sashing pieces, or on the back.

SRE roses and leaves on the left, and some beading on a really nice piece of lace

Velvet ribbon flowers and lots of cast on stitches using one of the Colour Variation Perle 5 threads.

I found this lacy looking embroidery in "Bead Embroidery Stitch Samples" by Yasuko Endo.  I used a #10 crochet cotton.