Elijah is two!

Blowing out the candles

My grandson Elijah celebrated his second birthday today, and it was a noisy success! In total there were five 3 & unders, and three under 14's and eleven adults.  Elijah is a sweet child who's answer to the question "what kind of birthday cake do you want Elijah?" has been for the last two weeks: "a Pooh cake Nana".  So Nana (me) who's the cake lady to the family, did what she was asked!  

A post earlier showed Pooh and friends under construction. My friend Verdie and I completed the birthday party scene, it was fun making the tiny pizza and cookies!

Laurie's All About Angels CQI RR

This block has one of the prettiest colour schemes ever!  Shades of dusty lilac and a deep cream are just beautiful together and I really enjoyed adding my stitching to it.  Here is Laurie N's block after Wendy, Debbie and my work.  

I made a lace flower for the top left corner and added bullions and gold beads to the seam.

I filled the patch with scallops of golden chains and added an angel inside each.  Below the seam is a pretty piece of lace with exactly the same size scallops.

A sparkly piece of lilac ric-rac covered  another seam, and in the bottom patch I added some swirls and Kiko's flowers.

A bit of fun with dollies

The ladies at our Seniors have been knitting teddy bears like crazy for the Bazaar this weekend.  This is one of the many little and big bears, in a big variety of colours, using up lots of our small balls of wool.  The pattern is really easy - knit from the toes up and over and back to the toes.  The arms are stitches picked up on the sides, and the ears are pinched and sewn.  Easy as pie!  And they are cute!  But they are all boys!  
I used the same pattern (almost) and came up with a girl doll.  But it has taken me several tries at getting her right.  The first one has dislocated arms and thunder thighs.  The second one's a bit long in the body, and the third one, who knows what she will turn out like until I actually stuff her! 

Big Surprise at our Quilt Show

Betty's Crazy Quilt

Close up of some of the blocks

It was such a nice surprise to see this lovely crazy quilt hanging up in among all the "sane" quilts last weekend at the Rouge Valley Quilters Guild's Show.  It's beautifully put together by Betty Wildeman, and all seams are neatly embroidered.  There is also lots of embroidery on the individual patches and from what Betty said, it seems most of them relate to friends and family.  There are no beads, sequins or button embelishing because this will be a quilt that is used on a bed.

A Quilt Finished

Three of us from our Seniors group completed this "quilt as you go" queen-size quilt over the summer.  Suzanne and I sewed the blocks together, I machine added the blue sashing, and Anna handstitched the final seam on the back.

It's one of the prizes in our draw this weekend at our annual Bazaar.   All the blue fabric was donated.

This is a closer look at the individual blocks.

And here's a look at the back.  We used all shades of yellow and purchased the pretty patterned fabric to use for the strips.  I made blocks earlier this year that were sent to help Australian flood victims and I documented the instructions on how to make a block here.

Busy, busy, busy.....

This is what I wrote last weekend, but didn't have any time during the week to actually post it!

I have too many things on the go at the present.  There's a baby shower cake for the 22nd, my grandson's 2nd birthday on the 30th, a display of sugar maple leaves for my sugar group to be ready for Monday;  today I spent half the day at our annual yard sale in our building, tomorrow is clean-up and dispose of unsold stuff.  Tomorrow afternoon is our quilt guild show, and I'm on from 1 to 4!   Phew!   

It's a week later, the yard sale is done and dusted, the leaves were made and delivered to the Creativ Show in Toronto where Verdie and I did our shift yesterday from 9am until 3pm. I completed a fairy dotee that will be swapped.  I also enjoyed working at our Quilt Guild Show on Sunday (where there was a beautiful crazy quilt on display - more about that on another post).  And the cake for the baby shower cake was delivered this morning.  Here's some pictures I took along the way!

Here's the fairy dotee.  The wings were made with florist wire from my cake decorating stash.

I got soaking wet foraging for these branches in the ravine during heavy rain.  The leaves are gumpaste.

Baby shower cake, 12" x 12".  All sugar cradle.

Here's Pooh and friends still under construction.  

One more e-bay quilt

This 12" x 12" quilted block has been added to the E-Bay auction.  I made this three years or so ago, as a Challenge in the CQ for Newbies group.  We were sent a package of fabric, thread, trim and beads and had to make something of it.  I loved the fabric in the middle and chose "Mother Love" as my project.  I was very new to crazy quilting in those days, and I'm quite surprised at my creativeness here. 

It did not win the challenge and has been idling in a cupboard until lately when Lesley issued another challenge on CQI as a Tribute to Mothers.  I think I was the only person who completed the challenge (and that was because the block was already pieced and embroidered).  All I had to do was back it and bind it.  On the finished version on E-Bay the circle has been centred properly.

For interest's sake, I have the photo here of the  package I received to make the block.

E-Bay Auction - CQI Crazy Quilts for Breast Cancer

About 29" x 30"

These three beautiful hand embroidered and embellished crazy quilts are up for auction on e-bay.  The blocks were created, donated and put together by members of CQI to benefit Breast Cancer.  Click on the photos to enlarge and see the detail.

About 29" x 42"  

About 27" x 27" 

Tone on Tone DYB RR - My blocks

I'm so happy to have my Tone on Tone blocks back home.  This is how I sent them out:  Six inch squares in rainbow colours.  Five would be chosen by the group and the remaining one I would do.  In the booklet I mentioned that they would probably be made into a small wall hanging for a child's room.

Cathy L. chose the orange block and added a wonderful dinosaur, a sparkly corner with a beetle, and some neat ric rac. I also see some tiny kiko's flowers in among the winding chain. 

Cheryl A worked on the yellow block .  She brought it to sparkling light with the enormous  sun.    It's clever the way the sun's rays show off her neat stitching.

Ritva worked on the blue block.  In amongst her wonderful seams, she's added  the perfect charms for a wee boy:  teddies and the truck.

Candji's choice was red.  Her dramatic dragon is definitely the focal point.  There's sparkly seam treatments  and a neat kite to complete the scene.

Green was chosen by Rita.  Her spider is just waiting for his next meal!  Look closely and you will also see a butterfly, some fishes, worms and a turtle, not to mention some lovely seamwork. 

I
Thanks, ladies.  I love all your work.  

Flower quilt

I've finished two more blocks for the Flower Quilt.  That's eight completed.  They are small, just 6" square, so I'll probably need 64 blocks to make it a decent size.  It's a fun project because every time I learn how to do a new flower, it becomes a new block.  The flower always sits on a green centre patch, and the rest of the block is shades of the colour of the flower.

This flower was made by gathering up a wired ribbon on a smocking machine.  

This block was inspired by two things:  I found a faux ultrasuede jacket in a lovely shade of eggplant.  It had a long zipper and two different kinds of gimp trim that matched exactly.  Cathy K. showed me how to make a zipper flower.    

The stems are in a raised stem stitch.  The curves came from  a heart-shaped piece of plastic canvas.   For  raised stem stitch the horizontal stitches need to be measured and marked very accurately, the plastic canvas holes worked perfectly.

You can see the other blocks on Flickr - see my side bar on the right or click here.  I didn't realize that I haven't blogged about this project before.  My inspiration came from Alison Aller's workshop at last Spring's Adventure in Connecticut.  In her class we made flowers and leaves and drooled over her most beautiful flower quilt.  

All About Angels RR - Wendy's block

Wendy's block after Debbie's and my work.  Debbie worked on and around the silkie.

One little angel

Two little angels

Three little angels

Swirls and roses

Scallops, pearls and sequins

Wendy's Angel block is small and pretty.  It's going to be the cover page for the blocks in her Angel DYB RR that she is also participating in.  What a great idea!  I loved working on it and could have finished the whole block, but I had to leave some room for Joyce and Laurie's work!

Home again....

Well, it's almost a week since I've been home from the Retreat in Estes Park, Colorado.  What a great time I had again.  It's my third time attending the CQI Shenanigans and it was as much fun as the previous Retreats.  There are loads of photos of the scenery, the 8-bedroom cabin, the activities and eye candy on other blogs.  Check out Kerry's here and Janet's here.  


Lesley brought the Sendai blocks to the retreat and we were all amazed at the variety of imaginative designs, colour and stitching on the many blocks donated to the cause.  Lesley is a master at putting together and she had several quilts made up from the blocks.  You can see the individual blocks here on Lesley's Flickr site.   Kerry has photos of the some of the made up quilts here .


I was amazed at the variety of cherry blossom trees that appeared on the blocks and that was my focus with my camera.  I've also included a fir and a purple blossom tree.