Last of the Year's Quilts - lots of photos

Hello again, I'm just squeaking in with a last post for 2015.  Oh my, isnt it a bit of a worry how fast these years seem to be going.  Never mind, we all suffer from the same complaint so it makes me feel a little better.  I hope you have all had a wonderful time with your families as we have done. My last week before Christmas went in a blur, but I did managed to achieve a few things.

I quilted, buttoned and stuffed (with inners) to get daughter Rebecca's cushions all finished and ready to take up with us.  I am most pleased with the way they have come out - three different sizes that grade up pleasantly - all completely unplanned, hehe.

I did really enjoy designing the layout of these to have a more modern look to them and hope to play with the modern look in this coming year.

Also managed to finished this lovely floral square in a square quilt of Jean's. I used a free motion pattern that I enjoy using and am pleased with the results.  I used a lovely Magnifico thread.

It's always a pleasure quilting Jeans quilts as she makes such a good job of making them.  I never have any issues.  This meant I was able to have enough time to pop her other quilt on and get in finished before Christmas as a surprise for Jean.





















Isn't this childs quilt so pretty.  Jean put lovely soft pink minky on the back, which quilted up extremely easily with no complications.  I used another gorgeous Magnifico pink on this one too and put cotton batting in it.  What a super soft and cuddly quilt this one is.

I used a freehand combination of hearts and flowers for this one, connecting them with small loops.  I am so enjoying learning to do all over patterns like this and have to admit that I have not done a pantograph for quite some months.  Mind you, most of my quilting at the moment is custom.

This next quilt is my  friend Felicity's, and she informed me that it was made some 30 odd years ago when she was just beginning her patchwork journey.  Some of the fabrics have wonderful memories for her of her mother, aunt and her own dresses that were made for her.  It took me a long time to decide on an appropriate design for this one and am extremely happy with the result.  I hope you agree.

 Felicity thought this was called Jack's Chain, and was going to have a hunt to see if the pattern was still around.  We quilters do like to hang onto things, dont we?

The blue backing gave the whole quilt a really nice lift and quilted up nicely.

The photo bottom left shows how the quilt looked before quilting.  I am always amazed at how quilting completely changes the look of a quilt top even after all these years.

Thanks Felicity...I have loved quilting this for you, and delighted in each nine patch and it's different colours as I quilted along.  May you get lots of joy out it now.

And for the last finish for the year, I was so thrilled to get another grandson's quilt finished.  That's quilt an achievement this year for me, as it has been a year full of ill health and set backs.  Thankfully, we can put some of that behind us now and get on with our quilting.  What about this fun quilt?

 It was made from a bundle of Cat In the Hat fabrics that I had purchased about 3 years ago, (yay, used some stash) and there were only 8 fat quarters, but with some sashing we managed to make a good sized single bed quilt.  I did have to go buy a little bit of sashing as there was no green that was "just right" in my stash.

I quilted it in a quirky fun fashion, after getting the idea from a blog I follow called Tamarack Shack.  I did oddball shapes and did the vertical sashing in a different pattern to the horizontal.  Such fun was had by all, nope - by the quilter!!

The backing is a gorgeous fun dinosaur fabric I picked up on sale at Spotlight (like Joanne's) and it was perfect.  There was just enough left over to make a cute little summer dress for my granddaughter.

The quilt was given to my grandson Hamish when we went up to Te Awamutu at Christmas time.  I bought the book to go with the quilt.  This was actually a birthday gift, not Christmas, but who cares?

I am just stoked that I got another quilt finished out of my own pile on top of finishing three customer quilts. The next grandchild's quilt is for my older grandson Brad.  I have started cutting it out and am doing this one "quilt as you go."  Not sure how this is going to work out but I love the pattern so we will see what happens.

Last photo is my tidying up efforts in the last couple of days before Christmas.  This is only a portion of my stash of threads...I just love threads!!!

They look so neat and tidy.  Hope it lasts. Well I hope you will all have had a fabulous Christmas with your family and friends.  We did and I will talk about that next year.

I would like to wish you all a Happy and Joyous New Year.  May you be blessed in more ways than you can ever imagine and may you experience God's love for you in abundance.

Blessings to all and thanks for hanging in there with my erratic posting.

Clare
I am linking with Sarah at confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com

Check it out for some more delicious eye candy.

Quilt Exhibition and lots of other stuff....

We wont talk about how long it is since I posted.  Life trundles on and the quilting is slowly happening.  One good thing is another grandson's quilt is now just waiting for me to make and sew on the binding. I forgot to take some photos so will put it in the next post. It's the bit I dislike the most because my head has moved on somewhere else!!

Some pics you might enjoy from the bennial quilt exhibition of Hawkes Bay Quilters & Patchworkers held in Hastings last month.

 This gorgeous quilt below won the Viewers Choice award.  All machine quilted on a domestic machine.  Stunning.

Our trip to Wellington on our long weekend was so enjoyable.  The weather was fabulous for the time of year.  Spring can be so unpredictable. We went to the Botannical Gardens on Saturday and took a picnic lunch.  "Look at the ducks Nana! " Marcy is wearing her new wee dress that Nana managed to whip up before we went down.  Boy I was a bit rusty at making little dresses lol.

It was a lovely, lovely day.  We went to the rose gardens but there were very few out, but a couple of gorgeous beds of poppies were on show.

 Come on Grandad...push!!!

 Trying to hang on the little miss squirmy

Here's pointing at you!  Marcy loves pointing at things now and is so cute. Well, it goes without saying from this very biased angle...lol.

 I have finished cushion no. 2 for daughter Rebecca.  No. 3 is under construction and I had better hurry up if I want to take them up at Christmas time.

 Kerry is such a clever bloke.  This is  my portable oxygen trolley!!  You dont get given anything to cart the small oxygen bottle around in and a backpack is not an option for me.  So, Mr No. 8 Wire went to work on figuring something else out.  It's great because I can put all my gear in, it's lightweight and I can take it anywhere.

Our front verandah garden is looking really gorgeous with our triffid geranium on the left and right and our Clair Matin rose also on the left.  The rose in the middle is a small indoor rose I bought at the supermarket cheap as a left over from Mothers Day.  I put it in this bigger pot, stuck it outdoors and it has turned into the most beautiful rose.

Thought I had better finish off with the boys.  Travis (top) is actually sitting in front of me as I type, in the very same basket and sitting on the batting for the next grandson's quilt!!  Tyson is having a big stretch here.  He measures about 1.1m long at full stretch lol.

Hope to chat with you all again soon.  Take care in the mad season, and let's all remember why we have Christmas....to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

Blessings to you all
Clare

Caleb's quilt finished and a couple more....

quilts have been transferred from the UFO pile into the "waiting to be quilted" pile.  So happy to have achieved some finishes at last and am feeling a lot better.
Lots of photos for you so hope you enjoy....
The first photos are of our trip to Wellington to see our son Richard and his lovely wife Kea, and the absolutely adorable granddaughter Marcy (of course I'm not biased)...

I loved the look of this sculpture in the square along Lambton Quay and we also went to Scorching Bay for afternoon coffee and cake.  It was my birthday on the Saturday so we had to have cake!!!

This beautiful camelia grows along the back of Richard and Kea's new home in Karori.  The weather was glorious for a Wellington August.

In the quilty department I have been having a ball.  First off... a FINISH!!!!!   Woohoo, all done and dusted, pieced, quilted and bound, oh my!!  It's just too, too much.  Caleb's quilt is now an item.  Although his birthday was last month, I asked him if he would mind if it hung in the Hawkes Bay Patchworkers Exhibition in Hastings that starts today.  He was most agreeable, so still hasn't properly seen his quilt.  I had great fun with the quilting as I decided to try some different and more modern looks, especially as the quilt was for a boy of 11. I am in love with it I have to say. Hope you like it too.

I used Magnifico 2159 for the blue part of the quilt, and King Tut 917 on the red border.  Worked well

These squares were such fun to do, apart from going the wrong way a couple of times and having to unpick!

Spirals filled the alternate square created by the diagonal lines.  Good look and again nice and quick to quilt.

There are three of these red squares over the quilt.  I forgot to get a full front shot so will do that when I attend the exhibition this week.
Then it was on to finally finishing one of my dd Rebecca's cushions.  Again going for that more modern look and very pleased with the results, as is dd.  The focus fabrics I am using were a gift from my pal in Kansas, Barbara - thanks Barb, they are being used for a great purpose.  Now to get on to the other couple.

The Aunt Grace 1930's quilt I bought as a BOM in Missouri, with above mentioned friend Barbara, has now moved into the awaiting quilting pile.  Just love this and might try and get it quilted for the next upcoming exhibition. That's if I get all my customer quilts done for this same exhibition!

The "Pretties" scrap quilt is also in the finished pile.  It was supposed to have another two borders, but I have decided it is quite big enough at 76 x 83 already.  The great thing about some scrap quilts is they look good with or without borders and this one will be fine.

 And it wouldn't  be right to finished without letting you see that the boys are being well looked after.  We bought them this "Mummy rug" which is like Minky.  They go bananas over it and knead it to death lol.

So there you have it.  Updated and will put the rest of the photos in another post.  Hope you are all well and enjoying life.

Take care and God bless,
Clare
I'm linking to whatahootquilts BOM Monday and Oh Scrap

Autumn Medallion Quilt

Here I am at last.  In all the moving around of the "stuff" I lost my cord for getting my photos onto the computer. Of course I found it when looking for something else!!  Isn't that always the way?

Been working hard trying to catch up on my customers quilts.  This beautiful medallion quilt of Maria's is a wedding gift and is going off to Australia.  Although it seemed like the never ending quilt for a while, I am so thrilled in the end with how it looks.  It was only a bit of a struggle because I am still in recovery mode.  The colours are superb.  My photos are not.  Sorry about that.

It was very hard to get a photo in a good light and these first couple were taken at Maria's place when I delivered the quilt.  They do show up the quilting well though.

Some of the border treatments.  The thread is Superior Magnifico 2063 - a lovely gold colour that really highlighted the gold edged leaves in the focus fabric.  In the cream backgrounds I used So Fine 405 which worked perfectly.

 I had to do the on point triangles using Plan C.  Plan A & B were too difficult with my smaller 18" throat.  I was actually really happy with this plan and it probably looked better that the first plan...lol.

Because the focus fabric featured beautiful leaves and berries, I used these images in the quilting.  The feather border uses the leaf style of feather and I was delighted with how it came up.  Only the second time I have tried this one.

Using continuous curves on these wee 3" 9 patches made them quilt up a lot faster.

Used the leaf feather in this square and another border of cc.

Thanks Maria, it was such a pleasure to quilt your lovely quilt.

One last pic...this is my most beautiful great granddaughter who lives in Perth, Australia.  I am praying hard that I will get to meet her at the end of the year.  She will be 3 in October and is called Tiana.  Dad Wiremu loves her so much and they spend lots of time together.

Take care and I wont make any rash promises about being back....just will do my best to chat with you again soon.

Hugs and blessings
Clare