Thursday, September 29, 2011

Back to the Drawing Board

The Fraser Valley Modern Quilt Guild is participating in Robert Kaufman's charm pack challenge. Our quilts are due at our upcoming October meeting. Hopefully they will be completed but if not, at least our quilt top needs to be finished. The Challenge is to make a quilt with every colour in the Charm pack (no matter how small each piece is). We can add fabric but only solid colours.




















I've had my Charm pack, a lovely stack of 12cm by 12cm fabric in every Kona colour you can imagine, for a couple of weeks now. For someone that gets ga-ga about fabric, I was even surprised at how much I loved looking at this little stack. I would even go as far as to say it made me giddy! I tried to describe how exciting this was to my interior design friend. I told her it is like getting a can of paint for every colour in one of her colour swatch books! Her eyes lit up as she nodded dreamily and I knew she understood.













Even though I knew right away what I wanted to do for the challenge,  I had to draw the stack first and savour these little yummy pieces of fabric... before I start (GULP) cutting into them!












Now what will the quilt look like? I'll keep you posted! Cheers!


Friday, September 23, 2011

Harvest Time

 I made this quilt for my father in law back in April when he officially became a senior.  He LOVES his John Deere tractor and since he has come to my rescue with it on more than one gardening occasion, I thought he deserved something extra special.


















My husband and I are from Alberta but moved out to Vancouver in the early '90's and I guess as a reaction to that move a lot of my work has reflected where we are from.









 



 

I had a hard time adjusting to the west coast landscape and was homesick for open horizons and big blue skies. Don't get me wrong,We love the west coast and love living here which is why we never moved back but there is something special about the place you grow up in.


















When we were expecting our first son, it seemed only natural that we added a few John Deere accents to the baby's yellow and soft green room. I made a John Deere changing pad, covered a few pillows here, acquired  a John Deere lamp and it snow balled from there. Then the blankets and fabric started rolling in, we became the John Deere people. People would see something in John Deere and  they would pick it up for us. So for years I kept accumulating this fabric and what was I going to do with it all, so this was the perfect project!


















This part of the quilt is from the changing pad I made for the babies room but, now that our son is 11, I didn't think he'd mind much that I cut it up. Lots of the other John Deere fabric was used on the back of the quilt.

I just love how quilts crinkle after they have been washed!
Sewing the lines in the sky was super fun to do.

Oh and I forgot to mention, I had each of his grandchildren do a bit of sewing on the quilt, just to make it extra special!

Mr John Deere, tickled pink! Or should I say green?

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Psst... pass it on!

It seemed not that long ago I was driving away singing "Schoooooool's out for Suuuummaarr!!"
but as all good things, summer has come to an end and it's back to school time!

This summer I was inspired to make this quillow (yes, the quillow, I'm bringing it back baby!) by my son who had just finished grade 5. Ahhh... Grade 5, the switch from "Girls are gross!" to "Do you think I should ask her out?"  This of course is usually done by the passing of a note, in which you have to check box: (A) for yes or box (B) for no.










 














 


































What do you think?
Check box (A) for yes I like
or
Check box (B) for no I don't like