Magpie Quilts

Quilters are known for their generosity and the guilds that I have been a part of have made quilts for a variety of causes: premature babies, abused women, homeless people, victims of natural disasters and kids of all kinds to name a few. For me, it's a chance to let total strangers know that they have value as a person and the best way I know to show love is to make a quilt. This quilt was sent to Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, Canada. Take a minute to look it up on your map. Look up, way up and you can find it on Victoria Island. Wikipedia says: " Cambridge Bay is a hamlet located on Victoria Island in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut, Canada. It is named for Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, while the traditional Inuinnaqtun name for the area is Ikaluktuutiak or Iqaluktuttiaq meaning "good fishing place " The Canadian north has many communities that have vast challenges with a number of issues: lingering issues from the residential school systems, food insecuri...

Pattern is California Dreamin' by Fons and Porter (available here) Fabrics - assorted from my closet California Dreamin' This summer I had the pleasure of having my 10-year old granddaughter come and spend a few days with me. We decided to make a quilt during the time we had together and I didn't really expect to get a lot done past picking a pattern and fabric and a bit of sewing. Laying out the quilt blocks From the magazines I had, she looked and found this pattern from the Easy Quilts Spring 2014 from Fons and Porter. We then photocopied the pattern and went to the fabric closet to pick out fabrics. The 3-D effect of this quilt is from the clever use of warm and cool colours and soon there was a stack of warm coloured fabrics and a stack of cool. More blocks  After a quick introduction to the basics of sewing, we were off and sewing. Between the two of us, we finished sewing and trimming all the blocks needed for a quilt top in the two days she was...

Small quilts are some of my favourite quilts to make. They take very little fabric, allow me to try out different techniques and colour schemes. Straight furrows mini quilt - FOR SALE HERE  This quilt began as a collection of 2.5" squares from a quilt guild retreat. In quilter lingo, these are called mini charm squares and this particular collection is very charming! Mini charm squares  I paired them with an off-white tone on tone fabric and sewed them into half square triangles. And the off-white seemed just a little too plain and I used one of the pre-programmed decorative stitches to accent the lines in the quilt. Decorative stitching  Because I didn't get these fabrics from my own stash, I needed to find a border that would coordinate with the charm squares and I first found a lilac for an inner border and then found a brown fabric for the binding that isn't an exact match, but it does work with the overall colour scheme. Adding borders  The ...