Spring Time Tulips

Springtime and the tulips are popping up somewhere - not here in Alberta yet!

I've had this buttery yellow floral print for a while and thought I could use it to bring a bit of springtime early. (pictures are from early 2025)

A sweet tulip pattern and some custom quilting by me.

It's always hard for me to decide what I want to quilt. I'm getting better every time I do my own quilting, but I still prefer to send my big quilts out to be quilted and my go-to for most projects is an all-over meander. 

And I had a piece of this sweet pink bicycle fabric that was just large enough for the back! Can't say I planned that out - just lucky!

Do you change out your decor for spring?

--Ann

Pillow Talk

The Farmer's Prayer Quilt had some fabrics left over and the pattern had bonus instructions for making a pillow. 

A block echoing one that was in the quilt plus some flying geese blocks around two of the sides makes a nice pattern.

The back is an envelope style that has an opening that you can easily slip in a pillow form. 

Nice project to use up a few left over fabric pieces.

--Ann

(This pillow is sold)

String Quilt Update

The string quilt I've been working on for the last couple years is finally finished!

I love scrappy quilts and this one was so much fun to make with my left over strips and bindings. 

So much fabric history from my scraps. I can remember almost all the quilts made with these fabrics!

If I make another, I will use a larger white strip for the diagonals - this one used a 1" wide cut and I think even 1/4" wider would make a big difference. A different choice like black or teal blue would be a nice touch too.

And the for the backing - I was going to purchase a backing, but then I thought to go to my fabric stash and pick something from there. So these are 3 pieces left from other quilt backings and I pieced them together to make something wide enough. Pretty happy with the result!

Quilted by the amazing Marie of Blueberry Hill quilts in High River, Alberta.

What's your fav scrappy quilt pattern?

--Ann

Hand Quilting

All my quilts when I started quilting many years ago were hand quilted and the binding finished by hand. 

Machine quilting is much quicker and gives a very different look. No method is better or worse - you can show off your workmanship whatever method you chose. 

This table runner is made from some left over blocks that didn't make it into a full size quilt, so I pieced them together with sashing and borders and quilted by machine around the outline of the stars. 

And I'm finishing with some turquoise and brown thread by quilting by hand 1/4" inside each piece. I started by using painters tape to mark my 1/4", but that went out the window pretty quick and I'll be finishing the handquilting by eyeball! 

What do you prefer? Hand or machine quilting?

--Ann

A Farmer's Prayer Quilt

I rarely buy kits as I prefer to mix and match my own fabric selections to make a quilt but this quilt was a different story. I had purchased the panel a while ago - probably at a quilt show, I can't remember! And when I pulled it out of the closet to work on it, I didn't see any other pattern to use than the one that was designed for it.

I try to source my fabric and patterns locally whenever possible or via PDF when I can't. This pattern was found at a rural Alberta quilt shop called Beaver Creek Mercantile and I asked them to make a kit for it as well. They didn't have all the identical fabrics for the quilt, but the fabrics they sent worked really well together.

I backed this one with a fabric called Fireside. It's soft like Minky, but with less pile. Quilting was done by Marie of Blueberry Hill Quilts in High River.

And we found a great rural location to get some photos with farmers working in the background. (This one has been sold!)

--Ann

And more Denim Quilts

Having large piles of blue jeans on hand for quilt making or other items means boxes and bins taking up space. Used clothing requires deconstruction and while I looked for faded denim jeans and waited for my customer to get back to me with an ok for her queen quilt, I started the task of cutting everything apart.

I cut the jean legs from the tops right at the crotch level, leaving the tops intact for making bags. I then cut the seams off and I have a few ideas for those pieces that will show up over the next year or so.

A lot of the darker jean legs were cut into squares and matched with some purple and green flannel fabrics that I already cut into squares for a rag quilt and layered them with a square of batting that was an inch smaller.

After laying them out to get a random placement of the flannel fabrics, it was time to sew it all together. I had enough squares for two lap size quilts - big enough to use on a twin bed as an extra blanket.

After sewing the squares together with the seam allowances showing on the front, it was time to clip the seams for a ragged edge. This took several evenings of clipping while watching television.

Final step is running it through the washing machine to fray the seam edges and get that ragged look. It was almost too much for my washing machine and the lint filters needed cleaning a few times through the process. 

But the rich denim colors are so great with the flannels and gives a much different look than the faded blues of the previous post.

--Ann

More Jean Circle Quilts

Denim - it goes with everything and although the quilts made from them are heavier than a normal quilt - they will wear forever!

This lap size quilt was made early in 2024 and the customer who bought it loved it. She then messaged me to ask if I could make another one, this time in a Queen size. 

So I tapped into my online friend network to find the denim I needed as that first quilt used up all the denim I had on had. I ended up with a pile of a variety of colors. My customer then requested that she would like the faded denim look from the first quilt - which I made solely from my husbands worn jeans that were all the same style and color. The denim I had collected was definitely more on the medium to dark blue and wouldn't work for her.

I had one more friend that had jeans for me and thankfully, most of her jeans were the well-faded variety! Not sure that I had enough for a queen quilt, I traced and cut out circles, figuring that if I didn't have enough, I would at least know what I did have.

Most modern quilt making techniques involve using a rotary cutter and a ruler - which is far easier than the hand cutting with scissors that was required for the circle cutting. And . . . I had enough!

I layered a cotton fabric square with a piece of batting on the denim circles and stitched an X on them before sewing together. 

Queen size was going to be a challenge to maneuver through my machine, so I finished the quilt in four pieces and joined them together at the very end, so I would only have minimal seams at the very end. 

There were a little more variety in the shades of the faded denim than the first quilt, but the well-worn faded look is so beautiful in this larger quilt!

When a quilt is a custom order like this one, I only have a day or two to take photos for my records and I just love this one taken in front of our barn. Love it!

--Ann