Anyone who regularly visits my blog will already have seen and read all this but since
Amy's Blogger's Quilt Festival is going on, I'm telling the story for new visitors as part of the festival.
Category: Throw Quilt
This is one of two largish quilts I made this summer. In fact they are my FIRST largish solo quilts EVER! I'm kind of new at this.
This quilt is for Uncle Reg (my mother-in-law's brother) who turned 90 this year. He's quite the inspiration with his good health, energy, humour, and attitude. He's had a really incredible life that has taken him from a modest Saskatchewan farm, through World War II as a pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force (remarkably surviving several crashes), family life with three daughters, and now grandchildren. He still golfs and curls and both cheers and curses the Roughriders (our professional football team). He's also famous for his gardening expertise, roses in particular.
I won 6 one yard cuts of this fabric. It's
Curious Nature designed by David Butler. When the fabric arrived I liked it so much that I bought fat quarters of the complete line. It's very masculine fabric and, for whatever reason and before I even realized it was Uncle Reg's 90th birthday this year, the fabric reminded me immediately of him. So ... good reason to make the man a lap quilt. I picked out the blue/oyster/cream/black toned fabrics from the line for this quilt. I envisioned photos on the quilt so I undertook figuring that out. It turned out to be challenging and time-sucking but, ultimately, I'm very happy with how the photos printed onto fabric. What I learned about that process is a whole blog post on its own.
Auntie Eileen volunteered to embroider the strip with the words, poppies and roses. She has a fancy embroidering machine.
I had the quilt longarm quilted by
Lynette Hankewich of
Ladybug Longarm Quilting. She just quilted in the ditch so as not to quilt over the photos. She did a great job considering "stitching in the ditch" is not so easy on a longarm quilting machine. Perhaps I could have quilted this by myself on my little Pfaff Tipmatic but I've never machine quilted before and I didn't want to start on this particular quilt.
I pieced the back of the quilt using what was left of the six 1 yard cuts that I won.
I used all the fabric scraps pieced together for the binding and I included a strip of red fabric with fleur de lis on it for a touch of red. I do like a touch of red. And this is Canada after all, so a nod to the French is always in order for we English Canadians.
The above photo (the one on the park bench) shows the colours in the quilt more realistically than in the other photos, which make the quilt look overall more "blueish" than it really is.
I was very lucky to have Sean stop by to hold the quilt up for me. Sean's Mom is a quilter, too. He and his brothers and his Dad are all closer to 7 feet tall so they are every quilter's "best friends". Prior to that I tried to take photos of it all by myself at various places at the University of Saskatchewan campus.
Quilt Stats:
Name: "90 Squares of a Curious Nature"
Size: 54" x 69"
Fabric: Curious Nature by Parson Gray (David Butler), one charm square in the middle of the quilt that has various synonyms for "home" on it and is from Sweetwater's Hometown fabric line, and Kona Pepper for sashing and borders.
Inspiration Quilt: Chrysalis by Heather D at the "Crafting ... Blog"
Longarm Quilting: Lynnette of Ladybug Longarm Quilting in Saskatoon
Particulars: The quilt has 90 squares representing 90 years. Photos were printed using an Epson laserjet printer and Epson ink and I used cotton inkjet sheets from
Electric Quilt Company available at
Periwinkle Quilt Shop in Saskatoon and PeachTree Quilt Shop in Regina.
Best Category: Throw Quilt
I didn't use a pattern but, after looking at the "inspiration quilt" and knowing charm packs were used to make it, I used 5 inch squares (a good choice because I could get two 5" square photos out of one cotton photo printer sheet), and 1.5 inch strips of Kona Pepper cut to 5" and 6" lengths. The squares have black borders on 2 sides only and then you just turn every 2nd square to get this jiggy look. If it hadn't been for struggles with my first attempt at printing on fabric, this would have been a very quick and easy quilt to put together. It's worth noting that if you decide to make a similar quilt, prepare all the fabric squares first and then lay the whole thing out and figure out where you're going to put your photo squares because that will determine where you put the two sashing pieces on those. You don't want to end up with upside down photos!
I like how Sean's sneakers peak out from under the quilt.
For the quilt label I used the corner of a handkerchief that features red roses since Uncle Reg is famous for his rose gardening.
The quilt was delivered and, with blessed happenstance, the quilt colours match Uncle Reg's decor perfectly! I'm so pleased about that.
Click on the photos if you want to see them full sized.
Blogger's Quilt Festival Fall 2012 - 90 Squares of a Curious Nature
This quilt was such a pleasure to make, partly because it came together so easily and mostly because it's the first quilt I've made for any of my own immediate family. It's for Luke. He's a mathematician so a "plus quilt" seemed appropriate. The fabrics aren't from any one line. They're all reds, creams, blacks, greys, and taupes. I included fabrics that have fleur de lis on them because it's the symbol I most see in Louisville. I also included fabric with crowns on it because he is, after all, my prince. And I included some Sweetwater Hometown fabric that has the names of cities from around the world. I made sure to include some pieces that have "Saskatoon" on them as well as some other cities Luke has been to.
Since I hadn't decided on the finished size of the quilt, I waited until the top was finished at the end of November before going to Periwinkle to pick up the backing fabric I'd had my eye on - super soft and cuddly black dimpled minky. I'd been watching it regularly and even the week before there was still TONS of it on the bolt. When I went to get it, though, someone had arrived only 20 minutes before I got there and bought ALL NINE METERS of it! All of it. Gone! The people at Periwinkle were great, though, and were able to get some in just in time for Lynette (who longarm quilted it for me in an all-over pattern) to do her magic. I got it back the Saturday before Christmas. That night, fortunately, Luke was out and I spent the evening doing the binding and getting it machine sewed on to the front. There was no way I would get the hand sewing part done so I wrapped it up for Christmas as it was and did the hand sewing a couple of days ago. It was a 4 movie job and since I was … am … mostly sick with a nasty head cold, it was just the kind of sewing I could do.
So today we took some photos before I wash it. 
Auntie Anne celebrated her 80th birthday this Christmas and since I was on a mug rug roll, I made one for her. I've had and wanted to try out a dresden ruler for some time and so I busted it out for her mug rug. 
I work at the Centre for the Study of Co-operatives at the University of Saskatchewan and since the United Nations declared 2012 the International Year of Co-operatives, it seemed important to mark the year in a crafty way.
With renovations recently done in our building, the room where we regularly had lunch is now sometimes booked for events meaning we often have to eat lunch at our desks. I thought these might come in handy for that purpose. I won a mug rug a couple of years ago and it has been the handiest thing to have sitting in front of our desktop computer. 
Well, it took me over a year. It's approaching "toddler quilt" status. But it's done. Josh and Noelene are both pilots, hence all the planes and copters!
We were able to Skype with Robert and his family on Christmas day. He looked to be having a perfectly wonderful Christmas with his Grandma and Grandpa Kerr and Aunt Kathy there, too.
It's so nice to have both of our kids home for Christmas. For the first time in we can't remember when, we all decorated the tree together after Hannah got home.With Hannah home, we also got to see some of her friends who are still here or, at least, here for Christmas. Leah, Cody, and a bunch more. Sadly, we did not get to see Kayla, Gillian, Marissa, or Katelyn (except briefly at Shelley's and Ian's Christmas party).
And when Luke comes home, all our other boys come home, too! I missed some latecomers in this group shot and a few who couldn't make it … some because they had exams this morning.
Thank you Patti (of Retired to Quilt) for including me in the list of Saskatchewan Quilt Bloggers. I feel like a bit of a poser among the others but I'm starting to feel more and more like a REAL quilter all the time!
In March of this year I posted about this fabric pictured here. Mom and I had discovered it in the bags of scraps Mom had brought to the city for us to sort through and cut into quilt squares. I didn't recognize this fabric and Mom thought it must be from Grandma Kerr's scraps. There were some quite large pieces of it and it had obviously been used to make some garment. 
And then, bonus, we found a piece of the selvedge that reads, ""A Signature Fabric, "Rubaiyat", created by Vincent Malta of Associated American Artists, copyright 1955." I don't recall fabrics ever having information in the selvedge when I was a kid and since this fabric is from before I was born, I thought that alone meant there must be something special about it. I did some rudimentary Googling but didn't find anything. 
I haven't made much quilting progress lately. I would love nothing more than a week at home alone to just sew and sew and sew. I've been experiencing some "life interuptus" and now it's time to get back to doing what I want to do, which is SEW.
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