Catching Up on Christmas: Part 3

The final thing left on my Christmas catch up are the gifts I made for my brother. Quite a while ago, I purchased a couple panels of Canadian cities, knowing that I wanted to make something for my brother out of them, but not knowing what. One thing that had crossed my mind was seat cushions, so when he asked me to make him a seat cushion in the fall, I knew it was time to dig out the panels.

I had also bought some fabric with the provinces listed on it to go with whatever I had decided to do with the panels. I don't have a close up shot of that to show here. I thought I only had a little, so I used it sparingly, and then it turned out I had more than I thought, so I could have used more (especially because I don't have another plan for it)

I made an envelope-style cover, with ribbon ties coming out the two back corners. I then wrapped some foam in batting and stuffed it inside. 

I put them together in a couple groups. Quebec (above)/Ontario(below) were one set.

Then I did  a set of four that contained western cities on one side...

And eastern cities on the other.

I had a few too many panels, so I saved the west-coast ones for another project.

He also needed a new mask (since the one I threw together 2 years ago for use for a few weeks had been well worn). This year, he got season's tickets to see the Kitchener Rangers play (when we could do things in person), so I made him a mask to wear to the games.

 

I think I have now caught up on posting about last year's Christmas gifts. It's probably time to start working on this year's gifts :D.

Favourite Furry Friends

At Christmas time my friend, K, who moved away to England, was able to visit for the first time in two years. Last time we saw her it was Christmas of 2019 and she had a 4 month old baby. This time she was coming back into the country with a 2 year old.

My friend, B, and I knew we wanted to make her son something, but weren't quite sure what. We knew it couldn't be too big, as she had to be able to fly home with whatever it was. And we wanted it to be appealing to a 2 year old :).

We landed on finger puppets as something not too hard for us to make, small enough to pack into a suitcase, and even possible entertainment for the flight home.

We started by looking around online for ideas and then drawing out our samples. We definitely liked different elements from different things we saw online so there was a lot of "well we like the nose from this one, but the teeth on this one".

We had narrowed down our list of animals to Canadian animals so we could remind our friend's son of his heritage :D. 

We pulled out the felt we already owned, but also had to buy some. I have a lovely assortment of rainbow colours of felt. Do you know what doesn't involve a lot of rainbow colours...Canadian animals. In fact, we had to carefully pick and plan our browns so that we didn't end up with a bunch of finger puppets that basically looked identical.

We also hand stitched all of the pieces - with pieces that small it was just easier. Plus the embroidery floss for stitching was a really cute look. We seemed to have the uncanny ability to run out of thread about an inch before the end, no matter how long the thread we started with was.

Top left to bottom right we made an orca, a moose, a bear (I don't know if we ever decided whether it was a grizzly or a black bear), a beaver, a polar bear, and a raccoon.

We also made a bag for them that was a Canadian flag. We made a cotton pouch for the interior, so the puppets won't stick to it, and then surrounded it by felt.

We didn't do a great job of documenting, so I don't have pictures of the back of the beaver or the raccoon. The tails on the beaver and the racoon definitely took the longest. We stitched a crosshatch onto the beavers tail, but also planned it out so that enough of the design was sticking out the side. The pieces of the raccoon tail were small enough that having things to stitch through, and not shifting their shape, was difficult.

The orca was definitely my friend B's favourite one. She worked very hard on the design and construction of it. We did it in profile and so made it double-sided. We also stitched it so the flipper isn't stuck down - definitely our most intricate one.

Overall we were very happy with how they came together, and they seemed well received by the recipient. We might have to start thinking about whether there are other Canadian animals that could be added to the collection at a later date.

A Quilt of My Very Own

Next up on the list of "projects I'm getting caught up blogging about" is one of my favourites.

A few years ago I decided it was time to make a project just for me :).

I had seen the City Slicker pattern from Highway 10 Designs a number of times and really enjoyed every version of it I had seen (probably because it was usually made with batiks, which are my absolutely favourite kind of fabrics). I also liked it's simplicity.

A number of years ago at Christmas, I took my supplies up to my grandparents house to get started on the project. It's a great place to get things done - partially because one has lots of time and few responsibilities while there, but also because Gramma is a taskmaster an encourager of completion :D. I cut out all the pieces, and possibly began stitching them, I can't fully remember.

Once the top was put together, I was then in search of a back. I had previously seen a number of mathematically inspired fabrics, and I decided that since this was a project for me and I love math, that I would treat myself to one. However, I seemed to have missed that train, as all the nerdy fabrics had seemed to switch to be chemistry themed. Eventually I found the perfect fabric. It was bright and colourful and fun and covered in math: symbols, equations, and visual representations, oh my! 

I started by hand quilting the top. I did stitch in the ditch for all the seams. I also quilted around the interiors of each of the white rectangles. I used a brightly coloured variegated thread and sometimes quilted a single line, sometimes a double line, of varying sizes/widths.

Apparently the only pictures I took of the quilting process was when I kept majorly bending my needle. (I lost a lot of needles to this quilt.). It was in the frames 2018 into 2019, which leads me to believe I probably took it up to my grandparents in 2016 to get started (I'd like to think it was actually Christmas of 2017 that I began it, but realistically it was probably 2016).

I began with hand quilting because I am more familiar and comfortable with it. I knew that I also wanted to do some machine quilting on it, so I figured that the hand quilting first would help to stabilize it while I shoved it back and forth through the machine. The big question was, how (and where) did I want to machine quilt it. 

This picture was originally taken to show my Xmas
decorations, but it also gives you a sense of what it's
like to live with a quit in the frames
(and then when it's at its smallest)

So into the closet it went. I wanted to contemplate how I wanted to quilt it, but I also wanted to improve my machine quilting skills before I started on it - I had already put the fabrics I love into it and put a lot of work into the hand quilting, so I didn't want to ruin it on the last step. And in the closet it sat for a couple years. I had gotten an idea of what I wanted to do, but I didn't have the confidence or the brain power to start on it. Then last summer I decided it was finally time - all those quilt challenges (as small as they were) had finally given me the confidence - it was time to seize the day.

Out of the frame (hand quilting done)

I put together a sample version so that I could test out my idea and my skills. Here's the problem: I tried the design that I had been thinking I'd do for probably a year plus, and it didn't work. It didn't look good, it wasn't the right scale for the project, it was going to be much to hard to implement with the full bulk of a quilt. Back to the drawing board.

It was also time for another trip to my grandparents - the perfect place to get work done. I took up my sample and my half-formed ideas. I also brought the real thing with me. I was thinking that I would get started on it and then it would be easy for me to bring it home and just pick it up and work on it in an evening or a weekend (once I had a plan in place and just had to implement it).

I started out slowly. Trying out a few ideas. Still debating how much I wanted to switch things up or do things the same. I decided to draw a diamond shape inside each rectangle. In some of the rectangles I quilted inside the diamond shape.

In some of the rectangles I quilted outside of the diamond shape.

I also decided to do some of the diamonds so they met at the same outer corner instead of being an echo of each other.

I quilted swirls, and loops, and pebbles (oh my). I was starting to feel good about my plans and my work and how far I was going to get before I went home (which was mostly getting over the brain power hurdle so that at home I could just do the work). 

I as having fun and feeling successful. However, partway through the week, there was a major change of plans. We discovered that we had brought bed bugs up to my grandparents with us 😱. This meant two things: 1. Most of my time was spent spraying and moving and checking and cleaning and washing and crying. And 2. There was no way I was bringing home a quilt that could contain bed bugs and there was no way I was washing a quilt that wasn't done being quilted and bound yet.

That left one option: finish the quilt. So, after more than 2 years of it sitting in a closet because I wanted it to be perfect, I had 3 days to finish quilting it. I got busy and quilted every waking hour that I wasn't working or cleaning (and a few where I was working - hooray for camera-off meetings where I don't need to take notes).

And just like that I was able to finish it, get it in the wash, and even take it out for a photoshoot before we left for our long drive home. Special shout out to my mother who took it to an afternoon meeting with her and got most of the binding finished (good thing I had taken up a couple binding options just to see how they looked).

This is what a quilt looks like when you finish it late at night,
you are about to wash it and you're afraidyou might ruin it
in the wash - you get one terribly lit picture just in case
and put it in the washing machine on a wing and a prayer.

Is it perfect? No.

Would I have done things differently with a little more time? Probably.

Would I still not be finished it yet? Probably.

So, while it was nice to get it done, I would have preferred less stressful circumstances around its completion.

And now it lives on my bed, or the couch, or wherever I am, and just makes me happy.

As does the view from 
my grandparents yard

Block Adoption: An Atlantic Canada Wall Hanging

Full disclosure: I am going back through some picture/projects that I never blogged about. This project was completed in August 2020.

A few years ago (probably more than I want to admit) I was at the thrift store and came across 5 orphaned blocks. They were from the Cantik Batik Canada Mystery blocks designed by the talented Shania Sunga. If I have one weakness in life, it's batiks. (In reality I have many weaknesses in life, but I do LOVE batiks). And here they were, these 5 blocks made of beautiful batiks, fully put together. How could I just leave them there? And so they came home with me.

In the picture, the blocks I got were Northwest Territories (top left), Alberta (top middle), Nunavut (top right), New Brunswick (bottom left), and Nova Scotia (bottom right).

As is true with a lot of fabric I buy, I didn't actually have a plan for them. I wasn't planning on making the entire Canada quilt, I just knew that I couldn't abandon the blocks at the thrift store :). After thinking about it for a bit, I decided that I would like to do just the Atlantic blocks together. I had a friend who followed along with the blocks as the program ran, so she lent me her patterns (and her scraps!) so that I could do my own Newfoundland and PEI. It was even perfect because two of the blocks ran vertically and two of the blocks ran horizontally - it was like they were meant to be put together into a wall hanging. 

Newfoundland block
(sorry about the terrible lighting)

After completing the two other blocks out of my stash (and the provided scraps), I had to figure out a plan.  I already know that I prefer straight stitching on raw edge appliqué. I decided that there were enough little pieces that I did not want to try straight stitching around them through 3 layers. However, I also knew that I didn't want to do quilting over top of the beautiful images. So I made a plan for each block about which parts I would do through a single layer and which parts I would quilt through all 3 layers - trying to balance how much and which parts of the block were quilted all the way through.

As we were in a pandemic, I tried to make do with supplies I had, so I pulled threads that were "close enough" and borrowed from a friend for the rest. (Greens were my downfall).

An example of the stitching I did through the single layer.

I used my computer to design some things I might be able to do with the 4 blocks.

I decided that I liked the look of the strips of different lengths. At first I was thinking that I would pull out colours/fabrics from the blocks and just randomly use them. However, as I started pulling fabrics and laying them out, I decided it would be nice to make the top border be the "sky" and use sunset colours and have the bottom border be the "ground" and used greens for land and blues for water. 

I couldn't decide whether or not I wanted something in the black bit in the middle of the quilt or just do something in there with quilting. In the end I decided to add the blues and yellows to try to pull the blocks together (the blues being the water from in all 4 blocks, but specifically the two vertical ones, the yellows pulling in the yellow sunset and yellows in the tree of the two horizontal blocks).

The next decision was to figure out how to quilt the rest of it. I decided to lean into the "ground" at the bottom and "sky" at the top, so I tried to do waves at the bottom and clouds at the top.

Practice stitching - very important!

The real stuff

This is where I decided that I actually needed to go to the store. Not only did I need shampoo, but I felt like I wanted to make sure I had thread that I was happy with as it was going to show up on the black. I don't normally like to shop at big box stores, but since it was a pandemic, I decided that 1 store where I could get groceries, household supplies, and thread was better for exposure risks.

For the middle section, I did stitch in the ditch on the coloured fabric, and then carried that stripe design through into the black bits as well.

And now time for the photoshoot:

 

 

This project was gifted to a friend's mother (who was my second mother in high school - I still call her "Mommy"). She has a grandbaby that was born out East during the pandemic who she hasn't been able to go and meet in person. While this in no way makes up for that, I thought if she couldn't go out East, I could at least bring a bit of out East to her :).

The other 3 blocks that I got at the thrift store are still waiting for their project :).