New Kids Quilt pattern from Upper Canada Quiltworks

Northcott has some great new fabric lines coming out and this one is super sweet!!

"A Little Birdie Told Me" is a line of flannel fabrics featuring woodland creatures, bugs and flowers and we used it to make a cute kids quilt using fusible applique circles. Our "Hip Hip Hooray" pattern makes a twin sized quilt - 65" x 81" - perfect for a little one who is just graduating from a crib to a "big girl" or "big boy" bed. And we all know how cuddly soft Northcott flannel is!!!

"Hip Hip Hooray" quilt

You can get the "Hip Hip Hooray" pattern from a quilt shop near you, or you can download an epattern from our Craftsy store. The quilt is also SUPER cute when made with a white background!!

New Halloween pattern from Upper Canada Quiltworks Publishing

WOW!!! I can't believe that it is already August 17th!! Since I was on holidays for two weeks and then I was working extra shifts at the drug store to cover other people's holidays the first half of August just seems to have vanished into thin air!!

BUT.... I have been doing lots of work at home too and a couple of the things we've been working on are new patterns for Upper Canada Quiltworks using new fabric lines from Northcott!!

The first new one is coming out just in time to sew for Halloween and it is called "More Little Tricksters" which uses Northcott's new "Happy Halloween" line.

Our pattern uses the panel from the line as well as some of the fun co-ordinates.

The pattern for "More Little Tricksters" is now available at quilt shops and in our Craftsy Store!

New Beginnings Block of the Month

August block is now available!!

Our New Beginnings Block of the Month program is moving right along and the August block is now available for download.

Here is my block - made with my awesome selection of batiks. As you can see, I've used a couple different cream batiks, a navy one, a turquoise and a peach as my accent fabric. This block is one of our more complex one and I really like it!

As I've been making the blocks I've been pressing all of the seams open - I'll admit, not one of my favourite things to do, but I'm sure that I will appreciate it when I start assembling the quilt top.

Here is a close-up showing my beautiful batik fabrics.

Visit Craftsy to download this pattern and to see the rest of the blocks for the New Beginnings Block of the Month quilt. The general directions are free to download as are two BONUS blocks

General Instructions on Craftsy

As mentioned in the General Instructions, anyone who makes a block and uploads a picture of it to Craftsy will have their name entered into our grand prize draw for a complete quilt kit!!The more blocks you make, the more times your name will be entered.

Machine quilting my orange poppy wall hanging

52 Week UFO Challenge #34 - Poppy wall hanging

Back in 2006 - yes TEN YEARS AGO - my mom and I attended Quilt Canada in Ottawa and took a course on creating pictorial flower quilts from a photo. I wish I could remember the name of the technique we used or who taught the class, but the handouts we received are long gone (or lost somewhere in the depths of my sewing room).

My flower applique was finished shortly after we came home from the conference, but I never knew how I wanted to border and quilt it, so I tucked it away and was surprised when I found it back in December!

I have quite a collection of batik fabrics - all housed in this shoe organizer. I LOVE batiks, and always seem to be adding to my stash. I figured that was a good place to start when looking for border fabrics for my poppy.

I picked out a few to audition...

And ended up picking a black batik for the inner border and two different orange prints for the outside border.

Once I got it loaded it on my Gammill, I had fun doing lots of machine quilting on the flower and  background.

Here is a view of the back of the wallhanging showing some of the machine quilting.

Here is the finished project. I really love how it turned out and really can't believe that it took me ten years to finish it. Good thing I started my 52 week UFO challenge!! Project #34 is done!!

Using left over tumbler blocks to make a table runner

52 Week UFO Challenge - Project #33

I have made quite a few projects using my Accuquilt Tumbler Dies. I have both the 3 1/2" and 6" size dies and find that they are AWESOME for making large and small projects. 

I used the larger die to make the Tumbling Waters quilt for A Needle Pulling Thread magazine and (just like always) used my die cutter to cut up the leftover fabric into extra pieces. 

A Needle Pulling Thread - Fall 2015

I used some of these small tumbler shapes to make a pillow - Project #27 in my 52 Week UFO Challenge.  But I still had many more left over, so I randomly sewed them together into four rows of 15 tumblers each. I then sewed these rows together and trimmed the ends of the table runner straight. I popped it onto my Gammill and quilted it with gentle curves from end to end. This quilting design is fast and easy to do - even with a walking foot on your home machine!!

After trimming off the excess backing and batting I got out my binding box and found one that would work perfectly. If you are looking for tips on tidying up (and using) extra binding strips check out my blog post on March 22nd.

Picking a binding

Here it is - the finished table runner. Doesn't that make you think of tropical waters!! Project #33 is done AND I've finally used up ALL of those tumbler blocks!!