A Super Hero Quilt for Maddox

This is the third of four quilts I made in the last few months. Four quilts for four children who lost their father last year.

Maddox's quilt has a Super Hero theme.

The inspiration for this quilt came from a picture of Maddox and his Dad taken one Halloween. Maddox is dressed up as Captain America and his Dad is dressed up as Superman. Kevin has his hands on his hips, just like Superman, and is looking straight ahead. Maddox is looking up at his dad with that look of admiration only a child could have for his Hero, his Dad.  Perfection.

The t-shirts were all worn by Kevin and the blue patches are from his shirts. The plaid ones are actually from some pyjama pants. We picked up the red fabrics from our local quilt shop as well as the border, binding and backing.

The Captain America T-shirt was a gift Maddox gave his Dad for his birthday and also the last t-shirt Kevin wore before he passed away.

Kevin was a fan of Ralph Lauren Polo shirts so I added a patch from one of those shirts.

patch from Ralph Lauren polo shirt

 I quilted the pattern Jessie's Swirls on the quilt to add some texture and movement to the geometric squares.

quilt on the longarm

For the back of the quilt I used a nice blue crosshatch fabric from Carolyn Friedlander, one of my favourites.

back of quilt

This is Maddox's label with the scriptures his mom picked out just for him.

His father used to sign every email and letter: "Here, with a purpose."

Everything was very well thought out and has special meaning.

label

The children received their quilts on the 1 year anniversary of their father's passing, along with a beautiful photo book their mother put together.  Beautiful keepsakes they will cherish forever.

Stay tuned for the final quilt...

Paxton's Quilt

This is the second of four memory quilts I made in the last few months. Four quilts for four children who lost their father last year.

Paxton is 6 years old and his quilt has a "Canadiana"/Americana All-Star Theme.

Nancy found this pattern on Pinterest and it really spoke to her because her husband, Kevin, was born in The United States.  The pattern was originally for a Queen size bed so I did some playing around with the measurements so that I could have something to work with and we would end up with a lap size quilt.

the completed quilt top

The blue parts of the quilt consist of Kevin's blue shirts, the beige parts include one of his shirts, a pair of his pants and some fabrics from my stash and from the fabric store to make it look scrappy. Nancy and I had fun picking out the red fabrics at our local quilt shop. We wanted to add a bit of Americana with the stripes and a bit of "Canadiana" with the maple leaves. It was the perfect time to buy all of those fabrics, it being the sesquicentennial, and all of those fabulous fabrics being in the store! We also bought the blue border and binding and a dark blue polka dot for the backing.

Kevin was from Atlanta so I added a strip from a shirt that had the word "Atlanta" on it, and he was a fan of Ralph Lauren Polo shirts so I added the tag from one of his shirts to a strip as well.

The inspiration quilt had one star in the centre of it and Nancy liked this idea. Since Paxton is only 6 years old, we wanted to make the quilt playful, so we went with it, and added stars here and there in different colours, some are fabrics from Kevin's shirts and some aren't. I even found that fun navy star fabric in my stash.

To keep with the theme I quilted a Stars and Loops pattern on the quilt.

the quilt, loaded on the longarm

The stars and loops really show up nicely on the back of the quilt with the lighter coloured thread.

the back 

 Here is Paxton's label, with the scriptures, picked especially for him by his mom.

His dad used to sign every email and letter: "Here, with a purpose."

Everything was very well thought out and has special meaning.

the label

The children received their quilts on the 1 year anniversary of their father's passing, along with a beautiful photo book their mother put together.  Beautiful keepsakes they will cherish forever.

2 more quilts to go...

A Quilt for Brinley-Blüe

I have been working on a project for the past little while and now that the quilts have been received, I am so happy that I can share them with you.

I have made four memory quilts for 4 children who lost their father last year. Their mother approached me last fall and we have worked together to make these wonderful keepsakes.

The quilts have so much meaning and detail that I decided they each deserve their own blog post so this will be the first of four posts.

Brinley-Blüe is 5 years old, and the youngest of the family.  Her favourite colour is purple.

When I first met with Blüe's mom Nancy, she had separated all of  Kevin's clothes into piles of different colours. This pile had a lot of striped shirts so we added a pair of grey shorts.

just the beginning...

Nancy wanted a different pattern for each quilt. She wanted each one to reflect the personality of the child it was going to.

the completed quilt top

I brought her to our local quilt shop and we had a great time picking out borders, backings and filler fabrics for each quilt.

For Brinley-Blüe's quilt, we added the lovely mauve for the border and I used it for some of the triangles as well.  I also added a grey polka dot and a grey and black print.

Blüe's dad loved to wear Ralph Lauren Polo shirts and Kenneth Cole shirts so I added the tags from the shirts to the patches on the quilt.

I wanted the quilt to have a feminine look to it so I quilted a pattern called Butterfly Vines on it. I love the texture the pattern added to the quilt, and the softness the curves added to the geometric shape of the triangles.

For the backing I used a nice grey polka dot. We liked it so much we decided to use it for the binding as well.

backing

Each quilt also got it's very own personalized label. The label includes the child's name as well as some scriptures, specially picked by Nancy.

Kevin used to sign e-mails and letters: "Here, with a purpose."

Everything was very well thought out and has special meaning. 

the label

The children received their quilts on the 1 year anniversary of their father's passing, along with a beautiful photo book their mother put together. Beautiful keepsakes they will cherish forever.

Stay tuned for the other 3 quilts...

Working on some Christmas quilts

I spent part of my day working on some Christmas WIPs in the hopes that I might get them done in time for The Holidays.

In From The Cold

First I finished putting the borders on my In From The Cold quilt. I am so pleased with this quilt and I can't wait to quilt it! It will hang in my dining room.

Christmas Sampler

Then I pulled out these exchange blocks from my quilt group. I think we exchanged these in 2014.

I had 8 blocks and I want a square wall hanging so I had to make another block. I added the block in the upper right hand corner. Now I am working on the sashing and then I will add a border. This one will hang above the couch in the living room.

I'll share them again when they are done but I thought it might inspire some of you to pull out some WIPs or to work on some Holiday projects.

 

 

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Giving to Charity

My quilting friends and I have been working for the past 6 months or so on some Charity quilts and I wanted to share them with you.

I found out about a home in our city where young women who are going through a hard time can go when they are pregnant or just had a baby.  They have another group of women donating quilts for the babies and I thought it would be nice to be able to do something for the young moms.  So we are making quilts for them to put on their beds and use while they are staying at the home, but that they can then take with them when they are ready to leave.

There are 15 beds at the home so for our first donation we have dropped off 15 quilts.  We wanted to make sure all of the girls get a quilt. 

There are 9 of us participating in various ways in the making of these quilts.  Some donated fabric from our stash, some donated orphan blocks, some pieced the tops, some quilted, some did the bindings.  We all chipped in to buy the batting.  Some of us even had some quilt tops that we didn't want anymore and donated those.

It was fun to see how Alice put Betty's orphan blocks together with Rita's fabric! It's been a great group project and a lot of fun getting rid of some of our old fabrics and UFO's at the same time.

We will be making more and bring them as they are done so that when new girls come to stay at the home, they get a quilt too.

My mom and I dropped the quilts off earlier this week.  The ladies who work at the home were so happy with our donation.  They are going to let the girls pick their own quilt, so they can have something they like.

It feels so good to give! I highly recommend it if you can do it too.