Quitls and Cushions

Last winter when I was not able to work and it was too cold to be outside I began working on various sewing projects, some with the thought of having children in the future (I will post some of those later). One was a New Zealand ABC quilt. When my nephew in NZ saw it he said "Aunty, can you make me a blanky like that". Well, I thought seeing as I had extra fabric I would love to do that for him. And then began the projects as then I wanted to make one for each of the NZ nieces and nephews.

This was the first one I made for Curtis, he loves Lego and these were the colours that I had. 

The circles are fabric yoyos
with batting in them and
sewn upside down. Because
they stick up I could only
quilt around the outside
edge and then sew around
the individual rectangles.

When looking in the local sewing shop I saw a panel hanging on a wall. Thinking it looked familiar I saw that it was in fact the NZ emergency vehicles. So after much thought decided that it would be less work to use a panel and that it would work well for Zeth.

Then for the girls, I started with a simple tri-coloured square pattern for Emily.

For Leira I worked out a pattern that would work with the amount of fabric I had left and added the brown which was left over from a project I did for a friend. The quilting pattern took away from it a bit but the flowers in the centre and corners are embroidered.



We wanted to get the quilts to the children for Christmas, and so decided to post them as there are no plans for anyone coming to take them back. So I had a deadline and that meant hand quilting would take way to long. I was able to use a long-arm quilting machine at the sewing shop which was fun to learn to use.

One day when some of our Canadian nieces and nephew were visiting, one of the girls asked if I could make her one too. I told her that I was doing them for the NZ nieces and nephews because I don't get to visit them and wanted them to know we think of them. She told me that she would rather have me spend time with them than have a quilt. I thought that was pretty special and when I was not able to do much due to being sick with pregnancy I began work on a project for the Canadian nieces and nephews. The first three cushions are made with what I had left over from other projects.

I got to the point where sewing was too much for me and so Davis' Mom taught me to knit. Then I got an idea, why not knit cushions for our other niece and nephews. Well, that was sure a trickier job than I had thought but this was the finished project.