I attempted to make a table topper that would match a set of placemats. I didn’t have enough of the matching fabric but I thought that these ones would work. As it turned out the colours were completely “off”.
My first mistake was in the cutting. I didn’t cut those centre squares the right size but I thought I could adjust the rest of the pattern to make it work. I couldn’t so I ended up putting it together with my own pattern.
I like the results but I don’t have a need for another topper so I will offer it for sale at the quilt show.
This was my pattern for the March sew-along with Stacia and Deloise. Because they had both done this one before I had a few notes in my book regarding cutting errors. I tried to follow them but found even with the updated measurements mine wasn’t coming out the right size. I was almost finished when I realized I had completely missed one of the borders. Because I was so far along I chose not to correct my mistake. It finishes a bit smaller than it should have but I’m okay with that as it hangs in the stairwell as part of my collection of small projects.
The fabric I picked for the basket didn’t have enough contrast with the background so I outlined it with a blanket stitch. I’ll keep that technique in mind for another time. Most of the flowers were cut from scraps of fabric I’d used for my One Block Wonder project.
At the Guild’s 2023 quilt show there as a display from Woolies on the Coast of a chicken block done in wool felt embroidery. I couldn’t get it out of my mind and before I knew it I had convinced Stacia and Deloise to stitch along with me. Not only did we get that first block but we bought the entire series of six, and each of those six had a bonus block.
I was very tentative in starting out and really didn’t have a lot of confidence when I got to the end. I enjoyed the stitching but was thankful for the pile of embroidery books and youtube videos to help me with the various stitches. I also admit I copied some of Stacia’s ideas.
When it came to putting it all together I made up my own version. I wanted to add all the bonus blocks in with the main blocks so added some appliqué vines and flowers. In the end, I was very happy with it.
The next chore was to figure out a way to quilt the project. For the appliqué blocks I as able to do a mattress stitch but I didn’t want to stitch over the embroidered blocks. I decided to hand quilt those larger blocks. I used a big stitch hand quilting technique to finish the project.
This was an entry into the Guild’s 2025 quilt show.
I saw one block of this on display at the 2023 quilt show and before I knew what I was doing I had ordered kits for six blocks. It is my first attempt at wool felt embroidery. I quilted some of this by hand (another first for me) and some on my domestic Janome.
This quilt probably took as much time in the planning stage as it did in the making. I’ve always liked the idea of a temperature project but could never settle on what it would be – cross stitch, knitted or quilted, and then all the various options in all of those cases.
About the same time as I was seeing temperature quilts on social media, I got interested in fabric yo yos. I made a practice wreath to see how yo yos were made and then decided to use yo yos in my quilt. The size of the yo yos was the next decision; if there were going to be 365 of them they needed to be small enough that the quilt wouldn’t be super-sized, but they had to be large enough that I’d be able to do some quilting between the rows.
Next decision had to be what year I would choose to represent in my quilt. After some checking to see if I could find historical temperature records I decided to use the temperature readings from Saskatoon during the first year of my life – September 20, 1950 to September 19, 1951.
Once the year had been decided I needed to sort out temperature ranges, both highs and lows. I was working with a fabric line from my stash that had a restricted number of colours. Once the ranges and the fabric that corresponded to the ranges were decided it was time to get started.
The low temperatures of the day are reflected in the background colours while the highs for the day are reflected in the yo yo colours. It is interesting to note that the highest temperature of 33.3o F was on August 4, 1950 and the lowest temperature of -37.2o F was on February 7, 1951.
Surprisingly the whole thing went together quite quickly. The quilting is a simple mattress stitch both horizontally and vertically. I was able to complete the quilt in time for the Guild’s 2025 show.
This quilt represents the temperatures (highs and lows) for the first year of my life. The yo yo’s represent the highs and the backgrounds represent the lows. Interesting to note the highest temperature of 33.3 F on August 4, 1950 and the lowest temperature of -37.2 F on February 7, 1951. See the label for the temperature ranges. I quilted this on my domestic Janome.
