Farm Friendship

Another signature quilt for a colleague that's retiring. This time it's a unit clerk on acute care. And I surely will miss her. She's a great unit clerk, as well as a wonderful person. But I wish her well. She's also a quilter. She makes rag quilts out of flannel, and makes one for each acute care nurse that retires. So, I definitely could not let her retire without receiving a quilt of her own, though I'm not planning on taking up her mantle and start making quilts for the retiring acute care nurses. Technically, I'm part of the home care team and will spend enough time and money making quilts for my team, in addition for all of my other projects. 

I find it interesting when I start out making a quilt for someone, and decide I like it too well and plan to keep it. So, I have to come up with another quilt to gift to the individual, and end up producing something that I think will suit them even better. That happened with Amazing Grace, and it happened with this one. Originally, I was going to give the recipient Fiesta, and I think anyone would be happy with that one. I certainly am. And then I started on this one. And I found out how much she likes horses. So, this quilt is perfect. 

I have several of this panel, and am in the process of using another one for a quilt for one of my great nieces. But for this one, I had to decide what to surround the panel with that would work for signatures. I wanted something that would work up relatively quickly. Then I found this MSQC video. 

Yes, I could make the Friendship Braid work, using solid cream coloured fabric as alternate strips for the signatures. And for the print strips, since this panel is an autumn scene, I was able to use leftovers from my daughter's quilt. I didn't quite have enough, but did have enough of the black print that I used for the binding as well as some of the setting triangles and some strips. 

Here's the backing: 

I really love it when I can coordinate a quilt so well, including the pantograph. 

This is Wild Horses Grande by Deb Geissler from Urban Elementz. I debated on this one versus Mustang Stampede from Meadow Lyon, and this one won out (they've changed Mustang Stampede, by the way - the one in the link is the newer version, which I don't like quite as well, and it's 15" so would be about the limit of my throat space).

Now I have to try and keep this quilt a secret while gathering signatures.

By the way, in case you can't read it, the backing says, "Count Your Blessings" and "Be Grateful for All Things". Isn't that a great message? Every time I worked with it, I started singing. 

 

Gone Golfing

 Well, no, I haven't gone golfing. Aside from mini golf and a very brief try on my Wii, I've never been golfing, and likely never will. The title of this post refers to this quilt. 

A member of our management team is retiring and I determined to make her a signature quilt. No one seemed to know her favourite colour(s) from which to compose her quilt, but then I remembered that she likes to golf. It's not very easy to find golf-themed fabric. I don't know why. But I was able to find this pattern by googling. I could pay and download it right away, which was important since the recipient didn't give us much notice. So, I really didn't have time to wait for a pattern - or fabric, for that matter - to arrive in the mail. And I could also figure out how to turn this quilt into a signature quilt by changing the squares into signature blocks. 

I was dropping off my Fiesta quilt, which I haven't blogged about yet, at Johnson's Sewing Centre in Edmonton for their quilt challenge and checked out their sale fabric section. Yes, they had the colours I needed in batiks. I picked up the Deb's Golf pantograph at Sparrow Quilt Co on the same trip, and found some appropriate backing fabric at Fabricland. The pink, the cream for the signatures, the white for the golf balls, the grey for the clubs and the batting all came from my stash. 

I really love being able to coordinate my pantograph with the theme of my quilt. 

I chose green for the thread colour, because what other colour could represent golf? However, if I had to do it over again, I may have chosen a thread that matched the light blue. It wouldn't have stood out as much. But I'm still happy with it. And I'm hoping the recipient will be, too.

Another signature quilt is in the works because we have a unit clerk retiring in July. She has made rag quilts for every nurse in acute care that has retired, so I asked the unit manager if there was anyone besides me that would make her a quilt. No, there isn't and I can't let her retire without getting her own quilt. 

Irene's Rubies

This is my first signature quilt. While I was working as Director of Care in a nursing home, my senior nurse retired. I wanted to make her a signature quilt and have all of the staff members sign it. However, I lost that job - I was going to say "unfortunately," but the only things unfortunate about it were a) my staff were left without effective leadership that genuinely cared about them and b) I didn't get this quilt made before I left. So, aside from my signature, it will be up to the recipient to get the signatures if she so desires. It's an attractive quilt even without the signatures.
Before she retired, I asked her what her favourite colour is: red. So I chose the Boundless Ruby Rue fabric from Bluprint (Craftsy).  
This was my very first signature quilt, so I googled to find ideas. I had the signature block from my Canada 150 Sampler quilt,

but I didn't want such big blocks. There were 70-80 staff members that needed to sign, and this is a 10" block. I did not intend to make a queen-sized quilt. In my search, I found the directions for making the basic signature block I used here, and the layout here. 
I bought a warm white solid for the signature part and the cornerstones, and cut 2½" squares from from jelly roll strips for the corners.

I have to admit that I really like the looks of this layout. It will hold 100 signatures and measures 36" square (finished size), so it could be finished this size and used as a wallhanging. However, I wanted a throw-sized quilt, so determined to add a border of 12" quilt blocks.
By this time I had made up my mind to call this quilt Irene's Rubies. Irene is the recipient and the fabric is Ruby Rue. Meanwhile I was trying to determine what block to use and I remembered that in the book Lazy and Loving It (companion book for the Lazy Angle ruler), was at least one gemstone block, Sapphires, that might work. But there are still boxes, fabric, books, etc. piled everywhere in my craft studio and I couldn't find that book. I found a picture of it online, so I at least knew what it looked like and that I was looking for a blue book. But I could not find that blue book on my shelf. Until I prayed about it. And there it was on the shelf where I was sure I had checked any blue book on that shelf already! Thank the Lord. He does care about little things like quilt books. And not only was there a Sapphires block and a Diamonds block, but also a Rubies block. 

It is a rather labour-intensive block and between these blocks and the signature blocks, there was a lot of fabric wastage. So the Lazy Angle will not be one of my favourite rulers, but it's nowhere near as bad as the Bias Stripper or the Square in a Square. And now I have completed one quilt using the Lazy Angle ruler (remember I have a goal to make at least one quilt using each ruler I own).

I decided to add a narrow border out of the same fabric as the sashing in the signature section to give it a more cohesive look. 

In keeping with the red theme, I used the Moulin Rouge pantograph by Patricia E. Ritter from Urban Elementz, "rouge" being the French word for "red," and quilted it in a red Glide thread. This is a beautiful pantograph and not too difficult.

I finally put my clothesline up to get a picture of the full quilt. Unfortunately, the wind was strong and I had to have help holding the quilt in place. Allan (my ex-husband, friend and handyman) happened to show up while I was struggling to get the picture, so those are his fingers you see at the top left corner and side of the quilt. Thanks Allan, I couldn't have done it without you. 😊

Now I have to find a box for shipping it to Irene. I'm having a problem with locating boxes of the right sizes for shipping quilts. I may have to buy some from Staples.