A special gift for a special friend!

My very special friend Véro is expecting her first child. How exciting! The first baby amongst my friends and family! I wanted to give her (and her baby) something very special for the occasion. What’s more special (and more personal) than a hand-made gift? Nothing, so I decided that I would sew up a baby quilt for the two of them. Something they can use now but also keep for life!

Once again, picking out the fabric is my favourite part! It’s so exciting to chose the different motifs and try to imagine what they will look like once assembled. I just fell in love with the fabric that has the different animals, and what about the yellow fake wood! Love them all!

The longest part of the whole process is actually quilting together the different layers. It’s a tedious but well worth while because the effect is extra comfy and inviting!

A little hand stitched animal on the backside of the quilt really makes for a personalized gift!

Voila! Enjoy my friend (and new tiny friend to come)! A gift from me to you, made with love!

My cross stitch family

I few months ago I came across this great idea of making cross-stiching people. I instantly fell in love. I knew I had to make my own cross-stitch family.

The first step is to draw up the different members that you want to represent. I tried to add details that are specific to each person. For example, my dad always wears a bow-tie, so I added one on his cross-stich persona. Drawing out the cross-stitch people is the longest (and hardest) part but once that’s done everything goes well.

Here are my parents.

Myself and my sister Anne.

And last but not least, my sister Elizabeth.

Each square on the grid paper is equal to one little x of cross-stitching. All you have to do is follow the drawn up plan.

I framed-up my family portrait and offered it to my parents at Christmas. 

It's quilting time ... Part 4

Yahoo… I’m finally finished and I’m really proud of my very first quilt!

This was really fun. Choosing the colors, assembling the pieces, embroidering the name.

I’m excited to get started on a new one!

It's quilting time ... Part 3

Here’s a little update on my baby quilt.

I’m finished assembling one side and I’m super excited! I think it looks pretty darn good for a first time!

I still have to make the back side, and here’s what I have in mind. I want to stitch my niece’s name and date of birth as well as something like: hand-made with love by Catherine.

It’s quilting time ... Part 2

Here is a little up-date of the baby quilt I am making. I must say that’s it’s coming along quite well and I’m pretty proud… for my first time!

So far, the hardest and longest part is cutting up all of the evenly sized pieces.

Here are the little squares sewn into strips. Next I’ll have to start assembling all of this.

I’m really excited! 

It's quilting time!

Remember the baby quilt that I came across when I was looking for gift ideas for my new niece? 

Well, I decided to try and make one myself! You must be warned… I have no knowledge or experience in quilting. What does one do when faced with such problem? Turn to You Tube of coarse! So I watched at a few videos, took a couple of notes and pulled my sewing machine out of my closet. 

There is this great little shop on the Plaza St-Hubert in Montreal called Effiloché. They offer an impressive variety of textiles (for quilting and sewing projects of all kinds) in many colors and motifs, tons of different kinds of yarns, all the knitting apparatus you can dream of and even offer sewing and knitting classes.  

Picking out the different textiles to use in the quilt is great fun but at the same time pretty tricky. I don’t really know the quilting rules of choosing the patterns (if there are any….), so I just went with what I thought looked really cute and girly!

More to come later… as I get this quilt making under control!

I can’t wait to see how this is going to turn out!