Since I can’t enter this week’s quilts for little girls contest, I wanted to share with you some of the quilts I’ve made for my nieces.

I have two nieces, Lucy just turned 4 last Saturday, and Alice is 1.5, she’ll be two on Halloween. While I don’t live close to them, my sister does a fabulous job sharing their lives with me via pictures, videos, daily chatting, and her blog.

Lucy and Alice showing off their Olympic gear

For Lucy’s fourth birthday, I made her an art portfolio from Geta Grama’s fabulous tutorial.

I filled it with sketch pads, markers, construction paper and STICKERS!

Since I mailed the package to Lucy, my sister let her open it before her birthday. Here’s the video. “I think it’s made out of fabric!”

Lucy had a princess/fairy/barbie birthday party on the weekend. Here’s the fabulously creative cake my sister made … and more pictures of little girl cuteness.

For Lucy’s third birthday, I made her this doll quilt and used another of Geta’s tutorials for the fabric baskets.

For Christmas 2008, Alice received an Elmo quilt:

And for Lucy I made a Dora quilt:

As the girls get older, I’ll start to make them more complex keepsake quilts. For now, I want to make them things they can use, love and enjoy.

What about you? What have you made for the little ones in your life? Do they have favourite colours? Lucy is definitely a pink and purple girl. We’ll have to wait until Alice can communicate her colour choices. I do think she’ll follow in her sister’s footsteps, at least initially.

Join us at the new Quilter’s Daily Blog Along. The idea is that each day a new prompt will be posted, to give you inspiration for your next blog post. On your blog, write a post using the daily prompt as a guide. Then head over to the blog along site and add a link to your post in the comments for the specific day.

Today’s prompt is Quilting for Kids.

P.S. Today (Thursday) is the last day to enter this week’s themed quilt contest: Quilts for Little Girls.

Yesterday, I dropped off two more charity quilts for Victoria’s Quilts Canada. Last week, their headoffice, located here in Ottawa, received requests for 80 quilts… in one week! They definitely need more quilters. It’s a fabulous organization, if you can help out, I’m sure they would appreciate it.

These two quilts were made with the charms donated from quilter’s around the world in the Charms for Charity contest I did at the end of 2008/early 2009. With those charms, I also donated 6 NICU blankets last year, and another full-sized quilt for Victoria’s Quilts Canada.

My little quilting for charity group has a couple more quilts just about done too. These ladies have done an amazing job, never having quilted before we started our group last year. I’m so proud of them. I’ll be sure to post photos next month.

The first quilt I dropped off yesterday is called Flowers in the Wind. I used the Tri Recs Tool for this quilt. It was perfect for the charms, and the side bits cut off the ends I was able to use for a top and bottom border. No wasted fabrics!

I met a friend for lunch yesterday and she remarked, “I recognize that fabric”. Yes, you do. The border, binding and sashing fabrics were from my first bed quilt. I’m happy to say that the fabric is all gone! Finally.

For the quilting, I did a large meander/stipple over the entire surface. It went pretty quick, and was a perfect free motion practice experience on a large quilt.

The second quilt is Sidebars 1. This is a pretty easy quilt to do, and I’ll be trimming up some more charms and writing out the instructions for the ladies in my group to make one too.

For the quilting, I stitched in the ditch around the sashing, then did free motion X’s in the centre. I’ve decided I HATE stitching in the ditch, it just takes way too long. I also echoed several straight lines in the outer border.

And a close-up:

Join us in the brand new Quilter’s Daily Blog Along. The idea is that each day a new prompt will be posted, to give you inspiration for your next blog post. On your blog, write a post using the daily prompt as a guide. Then head over to the blog along site and add a link to your post in the comments for the specific day.

Today’s prompt, from me, is Charity Quilts. I’d love to hear and see the charity quilts you’ve made.

Here’s the fall mini quilt I sent to my partner Chris in Alabama.

The fabrics: a gorgeous leaf print, that was in my stash, sadly without selvedge so I’m not sure where it came from. The three coordinating fabrics are from Ricky Tims’ Rhapsodie Colorée III line.

The 1/2 square triangles finished at 1.5″. They were pieced using Brenda Henning’s Triangulations CD. I love this CD, makes 1/2 square and 1/4 square triangles in various sizes… so accurate!

I quilted in the ditch around each seam and echoed straight lines in the outer border.

Here’s the gorgeous mini quilt I received from Rebecca in Australia.

A close up of the swirls, which I love:

Here’s a mini magic tiles quilt with batiks that will be used as an angel quilt. Magic tiles is a pattern by Kathleen Bissett. To complete the pattern correctly you would start with 12 fabrics and end up with 12 blocks. I did this one as a test, to see if 9 fabrics would work too (it didn’t, but I still like it). My starting blocks were 6″ square.

The quilts and quilted projects I completed in 2009. My biggest accomplishment this year, would be mastering (sort of) free-motion quilting. I’m looking forward to improving my free-motion skills next year and learning new techniques.

There are six additional quilts started, but not finished yet.

What did you accomplish this year? Would love to see links to your blog posts in the comments.

Wow, I had no intention of taking such a long hiatus from blogging. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas shared with family and loved ones. I had a great time visiting with family and friends in the Toronto area for several days. This year, I made two lap-sized quilts, a table runner and some quilted bookmarks.

Here’s the quilt I made for my dad. I bought this fabric in June 2008. It is Tooling Around by Blank Quilting. I designed the pattern in Electric Quilt 6. The quilt finishes at 60" x 80".

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When Lucy turned one a few years ago, I made her a wall hanging with her first name. For Alice’s first birthday a couple of weeks ago, I gave her one too. I named it Soaring in the Wind.