After my grandmother, died, my mother commissioned a bear maker to make my grandmother’s muskrat fur coat into three bears as a mementos for us. The bears were, Robert (my grandmother’s first name was, Roberta) which belongs to my brother, Elva (my grandmother’s middle name) which belongs to me, and Grandma which belongs to my mother.
Since Elva is owned by me and I am a quiltmaker, it was not long and I had made Elva her own quilt. This quilt is named, Canada Day. It is red and white – the colours of the Canadian flag and has a backing with small Canadian flags on it.

When my mother discovered that Elva had her own quilt, she wanted a quilt made for her bear. I decided that the quilt would be a gift for my mother for Mother’s Day. I finished the quilt in April 2001 and took it to my local quilt guild for show and tell.

The guild was asked to develop a display to showcase quilting for the the local library. I was asked if I would loan my small quilt to this display for the month of April. These pictures are of the showcase as it appeared in the entrance of the library.

This is Grandma Bear with her now famous quilt.

These pictures show the details of the quilt. Take a look at the penny in the upper right hand corner. I have never made blocks this small since! I do not enjoy making quilts with triangles but I managed to make tiny half square triangles for this quilt using the “Square in a Square” ruler developed by Jodi Barrows.

Prior to Valentine’s Day, many quilters’ blogs contained pictures of quilts that they display in their homes each year in celebration of February 14. I have no such quilt. There are no quilts in this house sporting red hearts. This is not because I don’t like heart quilts, it is just that I have not yet found the time to make a heart quilt. So, for the month of February, this quilt hung in my entrance as a tribute to Valentine’s Day. Perhaps I will finish a heart quilt in time for next Feb.

This is the third nine patch wall hanging I have shown on my blog. I enjoy making nine patches. I think they lend themselves well to scrap quilts which are the quilts I enjoy making most.

In 2003, my sister-in-law turned 40. I made her a table runner in recognition of this milestone and presented it to her for Christmas that year. I named this table runner, Four Decades.

I had fabric left from making the table runner so I continued to make nine patch blocks and put them together in this wall hanging.

My brother also turned 40 in 2003 and his Christmas present that year was a quilt. This quilt was named Forty Years. It is comprised of 40 hourglass blocks – one for each year. Surrounding the hourglass blocks are rail fence blocks. The rail fence blocks represent the roads by brother has traveled in 40 years. You can’t see it in the photo, but the backing of this quilt was flannel printed with license plates. The reference to the road and license plates are in recognition of my brother’s hobby which is buying old vehicles (sometimes not running at the time) and fixing them up for enjoyment and later re-sale.