Three borders treated as one

On Monday the Binbrook Guild held their meeting and had Kay Boyd from Brantford as the guest speaker. This is the third time I've seen Kay and I am certain she is the BEST speaker I have ever seen. She has a great sense of humour and makes tons of silk quilts using clothing she buys at thrift shops. She also brings a sampling of her dolls, hats and clothes.

For supper last night I cooked a bacon-wrapped pork tenderloin. Rub your seasonings over the pork (season salt, oregano, 5-spice pepper) then wrap with about 10 pieces of bacon secured with toothpicks. Roast uncovered at 400 for about 45 minutes, then cover in foil & let rest for 10 minutes away from the heat. Yum!

This quilt has three borders which I am treating as if they were one. I quilted clamshells (using the Circle Lord template) in a pyramid shape with narrow vertical channel quilting above/behind to enhance the shape. The quilt has several house blocks which will probably get a similar clamshell treatment on the roofs, so this should tie in nicely.


Last night I lit a fire in my workroom to take the chill off. The temperature was going down to 3 c. again and the floor is ceramic tile. I finished piecing 20 DARK 16-patch units from the jellyroll strips. Next job will be the 20 LIGHT 16-patch units and 20 LIGHT 4-patch units. This will probably have to wait until next week. This weekend we are helping the nephew & his bride move. I need to clean the house because (funny how you need a reason, eh?) his parents are coming to spend Saturday here and sleep over before the move on Sunday.

The Weekend - yard work & k.d. lang

The Lone Star quilt is finished and looks very pretty. The zillion prarie points must have taken her hours to make.

I had a productive weekend - the window screens all came up from the basement and got a bath, then went back on freshly washed windows. Hubby helped with the window washing part. The geraniums got planted and the grass in the garden got dug out. The veggie garden was rototilled (more hubby-work). I also thinned out the grape hyacinths. They were kind of reminding me of hangers in the closet - you know how they multiply???

I generously gifted those thinnings to the girls I went out with last night to see k.d. lang. Fun evening! First, the restaurant where I tried to make a reservation was fully booked and could not take us. The next restaurant was not cooking for at least another hour. The third restaurant was closed. (Are you seeing a pattern emerging???) The next restaurant was also closed. Uh oh, we're starting to get worried now. None of us are that familiar with downtown Hamilton so we finally went to the Sirloin Cellar, which we all have patronized before, and had a great supper. k.d. lang was wonderful - she's a gift to us from the gods with that incredible voice of hers. I think I'd pay money to hear her sing Three Blind Mice. I have been looking for her new cd Watershed for a few months with no luck, so I bought it at the concert. I'll be listening to that today for sure!

Going to the movies

My nephew and his fiancee invited hubby & I to the movies to see Ironman (with Robert Downey jr.). Nice theatre, reclining leather seats, licensed, food delivered to your seats. It was a good movie, very entertaining, no blood & guts. OK, very little blood & guts. This is the quilt I made for him two years ago as a Christmas gift. Notice the zillion flying geese? I looove Eleanor Burns and her Flying Geese rulers! This was a great opportunity to use a stripey fabric for the sashing strips. I quilted it with the Baptist Fan template using my Circle Lord. Perhaps tonight I will get back to working on the jelly roll batiks for my other nephew.

Quilting Retreats

I just looove going away with the girls on quilting retreats. Well, going anywhere, really! At the end of April I went to my friend Margaret's, with Sue and Anne for a nice long weekend. Margaret has a fabulous place on a lake. We share the cooking (we are all fabulous cooks, I might add) and cleaning up, so it's not like home at all. If you know what I mean? The quilt I have on the floor has been in progress for about 18 months. It was designed by a longarm friend of mine, based on a quilt her mother made a zillion years ago. The strips are 1 1/4" and finish 3/4". I have a bad name for the quilt, which I won't mention here. I really hope to finish the top some time this summer. It is mostly assembled, it just needs an inner border and then add the outside blocks. The plan is that it will be the 'summer quilt' for the guest bedroom. It is definitely too light in colour to be anywhere near my hubby.

Jellyrolls and Flying Geese

Last night I went to a different guild (Ancaster) to see the guest speaker. I needed a night out since my scheduled night out (dinner with friends) has been cancelled. I brought my friend Sue who also needed a night out. We bumped into two other friends from our Caledonia guild. None of us won any of the prizes - no door prizes, no raffle prizes, nothing. I'm glad the speaker was good. And the treats were good. :-) Afterwards I started trimming the jelly roll strips I bought in Chicago in April. I am making a quilt for my nephew and his bride but the strips are 2 1/2" wide and I need them to be 2" for the patchwork. I already have the flying geese finished. I use the Quilt in a Day Flying Geese Rulers. I love Eleanor Burns - that woman is worth every penny she has ever made. I finished 96 geese in 4 1/2 hours - cutting, sewing, pressing.

I'm not working today, it will be my day with Mom - groceries, clean out the fridge, fill up the pills, do a load of laundry, get rid of the garbage, bring her to the foot nurse. Then she'll come home with me for supper.

Red Hats

I wanted a day out with the girls but the local Red Hat group was not accepting any new members. During one of our guild sewing days I brought the subject up (I was whining, actually). Several of the other girls also wanted to join a Red Hat group. I use the term 'girls' loosely since you must be 50 years of age to be a member. One of the quilters offered to be the Queen and got us up and running. We have a target date of the third Thursday every month for our get together. Our Queen is super organized and has a schedule of who is responsible for planning each outing. An excellent way of running the group, so no one person is saddled with entertaining us every month. We frequently end up at a quilt shop, since we are all quilters. I often feel sorry for other patrons at the restaurants we go to because we laugh so much and we're so loud. I love the days when we do something creative. In February we had Monika Shedden, a doll maker from Dundas, On., lead us through making our own cloth doll. It's a great way to have a day that is 'All About Me'.

Choosing a Quilting Design

Hubby has taken another vacation day today. It's cold outside but should warm up to 16c. I have dandelions in the front garden that need to be extricated. Work first, though. Here is one method of auditioning quilting designs. I use the yellow cello wrap for gift baskets and design on it with a Sharpie marker. This is an excellent way to figure out the quilting path, ie the movement of the quilting machine. This is a customer quilt I was very excited to see. I have the same quilt in a state of UFO (unfinished object) from a class I took with Shirley Stutz, author of Easy Elegant Lone Star Quilts.

my first post

An introduction: My identity seems to revolve around my work - I'm a professional quilter. I own a longarm quilting machine and work most days - anywhere from 4 hours to 8 hours. I also teach quilting, belong to two quilt guilds, and sell fabric and quilts. I eat, sleep and breathe needlework. I'm married, 24 years this summer, to a welder. We have a 1 year old Golden Doodle (a golden retreiver bred to a standard poodle) named Sadie. I try to keep the garden under control but it's a losing battle, living in the country as we do.

OK, post # 1 is finished.