Loon Quilt from Shop Hop

What an interesting quilt from a shop hop.  Usually they are all patchwork, not applique.  And this is what I would call challenging applique, with all those skinny cutout areas inside the loons.  This was beautifully pieced - lovely and flat.

There were some odd areas with wider border spaces - I filled those with continuous frogs.  Click on the photo for a larger pic.  The narrower grey borders and the navy sashing were quilted with a wave design.

The applique was s.i.d. (well, actually everything was s.i.d.) with background quilting of water, grass, and the odd dragonfly.

Am I not an awesome baker?  Isn't this a beauty?  Nice way to spend a little time on a cold, rainy afternoon when I could not take the time off to go to the guild sewing day.  It was either BAKE something or stain the quilt I was working on with my crocodile tears (pout pout).  The filling is cream cheese and peach marmalade.  Ooh sweet - tart - mouthwatering goodness...  When I made one of these after my return from Bali half of the braid split apart - looked like something from a sci-fi movie.  But this one is real purty.

Scrappy Quilt for Quilts of Valour and Stash Report

Way back in January, before I broke my wrist, I did a post about a scrappy quilt I was starting - the link is here. I went to the guild's extra UFO sewing day on January 23rd and got the quilt top sewn together, all except for attaching the borders.  The next day I went to the hospital.  Dumb.  Anyways...

My b.i.l. and his wife came Friday night and spent the night.  We are on their route to our niece's apartment, where they were scheduled to remove some furniture (which oddly enough, is being stored in our basement for the next several months).  After Saturday's breakfast, and the guys heading off for their job as moving men then returning with all necessary  furniture, we went out for a late lunch at the local restaurant.

They hit the road for home early enough that I finished up a couple of small jobs left over from the week, then still  had Saturday night.  And no plans.  So I finished up this quilt which will be donated to the Quilts of Valour program.  All that is left to do now is a label, and binding which I think will be red, then a run through the washing machine.

This leads me to the first stash report in several months.
STASH REPORT
Used this month   6 m.
Used YTD           11.8 m.
Purchased this month  3 m.
Purchased YTD          3 m.
Net so far...               - 8.8 m. 
 

Kaffe Fassett quilt

Red, red, and more red.  Wow - I love it.

It is very hard to see the quilting on this baby, but the wool batting pumps up the volume a bit.  Lots of s.i.d.

The center panel was done with straight lines in the background.  For the flower I quilted along the design lines.  A bit like paint-by-number.  :-)

Lovely on the back...

Thursday was Red Hat day and I got so carried away with my project I forgot to take any photos.  We went to Crock a Doodle in Brantford which is a paint-your-own-pottery studio.  I did up a new teapot for myself, since I broke my other one when I came home from Bali.  Everything is supposed to be fired and ready for pickup on Tuesday.  Yee hah!  I am ticked off with Mother Nature again, though.  Thursday was so warm we stopped for ice cream.  This morning we had more snow.  STOP IT!!!

16-patch & snowball and Beach Girls

This is such a simple but effective design for a quilt.  One snowball block and one 16-patch block.

The snowball block is a beautiful spot for a pretty quilt design.  I love, love, love working with bright colours, especially in the winter-that-won't-end.

Continuous hearts in the border tie in with the snowball's quilting motif.  The outer border is hidden behind the binding (which was attached using the longarm), but it was quilted with continuous stars - see the pic of the backing.

The 16-p blocks were crosshatched.  Looks great on the back, eh?

This week I was going to rant about RBC and their abominable behaviour towards some of their IT employees, but Gord Nixon has already had to publicly eat crow.  If you've been living under a rock, click here for the story.  If he's so concerned about saving the bank some money, perhaps he should return some of his $12,600,000.00 pay from last year.  No - I have not accidentally stuck too many zeros in that number.  Obscene.  No one works that hard.  Except maybe Mother Nature.

Instead, I am going to bitch about the weather.  Fer cryin' out loud!!!!  I had a date with my Beach Girls (the longarm crew) to meet in Exeter on Thursday at the Heritage Quilt Exhibit.  But oh, no - Mother Nature (see above paragraph) decided to wallop us with a freezing rain & ice pellets storm.  These are the same gals who came here for winter beach day back in February, when we had to emergency-reschedule-one-day-early to avoid another storm.  Poor Carol Anne lives in Markdale and could not make it to either event.  I'm going to make a poster-board of her that we can bring along with us when she's missing.

Anyhow... we rescheduled and had our get-together on Friday instead.  There was still plenty of ice around, and broken tree limbs littered the ground.

The show was wonderful but they had some RULES about photography, so I have nothing to show you.  After the show we went down the street to Quilts 'n Calicos, which is having a closing-out sale - 40% off as long as you purchase minimum 1m. cuts.  Karen has a new SUV and drove us the 2 1/2 blocks to the shop, but since she only picked up her wheels the previous night she hadn't had time to read the manual.  So she inadvertently locked us in the back seat with the kid-proof back door locks.  Trapped.  And a fabric sale just outside the windows.  Shee-ite!!!  She pressed every button and turned every knob she could find but we were not opening those doors.  I had a momentary vision nightmare of us having to climb over the seats to get out through either the front doors or the back hatch. The eventual solution was for mommy to get out and open the door from the outside.  Pfft.  Poor kids these days, can't even make a quick escape.

Oh, My Stars and Jet Lag

The quilt that had to sit 'on hold' for a week while I was in Bali is finished.
The pattern is Oh, My Stars by American Jane (AJP 255).

What a beautiful job the piecer did.  All the fabrics came from her stash.

Whenever I try to make any Lone Star type blocks they end up with a pronounced D-cup in the middle.  These were all beautiful and flat.

Ooh - love the back!!

Coming back from Bali left me with 12 hour jet lag to get over.  I checked on Facebook to see if I could update my status to Calamity Jane, but no, there's no such status.
So far I have:

• dumped the dog's kibble into her water dish (which was full of water)
• made a lovely breakfast pastry that looked like it was run through the washing machine
• made a pizza for supper but the dough did not rise one little bit, so we darn near wore our jaws out eating it
• broke the handle on my FAVORITE tea pot
• twisted my ankle when the neighbour's farm dog came after us on our walk

I am hoping this will be a more...uncomplicated week.

the Wedding Gift

You may have noticed that the happy couple came complete with a baby.  :-)
I made them a birthday banner with removable numbers that can be used forever and ever.  Here is a link to the pattern.

It took DH and I two weeks, but he finally found the two clusters of flowers that have been in mom's cedar chest since my first memory.  (yes, a little cleanup in my house would go a long way)  I have no idea where these came from but they are at least 60 years old.  There are matching necklaces too, but I'm keeping those for the time being.

I really wanted to add some family treasure to the banner.  Mom would have loved to see her granddaughter's wedding.  This way she can stay in their lives for a long time.

I also had some fabric left from the bride's brother's wedding, so that was used for the center cupcake.  The cupcakes and candle flame were bejeweled.

I was still encumbered by my cast and dreaded having to trace out the series of numbers from the pattern.  Instead, I purchased a set of letters and numbers for the IQ.  I loaded up the backing fabric, layered that with black 80/20 batting, and added the black polka dot top fabric.

After the numbers were cut out I added a blanket stitch all around and used soutache braid to make hanging loops.

To keep the numbers from getting wonky over the years I also made a little box to contain them.  For this I used Peltex 72, which is fusible on both sides. 

There are two sets of numbers, so the banner can be used right up to 110 years of age.

Wedding Day

On the morning of the wedding the bride took her family out for breakfast to a swanky place called Ku De Ta.  We all started with bellinis, then I had ricotta flapjacks with blueberry sauce and maple syrup.

They were ready for Easter with the creepiest bunnies I've ever seen.  The breakfast was excellent though.  It was a little disconcerting when we arrived - they check the underside of all cars with mirrors to make sure they are not coming in with explosive devices.

The ceremony took place at the end of the lawn, before the dropoff to the beach.  This happened at the villa where we (bride's family) were staying.  I spent the afternoon watching as the grounds were transformed into a fairy tale setting, which was really quite fun.  The Balinese do not move quickly.

Happy bride, groom & baby.  The groom is not wearing a transparent shirt - the poor man was soaked.  It was so hot and ridiculously humid.  We girls are so lucky that we can wear spaghetti straps and blowy skirts in that kind of weather.

After the Balinese dancers (see previous post), champagne and hors d'oeuvres, we moved over to the bride's villa for dinner & dancing.  Like I said earlier - fairy tale setting.  She even managed to schedule a clear sky with a full moon.

Of course, no wedding dinner would be complete without the FIRE DANCERS in between dinner and dessert.

The dessert table was incredible.  This is a tiny portion.

I went to bed at a reasonable hour, so I missed the communal swim.  Everybody went in the pool, in their clothes, many with their shoes still on.  Yup, that is the happy couple in all their finery.  Trying to save on the post-wedding dry cleaning bill, no doubt.