Happy Canada Day, and Quilt Canada

This is a great quilt to feature today, don't you think?  I feel so blessed to live in this great country.

Pantograph "Oh Canada".

Quilt Canada was held in Ottawa this year.  I had to grit my teeth to sign up for that - back many years ago when I was on the road with Royal Bank, everything "bad" that ever happened to me took place in Ottawa.  I accidently set a cash dispenser on fire, a childhood friend I bumped into stood me up for dinner, I was left stranded by a co-worker, etc, etc, etc.  But, you know, BEACH GIRLS, so I had to go.

THIS trip, my cell phone developed a bug that I still haven't managed to get rid of (must call Samsung...), and my credit card was declined at the Keg - even though it worked everywhere else.  Considering that I was there for the better part of five days I guess that's not so bad.

I took an Improv Piecing class with Krista Hennebury, which was a fun day.  Eventually I will set these bits into a quilt.

Here was breakfast one morning.  I loved the juxtaposition of the Froot Loops with the "healthy" breakfast.  That just made me laugh. 😄

This is the quilt that Diane had entered in the show.

Yes, those are all teeny-tiny little 9-patches.

Well, she was a big winner.  This is the ribbon for Excellence in Piecing.  Later in the week she found out she ALSO won Viewer's Choice.  Wow - big congratulations!!!

This was my favorite quilt from the show.  It evoked the fun times I always enjoy on my road trips with the girls.

A bit of a closeup.

This was the jaw-dropper for me.

One of the blocks.

Besides my improv class, I attended the lecture by David Taylor.  Hah, the guy is hilarious.  And he's very scornful of both fusible applique and raw-edge applique.  If you check out his his web site you will see why - all of his work is hand applique and it is INCREDIBLE. 

Another lecture was by Andrea Tsang-Jackson where she talked about the immigrant quilt and her summer as artist-in-residence.  She had the quilt with her and it was really something to see.

I was part of Laura Coia's Sew Very Easy Youtube Live show.  And when I say "part of" I mean that I paid money to be in the audience. 😉 This included a pattern and a bit of swag.

The free lecture by E-Quilter was very interesting too.  She presented a slide show from international quilt shows. 
Also this, in case you are working on any entries:

It was a great week, and now it's back to the grind.  Well, if you can call quilting a grind???

Canada Quilts, Red Hats in the Rain...rain...rain, the Potty Incident

Three great Canada quilts for the kids in this gal's family.
#1

#2

#3

This is (ahem) MINE.  When I was at Quilt Canada last week I bought the license plate panel, then came home and made up a quickie for the front door.  Now to get it bound and actually hang it on the front door.

Yesterday was Red Hat day.  Our outing was to Whistling Gardens.  Our admission included a tour and the water fountains choreographed to music.  What fun!  In the pouring rain!

It wasn't really pouring during the show.  But it was definitely raining.

We got in about an hour of the tour but gave up when it started to rain.  We decided to have our lunch early in the picnic area.  Do you see the rain pouring down?  Thank goodness for the tented picnic area.

It managed to stop raining in time for us to head over to Hewitts Dairy in Hagersville for ice cream.  A perfect finish to our day.

Aah, the Potty Incident.  That mirror, which used to hang above the sink, belonged to mom.  I kept it when she had to move into assisted living.  Why her spirit decided to fling it off the wall last night is beyond me, but I sure hope the "seven years of bad luck" thing is just a rumour.

Challenges, Stash Report, & Laundry (idiot)

I belong to two quilt guilds and they both ran challenges this past year.  In the spirit of killing two birds with one stone, I combined the projects into one.

• Caledonia was a paint chip challenge, where I drew the orange, lavender and turquoise.  Then I added black and white.  Sadly, at the June meeting I did not win a viewers choice prize.
• Binbrook was a border challenge with a hot mess of weird instructions every month.  The voting on this challenge will happen at the September meeting.

I'm honestly not crazy about the QUILT, but I had fun with the quilting.  That argyle design took f.o.r.e.v.e.r.

I'm really not very good at those wee circles.

I had fun with the back, too!  I used up some smaller pieces that were travel gifts to me from my DB and SIL (who b.t.w. are currently in England celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary, and witnessing the financially devastating Brexit vote.)

The past couple of weeks we have been entertained by COCO Paving who first tore up our road, and are now PAVING our road.  I knew they were paving this morning because all the racket woke me up. Clearly, those guys don't realize just how much beauty sleep I need.
I like to think that I stay on top of my housework with a scheduled list of chores.  I stripped the bed and decided it was a good day to put the summer quilt on the bed.  So, I washed the non-summer quilt and hung it on the solar dryer to dry.  Then I realized that all I could smell in the air was liquid tar.  Sigh,  When I get that quilt out of the cupboard in September I will probably have fond, aromatic memories of road paving.  Idiot.

STASH REPORT
Used this month 8.2 m
Used YTD         37.74 m
Added this month 2.5 m
Added YTD      73.3 m
NET YTD:       +35.56 m

When I was at Quilt Canada last week I attended a lecture/trunk show by Julie Plotniko.  She had lots of ideas for easy, scrappy quilts and got me a bit motivated!  At Scrappy Club on Monday I started a new lap-size-ish quilt for donation.  If I stay motivated maybe the stash report will get down to a red bottom line soon.

Current Events & CQA Quilt Canada Show

Current Events:  I have a new 'ride'.  A black (oooh, mistake!) Honda CRV.   Photo courtesy of Gail, taken on our Red Hat outing last week.  No, I don't have my hat on yet in this pic.  But I DO have my lipstick on.

For the rest of the week I was at Quilt Canada in Toronto.  With the Beach Girls. :-)
Yes, I think we'd had a glass of wine by this time.

Carol Ann gave us all 5 fat quarters as a challenge for October's trip to Tobermory.  So it's her fault my stash report will look bad again this month.

As usual, I took a zillion photos and I won't bore you with them.  These are just three quilts that I found particularly interesting.

I thought this quilt was very creative.

The whole darned thing is made from clothing labels.

This is a really lovely gift of love for her daughter.

Chains and clock bits and all manner of weird & wonderful things.

This one caught my attention because I love samplers.

I love everything about this quilt.

And it was beautifully quilted, too.

We closed off Thursday night with a lecture by my all-time favorite quilter:  Jane Sassaman.

Now, it's back to reality.  Asparagus beetles and laundry.