Prairie Points & Mug/Rug Swap

This is another one of those quilts where I hoped the maker would not come and pick it up after quilting.  Sadly, that didn't happen and it has gone back home.  The name of the block is Granny's Stars.

Prairie Points are definitely a challenge.  Once it's loaded on the longarm, flip the points OUT, baste one inch inside the base of the points, and leave the basting in.  Don't quilt anything beyond that - the maker will be turning the backing under and needs that space to work in.

The yoyo's added another bit of a challenge.  I outlined around the applique and the yoyo's, then modified the pantograph pattern which I used in the body of the quilt, and added freemotion quilting to fill the background.

Fresh, springy, and girly.

So pretty.

At one of my guilds the December meeting included a Mug and Rug swap.  It was done on a "make one, take one" basis, so if you didn't want to participate you didn't have to.  Here's my contribution.

And here's what I brought home.

I've been on vacation (or whatever it's called when you stay home and do chores?) for two weeks.  Sadie got clipped so she looks like a dog again, instead of a Wookiee.  All the upstairs windows (23 panes) and screens (11) have been scrubbed & shined.  My workroom has been defuzzed (you'll never find someone with MORE dust than me) and several hours has been spent on bookkeeping.  The house has been vacuumed and dusted.  I finished a UFO and quilted TWO of my own quilts - one needs hand stitching on the binding, but the other one is destined for the donation pile so it got machine binding.  I'll post pics of those later, but it makes my TFUQ list and UFO list look a little better. 😁  However, unfortunately while I was cleaning and defuzzing the workroom, I found ANOTHER UFO in a bag.  The blocks are all made and squared up, since 2008.  Geez Louise.
Now, I think I need a vacation from my vacation.

Beautiful Double Wedding Ring, updated to-do, and blah, blah, blah

As you may or may not know, I have been working on a double wedding ring quilt for several years.  I complete one row per year when I'm on retreat up in Tobermory with the Beach Girls.  Every once in a while the Universe teases me, and has a customer bring one for quilting.

This is so pretty.  I just love these quilts and look forward to someday completing my own.

Nice plain back that shows off the quilting. 💗

When I posted my to-do list last week, one of the items on the list was to "Marie Kondo" my corner of the living room.  OMG, look at the piles of mess on my table and in the bookshelves.

BEFORE

DH and I were heading out for Chinese food and I told him that I'd been working on Marie Kondo-ing my corner.  He had no idea what the hell I was talking about, so I had to tell him all about Marie Kondo.  If you've ever seen HIS corner of the living room (or his garage, or the shed, or his truck, or...) you would know that she is not his kind of girl. 😛

AFTER

I kept a small collection of magazines that I still need to go through before I decide their fate.  And that little pile of remaining junk will be dealt with today.  The Quilts Japan magazines will go upstairs where I have saved every issue I've ever purchased.  I may take them to the crematorium with me when I die. 😄

This is the pile that I'll plow through to see what stays and what goes to the guild for redistribution.  There are lots of Modern Quilting magazines and Machine Quilting magazines and a few random quilt magazines in here.  And my seed catalogue.

Here's the to-do list as it currently stands.

It has been a wonderful long Easter weekend for working on stupid chores.  We had no plans for a fancy Easter dinner, and it has been pouring rain for three days straight.

My quilting machine is broken and I can't do anything about it until I talk to Nolting on either Monday or Tuesday - whenever they are back to work.  Why is it that stuff always decides to break just before a long weekend?

In my forced down time I decided to join up with  #The100DayProject.  I have chosen a combination of two things, which doesn't seem to be against any rules.  I will either do some personal stitching OR I will do yoga.  The commitment is 5 - 10 minutes every day for 100 days.  The official start date for 2019 was April 1, but again, starting when I did is not against any rules.  If you follow me on Instagram or on Facebook I'm planning to post my activity there most days.  But don't expect to see any pics of my arse up in the air as I'm doing a Downward Facing Dog.

This is the stitching project I've been working on.  It's a Bonnie Hunter design Nine In The Middle from one of her books.  Today when I go and stitch for 10 minutes I will actually be PRESSING for 10 minutes.  If you check out that link to her site, scroll down to the quilt with the light blue background fabric and the red border...that's what I'm making.  Mine is in reds/greens/yellow-browns.  It will be for guests when I make up the sofa-bed in our upstairs tv room.  It should look nice with the room decor.

Vintage Quilts (love), the Current To-Do List, A Bit Of Humour

Several years ago I went on a road trip to the Shelburne Museum for their 100 Best Quilts exhibit.  So many of the quilts were tagged with the comment "maker unknown" that I was walking around with a kleenex mopping up my tears.  Yes, I'm a total crybaby.  I'm pretty sure I embarassed my friend Sue. The exhibit was fabulous if you're into vintage quilts.  Keep an eye out, they may do it again.  They DO have a quilt exhibit on from May through October.
Anyhow...I have a new customer who is loaded with vintage quilts.  She brought these two to start with.  Dear God - a double whammy - vintage AND Grandmother's Flower Garden.  I almost had to sit down.

Here's the first.  I did s.i.d. alongside the white area to create the "fence".

Inside the flowers is a six sided motif.  These were pretty wonky.  Some of the fabrics are polyester, so when the top was washed those bits did not shrink, but some of the cotton fabrics did.  It doesn't matter, it's still beautiful. 💗

Here's the back.

This is number two. These flowers are MUCH larger and have a small flower at the intersection of each block.  In this pic I'd finished...

• s.i.d. around the large flower, the inner small flower, and the intersection flowers.
• stitched a motif inside the small flowers, both the yellow center ones and the intersection ones
• stitched a motif inside all the large flowers with a ring-around-the-posy type motif in the large flower zones.

But I was seriously, creatively stuck on what to quilt in the yellow background area.

I ended up with 1" diagonals which did a good job of nailing down the background without taking over the quilt. 

It also eliminates the worry of showcasing any crookedness in the piecing.

Another beautiful back. 💗

THE TO-DO LIST 

I'll leave you with a little humour if you have 20 minutes to kill.  This comedian is hilarious.  Zip in to about the 6:20 mark for his introduction.  Rob Pue.  Link HERE.  Go to the bathroom first - I don't want you peeing yourself.  Especially if you have any connection to the East Coast.

Zentangle Workshop and To-Do List Update

I joined the Ancaster Modern Quilt Guild, partly because I know some of the members, and partly because they seem to have a pretty vibrant program.  Last Saturday I attended a Zentangle Workshop hosted by them, presented by Kim Mastromartino.  You can find her on Facebook as The Inspired Quilter.

Here's some of the little cards we were working on...

Here's my same card after I (maybe?) finished it.  The class was lots of fun AND INSPIRING.  Which we all need, especially in January.  Right?

TO-DO LIST
Yep.  Knocked another item off my list.  The mending & hemming item - complete.

My plan for today was to start the drapes, however that was slightly interrupted by ... oh, let's call it TECHNOLOGY. This is how my day has progressed so far:

• 7 am, go for a pee then crawl back into bed.
• 8 am, try to shut off the alarm before it wakes DH up, but inadvertently turn the radio on.  Oops.  Sorry.  Get up.  Let Sadie out of her crate and give her a morning massage.  Lucky dog.
• 8:03, take my morning pills and head out with Sadie for a pyjama walk.  She's recovering from knee surgery back in November, so in the morning she gets a massage, Range Of Motion exercises, and then a short walk.  Usually it's DH who takes her, but sometimes it's me - jammies & housecoat, yoga pants, ear muffs & winter coat.  It's surprisingly refreshing.  And I really Do.Not.Care. if people call me the weird old woman out in her pyjamas.
• 8:30, coffee & internet - read the forums, check the news, decide to investigate the KETO diet, and message on/off/on/off/on/off...etc. with the Beach Girls.  Discuss diets with them and pretend I have no idea what they're talking about when they mention the number of calories in alcohol.
• 10:00, beg DH to go get us breakfast from McDonalds.  Continue internetting & messaging while waiting on food.  Decide that KETO is never going to happen in this house.  DH would not eat 90% of the required foods.  Salmon?  Avocado?  ZUCCHINI?!**?!
• 11:00, breakfast is finished, go down to the "real" computer.  Search out "low carb diet", print out recipes that have a slim chance of passing muster.  (ha ha - "slim" chance - get it?)  Let's face it - if we're going to continue having McDonalds for breakfast we need to cut down somewhere else.
• 1:45, finish and send the letter of concern to one of my sales reps - yeah, I'm not particularly happy about something.
• 2:30, update the Caledonia guild blog after having gone through the photos I took at the January meeting.
• 2:45, start working on my blog.

Did you notice anywhere in that timetable a place where I mentioned "brush teeth" or "get washed" or "put on real clothes"?  So, here it is, 3:30 in the afternoon, and I have yet to make myself presentable.  Do YOU think I'm going to get those drapes started today?  

Stay tuned for the next instalment of The Caledonia Quilter's "Never-Done-Because-She-Won't-Get-Off-The-Damned-Computer List".

Progress on the To-Do List, and Random Stuff

As you can see, I am making some headway on my list of "things intended to keep me amused" for two weeks.

That pantry job took waaay longer than expected.  Several  years ago, well ok - more like a decade ago, I bought hanging files to try and get myself better organized with paperwork.  I set up folders for every month.  And folders for "vacation", and folders for research for Mom - first for Retirement Homes and then later for Long Term Care Homes.  There were folders for banking and folders for paperwork that I needed to read.  And more folders for ... more stuff.  That THING was taking up about a foot and a half of shelf space.  Not only was it not serving the purpose it was intended for, I also piled more junk on top of it.  Junk which was always falling down, and then I'd swear, and have to pick it all up off the floor.  Well.  You can probably see what the problem was.  That one job took several hours because I had to go through all that STUFF.  I burned a ton of paperwork in the fireplace - things with names and/or account numbers.  Another ton of paperwork junk went in the recycle bin.  I was left with a tiny, tiny pile of "stuff" that I think I need to keep.

Here's the table topper, with quilting AND binding complete.  Those inside miters were a challenge.

Next week (hopefully) I will show you the Chic Picnic with quilting and binding complete.  The quilting is done and the binding is on.  It is just a matter of finishing the hand stitching.

Now we can move on to the Random Stuff.

• My dog, darling Sadie, has been on Prednisone for many months.  She licks and licks, for no apparent reason, until her skin is raw.  The vet thinks it's allergies, and prednisone keeps that issue down to a dull roar, but I know it's not good for her.  Now that dope (?) is legal here in Canada I wanted to get her some CBD oil to see if that would calm her down and I could reduce the steroid intake.  Technically in Ontario we are only allowed to "order" cannabis products from "the Government Store" (isn't there a song about that???).  But there are medical marijuana shops all over the place.  The cops will occasionally go in and bust everybody, confiscate all the product, and next thing you know the store is back open.  Anyhow...DH and I were driving down Upper James St. in Hamilton, when he whips his head around and says "isn't that a pot shop?".  Well yes, yes it is.  It is very well hidden from the cops by the BIG NEON SIGN out front.  So I turned the car around and zipped into the parking lot.  OMG.  What a sketchy place.  I'm glad I wasn't alone.  But they DID have CBD oil, so Sadie's been getting 2 drops per day - one at noon and one at bedtime for two weeks.  I've reduced the prednisone from 3 pills to 2 pills and so far, so good.  Now I smile at her and call her "my dopey dog".  ha ha ha.
• A super-nice woman in town loaned us a dog magazine because it had an article about dogs and CBD oil.  Well, there was a fun article in there about making dog beds from old tires.  Seriously???  Yup.  Here's a link - now you too can go down the rabbit-hole of weird internet things.  hah... see you next week. 😀
• I've recently been muttering to myself about how I never get comments on my blog and only a few remarks on facebook when I put up a new blog post.  Well, hell.  There were a dozen comments sitting on Blogger waiting to be approved by me, going back several months.  I apologize to you commenters!  Blogger used to send a notification when comments came in but apparently that's been discontinued.  I will pay more attention.  I promise.
• As I mentioned, I'm cutting my workload down a little bit so I'll have more (ahem) leisure time.  I have started to make up quilt kits with patterns that I want to make.  HERE is the latest one that I've saved to make with the three charm packs I bought at Missouri Star Quilt Company in 2017.  I also still have, from that same trip, 2 MORE charm packs and two layer cakes that I haven't done anything with yet.  geez Louise - stop buying fabric!!!

I hope the New Year's Baby brings us all peace, love, joy, and money in 2019.  See you next year!!