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???

Retreat!

Sleep.  Sweet, deep sleep.   In spite of two glasses of wine and a two-pak of Dark Chocolate Reeces Pieces.
Yesterday I started at 5 am, so I could pick up Deb at 7 am, so we could be in Elmira by 9 am, so we could enjoy a trunk show/demo by Kelly Cline before we headed up to Tobermory.

Kelly was fabulous, she works with heirloom linens and creates beautiful works of art, drawing on her art degree and interior design background.  Excellent day!

Following that was a very tedious drive which seemed to take forever, up to Tobermory.  I slept until 8:30 this morning!  Cause for celebration!
Today my project is the Kleenex Box Challenge for the Caledonia guild.

Sunday's WIP, Red Hat Art, and a few thoughts on housework

Sometimes, feathers are just the prettiest darned things!

My Red Hat group spent Friday night at the local pub.  We're not usually allowed out after dark (ha ha ha) but we made an exception to take a wee art class.  I don't mind doing things badly - there is a quote that I am likely mis-remembering, but it sort of goes "if you want to be good at something, you have to be willing to be bad at it first".

Our teacher set us all up with easels, canvas, brushes, paint, water, and gave us plenty of instructions to get us on our way.  The restaurant provided the wine.  :-)
If you would like to make some art you can contact Brandie through her facebook page.

Sooo... housework.  For about the past six weeks darling hubby has been helping with the housework.  A lot.  After mom died I got way behind schedule on my quilting, which totally stresses me out.  Even though everyone has been very understanding, I know people want their quilts back.  Sooner rather than later.  DH is really good about vacuuming, if I ask him.  He'll wash the floors, if I ask him.  And he'll do the bathrooms, if I ask him twice, and if I ignore the teeth-gnashing.  But dusting?  Uh uh.  Nope.  He will say "what dust?"  Or "maybe after I cut the grass".  Or he could just be blunt and say "not gonna happen".  Anyhow, the past couple of days I've been looking at the dirt piling up on the floors.  I'm close to being back on track, work wise, so I dragged out the vacuum and the dusting paraphernalia.  OMG.  Just in time, apparently - the furniture was all meshed together with cobwebs!  If I'd let it go much longer it would have been the perfect spot to film the next Tim Burton movie.  (shudder)

another "Not My Quilt" and coming home from MQX (or: The Boston Airport Bathroom Story!)

On our final day in NH I think we all decided that we'd had the best.trip.ever.  My final class was with Jenny Pedigo and Helen Robinson from Sew Kind of Wonderful.  They had so many quilts at the show, I have no idea how they got them all there.  There was also a special exhibit of their work with 34 quilts hanging.  I truly wanted to suck every bit of creativity out of their brains.  Now I feel obligated to get better at pebbling.

Sunday was our day to come home and we had a few hours to kill, so the bus took us to Keepsake Quilting, which is probably everyone's favorite quilt shop.  Huge, too - you need a couple of hours to go through the place.  I was feeling rather blase about the whole thing because I was NOT BUYING FABRIC.  Yeah.  I'm sure you can guess how that turned out.

The Boston Airport Bathroom Story
So.  In the morning you have to hurry-up-and-pack-and-be-at-the-bus-by-7:45-a.m.  Well.  Someone (you can guess that was NOT me!) had a leftover box of wine that wasn't opened.  We have no idea how that happened - it must have fallen behind the closet, or something.  It would not fit in her suitcase, even if she used the magic fairy dust.  So, another gal offered to pack it.  However, being so early in the morning she was not exactly paying attention to where said wine was packed.  Well, those nice people at the airport tend to frown on liquids being brought into the cabin in your carry-on bag.  A few pilfered Starbucks cups later...

I was threatened with serious violence and mayhem on my personal body if this made it to the blog, so I have disguised the crazy-ladies involved.  If you realize, a week from now, that you have not heard from me...

MQX Thursday (Thursday? Yes, Thursday)

You know how when you are out of town, you have NO IDEA what day it is?  Especially when you start your trip on a Tuesday.  Yeah.  That's me.  So.  Today I had two classes - the first was a Divide and Design class with Lisa Calle, who has a remarkably strong resemblance to my friend Jane.  Both of them are natural beauties.  Jane is a little bitchier. 😉  Anyhow...Ooh - good class.  Except for the part where my whole hand was completely BLACK from the pencil rubbing off the tracing paper.  And also transferring all over my WHITE sweater.  That is one of Lisa's quilts in the pic.  Certainly not mine. 

My second class today was with cutie Judi Madsen.  That was a ruler work class.  It was a great class, except that Judi quilts r.e.a.l.l.y. s.l.o.w.l.y.  Which is fine, except that the class was in the afternoon, when I am most likely to start doing the head-bobs.  So, I am currently in my room (after having purchased my SECOND cotton/wool blend batt) having a glass of wine and too many potato chips.  Pondering another nap.  It has quilt ... I mean QUIT snowing but yesterday's fluff has not melted.  Zzzzzz...

Workshop in Goderich

This is work done by Becky Goldsmith.  I love, love, love her stuff.

She's half of Piece 'O Cake Designs.

I was up in Goderich to take a workshop with her when I spotted this roof.

OMG.  Is there a quilter in the world who would NOT want this roof???

I am not going to show you my awesome work accomplished in the class.  One stem, one leaf and one circle.  Very exciting stuff.


I love my quilty friends.  I got an email "I had a really good pumpkin crop this year.  Would you like some?"  Hell YES!!  One is already missing and in the kitchen - ready to be murdilized by my chef's knife.

Here we go - one large-ish pie pumpkin, maybe 8" across.  Cut, seeded and boiled.

The skins just slip off at this point.

I cranked up the Kitchenaid food mill and got about 5 cups of puree.

Whee... bread dough.

Yum, yum, yum.  Pumpkin bread from this recipe.

Afterwards, I made pumpkin cranberry squares from this recipe.  They went to a meeting with me last night and the only ones to make it home were in my stomach.  Oops.  Sorry DH.

Broken Star Quilt & Jane Sassaman

Mmm, what a beautiful quilt.  AND it was flat, and square.

Feather background quilting and a motif in all of the star points.

There are two smaller stars in the pillowtuck area.

Last Sunday was a day I've been looking forward to for months.  A day spent with Jane Sassaman, who is one of my long time idols.

This was a design class, not a sewing class, so we were working with paper, scissors, pencils and colour.  Just like being in kindergarten again.

I bought a half-yard bundle of her fabrics (as DH said:  "well of COURSE you did!!") and they were making me insane, sitting on my work table all week, staring at me.  By Thursday it got to the point where if I didn't sew them up into something I was going to explode.  Only another quilter would understand that feeling.






I left them in pretty big pieces - partly time crunch, partly lazy, partly just love the fabric and hated to cut it up.  It will make a wonderful throw or tablecloth, finished at 65" x 75" - I used 100% cotton batting so it's nice and thin.  I really like the pattern I quilted on it - Jesters Hat. Now I just need to finish the binding...

Progress, workshop, timmies

Here is a shot of progress.  After I finish with the pukey green thread (which sounds awful but looks very good on many, many quilts) I will move on to the cream thread.

The large corner pieces of the centre medallion.

I was in a workshop on Tuesday with Deborah Beirnes.  She taught a class on scrap quilts and gave us a handout with cutting & piecing instructions for 33 blocks.  Some of the sewing sequences are pretty slick.  She has a very quick method for piecing 9-patch units, and that snail's trail block (bottom right) was made with two squares of fabric.  Deborah is from the St. Jacobs, On. area and can be reached at deborah.beirnes@sympatico.ca .  She put on an EXCELLENT workshop.

I took my little stack of blocks to show mom yesterday.  It makes my visits easier if I have something to show her and to talk about.  Last spring I had a wonderful garden catalogue with lots of colourful pictures that we went through over and over again.  Sometimes I bring a quilt, sometimes photos.  I had to go to the home yesterday to sign an authorization for them to put a seatbelt on her when she's in her wheelchair, because on Monday she got up out of the wheelchair and promptly fell down.  (insert many swear words...)  Apparently seatbelts are a RESTRAINT and not permitted without authorization.  I guess that is technically correct, but c'mon - she's recovering from a broken hip.  Don't you think she should stay sitting unless someone is hanging on to her???  Sheesh.

Anyhow, as per usual I took Tim Hortons tea & timbits, and I got one of the teas FREE from my winning Roll up the Rim.  If you'd like to read a really fun post on an embroiderers blog about Tim Hortons, check out that link.

class results & insomnia

Sooo, did anyone else find themselves WIDE AWAKE at 4:30 this morning, eating apple crisp straight out of the pan?  On the plus side, it gave me lots of time to finish up the wee quilt I made in class yesterday.  I definitely need more practice with the Square in Square ruler.  I am accustomed to my block units all being the same size.  But these?... not so much.

And, I am scheduled to present the Block of the Month at the Binbrook guild tomorrow night, so I did up the pattern for that, too.  This is a 12" My Blue Heaven block from Quilters Cache.  I will hand out sixteen patterns,  have the gals make them in white with pastel, and someone will win enough blocks next month for a nice baby quilt.

Weather, Red Hat Outing

You can let your imagination run wild and GUESS what the weather is like. The fire has been going for several days, keeping me warm in my workroom.  So far the furnace has not been turned on, although the living room is chilly when we are watching tv. Thank goodness I know where to find a quilt or two to wrap up in.  :-)

Thursday was Red Hat day. We started at the Red Bobbin quilt shop in Brantford, then headed over to neighbouring Mount Pleasant to the Dutch Windmill restaurant for lunch.  Mmm... quiche & salad for lunch, then a pumpkin roll for dessert.  I fell off the wagon as far as my fabric moratorium goes, and bought 2 m. of a cute baby print.  No, the baby print is not for me - pffttt!!!  Afterwards we headed into Hamilton to Gage Park and wandered around the Mum Show.

The chrysanthemum Dragon and the chrysanthemum Fire Dog were both very well done.

Today I'm taking a quilt class on the Jodi Barrows Square in Square ruler.  I'm not even there yet and already I'm a bad student.  I don't like the project the instructor chose, so I've picked out another one to work on.  I hate students like me.  :-)

Jelly Roll Quilt & Pea Sprouts

This Jelly Roll quilt was made in the Morning Out class last fall.  I love the Civil War prints.

It was quilted with wool batting, which is my all-time favorite.

The pea sprouts are coming along nicely. They were started Wednesday morning and showed their first signs of growth on Friday morning. This is the status Saturday morning. Here's hoping I don't kill them before Monday night's supper.

Stash Report & Quilting & Movie Review

Stash report

Used this week: 5.5 m

Used year to date: 16.5 m

Added this week: 0

Added year to date: 0

Net for 2011 down: 16.5 m

And what have I used all this fabric on???  The above quilt, which is for the Morning Out class.  I started the quilting yesterday and hope to finish it in time for Monday's guild meeting show & share.  Lord willing and the creek don't rise.  DH is in charge of the kitchen while I'm on these manic missions.  I just ask him to throw food down to me occasionally.

I also finished an Underground Railroad quilt this week.  Love samplers.

And I REALLY love that border fabric.

Last night we watched The Fighter with Mark Wahlberg.  Stinker. Save your money.  They (?) must have paid someone to get a nomination for Best Picture.  I have no idea why the story seemed compelling enough for anyone to invest millions of dollars to put it to film. 

In retaliation for the man movie, I'm looking forward to tonight's Hallmark movie on tv.  I've got my kleenex all ready.