Fall & Winter Projects

 I started this back in the summer, it became Part II of a wedding gift.  Cute - a modern version of Christmas trees.

The pattern is a freebee from Art Gallery Fabrics, "Tepee Adventures".  It's written as a lap quilt so I had to make more blocks and kind of re-jig things to get a queen size quilt.  Most of the fabrics came from my stash, with the exception of the backgrounds and the border, and I think a couple of fat quarters.

This was made as a gift for an animal lover.

All fabrics from my stash, although the dog panel was a recent bargain purchase that I couldn't (ahem, couldn't?) walk away from, at a quilt shop that was closing due to retirement.  Quilted with cute little paw prints, and very cozy with a flannel back.

More animal lover gifts.  These were packed up with some tea packets, chocolate balls, and a book for each.

These six quilts went to Martha House (a women's shelter in Hamilton).  I've been working on these throughout the year.  

• The cat quilt on the left was made from a panel that I picked up from the guild "take it" table.  
• The blues/yellows next to it was a guild demo for three-patch quilts, made from flying geese blocks.  
• Next the charm squares were pieced on Super Bowl Sunday, my annual project fueled by commercials, cocktails & frozen lasagne.  
• The reds/greens started as a layer cake from Missouri Star Quilt Company.  
• Next is another layer cake, which I WON at Missouri Star, pieced with a redrafted version of the Summer Slice pattern.  
• Far right is the original version of the Summer Slice pattern.  This was an example on using a border print fabric.

This Dream Big panel has been hanging on my flannel board for a few years.  Originally I put it there to give myself some Stand And Stare time.  After it had been there for about three years, though, I started to get a guilty conscience over the un-doneness of it.  

When the fearless leader of the Beach Girls announced an in-person SOLO meeting (Southern Ontario Longarm Operators) scheduled for November (the first one since the pandemic started), I was determined to bring this finished, because the program was Show & Share.

As it turned out, I barely got it off the machine the evening before the meeting.  I took it in all it's not-quite-finished ugliness, with excess backing & batting flapping in the wind.  Whatever.  It was quilted.

This whole thing was quilted by me, as in "hand guided", as in "no computer".  I don't generally work my creative brain cells this much, so I had to pull out some of my books:  Angela Walters, Renae Haddadin, Judy Madsen, as well as go through the zillion sheets of quilting doodles that I've brought home from classes over the years.

I'll give you closeups of each quadrant because Every. Single. Petal. was quilted differently:

And the back.  You can see the various thread colours I used to accentuate the petals.  The one thread I ended up not being happy with was the pale peach, it looks washed out.  The rest were all good.

Now remember:  common folklore tells you that however you start the New Year is how the year will progress.  It is crucial that you have your stitching project planned for Sunday!  I'll be doing my usual in person AND long-distance-via-email group sewing, with Chinese Food to follow.  Happy New Year. 🎇

A Winter Quilt & A Donation

 This is a beautiful quilt made from a panel.  As you know, Winter Is Coming.

I love this gal's work.  She cut up the panel, did some math, made lots of patchwork, then put it all together.

Even the back is lovely.

Back in the spring my friend and I were horrified about what was happening in Ukraine, and we decided to put our stashes together and make a quilt for donation.

Here's the final product.

A closeup of the quilting - sunflowers.

I also made some placemats to go with the quilt.

I'm pleased to say that I delivered the quilt and placemats to the Hamilton branch of the Ukraine Canadian Congress last week.

That must have worn me out...here's what I just finished.

Ha ha ha, that tiny little thing is for a guild swap - a mug & mug rug.

I've kept up my energy by eating lots of Kale Salad.  My goodness, that stuff is very resilient.  

DH said: (with a fake sad face) The kale is dead.  It didn't survive that cold snap.

Me: Uh, nope, you should go take another look.

DH:  What?  No...it was all droopy and wilted.

Me:  Uh, nope, it has recovered quite nicely!

DH:  mutter, mutter, mutter... 😖

RECIPE FOR KALE SALAD

227 g kale, chopped (massage with lightly oiled hands for a few minutes)

2 apples or pears, cut into matchsticks

56 g sliced almonds, lightly toasted

DRESSING

1 tbsp dijon mustard

4 tbsp oil

2 tbsp white wine vinegar

Whisk dressing ingredients together.  Toss kale, fruit, almonds with dressing.

I'll close this post with a pic of my useless assistant.  She was stuck at home on a very rainy Friday instead of playing with her friends at daycare.  She's missing a tail, so she does a piss-poor job of sweeping up threads.

Kicking 2021 To The Curb

One of the best memories from 2021 - Beach Day in Exeter.  That car and I are approximately the same age.  I think it's a '57, and I'm a '56.

Lovely scrappy one that I quilted in September.

Margaret's 150 Canadian Women Quilt.  Mine is still only half way complete.

Wow, beautiful vintage blocks!

Ooh, so pretty.  I had trouble figuring out the quilting for this one but I love how it turned out.

Ahem.  How I spent December 16th.  Lined up for 4 1/2 hours at Dundurn Castle's parking lot for a booster shot on the Go-Vaxx bus, with DH and a friend.  It was a nice-ish day considering it was mid-December, but there were gale force winds AND periodic bouts of rain.  After we finally (!) got our shots we went to Lemongrass Thai Restaurant for lunch.  That was my last in-restaurant meal for the foreseeable future, I expect.

 MY BIGGEST ACCOMPLISHMENT

Finally managing to complete a no-complaint-30-days was definitely the top of the list.  That seems to have changed my brain, temporarily at least.  I still complain but I'm quite aware now that I'm doing it, and usually nip it in the bud.  I definitely recommend that long and occasionally painful process of personal growth.  It seems to me now that complaining is simply reminding yourself about your unhappiness about something-or-other.  There is zero point to that.  If you're unhappy about something, either shit or get off the pot.

MY NEW ONGOING HABIT

I could never remember when I did something.  When I talked to someone.  WHO I talked to about something.  I was listening to a podcast about something-or-other (see what I mean???) and apparently our covid isolation has resulted in our lives being the same, day after day after day.  We have no "markers" to isolate events.  My brain cannot flip through it's files and identify "the night at the pub when I met Chloe" as the same day when I got a haircut, for example.  So back in June I started keeping a tiny daily diary on Google Docs.  There are no deep dark secrets there, but I can tell you when I had lunch with someone.

2021 DONATION QUILTS    

These are the quilts I donated to the women's shelter this year.  These four were pieced in October at the Tobermory retreat.

These four have been waiting for a new home for a while.

I am guessing that I donated this one too.  It was supposed to be a gift for someone, but when I went to wrap it I couldn't find it anywhere.  All of these quilts were out in my workroom for photos at the same time, so this must have been inadvertently packed into the donation box too.  If not, then God help me, I have lost a quilt!!!

This is how I'll be spending New Years Day.  I saw that quilt pic on the internet somewhere - if I had any idea where I would certainly give the maker credit.  I sat down for an hour and ciphered out the measurements and drafted the instructions.

I'm supposed to have a friend over for the day, but we've changed that plan - she will stay home and sew.  The covid numbers are absolutely on fire here right now and we both prefer to stay healthy if we can.

COVID-19

Oh, what the hell.  I was hoping there'd be no more point to this part of my post, but the Universe seems to have a different idea.  Here are the numbers for today.

World:  Total cases 282,617,000.  Total deaths 5,413,000

USA:  Total cases 53,105,000.  Total deaths 820,458

Canada:  Total cases 2,031,000.  Total deaths 30,251

Ontario:  Total cases 697,000.  Total deaths 10,200

In Ontario our daily case numbers have gone from, well, here...  a picture is worth a thousand words.  The highest number since the pandemic started was on Christmas day at over 10,000.  Today is 8,800.  This might explain my earlier remark that booster day was probably my last in-person restaurant meal for a while.

I cannot end the year with a depressing topic like our covid numbers, so how about a cute cartoon?  Here's hoping 2022 will be an improvement over 2021 and 2020.

 

Catching Up, again

 I seem to have put my blog posting on the same schedule as my house cleaning...pretty darned infrequently! My new system for cleaning is to keep an eye on a couple of the pictures hanging on the wall - if I notice gooey, stringy cobwebs hanging off them I make myself vacuum some time in the following week.  

I'm just going to give you some pics of a few quilts that I've completed for customers over the last couple of months, ok?  OK.

This quilt came with a special request to add a couple of hearts in the quilting.

This was so stinkin' cute.

This is a special quilt for some Florida people.

I love these Quick Curve Ruler quilts!

Another quilt made from embroidered blocks.  This is #3 for this gal.

Scrappy - my all-time favorite quilts.

Like many people these days, I've had it up to the wazoo with politicians.  I was SO ticked off with one local provincial representative that I actually wrote a letter to the editor.  They edited out some of it, but I think they should have kept the comment that Oosterhoff is part of the governing provincial party that has mandated the regulations currently in place.  WTF???

I have a new t-shirt to get me through the rest of the year.  This arrived in time for me to cry in my wine over the cancellation of the annual Tobermory retreat with the Beach Girls.  This cancellation might explain some of my fit over Oosterhoff.  He gets to play with his friends, but I don't???  WTF???

Then I soothed the savage beast with copy-cat Starbucks Pumpkin Scones.

This was my most interesting volunteer in the garden this summer.  It's a kale plant in the same spot where I had one two years ago.  It's been feeding us for weeks (a fact that DH is not particularly impressed with, seeing as it is a green leafy vegetable).  These days if he makes any kind of negative remark over supper all he gets from me is an eye roll and "suck it up, buttercup".  Yeah.  Not winning any BEST WIFE, EVER awards.  Oh, covid... how many marriages are facing some less-than-stellar-days thanks to you?

On a personal quilting note, I stitched up and quilted a whack of Christmas panels.  Since this pic was taken I have cut them all apart and trimmed to size. These will be donated whenever I get all that binding finished.

The current GOOD news is that Biden/Harris won the US election.  I cannot wait to see Trump get his arse booted out of the White House.

COVID NUMBERS

Worldwide: 49.9 million cases and 1.2 million deaths.  Daily increase in cases 540,000.

USA:  9.9 million cases and 238,000 deaths.  The US hit a new daily high of over 130,000 cases yesterday.  Sad.

Canada:  261,400 cases and 10,493 deaths.  New cases yesterday 4,246.

Ontario:  84,153 cases and 3,233 deaths.  We hit a new daily high of 1,328 new cases yesterday.  Sad.

Half-Square Triangle Quilt, Yes I Have Flour, Covid Update #2

I really enjoyed working on this quilt.  There is so much depressing/horrifying/shocking (pick any one) news every day that this really cheered me up.

The whole thing is made from half-square triangles.  If you are involved in a guild swap of half-squares, this is a great use for them.

Mmm, love the back.

YES, I HAVE FLOUR

Like many people I'm not sleeping very well some nights.  Although I don't usually get UP at three in the morning, last Tuesday I was WIDE AWAKE.  So I figured, what the hell.  And since I have flour I decided to rattle around in the kitchen and make a couple of these delicious breakfast fruit braids.  The filling is cream cheese, fruit preserves, and some fresh berries.  DH and I managed to eat the first one over two days.  To show a bit of respect for the waistlines, I put the other one out of sight in the freezer.

One of the problems with the current lockdown is a lack of will to go get treats for Sadie.  Well, not that we don't have the will but it's a bit of a production, and frankly, quite stressful. So I fished around in the messy pantry and located the dog cookie cutters and the collection of recipes.  These are dirt simple.

After cutting and rolling, then kneading the leftover dough and cutting some more, I finally used the last bits to just roll out little globby blobs of cookies.  Sadie does not care - they taste just as delicious as the cute bones.

Forcing my way OUT of the kitchen I ventured down to my workroom and made up a bunch of masks.  And yes, I started cocktail hour a bit early that day.  Don't judge me.

More entertainment...I located a set of guild blocks.  Rather wonky, ranging in size from 12" to 13", but pretty nevertheless.  Hopefully quilting will happen this coming week.  This is one of the guild donation quilts.

COVID UPDATE #2

I need to update my blog more often if I'm going to continue this personal diary.

• 3/31 Public schools in Ontario will be closed until May 4th. Toronto cancels all events (parades, conferences, festivals, cultural programs, until June 30th. Hamilton has a snitch line to report non-essential businesses flouting the mandate as well as people gathering with more than 5. Haldimand-Norfolk has 27 confirmed cases, Anson Place (seniors facility in Hagersville) has 3 dead, 11 positive.
• 4/1, it's one of those days when I had every expectation of working. Morning news until 11 am, with a bit of online messaging thrown in. 11 am pull up a half hour exercise video, which is interrupted by a call from Dr. Adachi's office (he's my bone density specialist).  I got my "visit" over the phone. 1130 shower & dress.  1200 lunch & newspaper. 1230 dry hair then go back to the paper. 100 call from  a friend about the cancellation arrangements for our fall Italy trip, and some mutual Trump bashing. 130 finally finished reading the front section of the paper. DH & I go into town. ..get water, get meds, mail cheque to food bank. 230 take Sadie for a walk. 300 go fish small potatoes out of the bag in the fruit cellar so DH can plant them. 320 make tea & write up this timetable of today's activities. 330 go to work...it's obviously going to be a short work day today!  Hamilton reporting 112 cases as of today. Ontario = 2,392.
• 4/3 Trump orders 3M to stop shipping N95 respirators to Canada and Latin America. Gosh, you couldn't ask for a better neighbour than that, eh? (yes, VERY tongue-in-cheek)  
• 4/4 Provincial forecasting...by end of April 80,000 cases and 1,600 deaths.  Dr. Zizzo's death (my family doctor!) was featured on CH news, possible Covid death. Ontario today 3,630, Hamilton today 147. Effective midnight tonight I am no longer  permitted porch pickups or dropoffs, although I wasn't taking dropoffs anyways.(*)
• 4/8 Hamilton 198, 6 deaths. Hald - Norfolk 110 with 6 deaths (60 cases are at Anson Place who are reporting 8 deaths which is at odds with gov't numbers).
• 4/10 Ontario govt has extended all restrictions and regulations until April 23. Made 15 masks.
• 4/11 Tried to mail masks to family but the post office closed an hour early.  This is the first time I've left the house in 11 days.  I even had on mascara!
• 4/12 - Easter Sunday.  We took a drive to 1-800-Luke's and threw a bag on his porch containing two masks and a few gloves.  DH cooked us a roast beef for Easter dinner.  Yum.
• 4/13 - Got myself mascara-ed up again and made a succesful trip to the post office.  I also picked up my meds.  Only a 30 day supply is being filled these days to prevent hoarding and to limit shortages.
• 4/14 - 3 am and I'm WIDE AWAKE.  Decided to get out of bed and make a couple of breakfast braided breads, filled with cream cheese, fruit, and walnuts.  Later I will be making dog cookies since Sadie's cupboard is bare.
• 4/15 (*) I called the Ontario government for clarification on the non-essential business rules regarding porch pickups and dropoffs. Apparently that decision is up to the business owner, although my "storefront" must be closed.
• 4/17 Picked up our first produce box that was ordered online.  For $25.00 we got: 5 oranges, 1 melon, 1 box blueberries, 1 box blackberries,  1 box mushrooms,  2 sweet peppers, 2 red onions, 1 head lettuce (yay!!  I've been wanting lettuce for at least a week.), 1 head of celery, and a large bunch of snow peas. You drive up, tell them who you are and what size box you ordered and they put it in your car.  Nice.  After we got home I left a quilt on the porch for a client pickup, and she left me a bottle of wine as a tip! How sweet is that?  I was reading the news before bed (stupid, studid, stupid.  Always a mistake). Donald Trump was tweeting that three of the states needed to be LIBERATED. Wtf? He thinks the restrictions are too limiting on the population.  And, oh yeah, those three states are all DEMOCRAT states. That man is such a frightening character.  He instigates chaos and encourages frenzied behavior akin to a pack of wild dogs, all for the sake of politics. Check out the "rallies" of protest that are going on because of his vitriol. As much as I don't like Doug Ford, I agree that our border should stay the hell shut. Fucking nutbars over there.
• 4/18 Yay, the US/Canada border is staying closed for another 30 days. I started another batch of masks using the Patrick Lose pattern.
• 4/19 Canada 33,383 cases. Ontario 10,010. Hamilton 323 cases.  Anson Place 71 cases, 23 deaths.  Dear God.  And so many people still think this is no worse than the seasonal flu?  Today was supposed to be the SOLO meeting in Elmira.  Sigh, not happening now until the fall.