All Hallows Eve

We had the grandkids overnight so that the big kids could go out and play…

The alien, the trapper with his beaver, a fisherman, a Dutch fan from the World Cup (with a real vuvuzela).  DD # 3 is a rocket and DD # 1 is a bunch of grapes.  Neither of them were finished dressing when the pic was taken.

We took the grandchildren to a friend’s house for a pumpkin carving contest.

The finished pumpkins…..DH won the prize with the second pumpkin from the left….

 

Today I whipped up bags (literally the fastest bags I’ve ever made) for Ella and Declan to take out trick or treating…

They’ve gone home for the festivities.  Granddaughter is going to be a cat, grandson Batman.

Happy Halloween!!!

Janet

Blogger’s Quilt Festival

I am entering this quilt for the festival…

I chose this quilt because:

1) I just finished it

2) I really like it

3) I learned some things while making it.

I didn’t make this quilt on my own.  It was a collaborative effort by my local little quilt group.  Linda H., Francine, Diane and I all worked on the layout.  Francine organized the blocks for sewing.  Linda P. did all the piecing.  I matched seams and pinned rows – I take responsibility for all the corners that don’t match.  Diane and I squared it up, measured for the borders and pinned them on.  Linda P. sewed them on.  I did the straight line quilting (again I take responsibility for some of the lines being wonky.  And I did the binding.  This quilt is going to be raffled to make money to buy a couple of sewing machines for our group.  The older ladies all have machines but there are a few teens who come out and they don’t have machines.

The fabrics for this quilt all came out of my stash, but they were all hand me down fabrics from others.  When my friend Dahn got new dye materials in late summer and destashed a lot of her old fabric to me there was a pile of 5 inch squares.  Here they are in this quilt.  The backing fabric came from another friend.  Kim, who doesn’t sew and doesn’t own a sewing machine, decided she was going to make wrap around skirts for an abortion clinic.  She bought yard and yards of material.  Ten years later, when she was cleaning out her garage, she gifted it all to me.

What did I learn? 

I learned that a simple quilt can be beautiful.  I gravitate toward complicated  patterns, tiny pieces and other things that take time. 

I learned that every fabric has it’s place.  I couldn’t see how that green and white fabric was going to fit in this quilt.  Then we used it for the border and ahhh…..it was perfect.

I learned that it is possible to use nothing but stash fabrics in a quilt.  (I will use any excuse to BUY fabric.)

More pictures.  It was dull and grey out so the light wasn’t the best, but now it’s a raging snowstorm so I got the pictures just in time!

I see a stray thread….

Please click on the Blogger’s Quilt Festival button on my sidebar to see all the quilts.

Janet

Bonanza!

I’ve had a bit of a mail bonanza lately so there are a few items I’d like to show…

First up are my brown bag fabrics received from Leslie.  The brown bag contest has rules….use 90% of the 2 yards of fabric gifted, add any amount you like from your stash and can add one new piece.  Make something by March 2011.  I like the fabrics Leslie sent. She thought they might go well with my sailboat…. I’ve got ideas but nothing started yet.

Next is this block received from Heather in Nova Scotia.  Heather doesn’t have a blog but she was my swap partner for my first month in the Christmas block swap. I asked for wonky stars in Christmas fabrics on a snowy background.   This one is a beauty – if they are all this nice I’m going to be a happy girl!  I can’t show what I made her because she hasn’t received it yet.

Then I got the first instalment of completed hexies from DD # 2.  They are looking great!

I received this lovely pincushion and a few other goodies in the scrappy pincushion swap.  These goodies came all the way from Fiona in Ireland.  I`ve named this pincushion Goldie and the Bear.  I love it!  Below it is the one I sent out to Jeni.

 

And last but not least I received this postcard.  Sometime ago I sewed a couple of blocks to donate to this quilt for Errick who has cancer.  The quilt was made by Lucia and she was overwhelmed with donations.  She ended up making a quilt  for Errick, potholders, a zippered bag, a book showing the process and a mini quilt for his son.  What a labour of love.  Then she sent us all this thank-you note.  What a treasure!

I’ve been busy working on this quilt with the ladies from my hometown crafting group.  It’s going to be raffled off to raise some money for our group.  We get to use our local community club in exchange for cleaning it twice a month.  Lots of floor space to lay things out on = lots of floors to clean!  

Have to go and quilt this puppy now!

Janet

A slow week

It’s been a slow week around here.  The weather is snowy, rainy, cold and very much like winter.  I put my car in the ditch going to work yesterday.   I have studded tires and AWD and I NEVER have traction issues, but I got a flat tire and the road was glare ice.  Other than the flat tire and some gravel in the brakes there was no damage to me or my car, but while DH and I were there changing the tire one of my neighbours rolled his brand new SUV in the same spot.  He had his wife, two children and dog in the vehicle.  Thank God they only had scrapes and bruises, but the vehicle was very smashed up.  The daughter (about 12 years old) commented when I arrived at the vehicle – “seat belts DO work!”  Then a third car went into the ditch, right side up and right way around in the same area.  Needless to say I was shook up and when we finally got things sorted out about noon I had long given up any plans to go to work. The highway crews hadn’t been out – they thought since it was only –2 it wouldn’t be icy!!

I haven’t done much sewing in the last few days -regrouping after finishing the quilt I guess.  I did make this trio of hot pads (or coasters) from my pile of little scraps.  My LQS saves them for me for the postage stamp quilt but I have so many, sometimes I just have to play.  These really are square although they look wonky in the first two pictures.  I’ve given all three away already….but I have enough little scraps in these colours left to make one for myself.

I am participating in Friday Night Sew In this week – haven’t yet decided what to work on – and on Saturday my local “craft” group is having an all day get together.  I guess I’ll get back on board with sewing then.

Peg, from Pieces on my Mind and I did a swap of some vegies.  I sent her a lettuce and tomato salad and she sent me these two lovely oranges, carrots and pumpkins!  I’m thrilled as I didn’t have any orange vegies in my original line up!  Good for Vitamin A you know…..and C as well….

She also sent me a FQ each of these cute quilting themed fabrics!  I’m sure to think of something fun to do with them.  Thanks so much Peg!

And on a final note – thanks for all the loving comments on my quilt.  I do love how it turned out.  There were two ladies, Peg and Lesley (Canadians of course), who braved answering the quiz about the provincial tartan.  They were both right although Peg waffled a bit on which province.  It was Nova Scotia…

• The Nova Scotia tartan was the first provincial tartan in Canada.
• Tartan reflects the important contribution of the Scots to the founding of Nova Scotia.
• The very name Nova Scotia is Latin for New Scotland.
• The tartan was originally designed in 1953 for the agricultural exhibition in Truro. It was officially adopted by the province in 1955.
• The blue and white in the tartan stand for the sea, the greens represent the forests, red is for the royal lion on the Shield of Arms, and gold for the province's historic Royal Charter.

Peg picked the right fabric but wondered if it was the Yukon’s tartan.  She opined that the Yukon isn’t a province ….our “premier” (head of the legislative assembly) thinks the Yukon is a province :)   This is our tartan…

The Yukon tartan is a recent and non-traditional addition to the world's official tartans. The woven cloth is composed of green, dark blue, magenta, yellow and white stripes in varying widths on a light blue background.

The crystalline blue background represents Yukon's sky and the green symbolizes the territory's forests. White symbolizes snow and yellow suggest Yukon's gold. Magenta is the colour of fireweed, Yukon's floral emblem, and dark blue represents the mountains.

There are prizes in the mail for both of you.  Congratulations on your Canadiana knowledge.

Janet

DD # 2 is gone and she took the quilt….

We had our family Thanksgiving dinner last night – all the girls, grandchildren, friends, cousins, boyfriends and various dogs.  Nice to have the whole family together for the first time in over a year.  DD # 2 left early this morning on the plane, amid the slushy, snowy rain.  And she took her quilt with her!

Some hitherto little known and unpublished facts about this quilt….

1. This is the first large quilt I have made start to finish.

2.  The quilt is a graduation present for DD #2.  She graduated in July.  I started gathering the fabric in April and finished the quilt yesterday. 

3. I got the pattern out of a book at our local library; Fast, Fun and Fabulous Quilts by Judith Hughes Marte.

4. I started a quilt for DD # 2 several years ago from fabric she bought.  About a year ago, after a couple of years of nagging me to work on her quilt, she announced that her tastes had changed.  She pointed out this quilt in the book as one she was now liking.  She didn’t know until she got here last week that I wasn’t working on the old quilt.

5. There are 8 light coloured plaids and 27 dark coloured plaids in this quilt. 

6. I got many of the plaid fabrics from an online store – Schoolhouse Quilts.  They had a special of 20 plaid fat quarters for $30.  The owner was very helpful; after I got the initial batch, which was mostly dark plaids, I e-mailed and asked if she could send me a second batch with light plaids.  Although she didn’t have as big a selection of the lights, she was quite happy to send me duplicates of some of the lights.

7. I now have a large stash of plaid fabrics :)

8. The star pieces are all cut from templates and the pieces were not easy to match up.  I string pieced them four at a time.  After the first four I realized there were problems with the matches but I wasn’t taking it apart.  If I was to do this again I think I’d make a paper piecing pattern.

9. I did “custom quilting” on this quilt.  I’ve done a bit of this before but never on such a large project.  Please don’t look too closely at my mistakes.

10. The finished size is about 68” x 51”.

10. Judith named this quilt Stars and Stripes Forever but that was just too much of a patriotic American name for me.  I named it Dancing Stars.

 

It’s a little shy to start.  But then it jumps forth boldly….

Hanging out in the late afternoon sun….

Close ups….

And the label….I crossed all the T’s but I see I didn’t dot all the I’s….

 

After watching me madly finishing the quilt all week and asking a million questions like “What are you doing now?”  “Why are you using that foot on your sewing machine?” “How long is that going to take?”, the actual presentation of the quilt wasn’t much of a surprise.  She does really like it though, I could tell when she first saw it. 

Here’s a contest for you all.  There is one plaid in here which is a Canadian provincial tartan.  Which one is it and what province does it come from?  Laina, I know you know and you can’t play…

Janet

DD # 2 is here and so are the hexies…

Earlier this summer my friend Dahn called me excitedly saying she had something for me.  Dahn knows I love scraps and she abhors them.  She had been promising to bring me her latest round of scraps for my postage stamp quilt so that’s what I thought she had.  But this was something she found in the garbage….and even she could not leave it there.  It was a huge bag full of hexagons that someone had cut out.  Many of them were basted onto paper backing.  She just knew that I would do something with this and she couldn’t let it go to the garbage.  And she was right.  I took it home and sorted all the hexies into piles of the same fabrics.  It took me hours.

There are many little hexies here, some basted and some just cut.  As well there is some leftover fabric.

I keep seeing One Flower Wednesday on different blogs and thinking I should start working on the hexies but I haven’t started yet.

DD #2 is here visiting from Newfoundland.  It’s been great to see her as it’s been over a year since she left.  She works as a paramedic just outside Saint John’s.  She has downtime on her job and does a lot of knitting.  I mentioned before that she inherited my mother in law’s unfinished knitting projects.  One of those was a sweater for the youngest son.  He is a big man and it is a big sweater.  DD # 2 has finished it and is in the ‘sewing in the ends and sewing it together’ stage.  She brought it with her to work on as well as a pair of long overdue Christmas socks for her cousin.  She has those done and has decided she will give her uncle the sweater for Christmas so she still has time to get it done. 

DD # 2 loves the quilt I’m making her.  I had started a different quilt long ago and she thought I was finishing that one – hence the surprise element and why I haven’t posted photos.  It is almost done, just finishing the binding and you’ll get to see it soon.  But DD # 2 commented that SHE should make a quilt.  She doesn’t really sew but she does have time to work on things and she’s a smart cookie. 

SO….can you see where this is heading….I suggested maybe she wants to sew together a few hexies…..  At first she asked if I was crazy, but then she got engaged.  She’s made these two already

and she’s taking the rest of the pile with her.  She’s cut a stack of the yellow hexies for the centers and basted them onto paper backing.  She’ll mail the finished ones back to me as she gets them done.  What an inspiration!  These are very old fashioned fabrics and I probably wouldn’t have picked them but I think they will look very pretty.  DH said maybe this quilt could be for Zeke, our dog, as the poor guy was shivering in the boat yesterday.  Zeke needs a sweater and a quilt but I don’t think he’ll be getting this hand stitched one!

Janet

Quilt parade

Hope you enjoyed your morning toast :)  I didn’t really mean to post that utube video.  I just wanted to send it to my friend Dahn, but I couldn’t figure out how to do that.  Sometimes the computer befuddles me.  When we took my F-i-L on the trip he was determined to figure out how to use his new chip Visa card.  But every machine that you use is different and he was struggling with getting the process.  That’s how I feel on the computer.  Sometimes you can just send a page, other times you can’t.  Someone told me the Ctl C, Ctl V trick for copying – what a relief as I used to have such trouble copying things. 

But the toast revue is hilarious!  Hope you enjoy it.

Anyway …. a few pics of other’s work from the quilt retreat.  The pictures aren’t great.  The quilts were lying on the floor so the angle is weird and some of them are out of focus.  Too much quilting, not enough toast!  That’s gotta be the problem…

By our fearless leader,  Ruth, who owns the local quilt shop and organized the retreat.

I think this was my favourite….

Love the colours….

There were two in this pattern, this one …

and this one.  Amazing how different fabrics change the quilt….

Can you tell I had to turn the photo upside down to get the quilt right side up?  Very cute pattern.

The four ladies from Haines had a pact to all make this table runner.  The rest of us loved it and are hunting down the pattern right now.  The fabrics on the second one up are Fairy Frosts.  It is beautiful!

Blurry…rats…but you can see the beautiful colour distribution.

A siggie quilt to commemorate a school reunion.  Such soft gorgeous colours!

 

This Sudoku quilt was fabulous; fussy cut animals and Canada proudly proclaimed.

My friend Dahn’s raggy edge circle quilt made from her home dyed fabrics.  Beautiful!

I’m tempted not to put this one in here because it’s so blurry, but it is really cute with all the kitties.

A wall hanging in nice colours.

Lots of people were swooning over this gorgeous quilt!

I love the colours in this one.

And look at all the work in this fabulous quilt!

A wall hanging to go with the quilt above.

Look at the range of colours in this string quilt.  Gorgeous!

A set of two…these might be northern lights.

A finish of a mystery quilt.  I made this pattern with different fabrics and a different border and it looks completely different!

These Halloween wall panels are too cute.  One of the Haines ladies made it and she passed the pattern on to my friend Dahn, who has passed it on to me.  Sharing is such fun.

Christmasy table runner… tis the season….

Another Sudoku quilt  in pretty colours.

Hope you’ve enjoyed the parade.

Janet