The Sandwich Generation

That's me...the poster child for "the sandwich generation". That is the life stage where you have children at home to take care of and elderly parents to take care of. And in between all the caretaking you try to hold down a job, and try to find time for things such as quilting!
My mother-in-law had a stroke on the weekend, and since we are the only family in town, guess who is now in charge of her care? Me! Thankfully they are keeping her in hospital, so we only have to help her with eating meals and personal care. When she comes home, I don't even want to think about what that will involve.

And guess who has not finished sewing a Halloween costume for her son for Wednesday?? Me! My son and two friends want to be the 3 Musketeers, so that is what the moms are sewing. Here are the pieces I am getting ready to cut out. I am hating this pattern by McCall's...it's just the worst written pattern I've ever used and it is impossible to sew according to their directions. I thought it was all my problem since I have been sewing into the wee hours of the morning trying to get this thing done, but the other mother had the same problems. I have to finish it today in order to pass the pattern and equipment to the third musketeers' mother, so she can suffer with making her son the same thing!

Quilted Vase

I took a class in May with Christine Ford on how to make a quilted vase (click here to read about the class). It was a great class as I wrote in my previous blog entry. I finished all the quilted panels and enjoyed that process very much. I ended up making 6 panels instead of 5 because I decided that my first one wasn't good enough to be part of the finished vase! I wasn't used to quilting on the Fast-2-Fuse and it took me and my machine a bit of practise to get the quilting working well. Here you can see a couple of the panels.

So then I was ready to sew them together, but was unable to find the 3/4" fusible bias tape for the top and base. I finally found some and have finished the vase. I was very happy with how it turned out and wanted to take a photo of it to post on my blog.I searched high and low for the thing...I couldn't find it anywhere! I was starting to fear that I had left it at guild meeting. Then I noticed it sitting on my daughter's dresser yesterday...I was so happy to "find" it. It was in my house all along, but not anywhere I was looking...I didn't realize that my daughter liked it so much that she claimed it for her room!

Visiting Orillia

I have made it to the end of a very busy week! Too much fun, lots of excitement and not enough sleep! In the last week I taught three quilting classes locally and then drove to Orillia, gave a lecture to the quilt guild, and the next day taught two more classes. I almost forgot to take a class photo, but remembered at the last minute after a couple of people had already left. So here are some of the students with their projects: A big thank you to Joanne for inviting me and making all the arrangements, including taking me out for supper. Thank you also to Alie for generously hosting me overnight at your wonderful Bed & Breakfast (which you can see by clicking here). I had my very own apartment at Alie's, decorated with her beautiful quilts. Alie also treated me to a wonderful breakfast and lunch, which included her amazing, melt-in-your-mouth shortbread cookies. If you are ever in the Orillia area, you must stay at Alie's, if she's not too busy quilting to have more visitors!

I have to say that this is one impressive quilt guild! This guild of approx. 120 members annually donates more than 140 quilts to charitable needs in their community, in addition to many other ongoing projects such as placemats for Meals on Wheels, making doggie beds for the Humane Society from leftover scraps, and donating large heirloom quilts for fundraising raffles. It was very inspiring to be at their meeting and hear about their generous support of the community.

Of course, the drive to Orillia was beautiful and there are still many beautiful autumn scenes to enjoy in Ontario. Here is one photo that I took out the car window.

I haven't had much time to quilt, but can you guess what I have been doing from this photo?? One of the most dreaded jobs...removing the paper from the back of a paper pieced miniature. And look at all the seam trimmings that I will be saving...they are too pretty to throw in the garbage!! I do throw the paper bits in the composter....see I don't keep everything!?!?!

Too busy living a great life!

I have been too busy living to have time to blog about it :)

We had my husband's family for the Thanksgiving weekend, and this past weekend we had my entire family together for 2 days for a belated Thanksgiving celebration. We took my family on the Grand River Rafting trip and had another fantastic adventure. The photo on the left shows one of our rafts...my husband is the guy at the back of the boat trying to steer.

My 10 year old nephew said to me "today is a day that I wish would never end"! This photo below shows all the children ready to get going...yes, there are 10 of them between the ages of 5 and 15! And there were 8 adults (plus our guide Garth) rowing the rafts. What a great family memory we created!

And we are in the middle of planning my daughter's 16th birthday party celebrations. Here is the invitation production:

She thinks that each birthday should be a series of celebrations including 1) a big party, preferably a sleep-over (which I call a "stay awake" since there is rarely any sleeping going on!) 2) a party with immediate family members, and followed by parties 3) and 4) with each side of the extended family! I really cannot believe my great blessing in having such a creative, loving, talented and wonderful daughter! We waited a long time for her, and she was well worth the wait!

Besides planning family celebrations, I have also been very busy teaching quilting classes. Here is a photo of the project that the Friday class made last month. Today I taught a project using half square triangles made using the Angler 2, which is a great tool for speedy production, but not completely accurate (I'll show the finished quilts after next month's class).

I am heading out of town to lecture and teach for the Orillia Quilt Guild for the next few days and am looking forward to meeting some new quilters. See you when I get back!

Journey of a Quilter

I have been working on my hand embroidery blocks for the "Journey of a Quilter" (by Leanne Beasley) block of the month quilt. I really enjoy having something to work on when the children are watching TV and want me to watch with them. Without some kind of hand work, I find most TV watching boring and mind-numbing. They like to watch 'Dancing with the Stars', 'The Amazing Race', 'Survivorman', 'Deadliest Catch', and 'Little People, Big World'.
I find that I usually have 2 blocks in the works...one I am cutting and piecing, and one I am hand stitching. On the right is my finished block #3. I made a few stitching changes to suit my taste and I am happy with how it worked out. I have just started to stitch block #4.
On the left is the beginning of block #5. I have finished the piecing of the block and tracing the stitch pattern. When I am finished this block, I will be halfway finished with the quilt top. This is a very labour intensive project, but I am enjoying it!

Happy Thanksgiving!

It is Thanksgiving Day here in Ontario, Canada and of course we have a big turkey cooking in the oven. It is a celebration of the harvest - and all the good things with which we are blessed. I am thankful for so many things, and will spend time writing about them in my journal today. I am especially thankful for the gathering of my husband's entire family this weekend. We arranged for a rafting trip down the grand river (through this most wonderful company called Grand River Rafting Company) on Friday afternoon and we had record breaking weather for our trip....sunny and hot, and unbelievable for October! Here is the view we enjoyed rowing down the river.
We also attended some of the Oktoberfest celebrations, and the Saturday morning market. We saw the most spectacular arrangements of colourful vegetables. Look at the peppers on the right, the huge radishes on the left, and have you ever






seen purple or yellow cauliflower before?!?!

I am also thankful for many special quilting related happenings.

1) I was able to get to the fabric sale that Debbie told me about and got a great deal on some fabric for quilt backings. I also found some 3/4" fusible bias tape that I have been looking for.

2) I received my fabric strips this week, which Juliann organized for the 365 challenge members...thanks Juliann! I hope to update my 365 entries tomorrow.

3) My big quilty news is that I have decided to attend Quilt Canada June 2-7, 2008! This annual quilting conference is held in a different Canadian province each year and I have never been able to attend due to either family obligations (taking care of children or elders) or lack of finances. All of the money I make with quilting related activities, teaching and lecturing, from now until then will go into my Quilt Canada 2008 account. I have already written a cheque for over $1,000 which only covers the registration, classes, and food! I still have to pay for my accommodations and air flight to Newfoundland! But this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so I am very thankful that I am able to make this dream come true! I have poured over the list of 79 classes and had the difficult task of narrowing it down to 4 choices. I would be thrilled to attend most of them, except applique classes which I don't love. How would you decide?!? I narrowed down the choices by first eliminating the topics I am not interested in, which still left me with 70 classes. Then I eliminated the teachers that I could take a class with at other venues closer to home, but that still didn't help much since the teachers are from all over the world. I will be thankful just to be there and don't really care which classes they put me into!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Accidental new project

I really didn't need a new idea! I have so many projects that need attention and that I want to finish. But sometimes when you are looking for something in your stash and you see other goodies, then you get distracted and start something new by mistake. Or maybe this just happens to me?!?! I was checking my stash for backing fabrics to see what I need, because my quilting friend Debbie (Hi Debbie!) called to tell me about a fabric sale where I could get some great backing fabrics at reasonable prices...oh, and she also called to complain about the frequency of my blogging entries :)
So here's a new one Debbie!!
Anyway, I thought I would take a quick inventory of what I might need to buy at the sale (as if I "need" anything!), and I found a big bag of batik scraps from another of my quilting friends (Hi Judy!). And the next thing I know, I was making a new scrappy paper pieced mini quilt! Look at the beautiful pile of scraps...who could resist?!?
But I was tired and shouldn't have started something new and fiddley. So I covered all my usual paper piecing mistakes at least once. When I was using my favorite Magic Tape to patch up the pattern I cut by mistake for the third time, I thought I better pack it up for tonight.
Hope I have time to get to the fabric sale...now what was it that I needed?!?!

Beadmaking with Judith Eckhardt

I really should not be on the computer today, but I have been wanting to blog about so many things and haven't had time. So I'm just going to take a few minutes to do this and then I'll get back to all the jobs I'm supposed to be doing (I am having the UFO group over today so I should be cleaning up and preparing a little snack).
On Saturday I took a Beadmaking class with Judith Eckhardt. It was a wonderful class with all my favorite things - an enthusiastic and organized teacher, gazillions of samples showing a variety of ways to use the skills being taught and to inspire the students, and fun, new ideas to try. This was something I hadn't ever tried before and Judy has enough ideas for a week of classes on beadmaking!
These are some of my early attempts at making some of the beads...they are WIP's, and need more work, but first I need some time to get back to my machine! I hope to show you the finished beads soon - maybe I'll have time this coming weekend (it's Thanksgiving here in Canada, so the kids have a 4 day weekend to look forward to).

Piecing blocks

I haven't had a lot of quilting time this week between working, and running the kids around to their activities. I did make time to piece my two blocks for the UFO friendship club's group charity quilt. Joan organized the project, cut out the patches for the blocks from donated fabric, and gave us instructions to use a scant 1/4" seam. There are two block patterns in this quilt, and it is a pattern from Quilters Newsletter Magazine. I'll post a photo in a few months when all the blocks are together. You can see our group's quilt from last year by clicking here.
I also updated my 365 quilt. I have now finished 4 months and am realizing how huge this quilt is going to be (based on the size of 4 months of entries), especially if I add some sashing and borders.

Blog reader winner announcement

Today was the day to draw the winning name for my blogiversary prize.

I printed out all the blog comments from this week and put them in the watermelon bowl that my son made for me a few years ago for mother's day. When my daughter came home for lunch, I let her pick the winning quilter - and the winner is...

Kim West!

Congratulations Kim! (Kim has a blog on our Stashbusters webring here.) Email me your mailing address and I will send you (all the way to Hawaii!) a package including this collection of Moda fabrics called Northern Flight, which has lots of fall colours and Canadian motifs, and also a few little quilt labels. I hope you find a project in which to use these charm squares!
Thanks to everyone for visiting my blog and for leaving me such encouraging comments and inspiring feedback.

I look forward to the next year of quilt adventure blogging!

Georgian Quilters

I was invited to speak at the Georgian Quilters' Guild in Meaford, Ontario yesterday. It was a lovely fall day for an adventure - sunny and warm, and the leaves are starting to change colours. The drive took much longer than I and 'Google Maps' had anticipated, since as Beate said "there are 2 seasons in Ontario - Winter and Construction"!! Construction that went on for miles and miles along Highway #6 - blah.
Anyway, I arrived safely and although the construction caused us to shorten our lunch visit, it was still fun. Thanks to Marg, Wilma and Beate for a yummy lunch at McGuinty's. And while I was at the guild meeting, guess what I discovered? They are having a 'president's challenge', and I can get in on it! You know how I love a challenge - especially if it has anything to do with buying, I mean using up, fabric. Here are the two charm squares to start with...let's see...wallhanging with a theme of "A snippet from my life"...perfect! Uh oh - I can only use up to six pieces from my stash plus the two provided...now that will be a challenge to limit myself to 6! Surely I can finish up something by June!
I entertained myself on the long drive there and back by listening to Lisa Boyer's "Stash Envy - And Other Quilting Confessions and Adventures". It was very entertaining and had me laughing out loud at times. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on 'progressive lenses and quilting'!
And of course I had to visit a quilt shop on the way home.... it was just a little out of the way! I stopped by Chrissie's store in Markdale called Quilter's Line. I picked up a couple of fabrics for borders for season minis that I am finishing, and some beads, and I may have also purchased a few batik FQ's :)
It was a wonderful quilty day, topped off with dropping in to visit my long time quilting friend Louise in the Mount Forest area. I thought "I can't be this close to her house and not take a little detour to see her"! I enjoyed having a cup of tea and visiting with her on the porch, while her children buzzed around us, doing homework, playing with their kittens and wearing off all the energy that youngsters seem to have so much of!
Don't forget that this is my blogiversary - leave me a blog comment this week and I'll put your name in the draw for a fabric gift!

Happy Blogiversary!

It has been one year this week since I started blogging. Who knew that I would enjoy it this much?!? In the blogging tradition that I have come to learn in this past year, I will be giving away a little gift (of fabric, of course) to one of the quilters who leaves a comment on my blog this week. So post a comment some time this week and your name will go in the hat for the blog reader prize of the week! It has been fun to read over my blog entries from a year ago and remember what I was working on then. It is a little sad to admit that some of my projects from last year that I wrote about are still in the UFO state. For example, in this pile of UFO's that I posted here, I can tell you that I have only quilted and finished two of them! I am going to make the pile more visible in my quilting studio so I can remember how much I still like those quilts and would love to see them finished.

I have had a very busy quilty weekend. I invited the students from the monthly mini class over to my studio on Saturday. They kept me company and worked on their own projects, while I sewed the Quiltaholics mystery quilt. These are the blocks I had sewn by Saturday night. It was quite impressive that I managed to get that far, since in addition to visiting with my quilting friends that I hadn't seen since June, I attended a 50th anniversary party, and also my husband and I took my favorite cousin and her husband out for supper and a lovely visit. Then it was back to the quilting sweat shop until I was caught up with the steps posted on Saturday. I started sewing again early Sunday morning until I had to take a break and make my regular visit to my Grandma's, then right back to work. This is how it looks tonight. I am pleased with it and am debating about the border. The mystery quilt design has a really neat pieced border, but if I add that, it will be too big for the spot on my dining room wall. I want to add the sunflower fabric for the border. So I will sleep on it tonight and see what I think in the morning.

President's Challenge Award Winners

And a drum roll please....

These are the winning quilts of the President's Challenge as decided by guild members votes:

First place is Wendy Oskam

Second place is Judy Taylor (hiding behind that envelope full of cash!)

Third place is Diane Black

Congratulations to these talented quilters!

And thanks to President Barb for all the fun and energy that was generated from this challenge!

President's Challenge Quilts Revealed

Tonight was the first guild meeting of the season and also the night for quilters to show the finished tops/quilts made from the mystery pattern we had received in our newsletters last year. The quilt design was created by Susan Druding and can be seen here. Our guild president issued a challenge to sew the mystery quilt and bring it to the meeting tonight for viewer's choice awards. There were 10 quilts on display - 8 were queen size quilts and 2 were wallhangings. These photos are the 8 large quilts. It was great fun to look at all the quilts, see the fabric combinations used, and see how the variation in colour values change the look of the quilt design. (Sorry for the dark photos...our meeting is held in a very large room with a high ceiling - it's difficult to photograph large quilts)
There were two of us who redrafted the pattern and instead of sewing 12" blocks, we sewed 3" blocks and made wallhangings instead of the queen size quilts. And here are those two crazy quilters...our Vice President Nancy (who paper pieced her quilt!) is on the left and I am on the right.
We had a viewer's choice vote for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place prizes, donated by our President. Check in tomorrow to see which quilts won a prize.

Challenge quilt is done!

I spent most of my quilting time this weekend finishing the President's Challenge quilt. You can read about the challenge here and can read all my blog entries about working on the challenge quilt here. This was a mystery quilt which used 12 fabrics, and I challenged myself to make the quilt from my stash. I am proud to say that I did not buy a single thing for this quilt, including batting, backing and binding! I have had the top sewn together and the backing pieced together from scraps since the middle of the summer. But of course I waited until the weekend before the deadline to quilt the thing! I used lots of pastel shades of thread and had a ball with the quilting. I decided I wasn't go to do the grid thing (stitching only in the ditches) and tried to think of different ways to quilt using a combination of the free motion foot and the walking foot. To some people this is torturous, but I really enjoy it! I also love to change thread colours frequently, since I get bored easily of quilting with the same thread. Changing colours keeps me interested! I am happy that it is finished by the deadline (including the label!!) and it will hang tomorrow night at the guild meeting with all the other challenge quilts. I will post photos on Tuesday night, so come visit my blog on Wednesday morning to see how many finished quilts there are at the meeting.

Today was changing of the quilt displays in my house. I have quilts hanging in every room (at least one or two) and change them monthly on a random basis (ie. whenever I have time). Today I decided to put out some of my fall quilts, since the weather is starting to turn cooler. I have posted this photo before, but I will show it again since it is one of my favorites. It is a round robin quilt that I hang on my dining room wall. It is 54" x 55" and is called "The Great Canadian Fall Quilt". The rows were made by Linda Grover, Cathy Carritt, Gail Wiebe, Shelley Belot, Carla Watt, and Carol Stevens as part of a round robin group project. The rows sat in a box for a few years, until I finally put them together in 2005 with the encouragement of my guild's UFO group, which is now called the Friendship Group. (Shhhh...don't tell them that I still have a few UFO's that they don't know about!!!) I quilted each row differently, mostly using my free motion foot and it was tricky getting it evenly quilted. The back is pieced from one of the extra rows and extra churn dash blocks that I had made a long time ago. You can see my little label on the bottom corner of the backing which lists all the quilters who contributed to my fall wallhanging.

Beginnings and Endings

There has been a lot of complaining in my family about endings this week. The kids are so sad that summer has ended and they are back to school. I have been reminding them of all the fun and exciting adventures they will have this year and that "when one door closes another door/window opens"....one good thing ends, another one takes begins to evolve in the empty space. They sure don't buy it! I believe it when I am saying it to the children, but it's so hard to practise what I preach!
I feel sad myself. Not about school starting though (we all know how I am doing the happy dance about that!!!) I found out this week that the Waterloo County International Quilt Festival, which I have enjoyed every May for the last 12 years, has "ceased operations". That's right. The last one was this past May, and when I was there enjoying the international quilt displays, Ontario Juried Show, and vendors, I had no idea that it would be the last one! (You can read about my fun at the May 2007 festival here.) The three reasons cited for this decision are decrease in attendance, lack of volunteers in leadership roles, and decrease in the financial sponsorships.
So now I have to hear my own advice, practise what I preach, and hope that new ventures in the quilting community will evolve to fill this empty space.
My own quilt beginnings - I am starting a new project next weekend! I know that I should be finishing one of my numerous UFO's instead, but I just want to start something new! Here are the fabrics I picked from my stash. I bought the green fabric to coordinate and am ready for the mystery to start. Well, not exactly "ready"...I still have to wash the fabric, precut the pieces and sew some HST's. I am making a fall-like wallhanging for the dining room. The fabric requirements can be seen here ... join in the fun if you can.
And for endings - I have to finish my President's Challenge this weekend since the quilts will be shown at Tuesday's guild meeting. I am close to finishing the quilting and just have to do the binding.

Doing the Happy Dance!

We are back from our last camping trip for 2007. Again, we had fantastic weather and a wonderful time.

And today..."it's the most wonderful time of the year"!

It's the first day of school and I am doing the happy dance!

What will I do with my new found freedom? Well, I will spend part of the day trying to fix my computer. I can access the internet, but not my email. This is a new variation on the endless problems I have had with my computer. And of course, I will continue to attack the mountain of dirty laundry.

This afternoon I will go to a meeting of some of my quilt guild friends and do some more work on my BOM. I finished one of the block components yesterday. I altered the direction of these flowers and am happy with the change. I find that I am making several changes to each block now as I find out what I like to stitch and what kind of a look I prefer.

Working like a dog!

This is my last week of more than full time work. Next week we will be back to a full staff compliment and I go back to my part time job. And not a moment too soon- I cannot wait! I have made arrangements for my children to do other things this week - my daughter to my sister's and my son to his friend's cottage, because I am working too much to have them home. They are happy to have an adventure, and I can sleep when I have the chance.

When viewing the Stashbuster blogs early this morning, I saw that Darlene has posted her beautiful new quilt using the Lucky Stars pattern by Atkinson Designs. It reminded me that I haven't posted a photo on my blog of the quilt I made for my nephew Matthew. (I have made a quilt for each of my 11 nieces and nephews, and this was for the youngest one.) It is made completely of flannel fabrics and started with a flannel panel of the dog blocks. I fussy cut the dogs, and they were the centers of the star blocks. The backing and the border were made from the red dogbone fabric that I was so happy to find. It was a delight to piece this quilt - I should make more of these quilts since I enjoyed it so much!

The quilting was another story though! The all flannel project was very heavy to quilt on my machine. I just quilted in all the seam lines, echo quilted the stars, and then got a crazy idea to free motion quilt a dog bone in each of the sashing bars, and inside each bone I quilted a dog word, such as sit, bark, Molly (my dog's name), roll over, ruff, doghouse, etc. It was fun at first, and then just labour intensive. Here is a close up of one of the blocks. Maybe you can see the bone in the striped bar? Anyway, Matthew loves his quilt, and it is already well worn!

Fabric mess

Does this happen to you!?!? I don't always wash my quilting fabric, especially if it's for a miniature quilt that will never be washed. But I do always wash fabric for bed quilts. I threw a few pieces in the washer/dryer yesterday to add to a project I am working on and look at the mess that I got! I know there is a way to eliminate or reduce this problem, but I forget what it is! Any suggestions???
I need to know because I plan to make lots of fabric purchases when the kids go back to school!

The end is near!

Only two more weeks until the children go back to school! I sometimes feel a little like a "bad mother" when I admit to other people that I can't wait for September 4th, and that I do a happy dance on the first day of school. Well, I must admit that over the years, I have also had some teary moments on that first day of school. But I know that it is because I try to be a good mother and am so involved with my kids, that I find the summer to be exhausting. In my own defense I should also mention that I was "older" when we were finally blessed with our children, so I am no spring chicken! And all the activities, having the friends of the children here, family visiting, travelling, and camping are getting harder every year! I'm thinking that a long vacation at a nice resort (by myself) is what I might enjoy these days!
I have primarily worked on 3 projects over the summer, which are all mostly hand work. The first is the 365 journal quilt and I will have completed 4 months of my quilt by the end of August. The second project is A Quilter's Journey by Leanne Beasley. In addition to the piecing and the stitchery of these blocks, I have kept a journal of my memories about my quilting journey accompanying each of these blocks. It has been a wonderful time of reflecting about my journey, the people and the quilting events of the past 16 years. But the progress on both of these is slow and I don't have any new photos to show you of recent work on these two projects.
However, my third project has been the Bead Journal Project which is a commitment to make a beaded journal piece each month for a year. I have enjoyed this so much that I started a separate blog to detail each month's work. If you are interested in beading, you can read all about my work/play on my Bead Journal Blog. It has really helped me to learn about my creative process and about what I enjoy doing the most. And all the recent photos of my work are on my beading blog.
So I have had lots of time for my creative projects over the summer. Almost all of my work has been done while watching my kids swim, practise/play soccer and baseball, and play with their friends. I could have a lot more done if I could figure out how to sew/bead while I drive!! I must have driven around the earth twice over the summer - but not to anywhere quilting related!!
But now, I am looking forward to working in peace and quiet, without the interruptions of applying bandages, making snacks and more snacks, and mediating fights! And being able to meet my friends for lunch and go to quilt stores and see my quilting friends again!