Getting "carried away"!!!

How many beads can I buy with $50?? A handful!
That's right...I like the expensive ones! I went to my local bead store today to get a few more beads for a challenge quilt I must finish before Saturday, and got a little carried away!!

And speaking of getting carried away...my creative children spent an evening with my parents and made this beautiful gingerbread house. They spent a long time making everything just right. My son added two special touches...he placed a family of paperdolls on the inside of the house for some reason, and decided the house needed a "welcome" sign. While he worked on those paper creations, my daughter worked on the actual house construction. Reportedly a great time was had by both the grandparents and the grandchildren!
Yesterday when I came home from work, guess what those lovely children were doing? This is what the house looks like now! They had eaten the candy off the house and ripped off half of the roof in the process! "What are you doing?" I ask (I may have screeched?), watching them as they continue to break off and eat the remaining candy. They didn't even act guilty!! "You didn't tell us we couldn't eat the candy"!
So now what am I supposed to do with this broken down gingerbread carcass??? Should I reconstruct with a glue gun and whip up more icing to add more candy?!?!

From the Ridiculous to the Sublime!

I am madly trying to finish quilts for Christmas, the same as most quilters I know! Every year I say I won't do this again (leave too much sewing until the last minute and stress myself out) but apparently I like it, because I am doing it again! I would love to be working on my newest mini quilt - some of the bits and pieces are sitting here on my 6" ruler. This is relaxing for me and each day before I go to bed I sew a few more pieces.
But mostly I am working on a bed size quilt for one of my siblings for Christmas. It's the first time in many years that we will be all be together on Christmas Day, so I wanted to make a quilt for each family. I have two of the three quilts finished...the last one is all flannel and hard work to quilt on my small sewing machine. I must force myself to work on that first, and then bribe myself with a little time sewing my mini quilt. I will post photos of my sibling quilts when they are all ready to be wrapped.
And then I just have to finish making something for my 12 nieces and nephews...asking myself again, "why do I insist on hand made gifts every year"? But on Christmas day when they have unwrapped PILES of toys and clothes, I am always happy with my decision to make them something handmade, unique and unforgettable.
And then I have to prepare something for a guild demo on Tuesday.
"Am I done my Christmas shopping" you ask? I haven't even started it yet!
Here are some of the other Christmas quilts around my house. These two quilts are from a round robin group that was together for many years. There were 2 quilters from Manitoba, and 5 of us from Ontario in the group and for each project we had a different theme. On the left is a row round robin that I finished in 2003. The rows are 20" long and for that project I asked for Christmas themed blocks. The quilt on the right was from our strippy round robin in 2000 when there were 6 of us in the group. For each project we had to make a vertical row 60" long, and I asked for star blocks. The second column from the left was my row and it was made up of blocks from a star making workshop I took from Andrea Curtis many years ago. This was in my UFO pile until this year when I finally sewed the rows together and quilted it. So this is our first Christmas enjoying this wonderful quilt. Thanks to my quilting friends (Gail, Carol, Shelley, Linda, Carla, and Cathy) for contributing to many of the great quilts I have in my house!

Christmas Preparations

On Sunday was our much anticipated, annual family outing to find our Christmas tree. Although this year was colder than usual, it was just as fun! We walked through the fields of trees in search of our perfect Christmas tree! Then we (I use the "royal" we here, actually my husband does all the work and I take pictures!) carry the tree to the farm office where they put it in a mesh bag and then we stuff it in our car trunk to bring it home. Every year we say it is the most beautiful tree and this year is no exception! Here is my husband relaxing in his Lazy Boy chair, by our decorated tree, covered in one of the first quilts I made from start to finish by myself. It is getting very worn and thin, but is still holding up. All of the 93 hearts are hand appliqued. I machine quilted in a simple grid horizontally and vertically, and then diagonally across the quarter square triangle blocks. I gave it to him many years ago as a quilt top, and after Christmas he helped me baste it on the dining room floor. That was my first and only time hand basting a quilt on a floor! And you can also see my wonderful dog Molly,who cuddles up with whoever has a quilt!
Our tree is always decorated in the tradition of my husband's family, with chocolate ornaments, straw stars, and crocheted stars made by hand by his Mom. When my children were younger we used to make popcorn strings for the tree, but now they think it is a waste of popcorn and would rather eat it than string it!

More Student Quilts

I had another busy teaching day yesterday. We had a slow start to the class because the students had to make their way through the crowds that came to see the Christmas parade, which started at the same time as the class...it was a very busy little town!
One of the students from my "Easy New York Beauty" class in October (see October 26th blog) brought in her finished miniature quilt to show me...isn't it wonderful? This was made by Sheila, from a bag of blue and white scraps she had purchased. I think she used the 2.5" block size, so the
little quilt is approx. 5" x 7.5". Besides doing a great job with the tiny piecing, she also was very creative with her embellishments, and this quilt just sparkles!
The morning students were finishing up their fall miniature projects with leaf blocks... they turned out great! Each person added their own unique touches, Annie's top was hand quilted, Sylvia's had a unique border treatment, Janet's had a tiny free floating folded border (some people call it flat piping) and Cindy was still thinking about her border, but had finished all the blocks. The tricky thing about this project was fabric selection, and mastering those small Half Square Triangle blocks, and they did great work! Sorry the photo didn't turn out well enough to post here.
The afternoon class worked on embellishing their painted pieces which they had quilted over the last month. Some were machine quilted and some were quilted by hand. There was a lot of creativity floating around in that room! Some quilters had no experience in painting, and some were beginner quilters, so they really did amazing work!

Christmas Decorations

Don't you just love getting your decorations out of storage? This weekend we had a family get-together so we decided to help Mom and Dad decorate their Christmas tree. This is the angel that has overseen every family Christmas for the last 47 years! Everyone would tell you that she is one of my Dad's favorite possessions! No one is allowed to touch the angel, and she is lovingly placed at the top of the tree every year by Mom or Dad. The grandchildren helped place all the other ornaments, and we found some of the ornaments I have made in previous years. In fact, there was an old felt drum that I made in grade 6 ("throw that ridiculous thing in the garbage" I say to Mom every year, but she still put it on the tree again this year), and here is one of the quilted ornaments I made 10 years ago for everyone in my family. It is a tradition now that I make something each year for all my neices and nephews...I still haven't decided on what to make this year...and now I have less than a month to figure it out!
After helping to decorate Mom and Dad's tree, I came home and started to dig out some of my old Christmas mini quilts to hang up. This is one of my favorites...it is about 8" square and was a fun project. I remember how much I enjoyed couching the garland on the quilted trees I made that year! If I were going to make these again, I would add many more ornaments to the tree and lots of beads! Oh...and I'd make sure the floor piece was not so wobbly!
You can find the full size block pattern here at Quiltaholics.

Monthly Miniature Class

Today I taught a miniature quiltmaking class and this was the project for November. It is a very small (approx. 7" x 9") paper pieced quilt which I call "Flocks of Geese". I made the entire quilt using one of the Moda Swatch packs (excluding the binding). One of my favorite tips (which I learned from a Carol Doak book) is to use the Scotch brand "Magic Removable Tape" if you should happen to cut your pattern by accident. You can sew through the tape, and when your quilt top is pieced, the tape easily peels off from the paper.

Here is the pumpkin patch that the class pieced in October ...mini "Jack-o-Lanterns". The top three were made by Barb, the middle larger quilts were made by Lana, the bottom left quilt is Marj's and the bottom right quilt is Marion's. They all have the same centre pumpkin block, which measures 5" x 6" and then each quilter created different borders.
Check out my blog next month to see their finished "Flocks of Geese" quilts! Each student brought such beautiful fabrics in a variety of colours, so I am excited to see how they turn out!

Trip to Frankenmuth

This past weekend I went on a mini vacation with my sisters and my Mom. For the past few years we have spent our November weekend getaway in Stratford, spending Saturday night at "The Quilt" auction, but the admission price has doubled and it would've cost us $200 just to get in , so this year we decided to go somewhere new.
We chose Frankenmuth, Michigan and had a wonderful time together. We spent some time shopping, but mostly we visited and laughed, and talked until the wee hours of the morning. We don't see each other very often since my sister moved to the US, so we had a lot of time to make up for! I had a great time with my "womenfolk", but didn't get nearly enough sleep for all the driving I had to do!
One of the great stores we found is called "Bead Haven". No one else in my family is interested in quilting or beading, so I thought I wouldn't be able to spend much time in the store. But my youngest sister fell in love with the idea of a bracelet of her children's names, and spent even longer than I did in the store! Here is Mom and my sisters selecting some of the stones and beads for the bracelet, right before I got in trouble from the staff for taking photos in the store....oops! Anyway, I purchased some beautiful beads for a project I am working on, and if I had an unlimited budget, I could've spent a big pile of money there! They have three large rooms filled with an incredible variety of beads. They also offer classes, in a lovely classroom setting with large well-lit tables. For the people who don't love bead shopping and have to wait for the shoppers, they have a sitting area with large comfy chairs. My sister was very happy with the beautiful bracelet she made for her birthday...a little gift from herself, to herself, and a momento of our girls weekend together!
The staff did allow me to take this photo (on the left) of a sparkling quartz that was just remarkable...it was probably about 12" across the base and 10" high. And here is a photo of us outside the store...it was cold and windy in Michigan. Can you see my sister's bracelet?!?!?

Guild Meeting

I had too many things to remember for the guild meeting last night! I had myself all stressed out trying to get organized. I had to put out the historical records (I am the guild photographer/historian) which meant putting the finishing touches on last year's album, and the quilt show album. And I wanted to show two quilts at "Show and Share" so the bindings had to be finished. This is a quilt for one of my energetic nephews. The pattern is called "Tesselating Stars" and is by Cindy Thury Smith. It took quite a while to finish (okay...it was just over a year, which is not long by my UFO standards!!) and it was a real learning experience in terms of color planning. I enjoyed the block construction, but it took many trips back and forth between the design wall and the sewing machine. I had a great time with the machine quilting and made a fun design in the middle of each star....I don't know if you can see the quilting on this close up shot of one of the blocks or not? The binding is one of my favorite fabrics....a bright and happy yellow and green stripe. And the best news is that Cindy (the pattern designer) has generously given me permission to teach a "Tesselating Stars" class this winter!
The second quilt is one of Debby Kaffunger's designs called "Diamond Waterfall". I was originally sewing it for a charity quilt, but my daughter loved it so much that I made it larger, and then I had to spend way too much time shopping for more fabric to finish it! However, I was successful in finding more fabric to match and it is finished now, in plenty of time for Christmas. I had trouble initially choosing my quilting designs and still haven't quilted anything in the pink areas. I haven't decided if it is finished yet or not, however the binding is on now, so I'm guessing it's done! (I have written more about these two quilts in October postings)
So between lugging the two large photo albums, these two quilts, my library books to return, my finished blocks of the month for charity quilts, and my camera equipment...I was loaded down. And guess what I forgot? My nametag! Why can't I just keep it in a place where I will always take it along?!?!?

Progress on my Winter Quilt

For the past 3 years I have been working on a winter quilt for my dining room wall. I already have a Christmas wallhanging and a spring looking quilt, plus my Great Canadian Fall quilt which is hanging there today. This quilt was made from a row round robin with Canadian quilters I met on the internet, and is about 55" square. I finally quilted it last fall but am seeing spaces that could use a little more quilting every time I look at it!

I have been collecting blocks for my winter quilt which I would hang up in January (if it was done!) for 4 years now. I have received many wonderful blue and white blocks in these exchanges in which I have participated. I have accumulated more than 30 blocks for this quilt, but the problem is that they are all different sizes and shapes and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to put them all together in one quilt! I have played around with EQ5 and designed several quilts and am not happy with anything so far. Finally I admitted to myself that if I continue on in this manner, the quilt will never be finished. So I just have to start somewhere and stop thinking about it. I decided that a starting place would be to make this unusually shaped block into a useable shape so I have made it into a rectangle. Then I decided that I would sew the blocks together into larger chunks/groupings. So that is what I am doing now. I am not worrying about the outcome, because that has kept me stuck for too long. I am just starting and sewing a few blocks at a time in a way that will join them together, and not thinking any farther ahead than necessary. I am hoping that by working in this way I will actually finish this winter quilt in my lifetime!

Fabric Painting Class

Last month I taught a fabric painting class and today the students returned with their paintings - dried, heat set, and ready to quilt. They did a fantastic job learning how to work with the Setacolor paints and over the past month they have experimented with the techniques. Today we spent the first part of the class looking at the paintings, soaking up the creativity and learning new ideas from their work.
The painting on the left was made by Cathy. The class decided that it looked like a Monet painting. She is thinking about making it into a water scene. It was heavily salted when wet, which gives it the mottled texture.
The painting to the right was made by another Kathy in the class. She made some beautiful sun prints using leaves and this one has great movement. We were amazed that she found a day over the past month which had both sunlight and no wind!!
Ruth created this blue painting (on the left) using water softener salt. I haven't used this kind of salt before and she got some great effects with it. Does anyone else see a tree that wants to be quilted in this painting? Ruth also made some creative sunprints using coins and jewelry!

The painting on the right was made by Danielle. This photo is deceiving because it is actually a large painting, with brighter colours than you see on the screen...I'm still learning how to use this camera properly! I'll try to get a better photo next class.

The painting on the left was made by Gerry and it is also a sun print, using leaves from her yard. She told us that many of the leaves blew away and had to be repositioned, but it
turned out great!

This painting on the right was made by Geraldine and she spent lots of time overpainting some of her pieces. This piece has several unique treatments in drying and painting.

This piece on the left was made by Sheila, who has experience with fabric dyeing and she tried some interesting techniques to make this landscape, including the use of Saran Wrap, and shaving cream!

As you can see the students are very creative and each are developing their own style. Next month we will meet again to further work on turning their paintings into quilts.

Fun With Quilting Threads

It has been a cold and wintery weekend here...perfect quilting weather! I have been quilting my "tessellating stars" quilt that I made in a class with Cindy Thury Smith last fall. It was a fun quilt to piece and has been fun to quilt. It is just the kind of quilt I like to make...scrappy with lots of bright colours. When I am machine quilting, I like to change thread colours frequently.Here is a photo of auditioning threads for the swirly design that I quilted in each star. In this quilt there are 18 full stars (each made from a different fabric) and 14 partial stars (there were some fabrics repeated on the edges), so that could potentially be 32 thread changes! Some quilters find it frustrating to have frequent thread changes, but I enjoy it.
Back to finish the quilting...I'll post a photo of the finished quilt when the binding is on...I'm using a lime green and yellow striped fabric for the binding!

Miniature Quilt Class

I taught a day long class today at Reichard's Quilt Store on how to use EQ5 to print out quilt patterns, and how to use wax paper as a foundation to piece arcs like the ones in this class sample. This miniature quilt was made for my guild's quilt show challenge this year. We were given two pieces of fabric and the theme of "celebration" - this was my entry called "Celebrating Beauty and the Beads". I had to abandon my original design idea when I realized it would be too large for the miniature category (even though the blocks are 2 1/2") and I eventually settled on this design. It won first prize for pieced miniature quilts and second prize for use of embellishments.

My class today included a pair of friends (a new quilter from Pennsylvania who was visiting her Canadian friend and decided to take a quilting class together), a mother-daughter pair, some very talented quilters that I haven't met before and an old quilting friend that I was very happy to see again! The students in the class worked really hard and did a great job on their blocks!

I am a Shop Hop Winner!

Much to my surprise, I received a phone call this week telling me that I was a Shop Hop prize winner! My name was drawn from the participating Shop Hop quilters and I won the gift basket from The Quilt Place in Shakespeare! I drove to the store on the weekend to collect my prize and this is a photo of all the merchandise they gave me...new patterns, a ruler, fabric, etc. My favorite gifts were the cutting mat cleaner (I need to use this!), a book called "Rx for Quilters" by Dr. Susan Delaney Mech (which I am enjoying reading and learning a lot), and the Omnigrid mat/ironing board. Thanks so much to Heather Stock, owner of The Quilt Place for the gifts and for organizing the Shop Hop.

A Busy Quilting Week!

I have had a very busy weeking having taught three quilting classes, given one lecture to a quilt guild, and driven over 10 hours, most of which were on highway 401, which means driving precariously, sandwiched between huge transport trucks.
This is the view I had last night, while speaking at the Oakville Quilters' Guild. A large audience full of attentive quilters, many of whom had brought handwork to do. I spoke about " Replenishing the Well: Quilting & Creativity", including obstacles or creativity blocks, and sources for inspiration. I showed about 60 of my quilts and wallhangings. Here are some of the quilters viewing my quilts. I talked about the importance of filling up your well of creativity and working hard to find a balance between draining your well (thanks to Julia Cameron for teaching me this) in terms of the busyness of life and work, and taking care of others, versus filling up your well and taking care of yourself.
My favorite website about wellness and creativity is:
www.womenfold.com/creativity/index.htm
It was an interesting topic to speak about this week because I was so busy, and needed to listen to my own advice! So...this weekend I will take my own advice and make time to fill up my own well with activities that are energizing and life giving for me. I'll start that right after my on-call shift at my paying job! And after I throw in some laundry and get supper started and.......................

Durham Trillium Quilters Guild

I spent a fun day with the Durham Trillium Quilters Guild yesterday. I taught two classes on making miniature quilts and met some wonderful quilters. The fabrics they brought and the projects they started were lovely. This is the mini quilt (which measures 5" x 7") pieced by Julia Smith in this class...thank so much to Julia for sending me this photo.
This pattern is made using a strip paper piecing technique.

Thank you to Shelley and Ann for treating me to supper... you sure know how to make a teacher feel welcome and everything was just great!

While I was away we had a water pipe break and flood the basement, so today, instead of finishing the quilting (my most favorite activity!) on my UFO, I'll be cleaning up (my most detested activity!).

UFO of the Month

I am making progress on my UFO of this month. I went to the Centre for the Arts on "open studio" night and used their large tables to baste two quilts. This sure beats crawling around on the floor for basting...only did that once and learned my lesson! I am using a new thread from Sulky, which is thicker than I am used to. It is a 12 wt. thread and I had to do quite a bit of adjusting of the tension to get it workable. The thread has only snapped three times, when I was free motion quilting at a high rate of speed! I used to have a great deal of difficulty finishing quilts because I either had to send them out for quilting, or wait for inspiration to strike with ideas for quilting. I was tired of stitching in the ditch but didn't know what else to do and so the UFO tops piled up. Then I took a Quilt University www.quiltuniversity.com class with Myrna Geisbrecht and learned how to overcome creativity blocks. Now I usually start the quilting by stitching in the ditch in a grid format to stabilize the whole quilt. Then I start free motion quilting in whatever design comes to my mind while I'm quilting. Sometimes I really like the outcome and sometimes I don't, but at least the quilt gets finished and isn't sitting in a cupboard. This quilt is a design by Debby Kaffunger and was going to be donated to the comfort quilt charity at my quilt guild, but my daughter loved the fabric so I made the larger size quilt and, of course, ran out of fabric! I will have to go shopping for more fabric for the binding, and hope there is something still available that matches these fabrics.

It's Snowing!

It's a windy cold day here and the snow is flying! The leaves have mostly fallen, but with the wind today they'll likely all be down tomorrow. The snow was heavy at times ...this is one of our little lawn ornaments (actually we have a whole family of ducks):

In cleaning out the flower beds, I found a little squash or gourd plant growing around the composter, which must have taken seed from the gourds we threw in there last fall.
That was a nice surprise. I was inspired to make a little sketch and have started to paint the sketch with wax pastels. I learned this technique from Holly Knott's article in Quilting Arts magazine. I love her website and her work...

http://www.hollyknott.com/artquilts.htm

When the piece is finished, I'll post a photo.
In the meantime, I'm searching for my sweaters!

Mending and Hemming

I am a quilter. I hate mending, and I hate hemming pants even more! Which is a problem because for the last 15 years I have had to alter almost every pair of pants I have purchased for my children. One is too thin and needs the waist tucked, and one is too short and needs the legs hemmed up. I might even describe this activity as bordering on torture for me! Here is a photo of my sewing machine where I am hemming yet another pair of jeans. I cut off 6" from the bottom of each pant leg, and force my machine to sew around each leg twice. Now, when I write that down, it doesn't sound as tortuous as it is. I procrastinate the task as long as I can until the children start getting worried about not having any pants to wear...okay I either have to do laundry or hem the darn pants!
Realistically I admit my reaction is bizarre, since hemming pants and quilting a quilt involves the same steps, the same skills, the same equipment. So what's the problem?? I don't know...I just know I hate it. After this past season of buying new pants, my husband offered to take them to the tailors shop at the mall so I didn't have to be tortured. That was very sweet, but made me think ...which do I hate more, paying a lot of money to have someone do something I could easily do, or hemming the pants?!?!?!? I hemmed the pants.
Which reminds me of a saying (I don't know the original source) but it goes something like this: Asking a quilter to hem pants, sew on buttons or mend clothing, is like asking Michelangelo to paint your garage door.
And speaking of painting....That is what I could be doing instead of hemming those jeans! These photos are from the fabric painting class I taught this past weekend. I love painting and wish I could schedule an "artist date" to paint once a week. The first piece was painted with blue and yellow and was heavily salted with course canning and pickling salt. I still need to heat set and then rinse the salt residue off before I can work with it. This second piece used the same colours, with a little purple added, and the paint was more diluted. Once the fabric was painted, it was pleated until it dried. Where the pleats were, the paint leaves a darker line. I am thankful to my first fabric painting teacher Maggie Vanderweit, who reminded me how much fun painting is, and my second teacher Michele Scott, who taught me about working with Setacolor paints and colour blending. See how much more fun this is than hemming pants!

UFO list is ready

My UFO group had our first meeting this week. This is our third year together as a group and we always look forward to being together. We were asked to bring anything we had worked on over the summer, any UFO's we plan to work on this year, and food (of course!) for the potluck lunch. I was so happy to see my quilting friends again and talk about our families, jobs, travels, quilts,...anything we were thinking about.
I had my UFO list ready and reviewed it at the meeting. This is a photo of my selected pile of quilt tops for this year's list. One of the quilts is so old that it has a bad smell to it. It was a "Quilt in a day" project, that the group has renamed "Quilt in a decade" project!! And the store in which I took that class, has been closed for over 10 years! That is so sad! And I still really like that old log cabin quilt...except for the smell!
Hopefully these will all be finished quilts by June of 2007! So now I have one month to pick one of the projects, piece a backing, baste, quilt, and bind it.
One of the funniest moments of the meeting was when I arrived wearing the same outfit as the hostess...sorry Cindy!! We took a quick photo and then she graciously changed into another outfit before the rest of the guests arrived!
So, now I have to get to work. I also renewed my goal to stop
beginning new projects until I finish some of the old ones!
Wish me luck!

Mystery Finished

I finished sewing the mystery quilt from the Quiltaholics website. Debby Kaffunger is the designer and she always writes wonderful directions and each quilt she designs is completely different. I have probably sewn 6 of her designs, although not all of them are finished quilts...a few are still UFO's. I realized that I hate to sew on the borders...it's boring and I have a strong urge to stop working on the quilt at that point. However, with this one, I ran out of fabric when I got to the last border. I bought expensive flannels (Northcott, etc) that shrunk to about 38 -39", instead of the regular width of fabric, which is approximately 42-44" . When you're working with large amounts, like with this quilt, that's a lot of fabric you don't have (5" less on each 2 1/2" strip). So now I have to go back to the quilt store in Stratford and buy more fabric. This is dangerous because we all know I won't just buy enough fabric to finish this quilt!!