Saturday night hockey

Saturday night hockey
Saturday night hockey

Thursday, December 31, 2015

Happy 2016!!

2015 has not been a stellar year for me.  I have felt overwhelmed and busy most of the year it seems... although there was that wonderful trip to Maui last January.... and a lovely relaxing trip to the east coast not even a month ago.

My plan is to retire at the end of 2016 and then my next life can begin. The life of a quilter.)

I haven't done much quilting this past year and even less blogging about it.  My new year's resolution is to do better in both departments.  There are so many quilting adventures I want to go on and I love sharing them with all of you, and seeing what you're up to as well!

We have had a mild winter so far.  Since early December I've been able to enjoy the Christmas lights and that has raised my spirits in the darkness.


And now the world is having three days of fantastic aurora borealis.  We were out for a walk and despite the cloud cover the sky is lit up with dancing light. They are supposed to be visible in places where they never are - I hope you get a chance to see them too.

Image result for new year clip art free      See you in 2016!

Janet 

Saturday, December 12, 2015

Holiday Time

I've been away on holiday.... Well really I've been home for a week now but you know how it takes time to adjust to being home when you've been away.

Hubby and I did a quick, one week, tour through New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, visiting my sister, my aunt, cousin and her hubby, and my hubby's cousins.  Then we spent two weeks in Newfoundland with DD # 2, her hubby and our delightful grandchild.  Some highlights from the trip...

Hubby clowning with the lobsters.  We had two lobster feeds, mussels, Atlantic salmon, Jiggs dinner, goose, moose and lots of other wonderful foods to eat.

Beautiful St. Martin's on the Bay of Fundy.  This is what my sister has to look at daily....

Another view of the Bay of Fundy - this time from Great Village, Nova Scotia.

DD's home in Flat Rock, Newfoundland... As you can see we did encounter snow there.  Sheesh... who vacations in Newfoundland in November anyhow?!

I did do a bit of sewing while I was away, but you don't get to see that today.  Instead I'll show you this block that I made for Jean in the Paper Piece swap that I belong to on line.  She wanted a house block and didn't have a pattern in mind.  It was difficult to find a PP house block, but I found this one by Soma from Whims and Fancies.  I simplified the pattern quite a bit but it is still busy.  Does it look a bit like DD's house?



It is definitely time to get ready for Christmas and tomorrow is the big day for us - getting and decorating a tree and baking, baking, baking.   Yummy!

I hope your preparations are coming along well.

Janet 

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Friday Night With Friends Report

This weekend has whipped by in a blur it seems.  Part of the reason for that is that I spent a good bit of it sewing!  Friday night and Saturday I hung out with my friend Dahn and played with fabric and other fun things.  I love going to Dahn's house.  She has a great studio to play in, for one thing.  But even better - her first love is art quilting and she has pieces of her work hanging all over the house.  It is wonderful!

Her studio isn't huge but there is a lot of stuff in it - fabric (lots of her home dyes), thread, magazines, inspirational pieces on the wall, art quilting supplies and Ripley, the cute dachshund.


We may not have been as productive as one would think though because we had lots to talk about. :)

Dahn created this huge tote bag.


I worked on some hot pads that I am making for my friend Judy.  She is having a booth at a craft show and asked me to give her some things to sell.  You can see I haven't quite finished the binding on one of them.


And I made this postcard for Sheila's fall postcard swap.  I watched a show about giraffes last week and decided I love these animals.


Yup!  It was a pretty fantastic Friday Night with Friend's!  I hope you had a good one too.  Head on over to Cheryl's blog to see what everyone else was up to.

Janet 

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

For a while I've been meaning to show an update of my Grandmother's Flower Garden, but I've had a row to attach and I kept waiting to get that complete.  Well, I finally finished it at our Craft Club get-together this morning.  So, ta-da!!  Here is my progress to date.


I have enough flowers for this many rows again, but I may make it another flower wider.  I haven't decided what I am going to do with the edges yet.  Karen at Faeries and Fibres has a tutorial for adding a border for a hexie quilt.  And somewhere I have seen a tutorial for finishing the edges without a border, but I can't remember where.  I am getting ahead of myself, because I still have lots of stitching to do before I get there.  But I do have a bunch of flowers already put together so I am just working on adding the green pathway now and it won't take forever (I hope!!).

Hubby and I attended the annual pumpkin carving party at my friend Donna's on Friday night.  Here are our funky and fun jack-o-lanterns.


Hubby's is Alfred E. Newman.  Mine is just a flower.  I won first prize - I've never won before - and got a cute little carving set as my prize,  I'm all set for next year's contest!!

I hope you had a wonderful Halloween, with lots of fun costumes and decorations and not too much candy!  Since NO kids came to our house, we have a box of chocolate bars that I am sure we'll be eating ourselves.. :(

Janet 

Friday, October 23, 2015

A finished quilt for Blogger's Quilt Festival

Even though I wasn't much of a dedicated blogger this summer I did do a little bit of sewing.  Most specifically I finished a quilt!  My sister came over for a visit from Australia and since this quilt was destined for my nephew in Australia, it made sense to get er done and send it back with her.

The starting blocks (pun intended) for this quilt were gathered during the Simply Solids bee on Flickr that I participated in.  I was in the Carmine group - all quilters from Canada.  Here is my sample block.

And the other eleven made by my bee buddies.


I added three more blocks - because my nephew is tall and I wanted the quilt to be long enough for him.  I added a tan background so that the pretty colours would pop out like jewels.  And I quilted the quilt on my Bernina, using flowery patterns to pretty up the plain.


Some close up quilting pics....


I used a piece of fabric for the back that I had bought some years ago just because I loved it so.  It needed a couple of strips added to the sides to make it the right size.


It's a bit difficult to see in the photo - fishing, kayaking, rafting and swimming in the river.  The river of your choice.  :)

My nephew plays music, works at gardening and loves the outdoors.  Here is the label for his quilt.



 I hope you have enjoyed this visit with my nephew's quilt.  Please go to Amys Creative Side to see all the entries in the Bloggers Quilt Festival, to comment for a chance to win, to add your own entry and to vote in the many categories.  I am adding my quilt to the Original Designs category.

Janet 

Saturday, October 17, 2015

Friday Night Sew In Report

For Friday Night Sew In this month I put the second round of hexies on one of my hexie flowers.


Not a ton of sewing but every bit helps.  The hexie quilt is coming together slowly, but it is coming together!

Hope you had a productive Friday Night Sew In.  Go here to see what everyone else did!

Janet 

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Obsession!!

When I was looking around on-line for an idea for my block request for the Canadians Quilt bee, I came across a block that really caught my fancy.  It wasn't the right block for me to request from the bee buddies - aside from the fact that it finished too large, it is composed of 84 individual pieces....

But I couldn't get it out of my mind and so I made me a block.  The block is called "Octagonal Orb Block" and it was designed by Elizabeth Hartman of the Oh Fransson blog.  She did a tutorial for the Modern Quilt Guild blog found here.

Here is my block....

So now I have to figure out what to do with it.  It is over 16 inches square, so a bit big for a bag and I don't want a wall hanging.  I guess I will just have to make some more of these squared and turn it into a quilt!  :)  I have already cut out the pieces for a yellow block and I think I'll make two brown ones - one a darker brown and one a rusty brown - and a red one.  There is a bit of a fall theme going on in my mind.  The problem is that I used a grey that I only have a small amount of .  What to do?  Do I use a different grey or try to figure out where this one came from and get some more.  It is NOT a Kona solid - I already checked.  Please give me some feedback on this one!

In wild animal news: we have had three families of grizzly bears hanging out along the road that I travel daily to go to work.  The other day I saw one of the families close to home so took my camera out for an (unsuccessful) shoot.  I did get this one photo that allows you to see that there is a mama and two one year old cubs.  They are all big and roly poly ready for winter so it is impossible to tell who is who.

My friend Mike was driving down the highway just after I was there and he did get a good shot of one of the bears.  Aren't they beautiful!


I seem to have forgotten my password for Windows Live Writer and I am having to use Blogger to write my posts.  It just isn't as versatile, friendly or fun!  Does anyone use Live Writer and know how one can go about resetting the password on it?  What do you all use for writing your blog posts?

Janet 

Saturday, October 3, 2015

Wonky Star Block Tutorial for my Canadians Quilt Bee Buddies

Let me start by saying that I did not invent the wonky star block.  It has been around for a long time and you may have made one in the past.  This tutorial is not original – I read quite a few before I made my block and was influenced by others methods.  I do need to give a shout out to Jane at Jane's Fabrics blog as she demonstrated one part of the method that I liked and used.  I’ll let you know when we get there. 

I also have to say that my block idea is not original.  I took a look at the link that Lisa provided to Stash Bee’s post on fun blocks to use and I really liked the look of one by Jolene from Blue Elephant Stitches blog.  I don’t have her permission to copy the photo of the quilt but you can see it here.

So I would like you to make me a 12.5 inch (12 inch finished) Wonky Star block.  I would like you to use colour.  I love colour.  Please don’t use solids or tone on tone fabrics.  Please don’t use anything that is predominantly black, white or brown, although it is fine to have these colours in a fabrics that is predominantly some other colours. 

Here is my pile of fabric as I played around figuring out what I was going to use.

In the end I decided on these two…

The one on the top is Silent Cinema by Jenean Morrison from Westminster fabrics.  I loved this line when it came out and bought a few different colour ways of the different fabrics, but I haven’t used it much.  The one on the bottom from Art Gallery Fabrics Sugar Collection and is called Feel the Difference.  It is my favourite fabric right now and I am always wanting to use it.  Good thing I bought a few meters of it. 

Enough rambling.  Here’s how to make the Wonky Star block.  Cut eight 4.5 inch blocks from whichever fabric you are going to use for the background and five 4.5 inch blocks from whichever fabric you are using for the star.

Cut four of the star fabric blocks in half diagonally – only four, leave the fifth one intact.

Place four of the background blocks out right side up and place four of the star triangles right side down on the blocks like so…


You notice that they are all different?  This is what will make the star wonky. 
When you are laying your triangles out flip them over to see how they will look once sewn to make sure you like how they look.

One of my blocks was problematic because when I flipped it over it looked like this… Do you see how far to the left the yellow fabric is on the bottom. This did not make for an attractive point on the star.


Another one was a problem because when the yellow was flipped over it did not completely cover the 4.5 inch block. 


Sew across the long edge of the triangles using a 1/4 inch seam.  Press the star fabric open.

Now place your second set of four triangles face down on the four blocks like so…  flip the triangles over so that you will see what they look like once sewn again.  This will prevent having to do any reverse sewing. 

Sew again along the long sides of the triangles using a 1/4 inch seam and press open.

Now this is the part that I got from Jane.  You notice that we didn’t trim any of the background fabric before adding the second triangle.  Now you can flip the blocks over – wrong side up – and use the original block as a guide to trim back the star points.


Trim all four star point squares to 4.5 inches then use your small scissors to cut away the excess background fabric.  I don’t know if this is really easier and if you are an accomplished wonky star maker and want to do it the other way, well please do. 


Lay out your nine squares thusly, putting the squares with the star points in a pleasing arrangement.

Sew the rows together, using a 1/4 inch seam. 

Press the two outside row seams out to the side blocks and press the middle row toward the middle block.  This will allow the seams to nest when sewing the rows together which is the last step.  Eh voila!!

A wonky star block!  I can’t wait to see what wonderful colours my peeps in the Canadian Quilt bee come up with.

Janet

Saturday, May 16, 2015

Friday Night Sew In for May

I had to do something for FNSI, otherwise I wouldn’t have done any sewing in the last couple of weeks.  That isn’t totally true – I have done some mending – but nothing that I want to tell the world about Smile 

I received three sets of second round hexies from Joke from the Netherlands, my March swap partner in the Inchy Hexagon Flower Swap.

These ones claimed their flower immediately and they have been united.

IMG_8899

Here are the other two sets, which haven’t been added to flowers yet.

IMG_8902

I asked for bright colours and that’s what I got!  They are great!

On Mother’s Day we started out the day with a rare bird sighting – rare for us anyway.  A yellow headed blackbird.

IMG_8882

Then we had a lovely canoe outing on the Yukon River along with two of my daughters, their partners and my grandson.

IMG_8887

And we are off on a boat outing this afternoon – down the lake and camping overnight.  We are having summer right now and it is much too warm and sunny to be inside for long!

I hope your weather is wonderful too.

Janet

Sunday, May 3, 2015

Friday Night Sew In Report–ARG!! This was Friday Night with Friends!!

Another Friday Night Sew In Friday Night with Friends has come and gone.  It seems sometimes like time disappears through a big hole.  Ah well.  I did manage to participate in FNSI FNWF this month.  I haven’t done any work on my Grandmother’s Flower Garden since I was in Hawaii in January, so I decided it was time to pay it some attention. 

I added the bottom green border hexies on two flowers…

IMG_8873

Earlier this week I made hexie flowers for my April swap partner, Helen (no blog) from England.  She wanted purples or blues in small prints.  I think I managed that…

IMG_8862

WE have had an early spring, the snow is almost gone and some days has been quite warm.  Some though are still quite cool… Today we went on the first spring canoe and bird hunt.  We didn’t see many birds but there were about fifteen sheep hanging out up on the mountainside. 

IMG_8865A

It was nice and warm when the sun came out. Smile 

How was your FNSI FNWF?

Janet