Sewing up a storm!!

was at a quilt retreat over last weekend.  It started on Thursday but I wasn’t able to get there until dinnertime that day.  Thursday evening, Friday, Saturday and Sunday morning.  Lots of fun and sewing …. about thirty-five ladies in attendance.  Eight of them were from Alaska, two of us from my little town and the rest from Whitehorse.  There are two women with the same name: one of them has an artificial leg, the other has an artificial arm.  The gym floor was full of quilts, people from the town came to visit and see what we were all doing.  Saturday was International Tai Chi day and adherents were practicing at 10 a.m. all around the world.  One of the quilters managed to get about 26 of us out doing Tai Chi.…

My friend Linda completed three quilt tops…  She really was happy about this although she doesn’t appear to be…

And I had a VERY productive time…

A couple of small mats for the dog to lie on in the car and truck… they just need bindings…

Three swap pieces… March and April for Canadians Quilt and April hexie flowers.

Four X and + blocks…. just for fun….

A start – two rows in fact on my very long term postage stamp quilt project… these little blocks measure 2.5 inches finished…

And – DRUM ROLL please -  Easy Street is pieced!!!  (Easy Street was a Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt from a little more than a year ago.  I think she has the pattern for sale now, but I couldn’t find it on her blog.)

Oh my this quilt felt like it took forever!  And there are eight pieces that are incorrect.  I am not fixing them.  If anyone can find them… well keep it to yourself.    I’ll be putting a couple of borders on this quilt and then I will take a bunch of photos and really show it off…

And no, I didn’t get the Grandmother’s Flower Garden pieces put together that I committed to two weeks ago.  I had to leave something to work on this week.

Last week we were talking on the phone with my daughter who lives in Newfoundland.  She was at work – she is a paramedic – but she was having a quieter day than they usually do.  Often they will do eight calls in a twelve hour shift.  This was on Good Friday and she said they had only done two calls then had their Good Friday fish and chips.  A tradition I guess.  Suddenly she said “I’ve got to go; I’ve got a call.”  DH replied “You have a cow?”  I said “I hope it isn’t a call for a cow…” 

Janet

Another week of sewing - er, I mean skiing

Well I didn’t make my goal – my sewing goal that is, the one where I was going to put together six flowers of my grandmother’s flower garden quilt.  I did get one more flower ready to add.  This is a pretty one…

And today I managed to make two blocks for my paper piece partner that are long overdue – from before I went to Australia…

Once again I was too busy skiing to do much sewing.  Hubby and I went for a three day ski camping trip over the Easter weekend.  Here’s a photo montage…

On our drive to Atlin, the take off point, we came across a herd of caribou…  My first good picture of caribou…

Our first rest stop…

And our first camp spot…

We had to look at a lot of scenery like this…

Hubby and the dog and I…

A gourmet meal…

A cup of wine to celebrate arriving home….

The snow is quickly melting and the ice is rotting.  The skiing might be done for this year.  I am off to a quilt retreat from Thursday to Sunday so I should have some sewing to show next week. 

Janet

My Week of Sewing (Not!)

I am having a heck of a time getting any sewing done.  Maybe it’s because I’m too busy doing other things.  Like working.  Or spending my day off going to the recently reopened coffee shop…the dogs couldn’t understand why they had to wait outside…

And skiing down the lake…  We saw 27 or more of these birds…

Trumpeter swans…  We also saw three otters and two mountain goats but they weren’t close enough for photos.  We straggled home at the end of about four hours out… but we did get a tea break in there.  

Yesterday I did manage to get a bit of hand stitching done by tackling it at every opportunity…  I managed to finish the pathway on one flower for the Grandmother’s Flower Garden and I can now join it onto the three that I have sewn together already…

Don’t you love all the movement in this flower?  I do! 

I have a goal to make the strip be six flowers long by next Monday.  Will I accomplish it?  Tune back in next week for an update. 

Janet

Home from Australia and a sewing post

You may have noticed that I didn’t post anything about sewing while I was in Australia.  That’s because I really didn’t do any sewing.  I took lots of hand stitching projects with me, but we were too busy most of the time for me to pay attention to them.  I’m not sure why I didn’t sew on the plane going to Australia but on the way home it was too rough for me to sew. 

I did get to sit out in the yard a few times, listening to the lilting song of the Australian magpies, watching the parrots swoop around, enjoying the sun and sewing.  I made two sets of hexie flowers for my February and March swap partners in the Inchy Hexagon Flower Swap.  Interestingly both Michele and Nora asked for 30s/40s reproduction fabric petals and yellow centres.  My LQS doesn’t sell 30s/40s reproduction fabric so I had to find some in my stash.  I think I did okay with these – I really like modern fabrics and haven’t paid a lot of attention to the reproduction ones, so had to sort of guess whether I was using the right fabrics.

When we were on the train travelling from Armidale to Hawkesbury River I added second round hexies to one of my own flowers.  Look at all those dots!

I only made it to one quilt store in Australia, EasySew in Hobart, Tasmania.  I guess sewing was really not at the forefront of my mind.   But I was able to get some Australian print fat quarters, which I’m really happy about.  Animals and aboriginal designs, which I love.  My sister gave me the one with the Eucalyptus leaves for my birthday.

The sewing highlight of the trip however was the opportunity to meet my blogging friend Lynne, from Never Too Hot to Stitch.  Even though they had sold their house and bought a new one and were working on packing their house for the move, Lynne and her husband Mark met us at the ferry docks in Sydney and we had a lovely visit.  They bought us dinner at a lovely restaurant, City Extra and we chatted into the evening.  I fear that we kept them out too late as they had a long trip home and Mark had to be up early for work, but it was so interesting to meet them and learn about their lives in Australia.  And I forgot to get a picture of us…

When I got home my second round hexies from my January swap partner, Celine, were waiting in the mail and I promptly sewed them onto flowers.

I am behind on a few swap items – my February/March paper piecing blocks and my March Canadians Quilt block.  But today I finished up my last piece for the Get Your Hex On swap.  This flower is for Sara in Italy.

That’s all the sewing I’ve done since we got home.  Jet lag, returning to work and all the catching up have kept me busy.  And this weekend I HAD to make Ukrainian eggs with my friend Donna…

The  one on the top right is dyed.  I wrote words all over it with the wax, then dyed it, but unfortunately the dyes aren’t dark enough to be able to read the words.  So I made another one, bottom left, where I dyed the egg a light blue then wrote the words all over it with Sharpie pens.  The other two are dyed.  These are fun to make and always look so pretty.

That’s all for now folks.  I am back in the saddle, have a quilt retreat coming up later in the month and plan to get lots of sewing done in the next while.  And I am going to try and post a little more often to the blog.

Janet