Well I'm here at the Saskatchewan Stitches Conference and I have to say "WOW".  I have never been to anything like this before.  There is constant motion, talking, sewing, knitting, garment making action and conversation.  I don't know how many people there are here but we had to set up 180 chairs for last night's fashion show.  One of the instructors here is Ron Collins, who teaches clothes fitting and making.  He happens to be a local boy who has made it big in the world of clothes making and is now creating patterns for Vogue.  I wish I was taking his classes, but then I wish I was taking the classes from Jan Bones, who teaches lingerie and sports/lounge wear, and from Lucy Neatby, who teaches knitting and from Liz Thompson who teaches quilting techniques... oh yes I did take one class from her.  It was a free motion class.  I really enjoyed Liz' style of teaching which was to give a bunch of lecture type instruction and then tell us to practice away.  Here are a couple of my practice pieces.

 

The other class I have taken so far is a two day class with Dianne Jannson.  She is teaching the Gypsy Wife quilt by Jen Kingwell. She is well known in Australia and beyond for here bright eclectic patterns.  I haven't made one before.  What I have learned about her patterns so far is that you get to try many different blocks and to learn about cutting different shapes for those blocks.  And that you can spend a lot of time agonizing over colours.  Here are the blocks that I managed to make in two days.  Yes I am very slow! They are sort of laid out the way they go in the quilt.  I have a lot more blocks to do.

 

 

Dianne is a lovely instructor.  She owns a quilt store in Pritchard, British Columbia called Di-Versity Quilting Supplies.  She says she has about 200 bolts of Kaffe Fassett fabric in her store right now.  I wish I could go there!

In addition to the daytime classes there is something going on here every evening.  The other evening Jan Bones taught her Secret Bag as a free class. 

She is a lovely woman, very elegant and very kind.  She designed these boxes when her kids asked her for square blocks for their juggling class.  She had the pieces all cut and serged for us.  What a lot of work for her with over 20 people in the class!  Here is my magic box, filled with my socks.  The boxes fold down flat when not in use.

I tried to add a link to Jan Bones website but... I am at a monastery and her site is called Lingerie Secrets and the computer policy of the monastery won't let me open the site.... :)  I think it is progressive that they have wifi available! 

I have to tell you about the monastery.  Such an interesting place.  But I'll keep that for another post, maybe later today.  I have a free day today, doing laundry and phoning home and the like, and of course keeping in touch with my blogging buddies!  Interestingly although the internet works fine in the building, one has to walk around the grounds to find a spot where the cell phone will work. 

Janet

Travelling

Two days and 1784 kilometres down.  The next two days will be a piece of cake.  Day one we travelled from Carcross to Fort Nelson, British Columbia. This highway is two lane, it has some rough and windy sections, but traffic is light so it was fairly easy driving.  It took us eleven hours to travel through this wooded area with beautiful lakes and several provincial parks.  There was ice on the river in Tagish...

and on Muncho Lake...

The outside temperature was 14 to 17 C and the day was grey as you can see.

We saw a little black bear and a porcupine within a kilometre of my house and then no animals for the next 400 kilometres.  But after we passed Watson Lake it became a Disneyland of animal viewing. Ten or more black bears, a small grizzly, a deer, four or five moose, including a beautiful new calf, about five porcupines and about thirty bison, with babies (so cute), sheep and two birds that I think were juvenile Sandhill cranes.

 

 

 

 

 

Today we travelled from Fort Nelson to Whitecourt, crossing into Alberta and into a new time zone. It took us 9 1/2 hours but we lost an hour because of the time change.  We only saw one wild animal - we're in ranch country now, with lots of horses, cattle, llamas, donkeys, sheep etc.  But the one wild animal we saw was this gorgeous boy...

 

 

Or is it a girl?? 

 

The temperature today hovered around 25 C.  This would be a very hot summer day at home and it felt pretty warm here too.  I feel like I'm on holiday!

 

And even though I said the hexies were on hold, I managed to complete one between yesterday evening and this evening.

 

 

Tomorrow we only have to travel about 650 kilometres so it will be a more relaxed day.  See you soon.

 

Janet

 

Friday Night Sew in for May

Guess what I did for Friday Night Sew In this month.... I completed another hexie flower!  The centre flower for this one was made by my friend Alberta from Georgia.  Oh how I would love to meet her one day.

Only nine more flowers to complete and then I can start to put the whole quilt together again.

But the hexies flower quilt will be on the back burner for a few weeks.  I leave tomorrow morning to go to the Saskatchewan Stitches Conference  with my friend Linda.  Why are we driving 2600 km to quilt and stitch?  Well we have a friend, Lori, who moved to Saskatchewan years ago.  Lori went to the conference three years ago and she told Linda that the conference was a spiritual quilting experience.  Linda and Lori both went last year and this year they have convinced me to come as well.

I have signed up for six classes and I am sure they will all be very exciting and interesting.  Right now I am exhausted from working lots of overtime in the last couple of weeks and having to get things finished up prior to going away.  But I have my camera ready to take photos of our drive and the fun at the conference.  The only problem is that it is at a monastery and I understand there is no internet access.  But I'll figure out a way to put up a post or two about our adventures!

Head on over to Sugarlane Designs to check out what others accomplished for Friday Night Sew In.

Janet 

Happy Mother's Day

I know it isn't mother's day everywhere in the world but it is here in North America.  So happy mother's day to anyone who has been a mother, stepmother, adoptive mother, pseudo mother, or any other kind of mother.  It is a tough but rewarding occupation in life!

I am still having a very busy time at work and don't seem to get much done all week besides working.  But the weekends are a different matter.  Yesterday was my great nephew's third birthday so I whipped him up a place mat.

It is just a panel that I added borders too.  I think it is pretty cute.  I had made my grandson a place mat using this same fabric a few years ago, so now the little guy can be just like his older cousin.

I did a minimal amount of quilting on this and you can't see it really from this side.  It shows up a bit on the back.

I also managed to get another hexie flower finished this weekend.  I have seventeen made - just ten more to go before I can start putting the whole thing together again.

Spring is progressing here.  The ice is almost gone from the lake and the water is starting to rise.

We have a few more wildflowers in bloom and the barest beginning of buds on the trees.  The shrubby cinqe foil  is the only flower I could get a photo of.  The others are tiny and delicate and the wind was blowing them all about.  

That has been my weekend.  I hope yours was lovely.

Janet 

Friday Night with Friends report for May

It was quite the week last week.  It started with two 6.2 magnitude earthquakes at 5:30 and 7:15 Monday morning.  The epicentres were about 100 km from my town.  We were really moving and shaking but no one was hurt.  There were a few building issues, but nothing huge.  In my house a pair of already not functioning well binoculars fell off a shelf and one of the eyepieces broke off.  In the bigger picture there was an Argentinian climber trying to solo climb Mount Logan, which is the tallest mountain in Canada and the quakes caused avalanches that left her unable to go up or down.   The weather wasn't conducive to a rescue right away but they managed to get in with a helicopter and get her out on Thursday.  She was fine but says she won't attempt another summit of the mountain. I wonder why! :)  Here's more on her story if you're interested.  http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/climber-rescued-mount-logan-natalia-martinez-1.4100727

I had a super busy work week and had to work some overtime, but I took Friday off to attend another quilting retreat.  Exciting!!

Although I sewed on Friday, Saturday and Sunday I didn't get a lot accomplished.  I think I must have been socializing too much.  And on Sunday one of our quilters learned her son had passed away overnight which put a real damper on my day.  My heart aches for her.

But there were a few good things on the sewing front.  I did get the straight line quilting finished on my postage stamp quilt and cut the excess batting off.

I still have to do the binding.  I'll do a post about this quilt sometime with all the details.

I cut a bunch more purple 2 inch squares for En Provence - still have about 175 to go.  But I made up a second block.

And I did work on one hexie flower but didn't get it finished.  Pitiful output.

And I won the door prize - a ruler and rotary cutter - and received a retreat gift of three fat quarters and an awl.  Pretty nice haul!

I hope you had a great Friday Night with Friends.  I sure enjoyed quilting with my friends and seeing all the quilts they were working on.  Now I am going to go and check out my on-line quilting friends at Cheryl's blog.

Janet