DD # 2 is gone and she took the quilt….

We had our family Thanksgiving dinner last night – all the girls, grandchildren, friends, cousins, boyfriends and various dogs.  Nice to have the whole family together for the first time in over a year.  DD # 2 left early this morning on the plane, amid the slushy, snowy rain.  And she took her quilt with her!

Some hitherto little known and unpublished facts about this quilt….

1. This is the first large quilt I have made start to finish.

2.  The quilt is a graduation present for DD #2.  She graduated in July.  I started gathering the fabric in April and finished the quilt yesterday. 

3. I got the pattern out of a book at our local library; Fast, Fun and Fabulous Quilts by Judith Hughes Marte.

4. I started a quilt for DD # 2 several years ago from fabric she bought.  About a year ago, after a couple of years of nagging me to work on her quilt, she announced that her tastes had changed.  She pointed out this quilt in the book as one she was now liking.  She didn’t know until she got here last week that I wasn’t working on the old quilt.

5. There are 8 light coloured plaids and 27 dark coloured plaids in this quilt. 

6. I got many of the plaid fabrics from an online store – Schoolhouse Quilts.  They had a special of 20 plaid fat quarters for $30.  The owner was very helpful; after I got the initial batch, which was mostly dark plaids, I e-mailed and asked if she could send me a second batch with light plaids.  Although she didn’t have as big a selection of the lights, she was quite happy to send me duplicates of some of the lights.

7. I now have a large stash of plaid fabrics :)

8. The star pieces are all cut from templates and the pieces were not easy to match up.  I string pieced them four at a time.  After the first four I realized there were problems with the matches but I wasn’t taking it apart.  If I was to do this again I think I’d make a paper piecing pattern.

9. I did “custom quilting” on this quilt.  I’ve done a bit of this before but never on such a large project.  Please don’t look too closely at my mistakes.

10. The finished size is about 68” x 51”.

10. Judith named this quilt Stars and Stripes Forever but that was just too much of a patriotic American name for me.  I named it Dancing Stars.

 

It’s a little shy to start.  But then it jumps forth boldly….

Hanging out in the late afternoon sun….

Close ups….

And the label….I crossed all the T’s but I see I didn’t dot all the I’s….

 

After watching me madly finishing the quilt all week and asking a million questions like “What are you doing now?”  “Why are you using that foot on your sewing machine?” “How long is that going to take?”, the actual presentation of the quilt wasn’t much of a surprise.  She does really like it though, I could tell when she first saw it. 

Here’s a contest for you all.  There is one plaid in here which is a Canadian provincial tartan.  Which one is it and what province does it come from?  Laina, I know you know and you can’t play…

Janet

DD # 2 is here and so are the hexies…

Earlier this summer my friend Dahn called me excitedly saying she had something for me.  Dahn knows I love scraps and she abhors them.  She had been promising to bring me her latest round of scraps for my postage stamp quilt so that’s what I thought she had.  But this was something she found in the garbage….and even she could not leave it there.  It was a huge bag full of hexagons that someone had cut out.  Many of them were basted onto paper backing.  She just knew that I would do something with this and she couldn’t let it go to the garbage.  And she was right.  I took it home and sorted all the hexies into piles of the same fabrics.  It took me hours.

There are many little hexies here, some basted and some just cut.  As well there is some leftover fabric.

I keep seeing One Flower Wednesday on different blogs and thinking I should start working on the hexies but I haven’t started yet.

DD #2 is here visiting from Newfoundland.  It’s been great to see her as it’s been over a year since she left.  She works as a paramedic just outside Saint John’s.  She has downtime on her job and does a lot of knitting.  I mentioned before that she inherited my mother in law’s unfinished knitting projects.  One of those was a sweater for the youngest son.  He is a big man and it is a big sweater.  DD # 2 has finished it and is in the ‘sewing in the ends and sewing it together’ stage.  She brought it with her to work on as well as a pair of long overdue Christmas socks for her cousin.  She has those done and has decided she will give her uncle the sweater for Christmas so she still has time to get it done. 

DD # 2 loves the quilt I’m making her.  I had started a different quilt long ago and she thought I was finishing that one – hence the surprise element and why I haven’t posted photos.  It is almost done, just finishing the binding and you’ll get to see it soon.  But DD # 2 commented that SHE should make a quilt.  She doesn’t really sew but she does have time to work on things and she’s a smart cookie. 

SO….can you see where this is heading….I suggested maybe she wants to sew together a few hexies…..  At first she asked if I was crazy, but then she got engaged.  She’s made these two already

and she’s taking the rest of the pile with her.  She’s cut a stack of the yellow hexies for the centers and basted them onto paper backing.  She’ll mail the finished ones back to me as she gets them done.  What an inspiration!  These are very old fashioned fabrics and I probably wouldn’t have picked them but I think they will look very pretty.  DH said maybe this quilt could be for Zeke, our dog, as the poor guy was shivering in the boat yesterday.  Zeke needs a sweater and a quilt but I don’t think he’ll be getting this hand stitched one!

Janet

Quilt parade

Hope you enjoyed your morning toast :)  I didn’t really mean to post that utube video.  I just wanted to send it to my friend Dahn, but I couldn’t figure out how to do that.  Sometimes the computer befuddles me.  When we took my F-i-L on the trip he was determined to figure out how to use his new chip Visa card.  But every machine that you use is different and he was struggling with getting the process.  That’s how I feel on the computer.  Sometimes you can just send a page, other times you can’t.  Someone told me the Ctl C, Ctl V trick for copying – what a relief as I used to have such trouble copying things. 

But the toast revue is hilarious!  Hope you enjoy it.

Anyway …. a few pics of other’s work from the quilt retreat.  The pictures aren’t great.  The quilts were lying on the floor so the angle is weird and some of them are out of focus.  Too much quilting, not enough toast!  That’s gotta be the problem…

By our fearless leader,  Ruth, who owns the local quilt shop and organized the retreat.

I think this was my favourite….

Love the colours….

There were two in this pattern, this one …

and this one.  Amazing how different fabrics change the quilt….

Can you tell I had to turn the photo upside down to get the quilt right side up?  Very cute pattern.

The four ladies from Haines had a pact to all make this table runner.  The rest of us loved it and are hunting down the pattern right now.  The fabrics on the second one up are Fairy Frosts.  It is beautiful!

Blurry…rats…but you can see the beautiful colour distribution.

A siggie quilt to commemorate a school reunion.  Such soft gorgeous colours!

 

This Sudoku quilt was fabulous; fussy cut animals and Canada proudly proclaimed.

My friend Dahn’s raggy edge circle quilt made from her home dyed fabrics.  Beautiful!

I’m tempted not to put this one in here because it’s so blurry, but it is really cute with all the kitties.

A wall hanging in nice colours.

Lots of people were swooning over this gorgeous quilt!

I love the colours in this one.

And look at all the work in this fabulous quilt!

A wall hanging to go with the quilt above.

Look at the range of colours in this string quilt.  Gorgeous!

A set of two…these might be northern lights.

A finish of a mystery quilt.  I made this pattern with different fabrics and a different border and it looks completely different!

These Halloween wall panels are too cute.  One of the Haines ladies made it and she passed the pattern on to my friend Dahn, who has passed it on to me.  Sharing is such fun.

Christmasy table runner… tis the season….

Another Sudoku quilt  in pretty colours.

Hope you’ve enjoyed the parade.

Janet

Heywood Banks - Toast

No Snow Quilt Retreat

After my trip south I came home and worked for two and a half days, then was off to the “no snow” quilt retreat in Haines Junction – where we had about six inches of snow!  There were 33 ladies at the retreat, mostly from Whitehorse, but four came from Haines, Alaska, one from Idaho, one from Yellowknife, NWT and me from my small town.  We were there for four days.

My friend Dahn, who has a big heart and is always offering to do things for people, gave us an unscheduled mini workshop on snow dying (after she called her DH and got him to bring out all the materials she needed to put it on).  She is passionately into dying and prepares a lot of the fabric she uses in her work.  Here are the pieces I made.

I love the yellowy green.

 

There was a gift “exchange” where you could steal from someone else or take a new gift.  I ended up with a fabric panel of quilt sayings and a suction handle to use on rulers.    There was also fabric door prizes and again you could steal or open a new one.  I came home with these lovelies although I lost them a couple of times in the process.

I also came home with a huge bag of scraps that people donated for my scrappy postage stamp quilt.  I have so many scraps that I’m going to have to come up with another quilt idea once that one is finished!  Some of the scraps were LARGE…I pieced together this unstuffed pincushion from some of the scraps.

 

And this is what else I worked on:

A setting for my bluework squares.

Second border on this quilt that I made a couple of years ago and need to finish.  It is for a friend who ran a marathon with me – in February, in the Yukon, on the Yukon Quest sled dog race trail.  The quilt is a representation of the many hours we spent training; running in the snow amongst the trees.

 

I also worked on the quilt for DD # 2 – it’s 2/3 quilted.  Yeah!… but, she arrives tonight at midnight and it won’t be completely finished.  I’ve got until October 10th when she leaves to get it done.

It was a fun weekend!  Now I have to stay home for a while.  Although I am taking next week off work….and maybe we’ll go out in the bush with DD # 2, hunting or berry picking or maybe a drive to Skagway… Hmmm…..

Janet

Travels in the balmy south

I’ve was away for a few days last week.  DH and I took his 87 year old father on a little trip.  DH flew to PG to pick his dad up and they drove down and met me in Vancouver a few days later.  I arrived on the plane about 4:30 in the afternoon.  We had booked a hotel room and I went there and hung out for a while.  By 7 p.m. DH and DF-i-L had not arrived and I was starved so I set out to walk to a restaurant recommended by the front desk.  Amazingly DH missed the turn off for the hotel and drove right up to me when I was a few minutes from the restaurant.  Funny how these things can happen in a big metropolis.

We took DF-i-L to Port Alberni on Vancouver Island to visit his brother, then to Chemainus further south on the island to visit some old friends of his.  Then back to Vancouver to my B-i-L’s place and I flew home.  DH and DF-i-L were on the road for 7 days; I was with them for 5.  I have to say that my DF-i-L was a real trooper.  I was amazed at his adaptability and willingness to go with the flow.  I think he had a great time. 

Unfortunately I wasn’t a very good picture taker – but I’ll share a few photos that I did take. Three exciting things in Port Alberni.

1. Biker’s toy run with 600 plus motorcycles.

 

2. Kiwi tree growing in DH’s cousin’s back yard.  I’ve never seen one before.  She said that you don’t pick the kiwis until they have some frost, which would be mid-November for them.

3. Deer hanging out on the side of a busy road right beside cousin’s back yard.  We don’t have many deer where I live.

 

And for Friday Night Sew In I worked on a knitting project.  These are fingerless gloves for DD # 3.  One is almost done.

 

I loved this blue door in Chemainus… if I look like I just got up… well I probably did….

And the wake from the ferry…

I went to two quilt shops in Port Alberni but didn’t buy too much.  These fabrics in one shop…

And these fabrics in the other.  I got that red as sashing for my postage stamp quilt.  Thank you all of you who gave me your opinion.  I was in love with the red and enough people agreed with me to give me the confidence to go for it.  I thought this red looked perfect when I was at the shop, but now I’m not sure…

It was a great trip.

Janet

ATCs and other business (busyness)

Life has been busy the last week and there is no end in sight.  A synopsis:

Friday night – Klondike Road Relay (a running race) from Skagway, Alaska to Whitehorse, Yukon (176.5 km) on the highway that runs by my house.  DD # 1 and DD # 3 running legs 1 and 10 respectively.  Eight people in and out of my house all night long, including two grandchildren, both DDs, one boyfriend and my sister, who is here visiting from New Brunswick. 

Saturday – very tired from the night before.  Harvested basil from garden and made four batches of pesto.  Harvested oregano, thyme, parsley, chives and dried several batches of each.  Didn’t harvest the tomatoes yet – hope they don’t freeze.  Our sailing friends out to stay overnight in their camper and hoping to sail.  At our house for dinner along with my sister. 

Sunday – In to my LQS for a workshop/demo on the Tin Lizzie LAQ.  Very exciting and lots of of new ideas for quilting.  Part of me would like to own one of these machines, the other part doesn’t know if I can justify spending so much money on one.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday – work, work, work.  Three big reports to write. 

On the quilting front I’ve been steadily working on quilting DD #2’s quilt.  Also made a few small items lately.  Here’s something I can show. 

I did an ATC trade with Linda from Linda Robertus, Quilts.  Now mind you I had never made an ATC before and had to get some instruction so I didn’t goof up.  Linda sent me this beautiful ATC

It is silk paper (paper made from silk fibres).  She said she followed a tutorial found in Down Under Textile magazine.

And this is what I sent her

 

The background is cheesecloth painted with acrylic paints.  The red is gauze layered and “soldered” onto the background.  You use a soldering iron around the edges of the shape.  It melts the fabric and the resulting gooey burnt mess acts as a solder onto the background.  It looks pretty cool I think.  There is a sequin attached to cover up a little spot where my soldering iron slipped.  ATCs are 2 1/2” by 3 1/2”, by the way.

Janet

My 9/11 story

Reading some 9/11 stories and remembering.  I woke up to the radio news telling of this terrible and fearsome thing – a plane flying into the WTC.  Put on the television and CBC had full coverage.  We got to watch the horror of the towers crumbling.  So terrible and sad …but we are far away from this craziness.  I was staying at my mom’s house in Whitehorse that night.  She was still alive, struggling to get by each day after my dad’s death and the reality of her dementia becoming clearer to us.  Went to work and the girls off to school.  I was supervisor of the volunteer ambulance service for our small town.  Had to call and make sure someone was on standby as planes were being diverted out of the US. Not likely it would affect us but had to make sure someone was paying attention in case our little airstrip was needed.

I was working with a woman who had been raped, helping her prepare for the upcoming trial when someone burst into the room to tell me there was an order to vacate downtown Whitehorse.  A Korean Airlines 747 which had been on its was to Anchorage, Alaska was being diverted to Whitehorse and there was suspicion that it was hijacked.  I’ve never heard what the truth is about this suspicion but I think it resulted from things the pilot said and the fact that he didn’t divert when he was ordered to.  The plane was escorted into Whitehorse by US and Canadian fighter jets.  I had to send that poor woman home on foot; there were no taxis to be found.  Fortunately she lived close by.  She declined my offer of a ride and set off.  I can’t imagine how traumatic this event was for her. 

I was on the road out of town, stopped at a red light,  when the plane came in flying directly over my car, what seemed like just a few yards overhead.  I thought “How crazy is this!”  It was just so close.

At my mom’s, I found my kids and made sure everyone was safe.  Then I got the call I was needed at the airport to help settle the people from the plane.  Off to the airport where the passengers were finally allowed to debark.  The hijacking scare wasn’t real but the people on the plane were confused, disoriented, scared and stunned.  Some of them were from NYC and were frantic to know about their loved ones.  They were all tired and hungry after a long flight from Asia.  I listened to people’s stories and comforted them as much as I could until the buses arrived to take them to the hotel where they were to sleep for the next few nights. 

My heart goes out to all those who were affected by the insanity of 9/11 and to those who lost loved ones.  I know there were thousands of brave and heroic people who did what they could to help others. 

Peace.

Janet