Friday, April 17, 2009

BLOGGERS QUILT FESTIVAL. MY ENTRY.


http://parkcitygirl.blogspot.com will get you the rules and details.

I have decided to join the Bloggers quilt festival.
Click on the blog above and see how to join up.

This is my favorite quilt. It's not new. It's over 40 yrs old. I restored it to its former glory saving as many of the original blocks as I could.
It was a labour of love on my part and I am so very proud of this quilt. The red border just pops the red inside the blocks.
Hope you like it.




EASY PEASY QUILT IN A DAY

Remember I told you that my friend Dawn was returning from Florida? Well yesterday, was lesson two in her quilting adventures.
Last year she came to the cottage for a few days, brought a down pour which consequently meant no playing or sitting outside.
So, I asked her about learning to quilt which followed with a strippy quilt being done in one day, quilted but not bound. Hello! we needed to eat and sleep!
She is going to a shower for her nephew whose wife is having a baby and asked about a baby quilt....Lesson 2 was yesterday.
We bought this panel and backing, spray basted and with a lesson in stippling she proceeded to oooooh and aaaaaaaaaaaw at how wonderful the Janome 6600 was to work with, so as you see, she is gloved...didn't do what I can do and that is stitch the glove to the quilt....and proceeded over the next few hours to stipple the quilt while I cleaned up my shelves.
As you can see, although this photo shows the quilt upside down..I didn't get her face in the second shot...she only has to hand sew the binding and label.
A great job and a fun day!
The daughter of a friend of mine is just starting to blog, so have a look at Claire's blog which is located in my side bar as Claire in Florida. Pop in and comment on her adventure in blogland.
It's Friday, I am taking our future Olympic girl to see about her leg once again. So my day of starting a new project is cut short a bit. The stress fracture that showed up in CT scan is being looked at by an orthopedic surgeon this am. He starts earlly, 8:30, so I gotta get going.
Have a super weekend folks! It looks like next week we may head up to the cottage to see how it fared through the winter. The ice is almost out! Wahooo!

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

AN EASTER STORY



I don't have much to report today, except that over the Easter weekend, I was reminded of an Easter about 14 years ago when Courtney was about 2 yrs old.

I made her a Polly Flanders (I think) dress, paid too much money for the pattern which had puffy sleeves, a full skirt and even a pinafore. I spent about $50.00 on just the material and lace for the pinafore. I spent about 2 weeks sewing this absolutely beautiful mauve and white print dress, then being so careful with the lace and the huge bow that went with it.

I called my daughter and said that Courtney should be in a slip and white tights as I had something for her.

I had to put the dress in one large box, the pinafore in another because they were so poofy, you get the picture....So, we arrive at the house with two huge boxes and the kid starts to tear it open and she picks up the dress, looks at me and says in her best english..."NO NANA" she didn't like it at all! She then opens up the lace...looks at her mom and says "NO MOMMY NO!"


I started laughing so hard, my sweetie was laughing, my daughter was horrified and her husband was just looking at the dress and pinafore thrown on the floor!


It took Kelly and I an hour to get her to put the dress on and only because that child loved us both that she put the damn thing on. She hated the dress!


We have only a snippet of a video of her wearing it, and she was drinking her juice while her poppa and daddy were drinking theirs (same colour as apple juice).


Kelly has no idea what ever happened to the dress, she passed it on to someone but can't remember who, and here I thought it would be such a keepsake...


To this day, that girl does not ever and has never since worn anything resembling poofs or full skirts and never mauve....I still laugh when I see her behind the bed, pleading with her mother and nana, saying the only words she could...noooooooooooooooooooo, Nana.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

DOTS AND STRIPES FINISHED


Here is my Dots and Stripes quilt. It's finished, measures 65 X 70 which is large for me to have done, but it went so well that I was able to complete it on the weekend. I used warm and natural batting. Is it just me or does this quilt feel heavier than most...It was definitely a hit with the girls that came for dinner on Sunday. The grandson..."nice Nana" was the only comment. He's not into pink obviously....

These long weekends with such nice weather can get a girl away from sewing for sure. We were out to dinner, had guests, ate too much and we were all just ready to veg out on Monday.

However our girl is back from Florida training camp, all tanned and antsy to get out on the frigid waters of Lake Ontario. So Monday morning instead of sleeping in and lazing around we went to get her kayak on the trailer of about 30 odd that came from Florida. There were very fit bodies there to remove the kayaks off the trailer and find our two which were were bringing back to the local Canoe Club. It was quite an experience to see how these kids had loaded and unloaded the boats.


The photo of the grandkids and me whilst awaiting the feast of roast beef, potatoes, sweet potatoe casserole and brocolli casserole. I made rhubarb crisp for one of the deserts and Martin brought Pumpkin pie for the other.

Did I tell you I had been given a box of left over fabric from my grandmother's stash? She passed away in 1965 I think it was and one of my aunts has kept a couple of boxes of her fabrics. I washed and pressed what I could yesterday and think that it's one of those that I must find a pattern that isn't too big in order to use the fabric.

I may cut out 2 1/2" squares and get ready to make a top with these and some of my scraps too.
It would mean connecting all these little squares together in 9 patch I should think and then add a colour in between.. It's a work in progress, and as I said, I got the fabric washed and pressed, that's the start.

Oh we are expecting 50 degree weather in the next few days. I saw a finch yesterday and so many redwing black birds! It's here, there are buds on the trees and when we went downtown to pick up the kayaks, there were so many shops with all the pots of flowers and perennials out to be admired! I love Spring!

PS. am going to the post office to pick up envelopes for mailing prizes today too.