What a Day

Well I meant to start early this morning to put my post in for today as I have promised myself to try and do it daily, but we stayed up late to watch the elections, then an early dental appt left me with hardly anytime to even get to the computer.
I have tried to make my blog look more to my liking, but since I am not very literate when it comes to the computer, being almost self-taught I have a hard time making the headings, and blogs I follow, the colours and putting it all together. I am sure others have a hard time making their blogs individual too.
I went to the dentist to discuss a bridge, implant or leave alone small tooth area that was removed last year. I just didn't like the $3,000.00 figure for the implant, and almost the same for a bridge that my dentist said would cost, so I asked for a second opinion from my oral surgeon dentist where I have teeth cleaned, and he said if it didn't bother me to leave it alone for a while and see how I am next year, well that is better because the economy isn't exactly up these days and investments aren't doing well as everyone knows.
I took my Janome circa 1990 or thereabouts to get a facelift and it will be returned on Tuesday. I asked after 10 yrs for the needle threader to be replaced. My eyes just aren't what they used to be and I have been placing a piece of white paper behind the needle and praying that I was able to thread the bloody thing in the first 20 tries. I have even removed the needle, inserted one of those threaders through the needle, put the needle back in the machine. Talk about being cheap.
The quilt shoppe where I bought the Janome 6600 has great fabrics, but so expensive compared to Fabricland. The price with my discount is about $10.00 per metre. I have some fabric in my stash, but not enough to make some more "male" type of quilts.
I wish there were lots of fabric stores here in Canada, but it is very limited. I may use online buying.
Obama is going to be president of the US. What an historical event. I remember when John Kennedy was elected the first catholic president. That was also an historical event.
As I said earlier.....what a day.

YELLOW QUILT TO BE NAMED

So here is my last quilt that I finished last night I really enjoyed doing this one. I tried a wavy stitch from the new machine and I don't know whether this is considered "quilting" or not but I did it anyways. Sometimes I look at these creations of mine and they are just my own, so why can't I do what I want to finish them.

There is a bit of a booboo at the finishing on the back. the fabric didn't quite meet the edge so I am going to put my patch there. Yes, I am posting my mistakes. I can't figure out how that happened because I thought I had lots of edges left over. I am not going to do that mistake again.

Yesterday we cleaned up junk from the basement and took it to the dump. Jerry, wanting to go to Port Perry dump because it is "cleaner" than the Pickering one, first drove us to Goodwill for donations, then on up to Port Perry, the scenic route because we weren't in a hurry. Well we arrived there and the sign said "Closed Mondays", so we then drove past our house to Pickering and dumped the load for $8.00, not bad at all. But we took 2hrs 15 minutes to do this and another 15 minutes of driving we would have been at the cottage in all the time it took us to drive around. We had Wilson with us, so when we arrived home, it was like we had been on a long trip. lol. We are not returning to Port Perry to dump again I can tell you.

I have not decided what my next project will be, so today I am going to try to get inspired. Yeah right, Jerry is starting to build the shelves now that we have cleaned up enough to make more mess.

It is going to be a lovely fall day, probably one of the last days of Indian summer that we will have. Nature has a way of lulling us, only to descend with storms when we least expect it.

And Kelly, I know that was you that posted on my Wilson blog, I did laugh as you did too.

Wilson the Wonder Dog

This is our 3 yr old westie, who rules the roost and as Kelly says, "the child we never had" Jerry being my second husband and no children but many dogs over the years.

However as we say to Kelly, that if she treated us like Wilson we would do the same to her as we do to him.....lol to Kelly.

He is a great dog and is very patient when I am sewing at the cottage. He will wait for a long time before he makes me crazy to play with him. At the cottage we can't go for walks like we do in Whitby. He and I will walk a few cottages over then back, which is enough for him to get a good run. He still likes his toys and specially any toy that has a squeek in it. He doesn't destroy them and just loves to play catch.

I am finishing up a quilt which is another lap quilt and last night while hand sewing the binding, Wilson wasn't happy because he couldn't get on my lap. Tough, quilting comes first. I haven't named it yet, but tomorrow when I post the photo of it, hopefully someone will suggest a good name, knowing I like ice cream names, or fruit names.

I am going to call for my sewing lessons on the new machine this week. I am getting the hang of it and am loving it very much. I am also taking in the old Janome to get cleaned etc. It seems to be a tension problem.

Oh,, I hate a day such as this, the rain came in last night, blew leaves all over the back yard, about 200 of them since our trees are so new that there is hardly anything, but it means that the weather will get colder and then the snow will come. We are expecting a few warm sunny days this week, so it will be hard to go to the basement and sew. But today, dark and rainy, I am going to sort through more "stuff" as I am decluttering.

SUNDAY MORNING

This photo was taken of a granddaughter, Courtney and her friend Doug doing crazy dives at the cottage 2 weeks before we closed in mid October.

The water was about 60 degrees, which is really cold and they jumped in and out for ages doing this kind of stuff. I took this with a telephoto lense from the deck.

These two along with Jeremy also water-skied most of the day. They did wear wet suits for skiing because the breeze at 22 mph was kind of cool.

Ah the young, they feel nothing but joy and doing wild stuff.

Today, the change of time "fall back" I am going to wake up at 5:45 for ages until my body clock gets used to it and then we will return to daylight saving time. I wish it stayed daylight saving all year round. So for the next few weeks I shall be up so early that even the birds won't be up.

Today, being sunday, we are going to go to the basement and work on the new area for my sewing area such as it will be. Jerry is not going to get fancy with this. I just want to be able to put my fabric etc on some shelves to keep the area neat. I am sick of the bins and they are always so messy looking.

MY DECK

This is where I do all my hand sewing in the summer. On the deck at the cottage. It is always peaceful there and swarming with the hummingbirds that I feed from 4 feeders. Although I must say with the weather this summer being so wet and all, my little hummers were a bit scarce compared to other years.

This sitting place is where all our gang and guests love to sit in the morning have coffee, eat cereal and play cottage game of "Madd" which is a variation of Sorry I think but with more agressive moves. This is the place and we can all enjoy the magnificent views from this deck.

Now that winter is coming, with this place being on an island, we have left it for nature to do its thing for the winter. The water drops about 4 ft, and the winds will howl, and the winter birds take over. We could hear wolves howling the week before we left. It was very eerie but we were blessed to hear them. There is no one there now, all the cottagers have closed their cottages for the winter, and as the water slowly rises again, the ice will come and with it winter.

THE FUNICULAR, DESIGNED BY JERRY

The "funicular" called "the lift" by those of us who are in awe of Jerry's design and building of same this summer has saved us so much of the lifting and carrying of our supplies up the 32 steps to the cottage landing.

Jerry designed this over the past winter, and for weeks he would say "look at this" and show me this scale drawing of the lift.

He had it built in pieces locally, designed the motor etc, don't ask, and then we transported it to the cottage and he built it over the summer, between the rain storms we had during the months of July and August.

It carries about 1500 lbs and the whole project was designed so that we can stay at the cottage longer as we age.

There has been so much interest in it on our lake and maybe he will build a couple more. It made the carrying of my stash which was in a big bin much easier to load in the boat to take back to Whitby.

My new sewing machine weighs about 30 lbs, so carrying it up next summer will be a charm.

THE UGLY QUILT

First, my mother is fine. She probably just had severe cramps, and at 89 yrs old, well she became fearful that she was dying. Anyway they kept her overnight at the hospital and sent her home yesterday afternoon. she was glad to go too.

The first image is my "ugly" quilt which isn't finished being quilted as yet. I think it's ugly, but the kids think it looks "different Nana". I will practice the stithes for stippling on this quilt and then bind it.

The first time I saw this pattern in a magazine, I thought oh that should be quick and easy. 12 " squares are pretty simple. It is the colour combinations that I put together that just didn't do it for me, but after putting the quilt together, there was enough money in it to try and finish it.

Quilt tops are sometimes cheaper than what goes between the fabrics, so being very frugal with my quilting dollars I am going to finish it on the new machine.

I am going to go to lessons tomorrow and see what I can do with the fanciness of this machine.

HOSPITALS

Well this will be a short post today. My mother is in the hospital with pain in her stomach area and until midnight last night the doctors were still unable the source of her pain. Exrays, ctscan and a couple of physical exams they were still unable to find the source.
So they kept her overnight. She was a bit confused about the whole thing, so this morning, I am off to the hospital.
I cannot understand why people who are not in true need of hospitals, do not use the walk in clinics. Last night, well crazy night as I call it, there were about 65 people in the emergency area, about 8 toddlers/babies. I heard 2 of them being told by the doctor that they should be given children's tylenol and contact their doctor, or go to a walkin clinic. Imagine waiting 4 hours with all those people and then being told, that. Some people just don't have brain power moving up there.
The nurse said that if they thought a bit more of what was going to happen, they would use the clinic, but somehow it doesn't deter them.
There were so many people coming (6 ambulances) that bodies were on the stretchers waiting for beds, or rooms and it was almost impossible to move in the emergency.
As I said, what a night.
I am off to the hospital this am.

KELLY'S QUILT

This is another of the leftover pinwheels from Tory's quilt. My math has greatly inproved since this was cut out. I don't know where I made the mistake of how many reds and greens that I needed, but I still (yep believe it) have a few of these squares left in my small stash.This green with the pink dots has been a huge hit with everyone and even though I also have black with pink dots fabric, this one is everyone's favorite. Lucky for me as I had so much of it cut out.
This quilt which has a white background is used in Kelly's family room and it looks great.

This past weekend we went to Goodwood racetrack to watch our nephew Drew race go carts. He is 10 yrs old and the highlite of his day was all the relatives who came to see his final race of the season,in cold damp weather with rain threatening. I should have brought a lap quilt to wrap in as it was bonechilling indeed. Drew was a great racer and we will see much of his talent in the future.

I also received and early christmas and belated birthday present from my darling Jerry. He bought me a new Janome 6600 sewing machine and the table to put the machine on/in. I am very excited about this as I think that with the machine having the quilting feature, my stippling will improve greatly. I am practicing on my ugly quilt, which Tory thinks isn't so ugly after all.
Tory and Alex both being computer literate took no time to figure out how to use the machine.
Today is a big practice day for me. I am also getting a sewing area with shelves to be made by Jerry, which will be a huge hit by this novice quilter.

Blueberry quilt

Another day of posting and feeling more comfy doing it. I took a photo of Helen's Uki Box and it has raised a lot of interest. I am going to try to make a pdf file to send to the interested people.

Being pretty basic in computer stuff, I shall have to bring in the troups, ie the granddaughters who know how to do this stuff.

The is another strippie and when I made it I had bought the blue which is an unusual colour for me as I don't normally wear blue at all and the print which is large looked good to me at the store because of the fish. It was a simple quilt to make and the back is also blue. We use this as the lap quilt of choice at the cottage even though it really doesn't go with anything there as I like very simple one might call me boring in my colour choices.

The first photo of the great room tables is where I did all the quilting this summer. For my family looking at this photo, they know I attempted to "stage" the shot as there is no sewing stuff in site. I like this room as it is airy, the trees are all around me and the windows being weather walls, can be raised up or down depending on the weather. The room is sunny here in the afternoon with the sun filtering through the trees and I can see the lake a bit from this vantage point. Very peaceful.

I made my first quilt label for Kylie Marie yesterday and sewed it on last night. I hope my printing improves, but the quilt which I called "tutti fruitie" is being mailed to British Columbia today.

This quilt was made for Kelly, my only daughter for her family room. As usual, I am still using the pinwheels that I cut out for the second quilt that I made. I don't remember being so bad in math, but believe it or not, I still have some of this stuff left. My favorite fabric of all time has been the green with pink dots. I just love it and have a bit of binding left for a small project or top of another strippie quilt.

Yesterday I went to the quilt shop in Pickering and bought quilting gloves, bamboo fabric and was supposed to get muslin and pen for labeling, but got talking and forgot to get the last two items. I love the shop and even though I find the fabrics expensive, I do get a shop discount.

I must go back to purchase the label stuff. I also bought fusible web to try some application techniques.

ANOTHER QUILT

My granddaughter suggested I change the blog to "NanaQuilts" because of who I am. So today is my first day of blogging with my simple new name.

We had snow here in Whitby yesterday and it was so cold for this time of year. My darling Westie, Wilson just doesn't like walking in rain or snow, so I put his coat on him. Alex walked him before the snow fall, and it was raining then, he doesn't like any of that.

This quilt is called "Lime Sherbet" because of the lovely lime colour that sets it off. It is another strippie quilt, not yet destined for anyone. I have a cousin that has a new baby girl named Sophia and I may get this to her.

Jerry has moved all the quilting stuff to my "sewing room" in the basement. I hope I can last there this winter. It does get chilly there, but since we will be in Florida for the month of January and also part of February, well it won't be a long stay down there.

THE BLACK QUILT

This quilt was made at the cottage this summer. Being black I thought that it would be good to use invisible thread...god it was hard to do as this thread is not the easiest to work with and also putting this together on the diagonal was a challenge for me. Jerry helped me with it a lot as for some reason I couldn't see the patterns on the quilt.

It worked out in the end and I am pleased with it, but was very frustrated doing it.

I haven't labeled it yet, but will do all of them before sending them off as gifts.

This is the quilt that I made for Kylie Marie, my new niece. She was born Sept. 7th. I'm so glad it was a girl because I didn't make a gender neutral quilt.

I loved the pink in this quilt and again, it was all those left over pinwheels that I had left from Tory's quilt. It is a variation of a "strippie" and the backside is a pink sheet with tiny checks.

I made this in a couple of days at the cottage, when the weather was really terrible. We had so much rain this summer that I didn't get a tan. On the other hand, I made quilts.

My granddaughter Courtney, would love a quilt too, but she is colour specific. She must realize that all my quilts are "creative" challenges, challenges being the operative here.

Tory took her quilt to her bedroom yesterday and she has been waiting for months for it. I wish her happiness with her "Raspberry sherbet" quilt.

Happy Birthday to my Jerry, he is 58 yrs old today.

My First Quilt.

This is my first quilt. I made it too small for my granddaughter's bed and I had to add another half to it. I simply removed the binding, then added a whole new top etc to this. It looks amazing and you can't tell where I added the other half.

I bought two orange queen size sheets, and a white sheet. I didn't know if I would like quilting very much (hard to imagine) and so I decided to try this one. I also found the fish sheet that I used for the back.

This looks so amazing on her bed. Alex loves orange and since I had a bit left over, she has a pillowcase the same as the back side.

It isn't too square, but the finished edges are so good, but I machine finished it, not knowing that the binding should be hand sewn on the backside. But it still looks good.

Since then I haven't been so lucky finishishing the corners and have opted for a different method which was shown to me by a friend who hand quilts, although Helen says that there isn't many more that her hands can do. She is an amazing quilter and has been my mentor in my endeavours.

More to come.