Just a busy week - some quilting stuff :-)

The Beloved Dearly and I have a geothermal heat pump - I really like it. It cost the bomb to have it put in three years ago - but it is wonderful.

On Friday of last week (I only tell this because it pertains to the rest of the week) the thermostat was backlit in red and there was a message to call the contractor. We live in a small town in Nova Scotia - I love it here. But the town has a reputation for having contractors who say they'll be there sometime on Wednesday, and you wait around, and no one shows up. Our contractor said someone would be over in the afternoon AND he said the system was under warranty, and that it was likely a sensor.

It wasn't a sensor, but Ryan was here in the afternoon, figured out what was wrong and said that, although he was off on Monday, someone would be here. On Monday we got up before 8 am. (We tend to stay up late and sleep in - what the heck, we get lots of stuff done, just later in the day than everyone else!) So getting up before 8 am is a bit of a pain. Anyway, at 11 I called the contractor to see what time they thought they would be over. A hiccup. Ryan was off and someone had called in sick. BUT she would call me right back and let me know what was going on. And she did! Ryan had diagnosed the problem, they had the parts on hand and someone would come over on Tuesday to fix the system - and it would be all fixed by 5 pm. (I made one tactical error - I did not ask what time she thought Ryan would be back...)

Monday evening, I bit the bullet and finished the pattern I have been designing. I had been writing it for awhile, and I had plunked a zillion pictures in it - but it was 9 pages (NINE!) long without cutting directions, fabric requirements, cover page or directions for the pockets. So I took all the photos out, added directions for the zipper and printed it. Then I proofread it - fixed it up, and printed it again. Ta-dah! Here it is:

 I am teaching this bag at a Quilt Retreat in Berwick next weekend, so I need 8 for the students in the class. So I took the whole thing with me to morning coffee on Tuesday, bought the folders, and printed 15 copies of them. Apparently some of the ladies have asked, if they weren't taking the class for the bag, could they buy the pattern? Well, heck, yeah!

So, we have the bag pattern and the block pattern. Phew! One thing done. I'm also doing a Trunk Show and I have started a list of quilts and sort of figured out what I'm going to say about each of them -- FORTY minutes. (I have to admit, anyone who knows me knows that forty minutes as a minimum is NOT the problem... How will I get stopped? I may take my timer!!)

So Tuesday morning, we got up before 8 again. Beloved Dearly was in bed before midnight - but I had trouble going to sleep - and was still awake at 2 am. The alarm was not a welcome sound at 7:30!

On Tuesdays in the afternoon, my friend comes over and we quilt together. I try really, really hard to have some hand work to do - binding usually, but occasionally applique and sometimes knitting. Tuesday afternoon I didn't have anything to do though - so I did some cutting. I quilt by machine. My friend does a lot of applique and almost all of her quilting is by hand. One of my facebook friends had made a Ricky Tims Convergence. I have his book, which I love, and I had pulled 8 fat quarters - with the thought in mind that I would make 2 of them.

Here is the fabric for the first one: (By the time I took this picture I already had them cut into squares.)

 I have to tell you, in case you don't know - my design wall is a pink, blue, white and yellow striped flannel sheet. My mom gave me two of them in the 1970s - and we used them on the bed in the wintertime when we slept on smaller beds. Now I use one to wrap things in for transport, and the other is pinned on the wall in the Quilt Studio. It works BUT it does have those distracting and disconcerting stripes!

Here is the fabric for the second one. Aren't they pretty?

By dinner time I had such a headache! (A fatigue headache, I'm such a wimp) However, I did manage to get back into the Quilt Studio, and I got the centre of the first Convergence done. What do you think?

(The design wall looks worse and worse! Sorry!)

At 3 pm on Tuesday, the phone rang, they would be here in a few minutes, was anyone going to be home? By 5 pm, our system was all fixed, I had reprogrammed the thermostat, and everything was wonderful. I had the BEST sleep Tuesday night - no worries! :-)

On Wednesday, I went over to my friend Freda's house and she drove us to New Glasgow where we went to Atlantic Fabrics - and she picked up the borders, sashing and binding for the quilt that she is making entirely by hand for her grandson! We went in to get green (this was her second trip there, she has anxiety about picking colours.), and came out with absolutely gorgeous blue!!

I love fabric stores. I try really hard not to get carried away! However, I found one piece I had to have!!! Here it is:

This picture does NOT do it justice. Sorry, I'll try to take another one. In the meantime, it is sort of green on this end, turns darker at the middle where it mixes with dark blue, which fades to light blue at the other end. It is absolutely gorgeous - and I had to have a little piece!!

Freda came over on Thursday evening, and I cut the fabric that we bought. She does traditional quilting - cuts with scissors, pieces by hand, quilts by hand!! She would like to have this quilt done by Christmas. I cut her sashing and borders (all 4 inches wide, all the same fabric) and then I cut her binding - which we sewed together with a mitred seam, and then we trimmed it, I pressed it, wrapped it around an empty toilet paper roll, and she was all set.

We had a discussion of hand quilting versus machine quilting. And I showed her some of the quilts I have ready for the Crestive Faft Market, and she asked me how I quilted those patterns on there. So I showed her. And I think the picture came out! I had a block ready for some class that I took or taught - who knows. So I stuck it in the machine, put on my white gloves and did this:

She couldn't believe I didn't draw it on in advance. I told her that I drew it on with the machine.


Fun anyway!! I think she is happy to do hers by hand!

I have the Hugs and Kisses quilt loaded on the frame - and we'll see how that goes on the weekend!

 Happy Quilting and stuff!

Just a Festive Craft Market

My friend Alison and I have been quilting together on either Tuesday or Wednesday afternoons for a couple of years now. Last fall, we decided that we should try to sell some of our quilts. We designed a webpage, made some quilts and posted them on it. More on that in another Blog Post.

THIS blog post is about the 'stuff' that I have gotten ready for the Festive Craft Market at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College in Bible Hill, NS in November 2012.

This, I might add, sounded like a REALLY good idea when we thought of it in July!

I have stopped posting new things on the webpage, as we signed a contract saying we would have enough things to keep our booth full for two days!! TWO DAYS! What were we thinking??

Alison has made a million small things. So many small things that she is getting sick of it. I don't have pictures of her things - she has also made a sale, as a fan showed up at her house and purchased some of her items.

I have been finishing things. I want to tell you that these were not UFOs (UnFinished Objects, in case you aren't a quilter). They weren't buried, they weren't dusty, they were piled up. We also have 2 partners in this quilt business - they make quilt tops and I quilt them. One of them is quite prolific! I have SEVERAL quilt tops from them.

I spent a LONG time making bags this year. (More on bags later too!)

So I was elated to get to actually quilting. :-)

I decided I'd better finish the things that Bern and Mandy gave me in March. (See that was THIS year!) I had finished one of them already!! So I had 3 more.

First I did Bern's Birds and the Bees. Here it is:

 The reason for the name is that the fabric is called Le Poulet Rouge (the red hen) - and it has pictures of chickens and bees on the various pieces. Sure enough... The Birds and the Bees.

I thought I ought to be giving Mandy and Bern equal time - so Mandy's Chopped Apples was next. It is below.

 Mandy collected the apple fabric over many years - and she collected and collected. Finally she decided she ought to make it into a top. Isn't it pretty?

After that, although I have 4 tops of my own done, I figured I'd better do another one of Bern's. This quilt was made for a colour blind boyfriend who jilted her. Ha! Do you think he is going to get this lovely quilt? I THINK NOT!! In any event, Compromised Values is depicted below.

 I added the border to the quilt. I think Bern had meant to add this short piano keyboard border. In any event, she had a couple of pieces of it done. I had fabric left over, but I decided when I got the border made that it really was all the quilt needed. It isn't huge, but it is kind of pretty. (Much prettier than I thought it would be when Bern showed me the fabric initially. She and I took the Lover's Knot course at the same time. Mine is hung in the spare room on the wall above the headboard of the spare bed. I did NOT arrange my colours as well as Bern did hers!

Finally, my guilt expiated, I decided I should quilt one of the three things that I had made - ready to go for the show. Except. I watched this funky tutorial on the Missouri Quilt Co. youtube channel and there was a video to make a Christmas Tree Skirt. Picture me rolling my eyes. There was nothing for it, I had to make one. So here it is, all quilted and bound.

 I'm really happy with it - I quilted holly leaves and berries on it, and I think it is gorgeous. So, look, something Festive for the Festive Craft Market.

I still have three things of my own ready to quilt. SO. I decided I'd better get them done. First is this.

This is a quilt made entirely of batiks. I called it Batik Sunset. (or alternatively, I mis-call it Batik Sunrise. My friend Kate suggested I should call it Sunrise, Sunset - and that would have solved my problem, but it was too late - the label was already made!) This quilt is actually much brighter and I'm going to post a picture taken with the sunset setting on my camera - the only issue is, that while the colours are truer, the picture is a little blurrier... anyway, here is the blurry picture.

This picture is before the binding was put on.

I still have a lap quilt called Hugs and Kisses - the top is made and the backing and batting are cut out and ready to go - hanging, in fact, over the railing of the quilt frame.

I have a Sampler Quilt that I am not sure I want to sell - I will ask a million dollars for it at the show - it is all houses, and I love it - I still, however, have to put the three inch border on it.

Yesterday I made a Convergence Quilt - this will be a table topper.

I now need to make some small things! Mug Rugs, Cat Mats, wall hangings and Advent Calendars. I daren't plan too far ahead - it is a bit overwhelming! However I am still having fun! I'll post more Crestive Faft Market stuff as soon as I get it done! LOL
Just Crestive Faft Market...

Just bags...

I was approached about attending a Retreat of a small local Guild. I was asked if I would be interested in teaching a quilting class of some kind AND doing a trunk show. No problem says I. What would you like me to teach?
The Theme of the retreat is something like Reuse, Recycle, Repurpose (that isn't exactly it, but it's pretty close) so I listed off the things that I thought I could teach. And we decided on a bag. A bag big enough to carry stuff to and from a class, and the pockets on the bag should be scrappy, so you were able to use up old fabric without having to buy more... And I thought of the Chop Suey Block - which I have also seen called Hidden Pinwheels after the secondary pattern. I have even taught that class before, so all I had to do was design the bag.

So I made a bag. It was HUGE!! REALLY huge!!!

So I redesigned the bag for the class. I added the chop suey blocks for the pockets, made the bag smaller and added pockets and loops on the inside. Below is the second bag.

Below is me, holding the second bag, which is a much more reasonable size. I will admit that before I made this, I used some 2$ material and made the bag without the chop suey pockets and with out the interior embellishments as well. Later, I disassembled that bag, and reclaimed the straps which were good quality cotton. The rest of the bag was polyester and I threw it away! :-)

 And I delivered the bag to the Guild, wrote a proposal with my costs and bingo, I was in.

I also decided to try a still smaller bag. One you could carry your book and sunscreen to the beach with! I bought some absolutely adorable chocolate fabric...

 

 I took it to show my Mom and Dad and my Mom really liked it. She took it downstairs to show the ladies in the Seniors building they live in. Within 15 minutes I had 7 orders for bags in various colours!!!

I have since made 38 bags. And I have four more on order. These are not part of our quilting company and there are none on the website, because I can't get caught up with the orders!!!!

Here are more bags, in no particular order! There were a few more than the pictures below, but you get the idea!

Just my grandmother's quilt

My grandmother (Grammy Cann), my dad's mom, was a neat lady. Her full name was Gladys Augusta (Durkee) Cann and she married a very taciturn man, somewhere around 1920 or so. When I was about 14 she told me that when she was young, her friends called her Happy Bottom. It took me a minute to figure that out!! LOL

When I met her (considerably later) she was a tiny little lady. She lived to be 78 or so, and she and her husband of 50+ years lived in a house with no hot water, no bathroom and no furnace.

After she died, I discovered from her obituary that she had been the organist in the little church that she went to for 68 years (or something like that). I had no idea - although I did know that she was very musical - many of the Durkees were.

She had beautiful gardens, her houseworking skills were fair to middlin' and she NEVER ever had a cross word for anyone. I never saw her wear slacks - when we went to the beach she was always in a skirt. She had two children, my dad who probably weighed in the neighbourhood of 10 pounds and his sister, my aunt Evelyn. Aunt Evelyn was born 16 years after my dad. Grammy Cann MIGHT have been 5 feet tall and she might have weighed 100 pounds - maybe 105 - and having a HUGE baby as her first must have been a tad (slight understatement) difficult. I can understand the delay before Aunt Evelyn came along!

Grandma taught me to knit (more than once) and refined my crochetting skills. She let my sister and I put her hair in curlers. At the time, that seemed entirely reasonable to Mary Ellen and I, however, when I got older and realized that washing her hair with no running water and only a well pump in the kitchen, must have been much more difficult than we would would have thought at the time. When we went to visit them (for two weeks every summer), I often got to stay at Grammy Cann's overnight for a night or two by myself.

She was interested in genealogy, as was I and she had endless patience for my questions.

She quilted as well - and I have one of her last few quilts. It is coming apart now and I'm trying to decide what to do with it. I believe I saw her working on this in the mid 70s, so it isn't very old, but it is in quite poor shape. It is also a rather ugly colour - I suspect that she used fabric she had on hand and bought muslin and some mustard yellow fabric to tie it all together and finish it off. (Yellow is not my favourite colour, probably because I can't wear it at all!)

Here is the whole quilt. I'm not sure what this pattern is called - and I have to say that it looks rather better through the camera than it does when you are standing and looking at it!

 This is one of my favourite blocks. I sort of think that she turned two of the half square triangles on their sides, now that I'm looking at this in the photo! I don't think that you can tell from the photo - but the stitching on one of the seams has come apart (I can fix that in this block).

 I'm pretty sure that there are open seams in these blocks too.

 See the frayed bit of fabric? I suppose that it wasn't cotton and so it isn't hanging together too well.

It is impossible to put a quilt on the floor here without having at least one of the three cats come to inspect it. This is Sarah. She, Molly and Ellie were all out on the deck in the sun - but she had to come in to walk around the quilt and smell the blue ink splotch that is in the centre of the block right in front of her. Funny about cats and quilts, isn't it!?

 More disintegration.

I think this is my favourite block - I love the paisleys and the blues and pinks - and it is on the edge so it isn't complete. Sigh.

Anyway. My next part of this project is to decide what I will do with it. The batting appears to be cotton batting - not put together in a sheet, but clumped together into hunks. The backing is plain muslin too.

Any ideas?

Just coffee mugs, again...

Coffee mugs, one of my favourite things in life, come in a variety of shapes, sizes, colours and designs.

They are tall and short. Narrow and wide. They have big handles that you can get many fingers in, or small handles that you can't.

They are made of a variety of materials and they keep your coffee (or other hot beverage) hot for varying amounts of time.

They are thick walled or thin walled. They are dainty or not. They are pretty or they aren't.

I have discovered that I have an ideal coffee mug.

Firstly, I don't care whether I drink COLD coffee or not. I know this is a turn off for lots of people... but I would rather drink a cold coffee than not have one. I'm willing to admit that other people have other opinions on this, and I'm cool with that. (Only a slight pun is intended!) However, the shape of a coffee mug has some bearing on how long your beverage stays hot - that's why I mention this.

I HATE coffee mugs that I can't hold onto 'properly'. I need to be able to get my index, middle AND ring finder INTO the handle of the mug. If I can't, I feel like the whole thing is going to dump into my lap (and I don't need any help to be klutzy - I'm perfectly capable on my own, thankyouverymuch!)

So. Big Handle.

I want a BIG mug. I don't want to have to go back to the coffee maker (more on that appliance in another post!) and refill and refill and REFILL! I want a MUGFUL! So a good size is important.

I like the mug to have a 'nice' shape. I haven't exactly figured out what that is yet... but I can tell you, I have two Tim Horton coffee mugs that I bought at Christmas time. And I have two or three old white Tim Horton mugs. The old white mugs are shorter and wider at the top. The two new ones are taller and narrower at the top. I wouldn't be surprised to discover that they hold the same amount of coffee. (Although I haven't tested that!) I don't like the two new red ones - the top is too narrow.

When my real estate agent gave me coffee mugs as a gift, they were shaped like a straight up and down cylinder that had been squeezed in the middle (clear glass with a flower shape impressed in them.) And I loved them. (I think I must have sold them all in a yard sale - it must have been snowing at the time. What was I thinking!?)

Those mugs that Shell gave away with gas in the 80s? Exactly up and down cylinders - don't like them at all.

 I have a short, BIG, straight up and down cylinder, made of clear glass, with a Guiding logo on it (White Oaks Area, I think). I LOVE it! I usually like clear glass mugs. I have two mugs with white holly leaves on them (also clear glass). I got them at Sobeys at Christmas and talked myself out of buying 6 of them (I didn't really NEED 6 more coffee mugs) but they are PERFECT. I bought two. When I went back to get two more, they were all gone. :-P

I have four mugs - BIG, nice wide open mouths, perfect handles, made out of some sort of pottery - they are white and have a little pale blue coffee pot on them. I bought them at Loblaws, and they are nice BUT one of them chipped, and now I don't 'trust' them. :-(

In short; I have definite tastes in coffee mugs. I'm not entirely certain what they are, but I can tell you that I like a clear glass mug, with a wide mouth, a big handle, and I want it to hold LOTS of coffee!

Enjoy!

Just Coffee Mugs

I have always LOVED coffee mugs!

I do have two coffee mug anecdotes that I'm going to relate, but I liked coffee mugs BEFORE the earlier one of these took place.

My husband used to be in Canada's Armed Forces. (Before I met him he was in the Navy.) He joined the Army when we finished high school (yes, we were high school sweethearts!) and we moved around a bit.

When we lived on Prince Edward Island, I joined a Newcomers Club (which is a great organization, I might add, and I belong to the Truro and Area one here!) The Newcomers Club in Summerside had quite a nice mix of ladies. We got together for all kinds of things; crafts, Moms and Tots, cards or board games, and we did alot of social things in the evenings and on weekends with our husbands AND we had a coffee group.

Shortly before Barry and I were posted to Germany, I went to morning coffee. All the other ladies had the MOST beautiful coffee mugs. I was so impressed and Elaine gave me a nice mug from her cupboard to drink my coffee out of. I was admiring all her nice mugs, when the coffee group was finished. All the ladies turned their mugs upside down, wrote their names on the bottoms and presented them to me! They were my going away gift! I was SO impressed!!

Two postings later, Barry and I were posted back to Canada and, while he was in the former Yugoslavia, the two kids and I moved to Calgary. Assuming my furniture would arrive from Summerside, where it had been in storage, within 5 days, I invited my mom and dad to come out to Calgary and visit with us for a couple of weeks - to keep us company until Barry got there. WELL. The furniture from Summerside did NOT arrive within 5 days and Mom and Dad, Nathan, Kimberly and I spent a week and a half in a VERY empty house. (How does this relate to coffee mugs? I'm getting there!) Our furniture came from Summerside and within a day we had everything organized, all the dishes washed and everything looked good. EXCEPT we had no dining room furniture... 4 days after that all our furniture came from Germany where we had been living for 5 years. We now had two of everything except for the piano, the masterbedroom set, and the dining room furniture. The house was suddenly VERY full. One might even say TOO FULL.

Mom and Dad thought I should have a yard sale. This was early September, by the way. We advertised, we marked prices on things and we filled the two car garage with stuff. The day came. It SNOWED! The yard sale happened. I SOLD 87 coffee mugs. I still had more than 30 in the house. Did I mention that I like coffee mugs?

When I bought the house in Calgary, the Real Estate agent gave me a house warming gift. She gave me 4 coffee mugs!

:-)
P.S. I had had a yard sale in Summerside when I moved there and it snowed. I had a yard sale in May in Calgary when we were getting ready to move away and it snowed AGAIN. I now longer have yard sales. At all. I just take the stuff to the Salvation Army or Rotary House. Bad weather can be their fault - but not mine any more!
J

Just Coffee

I like my coffee first thing in the morning. In fact, I HAVE to have it. Yes, I'm addicted to it. There, now that we have gotten that out of the way, please let me continue.

I have strong feelings about my coffee. I have discovered that I don't like DARK roasts - they make me shake. My girl friend tells me (and I have no reason to doubt her!) that dark roasts don't actually have more caffeine than medium roasts. But I do doubt a bit. (Why would my heart beat so fast after one if they aren't extra loaded with caffeine?) (Perhaps it's all in me head!)

I know that lots of people have done the rant about the stores that sell coffee in sizes that aren't in English. Well, if I wanted windy coffee I'd ask for it. All those barristoes (or whatever they are called) speak English - they know what I mean when I say a large coffee, medium roast. And because I don't take sugar or anything sweetened with sugar, I have to take EVEN more time. I might like to have an iced cappachino mocha - but I have to know what's in them - and that takes even longer than them explaining the sizes to me.

Okay, I got off track. Back to my own little slice of heaven in the morning! I get up, and I usually feed the cats before I make the coffee. However, if they are too lazy to come over and stand by their dishes and look up at me... if they just sit on the back of my couch, or worse, if they just lie there all curled up... Well, heck, if they aren't in any hurry, than the coffee comes first.

I hate to talk about the water here in any disparaging way. It is clean and safe and they have spent a lot of money here in this town on deepening the reservoir, and on a water treatment plant. (And our property taxes reflect that!) However, it has the faintest smell of chlorine - and I find that a filter takes that away ipsquitch (I think that is a BFG word - use the context!) The only issue that I have with the filter is that you have to remember to fill the darned thing when you use the water in it all up! And if it is half full, you are supposed to wait until it is empty before you fill it again... So, some mornings, the coffee is delayed by the water being filtered.

I used to make 8 cups on my coffee maker. Which makes four mugfuls (Are the coffee maker people drinking their coffee from ventis??) But I have discovered that I drink the coffees closer together now that I am retired. When I was working, I'd fill my thermos and I'd finish the last coffee early in the afternoon - but four mugs of coffee before 10 is too much now!

So I fill the thing to the 6 cup line. And I have a moment of heaven! :-) Enjoy yours!

Next topic - mugs!