St. Nicholas Mug Cosy and a Winner

A few days ago when I was perusing my Christmas fabric stash, I came across the remnants of this beautiful piece of Benartex fabric. I'd made two pillowcases with it, and still had quite a good length of the wonderful border print. Having recently made a few mug cosies to order and one to replace another that had sold, it struck me that the motif might be perfect for one.

Perfect! Both sides are identical.

I love the unusual Christmas palette here, which doesn't scream Christmas, but more of the legend of St. Nicholas.

Arabesque Pattern Release

It's been a minute or three since I've had a new pattern out, but here I am with one more for 2025. Many of you will remember my SAHRR this year, and several said it would be a great pattern. So here she is!

Something I realized as I wrote up the pattern is that because the rounds (all seven of them) are 3" blocks or widths, you can really go wild with this pattern, and switch them around to create a totally unique personalized quilt! I told my pattern testers to feel free to do just that!

Oh, and of course, Arabesque is on sale all weekend for just CA$10.🤩

Kindred Spirits

Kindred spirits, the name of my Sewcial Bee Sampler is done! This is a Quilt Along designed and hosted by Sharon Holland and Maureen Cracknell that started in the summer of 2017. I started the blocks about six months later when my friend Tish @tishnwonderland asked if I'd like to make them with her and her husband We made the first blocks on January 1, 2018.

I never realized until after I was cropping this photo, how perfect the bed of orange leaves are under the quilt!

 

We made a few over the next few months, sewing 'together' sometimes texting as we sewed, sometimes FaceTiming. Tish lives in West Virginia, and I am in Ontario. We first met in a New Quilt Bloggers group back in 2015, but we have met up in real life a few times. She's most definitely a kindred spirit: love of quilting, love of free-motion quilting especially, love of pibbles (at the time she had two pitties, brothers, and I had one, Rocco), a love of nature, and reading, and more.

I took these two photos in a favourite place near my house, Kennedy Woods. This first area by the parking lot is called The Sugar Bush because of these massive sugar maples throughout it.

Gratitude and Glimmers #101

Welcome to my post of glimmers (of joy and wonder) and gratitude for the month of November. You can find links to more posts like this one at LeeAnna's blog, Not Afraid of Color.

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

—Gilbert Keith Chesterton

English author, philosopher

Creator of the character Father Brown

1. The sky a couple of days ago at sunset caught my eye and never mind gave me a glimmer; it set my heart on fire! This is without any kind of filter, and it still does not do it justice how jaw-dropping vibrant the colours were. If only I had taken my phone out with me when I first stepped onto the back deck to look up--a big flock of Canada geese were flying over at that very moment , silhouetted against this fiery backdrop. By the time I ran back into the kitchen to grab my phone, they were over the next street away.

I posted it to Instagram the next day, and an even better shot was sent to me by my friend Mieke who lives right on Lake Erie's shore. We live about ten houses up. Look at this:

Looking southwest over the lake; used with permission.

I asked her if these magical sunsets are because the sun is lower at this time of year, and she said she thinks that's part of it but also because of the evaporation from the lake, there are a lot more clouds. This reminded me of a comment from the caption of the catamaran we were on in Key West years ago, a sunset cruise. When clouds were building up and everyone was starting to get disappointed, he said that sunsets are actually better when there is cloud because the light bounces off them. I think a quilt shot might have to happen here, and Mieke has said to walk on over anytime!

A Bag Lady That’s Me

I’ve been a bit quiet this month but my sewing machine has not. My two best customers, now two people whom I consider friends since we've been texting back and forth over the past several months (Lana) and couple of months (Audrey) have made sure of that!

Knitting Project Bag

Lana put in two more requests for when we'd returned from our Maritimes trip. One was a cat bag for a good friend of hers, small size (the usual makeup bags I've been selling for many years), and the other was a surprise bag for herself. I had free rein to choose fabrics and colours, knowing now what she likes; the only stipulation was the size, the 'tall small bag', sizing phrase as determined by her! Instead of my usual SandraJaneQuilts label, I sewed onto the bag side a piece of the selvage from this fabric, most fitting for a bag that will hold beautiful knitted projects.

I'm Screaming!

I actually dropped my phone on Monday morning when I saw who ordered a mug cosy from me on Sunday night. An author. A Canadian author who is "renowned as one of the trailblazers of the modern fantasy genre" (from his site). One of my absolute favourite fantasy authors whose books I've read and loved and owned since 1995. None other than Charles de Lint!!

So ya, I was screaming, and I still am. He ordered this mug cosy:

Made in February

My first thought was, Maybe there's another Charles de Lint. Checked the address. Ottawa. Nope. Second thought, He cannot pay; I'll refund him, but then I thought well, I do have to mail it, and my time is worth something, and I have bought his books because I believe in supporting artists of all mediums. So I had the idea to make him a matching coaster! Did I still have any of the butterfly fabric left? It had only been a fat quarter... I did: a 5" square coaster would work!

Gratitude and Glimmers #100

Holy moly! One hundred gratitude posts (brain emoji). My first one is here, written on May 8, 2014. This was before it was a 'thing', and it was an idea I'd had all on my own. I like, no I love that I have done this for so long. I keep thinking that each year I should print the twelve posts I write and put them into a booklet... There, I've put it in writing, so I will investigate!

A grateful heart

is a magnet for miracles.

--Unkown

Welcome to my post of glimmers (of joy and wonder) and gratitude for the month of October. You can find links to more posts like this one at LeeAnna's blog, Not Afraid of Color.

1a. I've been often in the "I hate humans" mode because of Gaza, of world leaders' NOT doing their job, of the rampant destruction of our planet, because of greed, and of the pervasive negativity... However, our recent Maritimes trip had me several times thinking how much I love humans, and how no matter what province we are from, we have common ground on many levels.

Cavendish Beach PE

At one charging station in Quebec, we couldn't get our Chargepoint user card to work in the Circuit Éléctrique charger. These Quebec chargers do not accept credit cards either, something that we think needs to change, as other networks do this as well. A gentleman came up to us and asked, "Y a-ti-il un problème?" to which I responded, "Notre carte ne marche pas; la machine ne l'accepte pas." and then he continued in English and when he couldn't get it to accept our card, he said, "I can do something else..." He did something on his phone, held it to the card reader, and voilà! Charging started. When we realized he had prepaid for a charge, I said I had cash and turned to the car to get it but he stopped me, saying no it's just fine, not to worry, and off he went! It got us to 75%. MacGyver figured out that the balance on the Chargepoint card, which is a prepaid system, had gone below $5 and he hadn't realized it to reload it. All went well after that learning moment. But what a kind human.