The Best of Times

Another title of a post where I sat, screen blank, mind flitting, heart full. If you follow me on Instagram, you'll have seen why it's been over a week since I posted.

Brady was here with Brianne, of course, for their annual September visit. Every one of the eight days was chock full of activities. He and Grandpa Rocco (named for one of our dogs; his other Grandpa is Grandpa Hague) did manage to squeeze in a few bike rides, this one along the riverfront in Windsor. For those of you geography buffs, yup, that is the GM Renaissance Centre in downtown Detroit, and it is north of Brady, who is yup, in Canada. The teacher in me just had to show you a part of Canada that is south of a whole lot of the USA. We are down on the 42nd parallel of latitude; the border between our countries is mainly on the 49th. Moving on....

One of the highlights of this trip was a day trip to the Toledo Zoo. We three adults are not enamoured of zoos, for a variety of reasons, although I do see their importance in saving orphans, and saving species.  Well, all four of us loved and raved about this zoo.  Brady was the very best guide we could have, no lie.  Because of his love of the show "Wild Kratts" on PBS, he was a wealth of knowledge, often telling us, ahead of seeing the sign, what animals we were looking at, or interesting facts about them. The red panda and the sloth bear were just two of the many he told us about in the collage above.

One of the reasons Brianne likes to come in September is to catch a Lions game. The season opener is always extra-special.

Brady was PUMPED that 'his' cheerleaders were there and that he got to pose with some of them for a photo. The last time he posed with the cheerleaders was at his first game when he was 5, and they weren't official cheerleaders back then. He got right into the game at many points, this one when the Lions scored yet another touchdown. Go Matthew! (as in Stafford--QB, we love him) Yup, they won.

Pre-game, we took in the Meijer kids area where there were loads and loads of activities. Along with getting his face painted, he did the high jump, and got his photo in USA Today!

Can you spot his nana....

Grandpa and Brady got one-on-one time, and so did Nana and Brady:

He sewed like a champ again, this time on the 1947 Featherweight (ya ya, I haven't written her story yet, sorry). He wanted to make a mask this time, not a quilt. He drew a pattern, and we used some leftover fabric (I still have a ton of that navy Essentials by Moda ha) from his Fractured Pieces quilt, and some Spiderman fabric I got at Fat Quarter Shop last year to make him....something! Still have enough for a pillowcase I believe. You get a bonus look at the granite and cupboards there, no backsplash yet, and another peek at Aidan's 'Radiance' quilt, which I still have to package up and mail off, but I'm taking this weekend to spread it on my bed and enjoy it as much as I can.

My non-quilts WIP is my selvages rug, which is coming along...

I started it while cruising around over the course of their visit, sitting in the backseat with Brady. He knitted several stitches of it too; the child is a natural whether it's brains, sports or arts. I videoed him, but it's too long to insert here; you'll have to take my word for it. He loves knitting, by the way. This is a project I saw by Amanda of Crazy Mom Quilts. That link will take you to her tutorial. It is fun and man, does it eat up those selvages! You knot them on the go, but some of the shorter ones I am stitching together, forwards and then going back over the stitching to reinforce it, and it is working well.  It is getting heavy!

I've been quilting a little bit, sneaking time after Brady went to bed to work with these pretties:

That is a sneak peek of a project for my stop on a blog hop later this week. Watch Benartex's blog, Sew in Love With Fabric, for the hop schedule.

Meanwhile, today and probably a bit of tomorrow, since today is half over, egad, I am going to participate in the National Sew A Jelly Roll day, which you can read about here. This link: Fat Quarter Shop will take you to their page (no affiliation, just pure love for their shop) where they have a special on jelly rolls, as well as a link to a video tutorial for a cool quilt. Connecting Threads also has some great jelly rolls at terrific prices (they do not charge a cutting fee; you pay the same price per yard as you would yardage). Here (affiliate link) is one I particularly like, Starlight Garden. There are two jelly roll black and white quilts I have on my to-do list; here is one from McCalls Quick Quilts:

Oh how I love that one of my librarians is a budding new quilter; she ordered a subscription to this magazine which just started this Spring.

And if you'd like more jelly roll quilt ideas, there are lots on Moda Bakeshop. This one, Hometown Christmas, by my friend Rose, at somethingrosemade is the one I plan to work on. Jasmine of Quilt Kisses has some great jelly roll tutorials: here and here. Remember you do not HAVE to have a jellyroll! Look how many strips the pattern requires, and cut 2.5" strips from your own stash! I may just be doing that in my corner of QBL.

Okay, I'm off to the races, ha!

Radiance - A Finish

I didn't plan to finish this quilt in the orange month for the RSC2017 at soscrappy, but how fitting! (It's not made from scraps though, but I'm still linking up there because it's so orange! I also never thought I'd get my OMG done within the first week of the month. It may be because there is another OMG behind the scenes for this month which will be revealed in a couple of weeks, so I had to be crack-a-lackin' as a certain precious grandson said about something after we picked them up at the airport! Yup, Brady is in the house, as I like to say when he comes, mind you this time, it's more Brady is in the D, as we are spending a few days in Detroit and area before going back to our side of the river.

The original post for making this my OMG is here. Thank you to Patty of Elm Street Quilts for hosting this year.

I took Radiance to Seacliff Beach in Leamington early one morning a couple of days ago. It couldn't have been more perfect: no wind, almost unheard-of in this Great Lakes area, beautiful blue skies, calm waters and almost no peeps.

Orange A Peel

LOL
I think all of us in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge with Angela at soscrappy could've said, "Called it!" for this month's colour, perfect for impending Fall. However, we haven't had brown yet, or black, or pink...ha!  Here is my first project, my houses:

Since the first owl appeared in the January purple block, I always put a little surprise in each house. This one has two orange dogs, awww, yeah! ORANGE dogs?! Love! More scraps from my sweet friend Jake, and yup, more Laurel Burch. She knows me so well.  I badly wanted to use some of my precious Kaffe fabric from my Three Quarter Patch tote I made and reviewed for Craftsy a while back, and from whose scraps I made a round mini for another sweet friend, Preeti.  However, it didn't want to 'go' anywhere...until inspiration struck, and it is is the stained glass window in the door! Lacy curtains in the windows are from pillowcases made from Tidal Lace ombré fabric.

Sunday Stretch for Sewists #22

With only 25 or so Yin poses, Sunday Stretch is coming to an end. Something that I always start every Yin class with is meditation and breath work. It is so important to just breathe, slowly, steadily, in and back out, through the nose, as we do in yoga, paying attention to the way our ribs move: expanding and contracting in all four directions (yes!) fronts, backs, both sides lifting and opening to make room for the beautiful pink lungs, virtual sponges that fill up the majority of your chest cavity, to expand and contract in those same four directions...

It's truly amazing how much calmer one can feel just by taking a few or several minutes and breathing calmly and steadily and with attention. Your breath is such a powerful tool that can help you deal with stressful situations; it definitely has helped me. Like anything, we get better at meditation with practice.

Today I give you a YouTube video meditation that I think you might like, from Ashtangi Kino McGregor. Less than 10 minutes seated comfortably, led by her, and I'm sure you will feel incredibly at peace.

Namaste.

DrEAMi! Linky #7

Okay, clearly I am in denial, because it cannot be a September weekend next Saturday?!! However, I checked, and yes, today is the 26 and no, there are not 33 days in August, so yep, this is the last Saturday and therefore a DrEAMi! party! If you aren't sure what the heck is a DrEAMi! then click here for a detailed explanation on the Drop Everything And Make it! phenomenon that happens to strike a LOT of us quilters.

I actually did have a DrEAMi! this past month.

This is Fractured Pieces, designed by my grandson, Brady, named by Jean of All Points of the Compass, and drafted and then pieced and quilted by me. You can read about it here.

So what has snagged your quilty attention lately? Please do share; the thought that our squirrels can scurry from one blogger's mind to another's excites me. 😆

Here's just two of the several fabulous projects that suddenly HAD to get made in July:

This is Janine's DrEAMi! made for her brother and sister-in-law.She literally did drop everything and get this beauty done in under 3 weeks!

This is Tanya's, and to quote her, "I succumbed to a moment of weakness... I had no willpower..." oh yeah, I hear ya! Free pattern from Pat Sloan in case you're interested. Tanya has the link.

No-Waste Two-Colour Wings Flying Geese

Gosh that's a mouthful of a title! Look, Ma, two colour wings, no waste!

I dislike wasting fabric. I'm one of those who will sew back together the little triangles you cut off if you do the 'Connector Corner' method for making flying geese, and the triangles you trim when joining binding. Hey, don't laugh; I made a cute mug rug last winter with binding ends:

Rainbows Abound

I haven't linked up or showed much progress on two of my three (3!! -- how did that happen? Well, it did...) RSC2017 projects with Angela at so scrappy.  I think it's time.

Project 1
My original project.  My house quilt! I drafted a basic schoolhouse block combining several ideas: the one on the cover of my first quilt book I ever bought, The Quilter's Companion from That Patchwork Place, a paper-piecing pattern I have by Denise McKenna from many years ago (15?) that has a quilt block on the side of each house, and Lori Holt's barn blocks on Pinterest. I made the first block in January's colour, purple, made the second one in turquoise leftovers, and felt compelled to turn it into a cushion cover for my new sewing loft space. I had had no idea aqua would be the February colour! So I thought I'd make another in aqua for the quilt, but that hasn't happened.  Nor had any other colours, much to my embarrassment.  Until this week.

March - red. See the candle in the 'window'?! When the owl flew into my purple house little block, I knew I'd be doing something in every house block. A really good quilter would have aligned the stripes in the roof...I'm pleased I got the stripes in the HSTs running in the right direction!