A Moo-velous Retreat

Even though it was pretty tough to get home at 9:30 pm Thursday night from Florida, and get to the weekend retreat for Friday morning (I did not make it for 9 am!) I am so glad I went.  Cows were the order of the weekend.  But first, I made Brady's Olaf pillowcase with leftovers from his pj shorts, and some other scraps I pieced together to make the snow-like main part.

It will be on his bed this Christmas! Eeek.
You can see the paper piecing templates and red fabric in that picture, because this is what took me a long time:

Say hello to Mary...as in Bloody, lol

I don't know if it was different surroundings, interruptions, (all good), or just being rather tired, but this girl took longer than any of them!  A little swearing occurred, which led to the bloody part of her name.  I do love her blue batik eyes. :-)  Her blaze is fabric from smocked dresses I made Brianne and Dayna for Christmas 1989.  Cranston VIP.  I know my aunt will love that detail. Red was the colour for July.

I took a break from paper-piecing and made up two blocks that I had already cut out and started assembling. They are replicas of the one I sent to Eileen...sure hope she's okay.

No clue where these are headed...but I did think of making more in green.  Maybe I could follow the So Scrappy Rainbow challenge for 2016 with these? Hmmm.

I also made time to take Rocco for a good walk on Sunday.  I missed our walks while I was in Florida.  He missed me walking him I think too!

He is not happy in his hoodie, but otherwise he would be too cold as he has no fur to speak of on his belly and inner legs.

Yep, we got our first little snowfall Saturday, just in time for the town's Santa Claus parade and Festival of Lights.  Rocco is looking at all the sculptures that are set up in the park!  Most of the snow went by the next day, although the temperatures hovered in the low 30s.  That's not Celsius, either! Brr, especially after I had just spent 10 days in 30 CELSIUS temps! (high 80s, even 91 the first day)

I finished these two gals after the retreat:

This is Ethel.  Don't you love her muzzle fabric?  It's tufts of grass!! Bahaha.

Bright or dark green was the colour for May, so I did dark.  Her blaze is scraps from a quilted runner I made for my Auntie Joan, my mum's sister who, sadly, is no longer with us, passing away a couple of years ago, much too young, from ovarian cancer.  Note how these last two cows have an extra 1/2" along the top?  They are unfinished 12", a royal PITA, and up until the retreat, I'd just figured I'd add to 1/2" strips along two sides, and then, with a few other quilters admiring all the cows, we hit upon being able to add along the top edge, as there are only two pieces there.

Interesting in that I auto-adjusted this one, as I do all my photos. However, I didn't like how dark picmonkey made dark green Ethel in auto-adjust, so I undid it and left her as is. The light background fabric has a much better definition in the aqua cow, but it made the eyes seem more electric than they actually are, although they definitely are arresting!

Aqua or light blue was the colour for June.  Her blaze is a piece of fabric my sister Wendy brought me back from a Caribbean cruise she was on several years ago.  Hence this cow's name is Carib, not to be confused with carob, native to the Mediterranean area. ;-)  Recognize the wave fabric?  It's from Cloud 9 Fabrics, and the quilt I made of the same name. 

So that brings my herd number to 8.  Indigo, orange and lime green are the remaining colours I need to make yet.  I also need to make Maartje's Mad Bull who will be black for Black Angus cows.  At the retreat, two of the gals to whom I gave a copy of this pattern were farmers, and one told me when I said some of the cows have named themselves as I sewed them, that it is the correct thing to do, name your Holstein milk cows! Who knew.  All my aunt's cows had names, some of them not so creative, like B3, lol, or Jersey who was, you guessed it, a Jersey cow!

So now that I have three more cows done, I have to get quilting on the Bento Box, which is loaded onto the Avanté.  I also did a little stash restocking while in Florida as well as at the retreat, so more on that, as well as on some of my warm fuzzy feelings about said retreat in another post. :-)

Linking up with Freshly Pieced and Sew Fresh Quilts. It's been a while!  Remember to check out what Craftsy has in store for us with Black Friday approaching....did I hear the phrase "stash restocking" somewhere recently?!  If you click through to Craftsy on the button on the sidebar, I will get a little compensation, so I thank you. :-)

Suh-weet!

I've been absent from QBL for a bit, but that's because I'm down at our Florida home for 10 days, where my mum and aunt joined me for 8 of them.  These two "wins" were waiting for me when I arrived!

The charm square pack is what I won from Stitches 'n Giggles in the July ALYOF hosted by Sew Bittersweet Designs.  I love Zen Chic designs; I made Pocketful of Sunshine with Sphere.  :-)  I finally remembered to spend more time on her site, and MAKE A DECISION!

WIP - Shift

This is another goal on my Q4 list, Bento Box, one for my nephew, Callum, that I wanted to get made last winter for his new home, but found out I had the wrong colour scheme in mind.  Ordered new fabric and shopped a little around town (darn, hate that, don't you?!), and by the time we headed back north to home, I had the new fabric pile all ready.

Bella's trademark stamp of approval pose--that or "Give me some attention! Look how adorable I am! pose

Autumn Glory - A Blast From My Past

...for Throwback Thursday, on a Saturday!  Oops, missed it again, but yay, Jenn, at A Quarter Inch From the Edge, keeps the linky open until Sunday night, so I can add this quilt, one of my top 3 all-time favourites (I know that because we had to do that at the guild in September).  I photographed it October 8 in preparation for the November linky (yep, guessed it, missed the October one, sigh).

Full sun in hopes of catching some of the texture as well as the glorious colours

Bahaha, on the shadow in the bottom corner...had to leave it, don't you know that technique (pinky extended just so, à la tea-drinking well-bred British lady) is very important when taking photos?

In shade.  I'm always intrigued by the difference the lighting makes; this one really shows the rich Moda Marbles purple background for the leaves

So this quilt has a story, as pretty much all do.  It is currently on my bed, my November quilt.  I am aiming for a bed quilt a month, and I think I am nearly there, nearly 20 years after making my first quilt!

It was the Birthday Block exchange I was involved in with my guild at that time, 2001.  Twelve of us gave a fat eighth of fabric to the 11 others, each of whom made a block using that fabric and some from their stash.  When it was your birthday month, everybody brought you the block they'd made.  They kept any leftover fabric of yours, as you kept leftover of theirs, which was a great way to add a bit of scraps (ha ha, in retrospect) to your stash.

Here's the back. All flannels, all except one, leftovers from a quilted jacket I made (which my darling brother likes to ask when I wear it, which I haven't, for about 5 years, how many couches I killed to make it).  The lovely rich brown and burgundy paisley strip second from the bottom on the right is a Jinny Beyer I used as backing for a Stack 'n Whack tablecloth.  It is the first quilt I went this crazy with piecing a backing, but I knew otherwise those flannels would languish in my stash, and hey, being a frugal person, this was a great way to save $$ using fabric I'd already purchased at several quilt shops around Alberta.  It is so warm and snuggly.

The pattern is one I adapted from American Patchwork & Quilting August 2002.  Peggy Waltman's version is very spring-like.  I wanted an unusual setting for the 12 blocks, and this was perfect. Hers had flowers where I have leaves.  Wow, I found the magazine (I have every issue but for two, we won't go there, since 1998) and I even had my graph paper sketch and figurings tucked into the magazine!

I had to slightly modify the inside frame so the outside border would fit.

I hand appliquéd (are you impressed, Lara? Shocked?!) every leaf and the entire stem, and then hand-stitched with embroidery floss the veins.  That was when I could see very well up close, and my stitches are pretty amazingly tiny, if I do say so myself.

What adds so much to the story of this quilt is that I did all this appliqué and hand-stitching of veins during weekly get-togethers with my dad for coffee at a local coffee shop we both loved, which became a victim, sadly, to the likes of Tim Horton's and Second Cup and Starbucks...

Here you can see the texture, and the all-over meander of ribbons and leaves I FMQ'ed

I was teaching part-time, and usually had a period or two off in the morning.  My dad didn't live too far from Sherwood Park, so we'd meet, and chat about many a subject.  So many times he'd tell me stories of his younger days, and I did take notes many times.  I treasure those meet-for-coffee times, and when I look at this quilt, I'm transported back...

I relied on those notes when my brother and I wrote my dad's eulogy in 2008.

One of Kathy Sandbach's leaf motifs in the purple triangles

This was quilted on my Bernina 180 using motifs from Kathy Sandbach's books.  She it was who turned me onto the possibilities of drawing with my sewing machine, showed me the freedom of using motifs from nature where no two leaves or flowers or trees, etc. are the same, so it just doesn't matter, and taught me that echoing by weaving back and forth over your shape would soften the edges.

I'm so glad I'm such a nut when it comes to labels on my quilts.  This is my preferred method: making the label as an integral part of the backing.  Ain't nobody gonna steal this girl's quilts, nuh-uh!

When I look at this quilt, front or back, I see the girls who made each block (I still remember so many! --Shirley's, Janie's, Helen's, Pat's, Penny's...), I am transported back to the coffee shop, can hear, see and smell my beloved dad, remember fondly the shop hops with the guild and with my best friend around Alberta, gathering flannels for our jackets, see myself at the design wall in my beloved sewing room in Alberta that MacGyver built for me, piecing together the chunks of leftover flannels like a jigsaw puzzle...ahhh.

Quilts are so much more than hunks of fabric cut apart and stitched together.

Hmm, you might see my house in this shot, well our half of the duplex, not the closest one, but the one with the hose hanging on the side!

My block?  It's in the middle row, last one on the right. ;-)

Quilt Stats:
Pattern:  Adapted from "Serendipity" a pattern by Peggy Waltman in AP&Q August 2012
Size:  75X62"
Fabric: pieced from 2001-2003; quilted in 2005
Batting: Warm 'n Natural
Quilted: on my Bernina
Threads: Sulky Blendables and Sulky Rayons

Yay! Finally linking up with Throwback Thursday!

A Pleasant Diversion

The first month of the final quarter of the year, and I got off track in my goals list.  However, that's how it usually goes in my world, and more often than not, I'm okay with the diversions.  I love this little quilt!  I named it Rosewater, as the pink centres sort of float on the tile-look blocks, which, for some reason, make me think of tile at the bottom of a pool, the kind you throw pennies in...which, if you live in Canada, you no longer have any to throw in...  Also, rose water is a lovely light scent...

The sun on Monday, well, that we've had all week, was perfect for showing up the quilting

Things That Make Me Smile

Meet Kahlua, the latest of my cows for my aunt's quilt

Citron--avec un accent français, oui oui?!--"see-troh" à la stuffed up nose...notice the difference a little starch makes for pressing between these two...might've found a new love.

I'm shamefully far behind in the cow quilt.  Yellow was the March colour of the month at SoScrappy! Brown was the October colour.  You can see my first two cows here.  I also have a purple (April) one done. Although they are time-consuming, 2.5 hours at least per cow, I adore them.

Sunday Stretch for Sewists #4

This is a great stretch for wrists.  A warning from Bernie Clark, who writes, "You want sensation, but don't make it sensational!"  In other words, easy does it.

Start by sitting on the floor.  Are you finding 5 minutes a day to do just that?!  Put your arms straight out in front of you, palms up.

Send your fingertips towards the floor, keeping your palms away from you.  You may lean forward a bit here.

Gently put some pressure into your hands, imagining that you could put them flat.  You will feel quite an intense stretch through your wrists and along the inside of your forearms.

Try to keep your elbows straight.  It feels good in the finger joints too.  Hold for 1-2 minutes, or even 30 seconds in the beginning.  When done, release, and make tight fists. Squeeze tight!  Then shake it out gently.

Now we'll go the opposite way.
Put your arms back out in front of you, this time palms down.

Dragonfly will give a nice tug along the insides of your legs and groin; good abduction (moving apart) of the hip joints too.

Once again, send your fingertips towards the floor.

Try to ignore any incoming felines.  This is Harper, Dayna's cat :-)

Now send the backs of your hands towards the floor away from you.

Does she have a toy there?  Is she trapping a bug? A mousie?

Again try to keep your elbows from bending.  This increases the tugging/tension in your wrists as well as the top side of your forearms.  Hold for the same time as the first one. When done, once again, make tight fists and squeeze, then shake out.

Mm-kay, just what ARE you guys doing?

Both of these wrists stretches can be done with your legs in Butterfly if you prefer.  Or do one in Butterfly, one in Dragonfly, aka Straddle. 

Butterfly gives a nice outer rotation through the hip joint.

Thanks, Dayna, for taking the pics back in September!  She took some for one more pose, which I'll post at the end of November.

Bento Box is next on the Q4 List, so I did some starching and ironing of fabrics on Halloween day.  I also loaded the quilt I've named Rosewater, and had some fun.  So much for a quick meander and get it done and dusted in an afternoon.

Avril and I are loving the Aurifil threads on this

In other news, not one kid came last night.  That is a record.  It rained and the wind got even worse, so I'm sure that was a factor.  Today of course, outside of the wind, is gorgeous and sunny.