Happy Thanksgiving!

It's Canadian thanksgiving this weekend! I lvoe photos of the trees and the sky. Lovely - this is just down the street from my house. I have lots to be thankful for and I am!

Summer of Quilts, part II

So, just one more big photo of the black and white and green.

Armstrong, BC has a fabulous quilt shop and they have the most amazing flannel! I have not name an all flannel quilt yet, and I loved all these wacky bright fabrics. I bought a big stack of them and added a few more for good measure. The wonderful easy and fun disappearing 9 patch is the pattern. I love this warm quilt in our always cool TV room.

The weekend we got back from San Diego in April we went to the Vermillion, Alberta quilt show. As part of the show the local shop was offering up a nice discount if you had been at the show. I have yet to make either parent a quilt yet, and with my father turning 70 next March I felt it was about time to make him a quilt. His favorite colors are blue and red, I picked up a bunch of fabrics but didn't have a pattern. I flipped through my magazines and books and patterns, and searched and searched for a pattern. The PLAN was to make a lap size quilt Dad said he just wants a quilt so he can have naps and keep warm under while watching Hockey. I came across a pattern in a magazine titled :Praline Parfait" it was a nice relatively simple pattern but in beige's, browns and yellows. Not Dad's colors but his favorite ice cream is pralines and cream and so I though perfect! I didn't even look at the size of the quilt, I just started to sew. Well, it's a big bed quilt! Ah well, lucky #3 for not planning the size of the quilt. When it was finished I took the long arm quilting class from Matt Sparrow and quilted this myself in 2 hours! It was lots of fun to quilt, I sure like the long arm quilting.

I haven't seen Dad in 2 years, and tomorrow is Thanksgiving - we fly out to see him. This is a "surprise" early birthday gift. I think he will be tickled to receive it. I must say, it is a really nice quilt when you can get enough distance to see the pattern.

Summer of Quilts

I have had a busy summer quilting!

Our summer started very late and then it rained for almost 40 days and then it stopped. We had about 40 days if nice weather, not stunning weather, but nice. All the while I sewed and sewed. I finally finished the gigantic Buzz Saw quilt, or now named Asian Fusion. The talented Manquilter Matt Sparrow did the long arm quilting on it, and he did a fantastic job. Thanks Matt! I am happy to say the quilt sold at the 2011 MCC auction in Sherwood Park, Alberta on a horribly cold and rainy June day for $1,550!


I also had Matt quilt a black and white and green quilt I finished in May. I picked up the black and whites from the fabulous Sugar Pine quilt shop in Canmore, Alberta about 2 1/2 years ago. I found the pattern and the green fabrics at a lovely little establishment closer to home the same year. And like many projects, they have to mature on the shelf for a little while before they are ready to begin. I hated this quilt while it was under construction. My husband took a liking to it and made an unusual request that I make a quilt to keep. It had been a few years since I made a quilt for keeps. So I reluctantly obliged, I had thought about sending it to MCC for auction, but when it came back quilted from Matt Sparrow I loved it. The poodles love it too!



Close up - pre-quilted.



In late June I visited my girlfriend in Beautiful British Columbia. Neither of us had been on a shop hop so we decided to make our own! We headed out from her place in the beautiful beetle, top down and off we went to Armstrong, Vernon, and finally Kelowna. We made it to 4 shops and 4 wineries. We had such a great time!

Before I went to visit however, I made myself this lovely little Urban Cabin quilt. It is Amy Butler fabric that naturally I bought years earlier. When I set out on the black and white quilt I originally thought it to be a lap quilt, however I had a bunch of fabric...so I made blocks until the fabric ran out. I ended up with a lovely Queen size quilt. Urban Cabin however was only going to be a lap size. So when I had extra fabric, double the required for lap, I decided to give it to my BFF for her birthday. We have friendship quilts now!


The backing is Kaffe Fassett fabric that I completely splurged on. I love the pattern, colors and texture. It is so soft!


But wait, there are more quilts!

It's been a while..

I can not believe it is June 4th!

The past few months have been interesting...to say the least. One event is with my husband I took a short week vacation to San Diego, California. Beautiful place and we both really like California so we will be back for sure.
The first day in San Diego we walked down to the water from our Hotel, The W - Beautiful hotel. And then we walked all the way down to the giant air cargo ship, and went for the tour. Amazing ship. It's interesting, my great uncle was in the navy and it was very interesting to see the inside and where the men who worked on the ship sleep and eat, it is incredibly cramped quarters. No irrational claustrophobia allowed. A person could go pretty bonkers after a tour on a ship like that if you didn't have the mental fortitude. It was a fascinating self guided tour.

I have always had a fear of heights growing up, and the harrowing drive up and back down the Volcano in Hawaii a few years ago didn't help. One of my treats in California was to go to a few quilt stores, apparently there are about a 100 within as many square miles! Or so it seems to me considering there are only 5 in the entire city I live in. Well, I digress, the point of this is that we stopped in at the first quilt shop, which was aboslutely wonderful and I made a nice purchase of some stunning solids. The ladies in the quilt shop gave me a copy of the shop hop booklet for the upcoming event and suggested we go to the shop in the next town. Off we went, but soon I was climbing over my husband to get away from the cliff that suddenly appeared on my side of the car. He had to pull the car over into a little rest stop area in order to peel me off his head, and take a break. Such an irrational and uncontrollable fear if anyone else suffers from this! It is not fun and deep breathing for me makes me hyperventilate even more. I was lucky, I climbed into the backseat behind my husband and as we were leaving the turn off a larger truck had slowed down and pulled over to let faster vehicles pass. We pulled out behind the truck, and the rest of the route was actually very tame. Crisis averted.

Me outside the quilt shop with my purchases. Now, what to make out the beautiful fabrics...

My Sweet Valentine...

I asked my husband the other day if we were going to give each other valentines gifts. He had a typical dry response, however he did comment that yes after 15 years I have earned a gift. ! This coming from someone who believes it is a stupid hallmark holiday. We will have to see what he gets me, it could be something big - it should be fun. I got him a little gift because this is not a holiday we ever "celebrate" and historically barely acknowledge. In years past I think I have given him something as elaborate as a t-shirt! But for those of you who like to take, what I believe the holiday is for, this special day to tell a special someone that you love them. It is opportunity to remind those that you love, that they are special to you.

So Happy Valentine's Day!

I decided to make cookies for the people I work with. Every few weeks or so someone will make something and bring it in and it's nice to taste other people`s home made goodies. I have a good friend who made 100 or so dozen cookies to raise funds for the walk to end to cancer - and she has a wonderful recipe. I make 2 batches and for me it turned out to be approximately 60 cookies - a far cry from the many many dozen she expertly crafted and beautifully decorated. My 60 cookies sure felt like a lot of work to me, I can not imagine how much work she went through! I enjoyed making and decorating the cookies. It kept me busy this weekend, and I do enjoy being in the kitchen. They are not fancy, but they are tasty!

Snow Day....or month!

Oh my goodness, it's hard to believe I live here. It is a winter wonderland outside with all the snow. El Nino, El Nina - regardless - we have had snow just about every day for the past 3 weeks. It's been hard to drive because everything is white. I work out in the country - in an industrial area and unless there is a building everything is white. the roads, the fields, the sky. :) The roads are slippery and packed down with snow - yesterday coming to work was a carnival ride - it was like driving across a field.

Well, it is beautiful and peaceful too. The dogs absolutely love it. Bella got new boots yesterday and when I put her boots on her to take the dogs for a walk she danced around. Grom and Bella's favourite thing is to have one of us throw a toy to the other end of the yard and they fetch it. Sometimes it ends up in fresh snow that hasn't been walked on - Bella flies through the air and lands in a big cloud of snow. Very cute.

I was very tired of the snow - mostly the cold. it's always hard to adjust to -33 temperatures. Sure it is fun to have a cool winter jacket and scarf, toque and mitts, snow pants and a nice pair of boots. And I must keep reminding myself - the cold helps keep down the bugs. I really don't like bugs.

Well, here's to the snow - and warmer temperatures ahead. Today is a balmy -17 degrees compared to yesterday with wind chill -29.

Keep warm everyone!

Merry Christmas - Wipeout!!

Merry Christmas Everyone! Wishing everyone the best of the season, happiness health and prosperity.

We had a good Christmas this year. The company I work for had a nice Christmas Party, we go tot see a magician - I have never seen a magician before so that was interesting. Dave was selected to go up on stage for a card trick, so that added fun to the evening. Dave's Christmas party was very nice as well. Dave was the emcee for the event and it went fairly well, one small hitch - his partner was supposed to make the annual address to the staff as he has done every year for the past 5 years however for some reason this year he seemed to "forget" this and claimed he wasn't informed. Dave seamlessly covered for his Principal, who must have been in a mood because his usually funny sarcastic sense of humour was rather cutting this fine evening. We didn't let it ruin a lovely evening. We got to visit with many friends who we don't see that often anymore, since the firm has grown so big and everyone has been very busy with their families.

We decided to host a gathering at our place on the 23rd for a number of the people Dave works closely with and some people we have not seen in a while. It was lovely to host a Christmas party again - it has been a while. It was lovely to see everyone and have time to really visit with the people who could make it. A few people we have not seen in a very long time, and this is not meant in a negative way but it was interesting to remember why we don't see each other much anymore. Our lives have changed so much over the 15 years Dave has been with the firm and some people just take different routes and we enjoy these opportunities to visit and catch up.

Christmas Eve!

Each year we get together with my sister and her family and this year was our turn to host. My nephew and his dad are very much out door people - and really we all enjoy being outside so we worked hard to think of something fun to do. We settled on tobogganing. The weather was wonderful, a lovely -12 degrees C and almost no windchill. Off we went to Gallagher Park down in the river valley so we could see the Christmas lights and regular lights down town. Edmonton has an absolutely beautiful river valley. I don`t know of any other city that has a ski hill across the river from its down town core.

Everyone arrived - My sister and her family and Uncle Dave and I. They brought the toboggans and a GT cruiser for Nigel, and off we go all suited up.

First run was funny because Nigel and his dad went 2/3 the way up and Nigel led us off by heading down first. Jeanne was closest to the bottom of the hill and when Nigel when whizzing by she started to run down the hill after him! Such a protective mother goose. it was cute and funny, and well I don`t blame her, those GT Cruisers have horrible safety ratings. We all got a few runs in and our nerves were calmed and we were having so much fun. There were quite a few people on the hill and we thought we would go across the hill to an area that wasn`t as busy. we found out rather quickly why! Wipe Out! Nigel, our fearless one went down the bumpy snowy route and took a face plant at the bottom. We could almost hear him screaming from the top of the hill. Poor guy, face plants are not good. We were able to convince him to try again, however back over on the side of the hill where it was much smoother. Up we went and started 1/2 way up and then up further we went with each run. Some people showed up with Tubes...well, tubes are scary. After us and the tubers had a few runs, there was a woman with a tube at the bottom of the hill taking time to come back up. Nigel headed down and as it goes he steered directly towards her - across the hill - yelling at her to move. Unfortunately she did not and so he ended up in another wipe out to avoid hitting her. Well that was enough for poor Nigel, he said through tears I am so done with this! We put him in one of the toboggans and walked around for a while, and then headed home for food and gifts.

Nigel received a very lovely stuffy dog from Grandma for Christmas. And I finally finished his Monster quilt and we gave that to him and the dogs gave him a fabulous book on rhyming words. Perfect for a 5 year old in kindergarten. Soon after the quilt was opened he was up on his moms lap, thumb in mouth and nodding off. The two wipe outs sure wiped this little guy out.

A wonderful Christmas eve! Lots of fun tobogganing, good food, and gifts.

Sweet Dreams Nigel!

Dog fight!

This is Bella.

This is Gromit. He's the first, he is 3 years old and is the best dog ever! Really, he is, people constantly tell us how sweet he is, and he is.

Today I have been sewing and working on the computer and doing a number of things. My little poodles were taken on a nice walk this morning and had a good romp in the community skating rink where they could be taken off leash. However they continued to pester me, pawing at my legs, giving me kisses. And of course green dog needed surgery too. His scent was caught on the table and an urgest request was made for him to be returned to the play list. Green dog nearly had to have an amputation and I am glad to say I was able to save his arm.

I decided to give them a little treat, they have really good and they haven't had one in a while. I gave them each a pigs ear. quite disgusting if you think about it too much, or look at them too closely, but they love them. Gromit always gets anxious in the house with his because he likes to bury his pigs ears and then dig it out and chew on it so I let him outside and left Bella in the house with hers, she got busy with hers anyway. About 30 minutes later Gromit is barking his head off outside so I thought to go see, well Bella charged out I thought to go give her 3 cents at what Gromit was barking at but she got sidetracked by the scent of Gromits unfinished Pig ear. Gromy gets a little upset when she takes his things and he went to see if he could get it back. Usually the scene is that Bella will take whatever and run and Gromit will sit there protesting. He's not often aggresive. Something was in the air today because they went bonkers! There was a short lull and then they went again, at which point I intervened. Gromit was so ramped up he was still making noise! for anyone who know's Gromit will know he was seriously irked by the little snarky pants because Gromit is very quiet. Save all the barking along the fence. Once they calmed down I had a good chuckle.

Here they were at Halloween. Gromy has had his Bat costume for a few years - my nephew picked it out for him. Bella is new to our life so this is her first Halloween with a family and her first costume. Pretty darn cute Catepillar!

Quilt layout Pic's

I forgot to add the photos of the lay out for the blocks. I ran out of time and I am still getting used to this blogging business... :)


So three different layouts: This first one is a variation of what I saw in the book that I liked and made me choose the pattern.




The second one is to just do the plain old alternating of the two colors.

The third option is to put the blocks on point. Always pretty, but requires more blocks.

Well, after meeting with the ladies at the quilting group we decided to go with option #3 and put the blocks on point. I think I have enough fabric to fill in the corners and make it a floating centre, and then put a little border around. It will make the quilt a nice queen size. So, it's back to the sewing room to make 7 more blue blocks to finish off the main part and then carefully measuring and cutting the fill and border. I am excited to get this one finished and see how it turns out. The ladies were impressed with it, they were first intimidated with the photo in the book not realizing how unbelievably simple the pattern actually is.