Location Revealed

In my last post, how many of you figured that the ‘or what’ would reign as the location?

How delighted I was to receive an email from my niece, telling me that she chose the launch of her first solo photography exhibit at a gallery to show not only her photographs but my quilt as well.

It was a true compliment from one artist to another!

It was a great day for both of us!

Turning Leaves

This quilt was made a few years ago and given to another niece. She is a forestry engineer and loves the outdoors and what better pattern for her than a quilt of leaves.

In her other life, she is a professional photographer and her subject is nature.

Upon giving her this quilt, it was requested that she provide a photo of the quilt with her in it and the setting would be of her choice.

I wondered what she would choose. Living in the interior of British Columbia, would she choose a scene with a majestic waterfall; or on top of a mountain; or beside a raging river; or what? What would she choose? Next post, you’ll find out.

Here is a photo of  the back showing all the hand-quilting. Sometimes, when the design on the front is so busy, you have to look at the back to see the quilting.

Have a great day!

Pattern Source: Quiltmaker magazine #87, Sept./Oct. 2002
Edited:  Sept. 21, 2015
From time to time, I have been asked about this pattern.  You can purchase it from this place:
http://www.quiltandsewshop.com/product/Turning-Leaves/quiltmaker-patterns

Working on Decor

The weather has been so gorgeous of late …. nice warm days with no humidity. We call these Indian summer days. I wonder how that name came about?

These are perfect days for getting work done around the home.

So, one day, I decided to play. We are in the process of revamping our back garden a bit and we decided to remove a couple of shrubs that were grossly overgrown. Clipped a stack of branches and put on a coat of varnish. These will be used for a winter decoration later.

A year ago, I had purchased a number of wooden decorations for Xmas. They were on my list to do, so (instead of staring at them and thinking about painting them) they are now painted up and ready for decorating later.

It was a good day!

Fingers Away!

Sorry, folks, but my swap partner has received her mini quilt and she loves it.

Check out http://www.hmmdesigns.blogspot.com/ for her posting of her new mini.

Oh well, you have a great day anyway! :o)

Bags encore

Here is my latest bag. The striped material is a piece of upholstery fabric. I used blue gingham fabric for the lining. Golly, it will be a hard choice which bag I will choose the next time I travel in a few weeks from now.

Have a great day!

Cottage Days of Summer

On my last visit up north, my sister and I made our way to our family cottage and spent a couple days just relaxing and doing absolutely nothing except cater to ourselves.

For breakfast, we JUST had to make a batch of bush pancakes. This recipe came from my Dad’s side and we have enjoyed these pancakes ever since we were tots. These days, we make these just out here as the batter is cooked in cast iron fry pans and in a lot of shortening resulting in a lot of smoke. These are not your typical Auntie Jem pancakes, but very tasty to us. :o)

My sister made me chuckle by showing me six different recipes for these pancakes depending on the number of people eating. If my Mom wasn’t at the cottage to make them, we kept asking her for the recipe and then storing it on one of the shelves for future use. We would forget about the recipe and then ask Mom again and again and ..... When we paint the cupboards, the recipe will be written on the inside of one of the doors so that there is a permanent record.


So serene, no city noise, no electricity …. just a plain rustic cottage. This was taken just after sunrise before heading back to daily life.

Have a great day!

Nautical Tote Bag

Well, here is my new tote bag and I am quite pleased with the way it turned out. I love how each side has a different look.

You know, I’m just a bag lady at heart and there are more bags just begging to be made! :o)

Have a great day

Looking for Miss Inspiration

Since there is so much going around on the web these days about orphan blocks, I thought it might be a good idea to glance into my bin to see what might be there. To my surprise, there is actually more than what I thought.

The Mariner’s Compass and lighthouse blocks (bottom of photo) will become a tote bag.

The rest, well, I can’t find any inspiration with them for now. I’ll hang them up on my design wall and see what I can do with them (I am determined).
Visit http://orphantrainsfromfinn.blogspot.com/ to see what is going on with orphan blocks and you will have loads of inspiration after one visit.

Speaking of inspiration, thank you Froggie for your compliment. I have such fun with my quilting and when I started this blog, my wish was to inspire folks to have fun with their quilting too. My feeling is that if you have fun, then inspiration comes along very quickly.

Have a great day!

Canadian Maple Leaves

Well, my 4 Seasons Swap quilt is finished and ready for a new home in ………….. nope, I’m not telling! Hopefully, my swap partner likes it! If not, there are a few folks lining up to take it off her hands. :o)

I love making labels and have a lot of fun colouring with crayons!

It’s time for me to say goodbye to this little mini, so ….so long, farewell ….go, get out of here, shoo, skedaddle, don’t look back, you go girl … happy landing!

Have a great day

Marking Woes

To continue my story about markers, you are probably wondering what to use. There are a lot of different products out there and you will have to decide what to try and use to see what works best for you.

Myself, I have used pencil (which I don’t anymore).

The thick blue Clover pens are good, but they sometimes leave a yellow line on some of my light fabrics. There is something in the white fabrics that reacts to the fluid in these markers.

The white Clover disappearing pen is great for darks. Humidity and heat will remove the lines far too quickly. With this pen, I usually mark as I go along.

The chalk pencils are good but the lines disappear far too quickly for hand quilting.

I have tried chalk pouncing markers (don’t even bother with spaying hair spray on top as it was a waste of time and spray and not to mention the air pollution) but they are not for hand quilting as the marks disappear far too quickly. Have bought a new-to-me product “Quilt Pounce” and will have to test that. Folks say it does stay on for a long time. We’ll see.

Tried masking tape and don’t like it for hand quilting. They are great to use for machine straight line quilting though.

For my style of quilts, I like to use elaborate stencils and I like straight lines and a need for a marker that will give me a good quilting line. There is free form quilting that does not use stencils or markers of any kind, but that is not for me and my style of quilts. But give the free form a try to see if you might like it better. 

So, I am back to Crayola washable Markers and TESTING!  For light fabrics, use the yellow marker (and mark lightly) and any colour will do for the dark fabrics as they don't seem to be a problem as the marks all disappear.  My teacher told me to stay away from blue and red, but I do use them on my darks.  Regardless, TEST!

I have wanted to try water colour pencils.  When I can get my hands on some, I'll give a comment about them.

Have a great day and TEST, TEST, TEST!

Look what I got!

It came …. My 4 Seasons-Fall 2007 swap quilt from http://judiromi.blogspot.com/. I have been following her progress with this mini and I still love it.

With all the swaps going on right now, my thought about the quilts is to display all of them together on the same wall.

So, this is the first of many.

Do you like my hanger? I ventured out into the back yard and cut a sturdy branch off a shrub. It's perfect for this mini.

Thank you Judith, I am having a great day! :o)

My Crazy Quilt

The borders are on and all basted up ready for quilting. I like how it turned out. :o)
Have a great day!

A Horror Story

Have you enjoyed seeing my last quilt? Good! That quilt nearly ended up in the garbage.

Now, for the horror part. I used Crayola Washable Markers as I had in the past, many, many times. For the first time I dreaded the washing part once my quilt was finished. Why? The markers are supposed to be washable…. are they not?

My first problem with the markers started with this quilt (see June 7 post). I started to mark just one corner of the border and quickly decided not to. Instead there were just straight rows of machine stitching all around the border. After the quilt was washed, I was taking it off the line to fold up when suddenly I saw the lines … they were still there. Impossible! The markers have always washed out before. So, the marks were washed again and again and again using all different types of spot removers, nail polish remover, rubbing alcohol, etc. You name it, I tried it! I even checked Crayola website for tips.

With dread, I looked at my scrappy quilt still in the quilting hoop and knew that it was doomed. I took it out of the hoop and washed a corner section that had been quilted. Nope, the marks were not coming out of the light fabrics. They came out of the dark fabrics OK, but not the light. Did I do a test before? No. Why not? Because the markers came out on all the other quilts and they weren’t tested either. I was that confident in the product.

Panic, what to do? Well, with dread, the quilt got finished anyway. I was determined to find a solution to my problem. And I did ….. with a bleach pen!

In hindsight, my backing was white for this quilt. Whew! What a rescue. So, taking a small section at a time, I lightly used the bleach pen on top of the markings and then rinsed the bleach out right away under running water. If any bleach leaked out into the batting and backing, it was rinsed away. It was tedious work but the lines came out. Today, I have a quilt that I can be proud of.

So, that was my success with this quilt, but I didn’t have the same with A Summer Bouquet quilt. You guessed it, the bleach pen took out the markings but it also took out the fabric colour (which was a light mint green) on both the front and backing. Looked terrible, you bet! But where there is a problem, there is a solution. Crayola Wax Crayons. I found a couple of colours that blended in quite well with the fabric and coloured in the offending areas. Heat sealed and the problem disappeared. My niece told me that her quilt has been washed about half a dozen times now and it is in good shape. Plan B will be to add appliqué if the coloured-in areas wash out.

I still use the markers today, but I now test my light fabrics to make sure the markers will wash out. Also, every September, I toss out my old markers and buy new ones so that I am not using old stuff.

So, that is my tale and I’m sticking to it.

Have a good day!

Just A Scrappy Quilt, Again

I have a routine with my quilts. All of my bed quilts get hung up on our dining room wall and then rotated around every few months. Off the wall and onto our beds.

So, here is what the quilt looks like on our bed. The design sure looks different!

Have a great day!