Sew Sister Blogathon Canada 2014 hits the Atlantic!

Welcome Blogathon readers!! This week Sew Sisters is celebrating Canadian quilters!

This week is the third Blogathon Canada sponsored by Sew Sisters, a brick and mortar quilt shop located in Toronto, Ontario. I have ordered fabric online from Sew Sisters and found them to be very prompt and efficient. I really enjoy how they wrap all fabric securely in plastic before they box it up to mail. It is great service because this is how Canada Post handles parcels being delivered to me: if it is raining or snowing, parcels are left it in the middle of my driveway and if the sun is shining, parcels are bent and folded and shoved into the mailbox..Fortunately fabric is forgiving!

There are two Maritime hosts today, and both happen to be Linda's! There is Nova Scotia's Linda at Scrapmaster and New Brunswick's Linda at Stitch Lines. Check both of Linda’s blogs out for lots more East Coast bloggers and be sure to comment on both their posts - Sew Sisters has generously provided some great prizes! Thanks Sew Sisters!!

I refer to myself as a "person of fibre"..I love it in its many forms and love working with it any way I can. I quilt, I paint fabric, I surface dye it, I have sewn lots and lots of clothing and household items over the years, I have built costumes for the stage, I can weave and felt, I knit, I can crochet. Breathing does become an issue around sheep (and horses, too, but that's irrelevant here) so I sold my spinning wheel early on in my weaving/spinning career.

As well, I am a sign painter. Hence the name of my blog, Sister of the brush. Sign painting tended to be a predominately male occupation for many years and when I studied at George Brown College (yes, there are legitimate sign writing courses...), we were told the secret to running a successful business was a supportive wife. A wife. No, they never said, supportive husband, spouse, partner, it was wife..Well, that left me and other females in our class high and dry, so it was there and then that we dubbed ourselves, Sisters of the Brush and swore to be our own support system!

I still love wielding a brush. And I incorporate paint and fabric all the time. Painting fabric is soooo much fun! I especially like low immersion dyeing, discharging, sun printing and soy batik and combinations of all techniques!

I am also a longarm quilter. I use pantographs to quilt edge to edge designs, but especially enjoy quilting my own designs.

Thanks for visiting and welcome as always to my regular audience! I appreciate you taking the time to see what I am up to, what I am currently ranting about or seeing what photos I am sharing. Please continue to comment and if you have any issues doing so, please email me. My address is available via my profile which can be found on my sidebar.

Signs of the times

Whenever I get home to PEI, I always make a little trip into my Dad’s workshop. I grew up with the smell of paint and it is forever a part of my past. Some people equate baking bread, or even a particular perfume with a part of their childhood; for me, it is oil based paint.

After years and years in the sign industry, Dad still has a few tools of the trade available that he uses if he makes a sign for the church, a local fiddle player,or maybe for the golf course down the road. For years after he retired he made banners for my kids’ sports teams and there were numerous times that he and Mom and my brother drove all the way here to Moncton, NB to paint sets and props for his granddaughter’s Drama program. My sister even drove from St John to help me air brush the plant for Little Shop of Horrors. Yes, we are all crazy like that in this family.....

I loved being a sign writer. I love the feel of the brush in my hand as I create letters. I loved designing signs. I loved finishing a sign and knowing it was going to do a great job for my client. I loved knowing that the sign would last a long time and that I would see it every time I went by their business or when their vehicle passed me on the road. There isn’t much I disliked about my job and I was lucky to work in the industry for a couple of decades.

I never did fall in love with computerized signwriting. I know it had a place in the industry, but I just wasn’t really able to grasp it. There are parts of the technology I like, but as a whole it wasn’t for me. Gradually hand lettering had less of a place in what was a fast paced, customer driven business.

So, when I go home, I have my few minutes with Dad’s collection of brushes and paints. When I do, years of wonderful times and experiences wash over me and I am reminded of just lucky I have been.

Text Me! Not

So now that I know my pieces were not accepted in the latest Quilting Arts magazine Reader Challenge, I feel comfortable showing them here. The theme was “Text Me!” and I really enjoyed creating these. I have them nearby so I can enjoy the warmth they bring me. Funny thing about being rejected, or not chosen; I know they set guidelines for their publication, but when push comes to shove, the choosing is subjective. My pieces may not have been picked by the editorial board, but those who have seen them have given me very positive feedback so I know I am on the right track as I continue creating in my own special style.

I titled this one, “O” Baby, I love your curves! 

I know it is very trendy right now to use text in your designs, whether as part of the fabric, or as part of the design, but I have been doing this for a long time. Some of my earliest pieces were based on phrases and words. This time I decided to hi-light one of my most favourite letters!

When I started studying signwriting we had to draw pages and pages of letters. We had to draw them thin, thick, elongated, squat, with serifs, without and on and on......over and over till we got the dimensions perfect. When I worked for my Dad and computer generated letters were still far in the future, he would handcut vinyl letters, then adhere them to another color of vinyl and I would cut a 1/8" or 1/4” border all around. These letters were generally black with a gold outline and used for window lettering and it was great practice for learning their shapes. So, I love hand drawing letters and I love cutting them out almost as much! 

In “O” Baby, I used my hand dyed fabrics and I even cut those tiny, tiny yellowish dots out by hand! I used a few gold seed beads for embellishment and then twisted three different strands of decorative yarn and hand sewed it along the edge.

My second piece is called, “Summer Alliteration”. I love the curves of “S” as much as “O”’s!

I used my hand painted fabric for the background and then cut the letter “S” and all my “s’ words from my photographs that I had printed on fabric. I really like this concept, have used it in larger pieces, and plan on doing a lot more with it. I take a LOT of photos and I spend even more time editing them. So, using them in my fabric pieces is a natural progression for me. The shells are actual sea treasures and I have devised a method to sew them directly onto the fabric without making any holes in them. I didn’t take a photo of the back but it is also a photograph of gull tracks in the sand.

My history with letters led me to this more literal interpretation of the challenge. I know that “text” has taken on an entirely new meaning to this generation, but to me, the beauty will always be in the individual letters and the words you can create.

I am connecting to The Needle and Thread Network. Check out what Canadians all across this chilly country are up to this week. 

Longarm Love

Gradually my longarm and I are becoming fast friends. As I continue to learn, I am gradually finishing up some small baby quilts in-between what I have dubbed my practice pieces. I have started with very basic designs on the quilts, but I go wild and crazy on my practice pieces!! These are full of sunflowers and meandering vines, wacky feathers that no bird would claim ownership of, script, doodles, whatever my heart and hands find themselves creating. Before I purchased this machine, I had a cautious curiosity about pantographs. Right now they hold no more than a passing interest. Time will tell, but I am drawn more and more to freehand design work. Perhaps this is a logical spin-off from my sign writing days.

It is very neat to combine my two loves; the basics of sewing combined with the skills of lettering and brush control. My hubby peered over my shoulder early on and commented that he could see why I was drawn to longarming - it is very similar to sign writing. And he is right! It feels very familiar and comfortable.

And though it is the season of bare feet and cool sandals at best, these are my footwear of choice as I stitch merrily along! These waterproof (yippee! dry toes! woot! woot!) puppies are brand spanking new and my feet need to adjust to them and the socks I have stuffed in there. To be honest, it is tough job as I have never met a pair of clogs I didn’t like (because you can slip them off when no one is looking) and socks never stay long on my feet. But, as long as I am focused on creating designs with my F55, I forget my feet encased in leather and I stitch merrily along.....

Drama Days. And nights....

"Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.” Bob Thaves


As I chuckled over the absoluteness of that statement, I was immediately lost in visions of dance routines and the tap, tap, tap of tap shoes. I am such a fan of musical theatre, and most especially water ballets! I have watched and re-watched all the Ester Williams movies I have been able to find. I love all things synchronized, and glitter and glitz make my heart race!! When my daughter joined synchronized swimming as a young girl, I was thrilled to be on the sidelines, ready to assist in glueing and sewing sequins and other shiny things. I didn’t do so well on the hair side of things though and after her head had been turned into a solid mass of hair with thickened gelatin, I resorted to glue gunning her bun cover to the back of her hair and making her sleep with it this way for the 2 days of the competition....I have never been good with hair. Or flowers.


My daughter was to spend a lot of time on stage and I was an adoring stage Mom. I learned early on when to interject and when to let her do things her own way. But, by the time she got to grade 8 and her Middle School Drama group produced Romeo and Juliet, I was involved. Her Drama Coach had a vision and allowed me to assist, so much so that I shared a NB Excellence in Costuming Award with her and another parent. Although I produced numerous costumes for that production, my favorites were those for my daughter as I had to develop the patterns myself. My daughter played the Nurse and I created her many layered costume including 2 elaborate head pieces and a “fat” suit based very loosely on the one in Mrs. Doubtfire. 


High school brought numerous roles for her to fill as she met a teacher who was to become one of her strongest mentors. Under his tutelage, she learned so much, and in tandem, so did I. I have lost count of the number of productions produced in her 4 years and also lost count of the hours my entire family spent spent building costumes, constructing and painting sets, lettering stage pieces, organizing the costume storage room and dressing rooms, compiling costume bibles, taking photographs, putting up and striking the sets, and transporting all of the above! 


Her time in Drama was a great training ground for life. And while she was busy learning lines, dance routines, songs, monologues and helping back stage, if I wasn’t painting sets, I was usually found in front of the cutting table or sewing machines building one of many necessary pieces. Probably one of my earliest and biggest accomplishments within this scope of theatre work was constructing 3 genuine corsets for Into the Woods. Each corset took me 21 hours - after I had first figured out how to create them. 


When building stage pieces, you need to consider so much more than when you are simply sewing garments. They need to be made so that they will accommodate a variety of sizes of actors, be strong enough for multiple costume changes and performances, allow for ease of movement, allow the dressers to get actors in and out of them easily during quick changes, and maintain a fresh look. There are many times you have to look outside the fabric store box to find exactly what would fulfill these needs. 


In order to keep the corsets shape intact and to help make sure they in turn kept all the body parts where they should be, I ended up using stripped electrical wire for the boning. It was difficult enough to use, but in doing so, I also had to make sure each piece was the perfect length so that the actor wearing it wouldn’t be stabbed during a performance if she happened to move a way that made the boning shift! For some of the first performances, I sat ready with my wire clippers so I could quickly adjust the lengths when one of the girls came off stage! 

When I was looking at photos from my daughter’s drama years, I realized she had worn one of the corsets again in her final year of high school in a production her Drama Coach wrote for her and that yielded her a NB Provincial DramaFest Outstanding Actor Award. That was the wonderful thing about building pieces for the Moncton High School Drama program - all pieces became resource pieces for other schools and theatre groups and many were integrated into other MHS productions. 

Ah, yes. That is the thing about inspiration. And creativity. And good intentions. Sometimes things just don’t play out the way you expect.

I had such hopes for today. But, all it took was a sinus headache and a poor night’s sleep and my plans needed to change.

I did salvage something of the free time I had and tackled some mending. I organized a few things. I sorted. All bits of quiet work. And when my headache was under control, I road my flywheel like a maniac. Or, like someone who feels they are working toward making up for lost time.

While I was sorting, I came upon 2 unfinished quilts. One is a bright fabric baby quilt that is about 85% machine quilted that I had abandoned for one reason or another. The other is a pieced top that I made following a pattern of Margaret Rolfe's from one of her Go Wild With Quilts books. I had set the top aside because I felt it needed a border to finish it, yet I was unsure of what border treatment best suited it. As I opened it up today, I realized it is indeed finished and needs no further additions. So I chose a backing, found a piece of cotton batting and have started basting it.

I pondered this development in my way of thinking off and on the rest of the day. When I was studying Signwriting at George Brown College, the instructors often pointed out that the borders and lines and swirls that students were so eager to add were merely window dressing and that the substance and strength of the sign should be in the lettering of the message. And I saw today that it is the same with quilts. There is no reason to add more to the design just to make it a less awkward size or to wrap the quilt in a unifying border when the design is already strong enough to stand on its own.

And so I baste.

Years ago I experimented with traditional batik methods but was never fully satisfied with the process, or the results.I didn’t enjoy ironing and re-ironing the wax soaked fabrics using reams and reams of newsprint. We used the resulting papers as fire starters for the family woodstove, but still it was a labor intensive procedure for results I was never completely happy with. Even after boiling or steaming the fabric, there always seemed to be a wax residue that kept my fabric from having a soft, flowing hand.

So, when surface designers started using soy wax for fabric batik, I jumped at the chance to give it a try. The process for removing the wax is still very much the same, but I have found the process much quicker and the results much more pleasing.

I have been experimenting with using soy wax as a resist with fabric paints and dyes. I have used very gentle ways of removing the resist and I have also tried very abrasive methods. If I want my colors to be bold I use more aggressive techniques to take the wax out. I use a strong hand and usually a scrubbing tool to first remove the layer of paint and then to assist in removing the layer of wax. Sometimes the results include some blurry edges that become incorporated as part of the design. If I want a clear solid edge, I am more frugal when I add the layer of paint and then it is easier to remove.

Soy batik with Seta Fabric Paints executed on solid black fabric

The flow of wax from a tjanting tool is somewhat similar to the flow of paint from a fully loaded brush. Achieving interesting shapes and lines is relaxing for me. It is a meditative action as my hands immediately kick into signwriter mode, my mind calms and my breathing slows.

I did not exactly embrace learning to hand letter.

In the beginning I filled in letters that my Dad outlined for me. I cut out hundreds of vinyl letters by hand, then mounted them on another piece of vinyl to add a narrow border, and then I cut them out again. I cut out hundreds more changeable letters with an ex-acto blade. In essence, by repetitive action I learned the shapes and contours of fonts most used in commercial signage.

When it was decided the time had come for me to start lettering signs on my own, I distinctly remember throwing the yardstick I was supposed to use to guide my hand across the floor shop. I used some choice words to let everyone know I wasn't happy. I remember my Dad saying something about how my work looked great and there was no rush....And then he exchanged one of those looks with another of the guys in the back shop and left me to it.

At some point I must have picked the yardstick up and continued on, but that part is foggy. I am sure though that I continued to throw things and swore more than my share as I learned to relax and trust my hands to create what they now knew instinctively. To breathe.

Today I still love the feel of the brush, the flow of the paint and the pleasure in executing a perfect line of beauty.