Marie's Christmas Quilt

My friend, Marie asked me to quilt this lovely Christmas themed quilt for her as she works on completing a number of her unfinished projects.

Like many quilters, Marie is involved in so many different projects that I sometimes wonder how she gets done what she does and although retired now, she still remains active in many charitable groups. While working as a nurse, she led a campaign to have quilts on every bed in the oncology unit at the George Dumont Hospital here in Moncton. She orchestrated all stages of completion of these quilts and she even looked after the necessary washing and mending that came with strenuous use. The small part I played in this project was to create hand lettered labels for each of the quilts.

So, now in her happy retirement, Marie is actually getting to a few of her own quilting projects, although still in between a lot of her other community based activities. This cheerful quilt was recently on my long arm and Marie has added the binding using the same blue snowflake fabric, making that one Christmas quilt ready for next year. Fortunately I was inspired by the wintery view outside my window as I quilted it.

Tomorrow we are expecting even more snow.

Editing Photos

I dedicated today to editing photos. What a job. It's actually something I generally enjoy, but I found this to be a mind bending experience. As I sorted and edited, I was adding and subtracting from three "albums" as I chose which photos would be used for what purpose. It was a long, eye twitching process but fortunately I was fuelled by a lovely tropical flavoured smoothie and medjool dates. Oh, and an egg. There is an egg in almost every one of my days. 

I tried to remind myself to get up and move at intervals, but wasn't terribly successful until some hours into my task. Actually it was my daughter's text during her lunch break at work that embarrassed me sufficiently to make that first move and to go change out of my pj's. And rebel that I am, I simply moved up the wardrobe chain to yoga pants and a hoodie, all somehow more presentable than fleece jammies. Well, sort of. And no, I don't "do" yoga, but yes, like everyone else, I wear the pants. And at this time of year, in layers.

It's still stinking cold here in New Brunswick. The snow is not disappearing and the small amount that has melted is forming a layer of ice anywhere the snow isn't. Our walkway is a skating rink. I still recall with great clarity the winter I slipped on our cement steps and landed on an already damaged tailbone. I was much younger and put on a brave face for my kids, but it sure hurt for a very long time. I am not looking to repeat that performance so I take great pains to walk around the ice. That takes me into the 6 foot cliffs of snow lining the walk. It is simpler to just not go out.

It is not an easy task being a Maritimer in March.

The Festival of Broken Needles, GMQG Retreat 2015

Whew..Well, it's over..There is still a mountain of paperwork, finances, thank you's, photo editing, a post-mortem meeting to be completed, but the actual physical retreat is over and done with. 

A puzzle table in the sun

I belong to the Greater Moncton Quilt Guild, a guild currently in its' 29th year. Each year a retreat is held and this year we were able to accommodate 40 participants. Last year I was one of two "assistant planners" and this year I was Co-Chair and next year I go back to being a registered participant.

Our block challenge was a spool block and the lucky winner went home with enough blocks for a very large quilt top!

 
We open the doors to our weekend retreat on Friday at noon and close up shop at noon on Sunday. What happens between these hours is pretty amazing whether you are considering what the collective group manages to produce, or whether you are considering the sheer dynamics of 40 women talking, laughing, joking, eating, and drinking, with a few tears mixed in, some from joy and a few less joyful, but all therapeutic none the less. 

I love to plan and execute events. And I feel establishing a theme helps create a cohesive event and makes it easier for the organizing committee. Last year our theme was "Quilters Love to Strip" and all the projects, games, prizes, decorations focused around strips. This year we based our retreat on the Japanese Festival of Broken Needles, an annual ceremony where Japanese seamstresses honour their broken tools by laying them to rest and giving thanks for their service. With this focus on gratitude, we also wanted to educate and were able to include valuable information on needles, pins and thread as part of the handouts. 

Juanita made herself and Shirley oriental mug rugs for the occasion!

We contacted sponsors, both local and online and were absolutely astounded by the support we received. In addition to the small budget we had from our retreat fees, we raised funds by selling tickets on a basket of quilting goodies. Combining what we raised and what was donated, we were able to provide each of our participants with a wonderful goody bag and a door prize! 

The last two years we have included a banquet on Saturday evening as part of the price of admission. This year after the meal, we also held a small ceremony conducted by our own Geisha who gave us much food for thought with her reading of Emily Dickinson's poem, "Don't Put Up My Needle and Thread". She invited each of us to consider the importance of these simple tools as we placed our broken needles and pins in a bed of tofu, just as they do in Japan. 

Our altar

Our broken needled and pins were laid to rest in a bed of tofu

Afterwards we invited everyone to come and have their photos taken in the photo booth we had set up, complete with costumes and props. To say we laughed is an understatement! What a wonderful group of women! Everyone participated and we have some gems of photos as they shared this fun activity with their quilting friends. 

The planning committee 

Co-Chair Nancy and I hammed it up

You might guess I am weary now. I had a full three weeks with a week long trip to Toronto, a three day seminar here, and then this retreat. Today I stayed in bed a bit longer, wore my fleece pyjamas longer than I stayed in bed and I enjoyed endless cups of coffee while I readjusted to the inside of my house. 

Simple Knitting

I am not in the upper echelons of knitters when it comes to executing patterns and textures. However, I find the act of knitting a relatively relaxing pastime and I enjoy making what I consider utilitarian items for my family. I knit socks and have a rotation as to who receives the next pair. They all seem to like wearing what I produce, so I keep at it. Besides, I have a hard time sitting still for long and knitting the same pattern repeatedly keeps me from fidgeting. A recent trip resulted in 1.5 socks..a few hours here and there will finish those up. Then I will cast on the next pair for when I need to keep my hands busy.

This Christmas I wanted to knit a little joke for my daughter. She is a curler and is always telling me how cold she is in the rink. Since I do not have it in me to knit a lovely Mary Maxim seater (remember those? a bulky cardigan with curling motifs?), I knit her a wool hat. And I added some buttons for curling stones...just to be cute. She has my permission to remove the buttons..

She posed for me, we both ended up crying from laughing so hard, and we took a great series of photos of her wearing her hat. This however, if what you get to see...the top of the silly hat. She did wear it once and her curling mates laughed and suggested it could have been worse. There is a pattern circulating that looks just like a curling stone, handle and all. I am sure Simone is grateful that I don't do patterns well!

Since I had lots of wool, I also knit hats for my son and my Dad. I kept them simple and basic, like all my knitting is.

The Calm Before the Storm - Shediac, New Brunswick

Whenever snow, storms, blizzards are coming our way, the media is all over it. Conversations are dominated by the topic of what is expected. Comparisons are made to storms of the past and predictions are made for the one coming.

Right now the first blizzard of 2015 is brewing outside my windows. At 8 am, the air was still, no snow fell. Within a half hour the view out my living room window had changed considerably. The snow had begun and the wind had picked up. 

We have electric heat, so the most that can be done to prepare is to run off some extra water and bring in the camp stove. I don't react well to a loss of power, but a cup of hot tea or coffee can go along way to a better attitude. After all these years together, my husband knows this well. 

Our antidote to an impending storm is to head to the beach. Saturday was spent exploring the sands and wharf of the Shediac - Pointe du Chene area. As always, I took my camera and my husband exhibited extreme patience as I stopped and clicked and oohed and oohed more. He carried driftwood and feathers after my pockets were full and helped me push huge chucks of ice into the current and we watched as they floated and crashed and broke up into smaller pieces.

Shediac Beach

Looking toward Pointe du Chene

We met some other like minded folk walking and biking and even had a gentleman in an ultra lite fly just over our heads and wave! My photos don’t convey it well, so you will have to believe me that by times the sun was glorious. 

It was an incredibly restful and fun day.

off the Pointe du Chene wharf

Pointe du Chene Wharf

Shediac Beach

Tyvek Experiments

I received some lovely gifts at Christmas and some came in tyvek envelopes!! Sometimes you just can’t think about something too much - you just need to gather up the materials and give it a try. That is how it came about that I spent a lovely hour or so playing with tyvek, some fabric paint, a teflon sheet, an iron and a heat gun.

Trying this out wasn’t my intention; I seem to recall that I was looking for something totally unrelated when I saw the envelopes and something in my head clicked. Whatever it was, I gathered everything up, laid it out on top of the other bits and pieces I was working on and I found myself painting and heating tyvek. 

Everything I have read or seen about this process tells you to work in a well ventilated area. Disclosure - I didn’t and I didn’t use a mask. Bad of me, I know. I tend to be slack about this type of thing, but I do encourage everyone else to take the necessary precautions. I figure after lettering signs with lead based paints and silk screening for years with little or no ventilation...and besides, it was just two envelopes and I didn’t breath deeply.

Lots of fun to be had playing with this technique! And you don’t need to use fabric paints - any old acrylic paint will do apparently. I can see beads and such intertwined with the pieces I have created. There will probably be some bits of over painting, too, and maybe some fibre bits added. Right now I have some of these laid out with a couple of the pieces I sun printed this summer and I am thinking there are possibilities..

Full Disclosure

These are two views of my dining room. Kind of a before and after..haha I was hosting a planning meeting so had to tidy up this first shot so we could sit at the table. Not even a half hour after everyone had left, the room looked like the second photo. And it isn’t the only room I work in..My excuse? I am working on some techniques and surface treatments as I create fabric for some designs I have going on. 

I am part of the organizing committee for one of my guild’s annual retreats, so there is a pile of materials and props and goodies accumulating in another room upstairs. It is sharing space with the Christmas things I still haven’t sorted and stored again for this year. Maybe I should get to that..

My long arm takes up the back half of our living room, cuddled in next to our treadmill and my beloved spin bike.

I have a room full of fabric, materials and tools downstairs..

I try to contain everything, but I tend to spill over and over into the other spaces in the house. I prefer to work in natural light and when I can’t work on either of my decks (boo! winter), the dining room is perfect for sewing and painting, catching sun from the east, south and west. 

How lucky am I that I am married to a very understanding man. He is used to dirty paint pots and brushes lying by the kitchen sick, dye tubs and rags sitting on the washer, bundles of knitting projects scattered here and there, rug hooking that sits in the living room, plus all that other clutter that comes with me. And he cooks..

Moving Forward

A new year generally feels like it offers a person a fresh start. Time to get your ducks in a row, begin new projects, focus on moving forward. 

I live in organized clutter. I try to maintain a feeling of everything being where it should, but a creative lifestyle doesn't always allow for "a place for everything and everything in its' place". And being involved in a variety of activities means that sometimes things that should go one place end up being placed elsewhere. 

The room I store my materials and supplies in has been a dumping ground for too long this fall. There is now only a very narrow path that leads to our freezer and I get anxious every time I go in the room. If I can't put my hand on what I am looking for, then there is a problem. As well, there is also a cubby hole under our eaves that has been a storage area for a number of years and it really needs to be addressed. That means cleared, cleaned and purged..

I don't know about you, but once something really gets my attention, then I have to address it. Moving forward creatively just isn't going to happen until I deal with these areas. In order for me to work most effectively, I have to get things organized. My ducks don't need to be labelled, but they do need to be in a reasonably straight line.

I think I have my work cut out for me next week.

First Snow and My Frozen Tears

I don’t take well to having any kind of a schedule on Mondays. Even when I worked full time, I would prefer to work longer hours the other days of the week so that I would have Mondays for me.

This morning I had to attend a meeting at 10 am and as my husband got ready for work, I lay in bed, bemoaning the fact that I had to get up and that not only did I have to leave the house, but also that I couldn’t attend the meeting in my pyjamas..My whining started before I even had my glasses on and when I caught on that he was ignoring me and my rant, I asked him what kind of day it was out there. When he replied that it was a white world, I sat bolt upright in bed and if I recall correctly, I screamed, “WHAT!” With a flourish he whipped the curtain back so I could see for myself and I know tears pooled in my eyes..

I am not a huge fan of cold weather. Or snow. Or ice. I don’t like driving in it, I don’t like other people travelling in it. I don’t like being cold and I always am. Case in point, I am currently wearing a hoodie (with the hood up) and have a heated magic bag in my lap. My husband says it is obviously the season of gnomes because when I am home I tend to look like one as I transition from summer’s bare legs and feet, to multi layer coverage. He is used to me wearing a toque at mealtime, along with a selection of scarfs round my neck. He is also aware that I own three magic bags that sometimes can be seen peeking from inside one of my layers when I am really chilly. Meanwhile he is in short sleeves and bare feet.....

My mother told me that I wasn’t always cold. When I was 13 and a Girl Guide, I was part of a group of three Guides who chose to work on receiving Outdoor Winter Camping Badges, a spanking brand new badge offered. Well. The night we built our lean to (back in the days when you could actually cut tree branches and build outdoor fires), dug our outdoor latrine and cooked our supper in a snow bank just happened to be the coldest night recorded that winter. It was -54 degrees with the wind chill. I have a very vivid memory of lying in my sleeping bag with its frozen zipper on top of a layer of spruce boughs and an icy tarp and staring longingly through the trees to the brightly lit windows of the farmhouse where our leaders were nice and cosy.

But, we all hung in there, had lots of fun, made some crazy wild memories and were the first three Guides in Canada to receive our badges. I came home with my waist length hair full of huge hunks of ice that mom spent hours on melting and combing out. And I came home with a chill that I have never been able to shake. Well, except for when I was pregnant with my son. But, that is another story for another time..

Totally unrelated to my winding tale, but because every post deserves a photo, here are two baby quilts that I quilted for Florine. These sweet little quilts have found they way to brand new babies in Edmonton. Hopefully these new little folk will be kept nice and warm in these adorable and colorful quilts.

Painting Fabric and More

When you consider my many years of working with fibre, my two years of longarming is not a big number and my textile interests are wide and varied. So, when we chose classes at Road to California with our focus on quilting, I still was most certainly not passing up the opportunity to take a class that involved paint and brush! I have been a fan of Mickey Lawler and her fabric painting technique for a very long time, so the chance to spend a day with her was the icing on the cake, so to speak, for me.

Mickey demonstrates one of her techniques

Even though she suffered a painful injury on the first day at Road, Mickey was delightful! She was very organized and informative, the class was fast paced, and best of all, Mickey is funny! She had us laughing over and over as she recounted personal anecdotes, all the while showing us new and creative ways to paint our fabric.

Mickey’s beautiful work

Mickey’s color chart

Mickey's class was on the last day of Road and after a full week, Lorette and I had new places to go and familiar to us people to meet, so we packed up quickly and set off as soon as the class was done. My hubby had just flown into the busy LAX and while I painted, was picking up this fun Escapevan for our next weeks journey.

We were amazed by how many thumbs up we got as we travelled in our van!

We hit the road and headed out, and the next day my freshly painted, damp fabric got to dry at the Joshua Tree National Park.

The days were wonderfully hot, the nights surprisingly cold and the area incredibly interesting!

This man always keeps me laughing!

Cholla Cactus

After what was already feeling like a long winter back home, the heat of the desert was so inviting and welcome to us. 

Octillo

We basked in our surroundings and marvelled at the views, especially enjoying the sunsets. 

Sun setting over Joshua Tree National Park

We often meet interesting people when we travel. After a night in the Anza-Borrego Desert and while hiking one of the trails, we crossed paths with a lovely couple from Washington, DC who are sheep farmers. She is a spinner and weaver and we ended up having a lovely chat about fibres as we stood in the middle of the path under the hot desert sun. I love that my travels randomly put me in contact with so many people with common interests. I think the key is to be open to the possibility and to wear a welcoming smile.

Colors of Cozumel

Spring is slowly making its way back into our lives, although as I drove through the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia this week, I saw evidence that New Brunswick is still slightly behind on the calendar. Even though I attended Acadia University way back when, I had never witnessed the apple blossoms in all their glory! So, I was actually momentarily puzzled when I saw the rows of trees laden with their ethereal whitish pink flowers. I remember the thought crossing my mind that it seemed like an awful lot of ornamental cherry trees off the highway with no houses in sight. Yes, I have days like that where the obvious is just not obvious...

Had I not been so focused on making my way to my destination, I might have stopped and taken a photo or two to share. But, I also remembered one night, those many years ago, when a group of fellow students and I made our way into the apple orchard, bags in hand, with plans to help ourselves to some deliciously juicy pickings. The details are now vague, but I do recall a couple of twisted ankles and scraped knees as we breathlessly raced out of the field when we were spotted and told on no uncertain terms to beat it!! Still embarrassed by this escapade all these years later and not willing to twist my aging bones and joints, I simply stayed out of the field and enjoyed the view from afar. You will have to trust me that it was a glorious sight with a very festive feel as the laden branches delicately danced in the breeze.

After that long winter we all persevered, I am visually hungry for new growth this spring and am anxiously waiting for my magnolia tree to bloom, for flowers to begin popping up, and for the greens of summer to grow strong and true. Nova Scotia is weeks ahead with magnolias beginning to drop their blossoms, ornamental cherries and dogwoods in full bloom, wild flowers and tulips in abundance and trees full and green. 

So, to appease my senses, I have been looking at some photos I took while in Cozumel. Until I get some more local color photographed, I am sharing these..

A little more about Road to California 2014

This morning when we got up, the temperature was -2! It only reached a wet, windy high of 8 degrees and someone remarked to me that if it really were the fall (which it feels) we would at least dress for the weather. No one wants to pull out their toques and mitts, but really? Well, if we were sensible, we would. But, sensible does not abound in these parts apparently. Today I saw more shorts and bare feet and bare arms than I have for days. Meanwhile I am wrapped in three layers, a scarf around my neck, shoulders up to my ears and anxious to get home so I can stuff a heated magic bag in my sweater! I am still sporting wool socks and flannel pj’s to bed and any tan I might have gotten last month while in Cozumel has long ago faded to pasty white. Sigh. 

Well, I am trying to keep warm thoughts and that brings me back to California. While there I had the pleasure of taking classes with numerous instructors. Lisa Sipes and Pam Clarke were both longarmers I had become familiar with and classes with both provided me with lots of tips, techniques and possibilities. Lisa is a relaxed, casual teacher and displays obvious skill on the longarm.

Pam is very, very organized and has developed a method of marking and quilting that is pretty much fool proof. As she says, when you have quilted as many quilts as she has, you need to be organized and use a method that you know will deliver.

I also had the pleasure of speaking with the very gracious, Alex Anderson of The Quilt Show fame. She was there representing the show and took the time to speak and pose with everyone and anyone. She was chatty and gave me a friendly jab of her elbow when I teased her about the trials of being a superstar! lol

Road to California attracts a large number of Canadians, mostly snowbirds who winter in Palm Springs, and mainly from the western provinces. On the day we were to take a class from Angela Walters who unfortunately got the flu and had to cancel, we posed with a couple of fellow Canadian classmates. We seemed to meet up with Colleen (second from the left) quite a bit and always enjoyed some laughs with her.

For a group that is missing out on a class with Angela, we look fairly happy. I know we were all very disappointed, but I think unexpectedly having a free day to spend shopping here...

helped keep our spirits up.

I normally don’t pose for photos since I am usually the photographer, but I am glad I did during that trip. It is proof positive that I did attend and that I did meet those great instructors and all those wonderful quilters! Looking at each photo takes me back to the moment and that particular experience and I remember something more about it each time.

I really think meeting so many friendly, generous quilters was one of the best things about going to Road. Every teacher relayed the attitude that if they could do it, you could do it. Every person shared information, offered assistance, moved over if you needed a seat. There were smiles, lots of laughs, oodles of positive vibes, and I couldn’t have asked for a better experience.

More Quilts from Road to California 2014

I have more eye candy to share..the more I look at these photos, the more I see..