July to October, what have I been doing?

Well not quilting, that is for sure! July and August saw me redoing my back and side porches. The purple steps are what is left of the old Montessori school, from when I moved in...oh back in1998! I slowly removed the wraparound porch, a bit at a time, but never ever finished dismantling it completely until now!

So happy to see it go!

 Then there was a big CAT in my yard!

It was a disruptive and back breaking month.

Then I turned 50!

It was Wonder-ful!

Then on October 19th, my friends and I presented the first Forest City Comicon! The culmination of a year's work into one exhausting but amazing day of nerd culture!

That is us, the organizing committee, on stage at Centennial Hall before the vendors arrived at 5:30AM

 

Below is the same view about noon!

 Next, is a photo of myself and Mitch Markowitz, one of our guests, who was a writer and producer of the show the Hilarious House of Frightenstein. HHof F was a children's show in the 70's filmed out of Hamilton, ON and was a cult favourite, syndicated around the world and also featured Vincent Price.

For some more amazing photos check out Forest City Comicon on Facebook and here is an awesome video of the great cosplay and the amazing energy of that day!


So, my friends that is what consumed me for the last 3 months, I am looking forward to a bit of quilting time...and some fabric shopping as I have some great gift certificates from my birthday to spend at my favourite fabric shop!

Trend-Tex Challenge 2014 - Modern Ways

When I saw these fabrics I knew right away I wanted to make a mid-century modern album cover. My inspiration was Saul Bass, a mid -century graphic artist, who built the bridge from Modern Art to popular culture, his iconic images include movie posters such as Psycho and Vertigo, and logos such as AT&T and United Way. His title sequence for North by Northwest is the main influence for the title sequence of Mad Men.

My quilt is influenced mainly by the poster for the movie, The Man with the Golden Arm but with a touch of “Vertigo”.

Tilting the square gave it a Vertigo feel...

I called it Vertigo: A Tribute to Saul Bass

I used only the fabrics in the challenge for this entry...however I was not done yet. I used a lot of white but not much of the others. I needed to make another.... first I took an old t-shirt of mine

and basically pieced a liberated log cabin...

 This when I thought it needed more black....

and I still needed to add the print... in the challenge you are allowed to add up to 3 additional fabrics, the t-shirt and the black are my add-ons. 

 

I asked my friend Jill Buckley to machine quilt it for me and we entered it as Take Two. Two friends working on the 2nd creation.

They hung side by side at the CQA show at Brock University.

But wait there is more! still had fabric left over!

I call this one Come on, Get Happy! still not quilted but I am finally done with that fabric. I can move on now.

 

Orange Crush!

It's been awhile since I posted, I seem to be missing my quilting mojo! But this usually happens at this time of year, my sewing room is too hot in the summer and there is a lot of gardening to do instead and one trip to Calgary in between.

Still I have made some progress on a few things....Orange Crush (working title only, in honour of the Netherlands in the world cup), final design, 14x16 = 224 squares:

 I have sewed all my squares into strips....this is the tricky part, you do not want them to get mixed up.

I numbered each row with an arrow to tell me which direction to press the seams.

I would stack my squares and sew one pair together and do a leaders and enders project (1.5 inch random squares) in between, which worked out fine until I ran out of squares!

near the end I tried to chain piece two strips at a time, but soon it went wonky and had to do some seam ripping to finish.

All the strips are done, do not have photo as wind blew them off the wall and I have not put them back up, good thing they are numbered!

Fanshawe Pioneer Village

This year's guild banquet was at Fanshawe Pioneer Village. We had our dinner in the Miller Barn.

It was a beautiful, rustic setting but the benches were uncomfortable!  But the highlight of the evening, for me, was going to be viewing the infamous collection of antique quilts that the village stores, but rarely puts out for display.

First we walked to the Jury homestead where a few quilts were on display in the rooms.

Then we headed to their processing center, where they catalogue and store their artifacts.

This is how they are stored on racks, rolled on acid free rods and covered with white sheets. They draped about 8 of them for display with a few smaller items on the table.

 my favourite was this red and white signature quilt....each signature hand embroidered!

a very interesting crazy quilt:

hand-pieced hexagon quilt, circa 1930-40's

the quilter cut her hexagons from the city directory

a top, never quilted, so many 1 inch squares!

a collection is never complete without a log cabin quilt!

 a well-worn quilt!

It was truly wonderful to see these old quilts, I wish we could have seen more, but obviously many are so fragile, but still a tragedy that they are hidden away. Our guide says she thinks it will take 5 years to finish cataloguing them...I think they do not have enough staff or volunteers... it would be nice if we cannot see them that they take some professional photos and produce a book, postcards or a calendar of these awesome treasures....I guess we will have to wait and see.