To my in-laws: We are holding your car hostage and you cannot get it back until spring...or at least until the weekend where the temperature is to go up to 6 or 7 degrees Celsius!

This was the view from my back door. In the top photo, that's a four foot fence on the right. The bottom photo is my gate buried in snow!

If you guessed this was a photo of me up to my thighs in snow; you were right!!!

Dutch Sampler

This is my Dutch Sampler wallhanging. The pattern idea I got from APQ #71 (12/04), Dutch Doll Quilt. The fabric I bought was a bundle of 4 inch square fabric samples, the centre fabric and binding were from my stash. I made up my own centre design, which I cross-stitched. I love old cross-stitch samplers. I made up the 2 cats myself, one black Spike and one brown Suske.

What have I done for my quilting lately?

I've been busy, but no photos to show for it. First I have been reading Liberated Quiltmaking by Gwen Marsten. I thought I would check it out since it seems to be inspiration to many. I found it at the public library, but had to put it on reserve because it was out and finally I received my email saying it was in! woohoo! It is an amazing book! But am I a liberated quilter? Sometimes, I think. I think my Spike quilt comes pretty close; it was made with scraps and although I arranged it on the floor I didn't have a pattern, just an idea. My Lest we Forget, I just made it up as I sewed and that was a new challenge. But I have to confess there is a part of me that wants my colours to match, and I have a compulsion to plan my scrappy quilts. I am trying to pull things from my scraps and just sew to see what I come up with. I've made one creation so far, but I am planning to dig in some more.

Other 'quilty' things I've done....I've hung more quilt stuff up in my house, and I like it. It makes me smile to see my stuff hanging on the walls. Also I have been going through all my magazines trying to figure out what to do with my Dutch fabric. I like the fabric so much I am afraid to cut it :(, but I think I've narrowed it down to a few contenders. I also finished a tea cosy for my mom's birthday. oops and I forgot to take a photo of it.....Oh and I cleaned my sewing room! what a mess! You'll always know I am thinking about a big project when I start cleaning! The music I am listening to lately while cleaning and quilting is David Gilmour's On an Island and Dave Brubeck's Greatest hits. Partly because they're the only 2 CD's my stupid CD player recognizes right now. And of course I blog and I read quilting blogs.

Next, I think I will have to dig out the Christmas quilts and start decorating for christmas. I am not sure if I will put up a tree or not. I have been bringing my artificial tree to the store and decorating it there. It is a very unusual tree, full of Simpsons and comic book decorations! With no kids at home or even visiting, I find I get more pleasure from it at the store.

Spike Quilt Completed!!!!

Here it is! I am really proud of this one! I think it captures the essence of my Spike, as you can see by the following photo!

Also, thanks to Tonya and her free hand fans idea for hand quilting. It worked well on this piece.

"Personally, I don't see the resemblance; I am obviously taller, and my whiskers! Where are my whiskers?"

Friendship Offerings Wallhanging

Here's the finished top of the Friendship Offerings wallhanging, that we did in Cynthia's workshop. The colours I chose are much darker than Cynthia's cheerful brights, but I fell in love with the outer border fabric!

Here are 2 close-ups of the applique. Cynthia taught us needle turn applique using freezer paper (leaves) and fusible web applique (petals of flowers), and we made bias strips for the stems using a 1/4 inch Clover brand bias maker. What a wonderful tool! I used a blanket stitch around the petals and Cynthia taught us a lovely feather stitch, which I used radiating from the centre of 2 of the flowers.

Backstage Pass part 2

This photo was just sent to me today! Myself, Cynthia Tomaszewski, and Christine.

Backstage Pass

On Thursday, Cynthia Tomaszewski, was the guest speaker for our LFQG meeting. Cynthia is the designer and owner of Simple Pleasures, a pattern company which markets over 50 different quilting designs. She's published 2 books Garden Party: Applique Quilts that Bloom and Tea in the Garden: Quilts for a Summer Afternoon, published by Martingdale and Company. She and her family have traveled extensively throughout the world and currently lives in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emerites.

Her talk was inspiring! Her motto is "Quilt where you are planted", and it was reflected in the story of her year living in Indonesia. She formed her own group of quilters, in a country where there were no quilters; she imported the tools needed, when there were no tools; she arranged to have tools manufactured, when it was too difficult or expensive to import. Overcoming a language and cultural problem, she arranged to have 50+ quilt hoops made for her quilting group! When there was no batting, she found a bra factory that could supply her with what her group needed! She's a woman that doesn't give up!

On Friday, she gave a workshop on applique techniques. I wasn't really sure I wanted to take this workshop. The wallhanging was nice, but it really wasn't my style. I was wrong to be hesitant, because this workshop was like a backstage pass to meet the band! The other message Cynthia has, is that quilts are about people. They are about the people you meet, the stories they tell, the memories you have. And that is what I got from the workshop. I met a wonderful lady who passed on her experiences and knowledge about quilting; I enjoyed the comraderie of my fellow quilters, and picked up so many tips that are etched deeper into me because of the experience I had. It was better than just reading it from a book.

I've posted a few photos below from the workshop. Later I will post a photo of the completed wallhanging.

Here is Cynthia in front of the class holding up her wallhanging. It was a great opportunity to have this intimate workshop!

Cool door prize, that Cynthia donated! Inside it contained a pair of scissors on a handmade string of beads and a small pincushion made by palestinian women! I'll hang this pincushion with one I have from Hungary....I just might start a collection of pincushions around the world. cool!

Quilt Show part 2

Here is another one of my entries into the quilt show. They are not good photos, sorry. I call it Lenore, Butterfly Hunter. Again, I took it from a Lenore comic by Roman Dirge. Lenore, with her butterfly net and baseball bat in the top frame (it's called extreme butterfly hunting!), and her mounted butterfly prize in the bottom. I also wanted to try out some butterfly blocks that I saw in Quiltmaker magazine (issue May/June '01 #79), these ones are only 4 in square instead of 6 inches. The top photo is a close up I made before I had completed it; the second is from the show. (I haven't figured out how to manoevre the photos, they never seem to go up on the page in the order I want them :( ) ....also you might have noticed a Lenore lunch box...I now use that for my sewing kit which I bring to workshops....I always get comments like, oh my daughter would just love that!... I guess I'll never grow up!

Here is another one of my entries in the quilt show: 'Gord's T-Shirts'. I made this quilt using my husband's old t-shirts, some flannels and I used a cheap fleece throw blanket for the back, so it is really warm! It was thick enough it didn't need batting. My hubby's office is the coldest room in the house, so he needed a warm lapquilt. I got the idea from an old Fons & Porter magazine, issue May 1996 (egad!) Sew Many Quilts. The top photo shows a close up of the label I made for the back of the quilt, that pic of the queen was on the sleeve of the Sex Pistols shirt.

Harvest of Quilts

Here is myself and my quilting buddy Christine (right). We volunteered for a shift at the welcome table at the London Friendship Quilters Guild 'Harvest of Quilts' quilt show. This was our first show with the guild and we had a great time! Christine entered 6 pieces in the show and I entered 4 plus the challenge quilt in the show. There were over 200 entries! It was amazing. We currently do not have a web page for our guild, but there are many proposals, for getting our guild onto the net. I have suggested having a blog for the guild....so we'll see what happens next.

Quilt Challenge

My aunt and cousin pointing to my prize (!) winning quilt! Our guild is celebrating its 25th anniversary and the challenge was 5x5 (or 25). There were 21 entries and mine was chosen for first prize by the guild members! (It's my first ribbon!) There are 5 rows of 5 blocks, 5x5 inches each. Row 1 are trees to represent London ( which is also known as the Forest City); row 2 are hearts to represent 'Friendship'; row 3 are spools to represent 'Quilters'; row 4 are hands that represent the members of the'Guild...London Friendship Quilters Guild...row 5 contains the Guild logo block and the anniversary years.

Circle of Life

This wallhanging is my own design. I bought these neat japanese fabrics from Kallisti Quilts. The animals I chose are pulled from the fabrics and are dependent on each other in the 'circle of life'. When I hand quilted this one, I chose shadow quilting because it is like ripples in a pond. I designed a type of chinese coin pattern to link the four blocks together. I originally designed a baby crib quilt for a gift, but reduced it to this wallhanging when I decided on another pattern for the gift.

This wallhanging is based on a comic book by Roman Dirge, called Lenore (the cute little dead girl). If you cannot find death amusing, this comic book is not for you! I loved the cover of his first collection and thought that I could adapt it for a Halloween wallhanging.

Here's a good photo of my cousin (right) and myself (left) on our last night together.

Winter Wheat

Well, my cousin has left for the Netherlands, today. sigh. It was such a brief but fun visit! Unfortunately, we had pretty lousy weather, but we still managed to do lots of fun things. This will be the first of a few posts of the visit. First, the weather...ugh I think it was sunny for about 2 hours the whole time she was here, it rained a lot, it even snowed and hailed once, but we still had some fall leaves left on the leaves as you can see from these photos.

This was our visit to Winter Wheat in the small town of Sparta. It is owned by folk artist Lucy Ogletree and her partner Mike. The store is surrounded by a grove of pine trees and corn fields. Amongst the pines you will find chain saw sculptures like this rabbit and his clocks "where time stands still". Other sculptures include a crow playing the piano, and along the highway the fenceposts are angels with halos lit with christmas lights! After exploring the store and the grounds you can pause for complimentary tea and cookies. It was a delightful, warm experience! I highly recommend it!

It was so nice! Winter Wheat offers 2 small houses in which you can sit and have complimentary tea or coffee and cookies. In one, my tante Janny relaxes and enjoys her coffee in the cosy, warm studio, and the gang (Marjon, Dad, Tante Janny, & Mom) stands outside the front. This house was decorated with original Lucy Ogletree art.

My Dad sits inside the glass house, made of recycled windows.

Here's a view of the driveway back to the highway, with the studio tea house to the left.

Echt Hollands

WooHoo!!! My cousin and my aunt have arrived from Holland! And catch your breath, these are the lovely fabrics they gave to me! (I am soooo spoiled!) Real Dutch fabric! And guess where they bought it! At Irma's Sampler Patchwork and Quilt Shop in Haarlem, where a certain Lucy works!
It's such an amazingly small world with the internet!

Can't write much more, have got to explore Ontario with the family!

Quilt Envy

We had our guild meeting on Thursday, and as usual it was inspiring as well as depressing! Nancy Trowbridge (?) gave a wonderful trunk show. Apparently she teaches many classes on quilting, so many of her quilts were designed to teach specific lessons. They were great! The depressing part is to see how many quilts these people have. I look at my paltry collection and I wonder where all my quilts went! I know, I know, I've given them away as gifts, mostly baby quilts. It's a good thing most of my friends have stopped having children! My new goal is to make and keep quilts for myself! (I've highlighted it to remind myself)

My four entries into our guild's quilt show are all wallhangings. So I must try and make another bed-sized quilt. I've only ever made one in the 10 years of quilting!

Also, I must tackle the UFO's: there is of course the Spike and Suske quilts, the remembrance day quilt, an old sweatshirt I want to dress up, my NBX (Nightmare before Christmas) quilt...I've drawn it out by hand and on EQ5 and have the fabric, but haven't started cutting....also a basket full of sampler blocks. I would go through my quilting magazines and see many nice quilts, but wasn't ready to make a whole quilt, but I wanted to try a block. I got this idea from one of the magazines, this lady would try out all her blocks on Christmas fabric and then turn those blocks into a christmas sampler. Well I decided I didn't want to use Christmas fabric so bought a bunch of Debbie Mumm fabric that I liked at the time and did my samples in that. The problem is I'm not as crazy about the fabric as I once was. So I think I should finish that one up and start a new bunch of samplers....maybe this time in batiks... or should I pick a theme, maybe not christmas, a colour theme, or a season, autumn,...hmmm ?

I think I'm going to make fabric postcards for Christmas, this year, too!

There. No more quilt envy, I've got a plan!

(next post: the best laid plans of mice and men...)

Here is my Remembrance day wall hanging, as promised. I was crazy to get this done, and worked at it all weekend. It was a glorious Thanksgiving weekend! It was sunny and warm. I managed to get a lot of things done as well as this wall hanging. I washed and put away all the lawn furniture and table. Cut back the wild perennials and even planted daffodils! Also managed to eat 2 yummy Turkey dinners! Thanks Mom and Mom-in-law!

As for the wall hanging, it is not exactly as I had originally pictured it in my head. But it was a totally improvisational effort. I started with the wonky letters and they were hard to do!(By the way that "F" is an F and not a "P", there is just a dark spot on the light fabric, which makes it look like a P in the photo) The letters were a bit bigger than I expected. I was going to put 'lest we' on one line, then the poppy, then 'forget', but 'forget'was big enough! So I rearranged them that way. I like the green fabric that I picked it an army green tone to it. I am thinking this could be good in wools, perhaps even made from old army uniforms....hmmm, something to think about.

Next photo is an update on the Spike quilt, it's looking good I think!

Here is an update on the Spike quilt. As you can see, I've started the free fan hand quilting around the outside. I had a photo of the whole quilt but you couldn't see the detail of the handquilting.

Let Freedom Ring

On September 22, 2006,as an expression of thanks to Canada and its Armed Forces, the Dutch community presented London with this Carillon for their role in the liberation of the Netherlands and Belgium during World War II.

The memorial consists of 3 sections. First, 18 bronze bells suspended on a large stainless steel tower decorated with a spiral of maple leaves. The bells were cast in Holland. The bells will chime on the hour, year round and can be programmed to play any tune. Second is a granite sculpture at the base of the bells that show the location of Canadian Forces cemetaries in the Netherlands and Belgium. Third, a beautiful garden was created to encompass the site.

The money to build this memorial came mostly from donations from the Dutch community in this area.

My mother took the following photos when she attended the dedication ceremony. My parents are originally from Holland and also donated money for this memorial to be built. I think my mom's photos were better than any that were printed in the local papers. However, there are some other nice photos of the veterans that attended the ceremony here.

Here, you can see some of the veterans and some Dutch-Canadians dressed in traditional Dutch clothing.

A veteran touches the memorial.

Keep On Quilting

I've started the handquilting on the Spike quilt, and I must say I really like it! Thanks Tonya , for the inspiration! I am doing her free fans around the outside and then I will outline Spike and then probably do full concentric circles in the middle (at least that's the plan). I don't have photos yet.

I have an idea for a remembrance day wall hanging. I think I will use Tonya's wonky letter for "lest we forget" with a big poppy in the middle, in fall or muted tones. I can see it my head. And I will also post some photos my Mom took of a Veteran's memorial dedication that took place in our city. They are very nice and I think moving photos. It is sad how fewer and fewer seem to take pause to remember their sacrifice, especially now that there are so few of them left.

The Shoplifters Saga continues...

Yeah. Well the second soandso (I'll call him Thing 2) came in the store on friday. double grrrr. First his 2 spotters came in. They weren't regulars and they had never been in a comic book store before, didn't know what they were looking for...a bad sign...I was going to ask him to leave his bag at the counter... I didn't trust him, then Thing 2 came in, right away I asked if I could help him and right away he was hostile."why did you ask me that for? there are other people here too" (????) Anyway I knew it was Thing 2, he too has tattoos all over him, I said "I want you to leave my store you've been asked to stay away." " No I haven't why do I have to leave?" "Are you soandso?" "no that's not me" (didn't fall for it this time, could he have been speaking to Thing 1?) "you match the description, please leave." "This is f****** g b******t", he says as he's leaving" don't be surprised if this place burns down" (???) " is that a threat?" and then he asks the other guys to leave with him (so they were together, it's the old distract the sales clerk while one of the other ones steals the stuff, grrrrrrrrrr.) I called the police (not 911) at around noon and didn't see an officer until 5:30 (!) Apparently a very busy day for them. Thing 1 and Thing 2 of course were in the police computers, 30 year old ne'er-do-wells, drug and alcohol dependancy, last known address: the men's mission...oh surprise. The officer said he would go there and see if they're there and serve them with a tresspassing ticket, but they probably won't be still there, which is probably why they didn't know they were banned from the store in the first place, the police can't find them. We have to catch them in the act...but of course the police say don't confront them, just call 911, they'd be gone by then.

So the good news is: no alarms went off in the middle of the night and our store is still standing!

Real Life Interferes with Quilting

Well the Spike quilt is all basted and ready to be quilted. I am thinking about trying out Lazy Gal's free fan method of hand quilting on this. I am really intrigued by it. I like the idea of using colourful embroidery floss. It seems right somehow. I don't have a fancy sewing machine to do machine quilting, so if I have to hand quilt this might suit me. But then I was on Fibermania and Melody's ode to the ginko tree had me weeping, it was so beautiful to me. The colours! She machine quilted around the leaves but hand quilted these simple circles and it was quite nice...so now I'm thinking maybe less is more.

I must stare at the quilt some more. I am at that point where I just look at it and look at it trying to imagine what it would look like finished. Then I go to bed and think about it some more. I am not a plunge right in kind of person. I look before I leap, I think about it too much!!!aaak!

You know when I can't make a decision, it's because I've had a bad day at work. I had to confront some punk kid and tell him to leave my store. He's a known thief, he's stolen from us and other stores and has been banned from the store. But he had the bloody nerve to come back. grrrrr. He thinks because he shaved his beard we wouldn't recognize him, but, you know, if you're going to be a thief perhaps tattooing your body might not be such a good idea! They call them identifying characteristics for a reason. The first time we talked to the police about them (there was a pair of them, then) all we had to do was describe the tattoos and the police gave us their names. So I went up to punk kid and asked is your name so and so or so and so and he said yeah I'm so and so ( is this who they were thinking when they made up the Darwin awards?) Well I said I am asking you to leave my store and not come back and then he has the nerve to ask why? I told him, but does he think we're stupid? It's a good thing my anger is stronger than my fear when it comes to confronting these individuals, because I'm sure his rap sheet includes assault, but after I was shaking. Grrr I hate shoplifters!

OK, I've vented. I feel a little better. It's time to watch some Lost (we're re-watching season 2) and relax :)

Suske as inspiration!

Don't mess with me!

Big girl sleeping.

Here you can see she does have bits of orange on her tummy.

I actually was a busy little beaver and I finished the top for the "Suske" quilt, again without embellishments (it still needs some whiskers). This is the Morning Mews pattern from McKenna Ryan. (see link in sidebar, to compare)

This is the first time I've done this kind of applique or even made someone else's design. I usually steal parts of patterns, very rarely do I make one complete from pattern. Having said that, I just fell in love with the pattern when I saw it, but of course had to change "Dora" to "Suske" and of course my colours are different, but pretty close I guess. Suske is a mostly black with bits of orange tortoiseshell, so I thought that particular batik caught her essence.

I found all the cutting pieces a bit tiresome, as well as arranging and pressing them a little difficult, but I muddled through. The steam and seam was interesting too, you actually draw on the fusible part and if you don't cut inside the line some of those lines can show through along the edges.It didn't happen too often. I think once I quilt it, they'll disappear. That's of course the next question, how am I going to quilt that?

Spike Quilt Update

Here is the almost finished Spike Quilt top; it just needs embellishment...like pupils, whiskers etc.

It actually turned out better than I expected.

Brain Freeze!

Holy brain freeze, Batman! We just had our first LFQG meeting of the year! It was great, I needed that. I just had a crappy day at work and it was so nice to plunge into quiltness! But what an overload of inspiration. Not only did we have our usual show and tell (what great works ladies and gent! :) Our speaker, Brenda Miller, presented her trunk show. I think I OD'd on quilts...is that even possible? I think I was a little too tired! Afterwards, I felt like I could never make anything as good as any I had seen.

I have been searching the net looking for other blogs to read and I am coming across this blog ring thing. It looks like the best way to get comments to your blog is to join one, but they seem a little elitist. It's nice that they have rules of conduct but some are almost intimidating, but I did find some blogs I will continue to keep my eye on... I even went as far as commenting on one....ha my first post, one must take the plunge some time. So encouraged, I even commented on the blog of my local newspaper. Ha ha...there's no stopping me now!

Good news! My cousin, Marjon, and my aunt from Holland will be visiting the family for a week in late October. I am very excited! this is her second visit here. I will be dragging her to the LFQG Harvest of Quilts - Quilt Show 2006. And don't worry I'll be posting plenty of photos of the quilts I am submitting.

About the last 2 photos I posted: I was looking through my computer files of my quilt photos and I discovered there were not that many. I thought this was strange because I take photos of all my projects. But then I realized that most were taken before I owned a digital camera (yeah I know, there was a time when we used to develop photographs...so long ago) and many my mom took with her camera (which is so much better than mine) and I don't have them in my computer. The 2 photos I did find were of baby quilts I made for 2 other cousins in Holland. They are sisters and both were adopting babies from other countries at around the same time. Linda and Dick adopted Alissa from China, and for them I made the Butterfly quilt from Quiltmaker magazine. Monique and Peter adopted Jesse from the Dominican Republic. I made him the Kite quilt from a Fons and Porter magazine. See photos, previous post.

Here is the quilt I made for Jesse.

Baby Quilts

Here is the butterfly quilt I made for Alissa.

Back from Vacation!

Sorry I haven't posted for awhile. My husband and I were staying at a friend's cottage on Oxtongue Lake, near Algonquin Park. It was beautiful, peaceful and very relaxing!

We went one day into Huntsville and I stopped into Quilted Dreams, where I met Sue Chinn for the first time. My friend actually took up my bed quilt to have it machine quilted by Sue. She did an amazing job! Kudos to Sue! So it was nice to meet her face to face. She has a photo collage of all the quilts she's quilted, and mine was there too! While I was there I picked up a new pattern by Mckenna Ryan, "Dora", one of the Morning Mews series. www.pineneedles.com With apologies, I think I might turn "Dora" into "Suske", if I can find the right fabrics.

When I got home I received my London Friendship Quilters Guild newsletter. It's time to start a new year at the guild! I wrote an article for the newsletter about quilt blogs. We're having a quilt show October 27 & 28 at the Rowntree Memorial Church in London. I have a few quilts going in for the first time. I am kind of excited. Also I have news that my cousin from Holland will be visiting for a week around that time, so I hope she can see my stuff in the show as well.