Birds and Canal Houses

My neighbour left a bag of scraps in my mailbox, there were some weird bits of fabric in there, fabric I wouldn't normally use, some terry cloth, faux suede, bits of jeans, etc...there was also this square of randomly pieced red and white fabric. It was uneven and the seams were thick and varied in width, top-stitched in places... I thought hmmph...I found out later that she and her daughter made gift bags for a party out these pieces and this was left over...anyway, they went away for easter and I am taking care of their cat, so I am giving this piece back to them, altered my way...!

Spring Grackle!

I am obsessed with birds lately! I guess it is spring!

Anyway, I'll leave it on their table, for when they come home and they can do with it what they will, maybe they'll hang it on their wall or turn it into a pillow, or whatever...It's their turn in this make shift round robin!

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I've got this great Eyewitness Travel Guide to Amsterdam, and inside they have this pull out section of the houses along each of the canals. I've always wanted to make some pieced canal houses. Most pieced houses are a door, window, roof and chimney, but these canal houses are so interesting.

It shows details of the different types of gables of these houses.

So I drew some of my favourites. Trying to keep it simple, and using scraps I attempted my first house (below, based on sketch on left)

I think my windows are too square and the pink is a little lost, but I am just trying to build not be perfect on my first attempt. My second attempt is the warehouse style house, it has those great big shutters.

Much better, I think the windows are better proportioned and the colours are a better contrast, I like my pink shutters.

Goodbye Winter!

There are 5 cardinals in this photo, can you spot them all?

My parents sent this photo taken in their backyard. They attract a lot of birds with their birdfeeders, but usually the cardinals visit singly or in pairs, but what a treat to see 5 at a time! This is an older photo, the snow has melted in London, Ontario!

This photo, below...just because, who can resist those yellow characters with their googly eyes.

Sorry, no quilting here today, have been working on Secret projects...finished my Guild Challenge quilt! Woo Hoo!

Garden Visitors

I had a really nice tea towel called Garden Visitors, but it was too nice to actually use, so I cut out the nice pictures of birds and made postcards out of them. Does that make sense? I experimented with embellishing it with my version of thread painting,...well, more like trying to colour within the lines...

Beam Me Up, Scotty!

Sorry I haven't blogged lately! I have been busy, of course. We took a weekend off to visit our friends in Michigan. It was a great visit and it was completely geeky! We visited the Star Trek Exhibit at the Detroit Science Center. You can get your photo taken on the bridge of the Enterprise or on the transporter pad! It was fun. They had props and costumes from the various shows and movies. The hallways look like the interior halls of the Next Gen Enterprise. It was cool but you were absolutely not allowed to take photos and you could buy the photos of your group on the bridge or transporter. A nice souvenier albeit a bit expensive.

We also visited the Flint Institute for the Arts to see an exhibit of original comic book art. That was quite nice too! It's a nice little art Gallery, we even took some time to look at their other art collections. I took photos there, without the flash, so they are a bit grainy. I probably was not allowed to but no one saw me...I don't really get why you are not to take photos...a trip fades away so quickly for me without the photo memories.

It is year end time, tax time, and event time at the store. So I have been wiped out with the work load. We are getting ready for the following events Worldwide D&D Day and Free Comic Book Day. Besides my duties maintaining the blog for the guild, I am now on a committee to submit a proposal for our guild to host a CQA event in our city for 2011. (What was I thinking!? I am thrilled but a little overwhelmed by the work that will be involved and a lot of energy and my time will be invested until 2011!)

As for quilting projects, I have been handquilting my 9Lives slowly. I have been working on my O Canada Guild Challenge (can't show you that until May), and I made these postcards. The Dutch fabric cathedral windows one was an anniversary card for my parents and the other was for the guild exchange.

Oh yeah and here are some gratuitous cat photos! Suske loves fresh laundry out of the dryer! I often throw the pile of warm laundry on the couch to fold it, and Suske will jump up and start kneading and purring and sticking her nose into the laundry. Then curl up and sleep in it.

chickens go bok, bok!

I got a chicken in the mail! Sewnut sent me this PIF and I was quite thrilled as it arrived at work and I was not expecting it all! Thanks Sewnut! So now I have to send some handmade gifts to 3 others.

I've decided to send a block to this flickr group who are making Bushfire quilts for the victims of the fires in Australia. The guidelines and the address to send the blocks is here.


I am sending the pattern of my Cathedral Window pillow to someone in the guild, and I will make some fabric postcards to mail out.

Apollo 14 February 5, 1971

My dad recently came across an old school project of mine from 1971. It was a book about the Apollo 14 mission to the moon. The teacher gave us pre-printed pages with the story of Apollo 14's trip to the moon, and we were to draw the pictures and then it gets stapled together as a book. What a hoot! My moon likes like a chocolate chip cookie!



In those days we were excited about the trips to the moon and the teacher would wheel in this TV on tall legs and we would watch it live on TV at school. It was a big deal....now many people actually believe it never happened, that it was a hoax. How sad. One of my favourite movies is Apollo 13, I don't remember that mission in particular, but it is amazing that they made it home alive! One part in the movie that stayed with me was how the astronauts were all excited to say hello to all the people on Earth, but they didn't know that it wasn't going to be broadcast because the networks believed people were already finding the space missions too boring. We still don't appreciate the risks that they took and choose to believe it was a hoax. Astronauts were heroes back then and they still are in my book! Can you imagine being one of the few people to actually set foot on the moon or hit a golf ball on the moon!

Anyway, if you would like to see all of my school project from 1971, I created this little slideshow movie in Picasa (2 and a half minutes). The music is "Hey, Hey Spaceman" by Guided by Voices. I think it captures the kids' point of view.



You know, I was going to pick Rocket Man by Elton John for the music, but someone else has made a wonderful video of the missions to the moon using that song, which you can watch here. (4 minutes)

Which brings me to this challenge: My husband and I are creating a CD with "space" music. Help me make a playlist of songs I should put on this CD and leave your suggestions in the comments.

I have been so inspired by my school project I made this block to add to my Secret project:

Old Squaw and Red Star

I spotted this awesome duck in the Thames River on my way to work last week! It dove under water for a bit and I grabbed my camera out of my knapsack (I always carry my camera with me) and waited for it to re-emerge. Unfortunately I don't have the strongest zoom and this was the best shot I got. I had never seen a duck like this before. I went home and tried to find it in my bird book (Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Birds), the closest that I could find was the Old Squaw Duck (re-named Long Tailed Duck) but this bird is in its winter plumage and the photo in the book was not, but the description was pretty accurate, but the range is Northern Canada and the Arctic tundra! Does this bird come this far south? I emailed the London Free Press wildlife columnist, who passed me on to someone at the McIlwraith Naturalist Society and he confirmed my identification and said it does come this far south in the winter, but not often spotted in London. Isn't that so cool? I feel so lucky that I saw such a rare sight.

And in quilting news... I finished my Red Star top. Welcome new UFO! May you be finished sometime this year!ha! I have also started handquilting 9 Lives and more piecing on my secret project.

Memories of BIQR 2008

BIQR 2008 Floor Scrap Quilt done!

Minus 20 Degrees Celcius! with a windchill of minus 30!

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!
It is so cold outside!!!aaaaaaaaaagh! unfreakingbelieveable!
I feel like I am wearing 20 lbs of extra clothing!

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!

Cats will find the most inconvenient spot to take a nap, won't they?

(that's hubby trying to straighten his back) That Suske, she's a big girl, isn't she? Of course, hubby lost 20 lbs in the last year, I think Suske found them!

I finished my Dutch Cathedral Window Sampler pillow:



Here's a new project on my design wall, Red Star:

and a few more blocks on the way!

And to think that it happened on Becher Street!

Photo by Derek Ruttan from Sun Media

The above photo was the front page photo of the London Free Press on December 24th. It is a stained glass made by Ted Gooden of a hill at the end of my street that we called Lawyer's Hill. We called it that because at the top of the hill there is an old apartment building with lawyers' offices on the main floor. In this piece you can see the footbridge I cross every day on my way to work. ( I wish I owned this piece but it is someone's private collection) My house on this street used to be a Montessori School, at which I taught for 5 years. One of my students was Ted's daughter. At lunch time, in the winter, we would take the children to the hill and they would slide down the hill in their snowpants; they didn't even need a toboggan. It was great fun for the kids! Ted is a renowned stained glass artist in London and still has a studio on an adjacent street.

Here is what Lawyer's Hill looked like this winter so far...from snowy to floody, to frozen but dry!

Christmas decorations

Above is a table runner I designed and made for my mom for Christmas a few years ago. I never had a photo of it until now.

Below is a Gift Card Stockings wallhanging I designed and made for my sister-in-law and her family this year. I knew I was sending gift cards but I needed to give it some oomph. I added some stuffing into the bottom of the stockings so that the gift cards don't fall too far down.

I think he likes it!

I think he likes it!

More work on my Dutch Cathedral windows...


I think I will make a decorative pillow out of it. I bought the blue background fabric when I was in Holland. It is the fabric they would use to make the traditional costumes that they wore. I bought it at the Zuiderzee Museum; it is an outdoor museum like a pioneer village, where there are demonstrations done by people in period costume.

Sub zero temperatures!

Here are a few photos of our Thames River on Monday when it was minus 11 degrees Celcius. The sides of the river was frozen with chunks of ice floating rather quickly by. The Canada geese and ducks are huddling together at the forks of the river...haven't made it far enough south, I guess.

These 2 specks are merganzers swimming against the flow, I watched them as they kept diving under water...brrrrr! I have only seen the merganzers in the river in the winter.

The forecast today is a high of plus 6 degrees Celcius and rain! and then tomorrow it will dip down again to -3 and then back up over zero. It's going to be icy out there!

We had to make Christmas decorations to demo at our guild, and I chose these Cathedral Window ornaments to do...I had never made cathedral windows before...and now I am addicted!

I've decided this will be a fun way to showcase my dutch fabric collection! and so it begins...!

December postcards: Let it Snow!

For this month's guild postcard exchange I took an old stained doily I had and cut out some of the circles.

Then I tacked them onto a beautiful snowy background print and then added some tiny embroidery snowflakes et voila!



Let it Snow! and has it ever! We have just had 2 major snowfalls come through since Friday and now it is snowing again...there is rain/snow coming in the next few days...will it be an icy Christmas this year?

Andrew's Scrappy Bargello done!

Yay! My brother's Christmas present is done, with a couple of weeks to spare! I am pretty happy the way it turned out. I decided to just do straight line criss cross machine quilting...(does this have a name?). Many thanks to Jacquie at Tall Grass Prairie Studio for her advice and to Bonnie at Quiltville for the free pattern!

And whenever I have time I have been handquilting my BIQR floor scrap quilt. I designed this celtic knot but I am not big on marking my quilts, I usually eyeball it.

But with this pattern I can't even draw it on paper without making a bit of a mess of it and it turns out all uneven. So I came up with making templates of the inner shapes and handquilting around them and then just eyeballing the rest.

Unfortunately, I should have spaced them farther apart, so that my double lines don't get too narrow, and I also had to take care that they looked like they were inter weaving.

Christmas Open House

Haven't been in a blogging mood lately, sorry. So I will tell you about a lovely open house I went to last sunday. I received this lovely invitation in my mailbox, inviting me to an open house featuring the "whimsical paintings an greeting cards of Nicole Campbell. All are welcome! Apple cider, hot chocolate, and cookies!" Oh how nice, I thought, and only a block away from my house!

So my mom, dad and I went, a perfect day for a Christmas open house, big white fluffy snowflakes flying! I am so glad I went, what a lovely house she had, christmas music playing, her artwork displayed on the walls and her greeting cards on the dining room table, or tucked in baskets on tables in different rooms. You could buy packages of single cards or make up your own assortment. So hard to choose! She had the most beautiful Christmas tree I had ever seen, I wished I had my camera to take a photo of it. You could see the bottom of the tree from the dining room and then you walked into what is usually her living room, and there was this giant 16 foot tree beautifully decorated with fairies and glass pine cones and acorns, a tree skirt with real pine cones scattered across it and ceramic bunnies. Oh so cute, and magical!

I asked her where she got such a beautiful tree and she said they trudged out in snow thigh deep to cut it down. It turns out she has family that lives on my street and she saw my Black Cats Staring in my window, and thought I might like an invitation and popped it in my mailbox! So how lucky is that?!

So dear readers, I send you to her website Moonboots to see the Christmas card I pick out for you! Please check out the rest of her gallery of cards, they are a delight!

Season's Greetings!