Voila

Today I finally finished Trevor's quilt top. I am very pleased with the quilt overall even though it did not turn out anything like I originally envisioned. That happens a lot.

It will be a lap quilt... 56" square.

The outside border is not black, but a dark, dark green. Nice and rich. Next step will be quilting, so I am off to get batting tomorrow. The binding will be the same brown stripe as in the two narrow borders.

I bought a new Husqvarna sewing machine on Thursday. It made the last few stages of this quilt much easier. I will be a more accurate sewer with the custom 1/4" stitch adjustor on the machine.

A blog for Sam

This post is for Sam.

I have been away on a wonderful visit to family and friends in the Kootenays. We began with a lovely family memorial for my Grandma who passed away in April. We went on to Nelson and stayed with my husband's brother and his wife... had a good visit with parents and nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles. We then spent three fun days with our good friends in Salmo. It was nice to get back to the mountains, but I did miss the big sky.

Now I am home again. Working on patterns, sewing, doing a little graphic design and planning for the next holiday to Vancouver Island.

Today I spent more time on Trevor's quilt top. I am pausing while I think of what to do with it next. So many possibilities, so hard to choose just one.

At Last

Dyes arrived! Play time.

Time is Flying

Good Morning,

I thought I would try to blog everyday, but time goes too quickly to keep track of my life that closely. Here it is Thursday and I haven't blogged since Sunday!

I have been writing out my pattern directions for my sheep quilts sporadically all week. They are coming along. The quilts themselves are completed and waiting to be photographed for the envelope of the pattern. I'm happy with how they turned out.

Last week I was going to start dying my center graphic from the "spring" quilt I designed. I was delayed by the fact that our town does not have any setacolour dyes... anywhere. I ordered the dyes from Maiwa Handprints on Granville Island inVancouver last Friday and found out yesterday they did not have record of my order. Now that is straightened out... my dyes are in the mail and I hope, hope, hope they will be here by Tuesday at the latest. Sometimes creativity has bumps along the way.

In the meantime I have been working on the rest of this spring quilt for my son Trevor. I took many of my green bali fat quarters and cut them up into 4.5" squares. I've cut and sewn and cut and sewn and now they are all 3.25" squares with triangles of four colours in each square. I'm trying to give a sense of leaves in sunlight and wind against a blue sky... I really like the results so far and can hardly wait to sew things together.

Father's Day

Today is Father's Day. Our children are young adults now and were in no hurry to get up and make their Dad breakfast. Russell and I enjoyed a breakfast out at Denny's all by ourselves... very nice at 8:30 in the morning.

I spent the rest of the morning taking photographs of the wild roses native to Alberta. I do have a project in mind, but for now I am just making photographic notes.

Of course, while on the photo hunt for roses, I found a plethora of other things. Ants, red-coloured bugs that looked like weevils, grasses, dandelion puffs and a beautiful moth I have chosen to name the "Solstice Moth" since it is the longest day of the year.

We celebrated Father's day with a crab feed. My beautiful, sensitive daughter is ruthless when it comes to boiling crabs. She had a bit of a fight on her hands when one of the crabs seem to wake up enough to grab her oven mit and try to escape. I'm sorry to say the crab lost and didn't last long in the hot tub (crab pot).

All in all a good day. Hope everyone else had a good solstice as well.

New Growth

This week I started designing my son's graduation quilt. He graduated in 2008, so I am a little behind. I will catch up quickly :-)

Trevor described to me the quilt he wanted... "I would like you to capture the first green of spring on the trees". This enticing (and overwhelming) description has been running through my mind for two springs now and I have a large stock of photographs I took in May and June 2008 and 2009. Finally I have decided on the basis of a design. The graphic I created in CorelDraw from a sketch of mine (above) is a tonal rendition... it will be bright greens when it is finished and will eventually morph into a full-size quilt.

I looked through my stash and just don't have quite the right colours... even though I've been collecting "Spring-like" green fabric for the past two years. After going on a search through our local quilt shop again today, I've decided it's time to dye the colours I want.

I've done this before for a polar bear quilt I made for a friend. It seems I know the colours in my head, but the fabric has not been made yet. All I can do is turn to my own resources for the fabric.

I'm excited to go buy the dyes today. I only need two or three colours and I will mix what I need from that. Art as science... here we come. I'll share the results soon.

The sheep quilts are almost done, only a binding to finish sewing on by hand and some directions for the pattern to write. Then put it in a package and away I go to market, to market!

Fibre Art Network

In April I re-joined the Fibre Art Network. This is a group of Western Canadian art quilters/fibre artists that have joined their efforts to promote quilting as art. They have had many successful exhibitions in the last few years.
This week I decided to become part of this group on their web site and today my profile is up on their gallery pages. It is exciting to see my work alongside this prestigious group of artists.
Have a look!

Pondering

Today is a quiet day. I spent several hours in my studio quilting on my sheep quilts. They are getting closer to being finished and I will be free of them :-) It is quiet today because our dog has gone in for surgery on her knee. Normally Rosie follows me everywhere, begs to play and helps continuously by picking up pins off my studio floor, shredding fabric, or trying to steal bits of paper out of my studio trash bin. It is amazing how focused I was today without all these distractions, but I would not give her up for anything.

The vet called and the surgery went fine. She will be slow for the next few weeks, but will be back to disrupting my creativity before long. Quilting is very boring without friends!

Canadian

I know I'm Canadian because the first thing I do in the morning is check the weather. I don't go to the internet, I just look out my window.

I can pat myself on the back today! Instead of heading outside into the sunshine, I went downstairs to my studio and worked on my quilts. I will work on them again this afternoon. I am itching to work on other projects, but cannot until I get my patterns up for sale.

I have to put on my graphic design hat this afternoon to meet with the Volunteer Services Bureau. I may volunteer time as a graphic designer with this association... we'll see if I can supply them with some help.

Marcy

Gardening

Well, it is Monday morning (a bright, sunny one I might add) and I have not finished developing my patterns. There is a reason for this, of course. The weekend turned out to be reasonably warm and very sunny... so I chose to finish building my gardens, rather than spend the days in my studio.

Studio time will not conflict with outside time once I finish my sheep quilt patterns because the next project on the list is sun-print fabric. This must be created outside under the sun on the back deck, so I will no longer be torn between studio and sun.

This picture, below is my newest garden along the side of my house. I also created a little garden along the brick wall in front of my house (second picture below). Since I tend to mow the lawn lately, I thought it would be a lot less trimming if I edged all my gardens with bricks... it took a couple of weeks, but is now finished and gives all the gardens a more finished look.

I have graphic design work for a client this week, which is next on my list today. And my patterns will get finished this week as well. I need them to be finished so I can get out in the sun.

Marcy