Happy Thanksgiving!

After 26 years in Canada, I've never really gotten used to how early Thanksgiving is celebrated here.  The harvest is earlier because of the weather, so it makes sense.  But often, this time of the year is still quite warm and it lacks the crispness and snap of cool weather that I think of as the hallmark of Thanksgiving.

Not this year, though!  There was frost all over everything this morning, and the heat was on when we got up.  Brrr!  The good news is that I won't be sweltering in the kitchen over the turkey, as I have on more moderate Thanksgivings.

My mother-in-law is with us for Thanksgiving, and I gifted her with the Valley of the Dolls quilt.  She liked it very much.


I hope to finish the Blue Meanies today.  I have sewn on about 40% of the binding.  Here's a sneak peek.

Thanksgiving is a time to reflect on and be grateful for what we have been given.  I have so many blessings that I can't number them all.  Here are the two for which I am most grateful.


Happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow Canucks!  I hope you've been able to celebrate your gratitude with your family around you!

Monday Night Quilting

Yesterday, I went into my place of work, which happens to be a university.  It was a Sunday afternoon, and no one was around, but me and my pal Lindsay, who is learning to quilt.  We both brought our quilt tops and various other quiltesque accoutrements into an empty classroom that had the most wonderful four by eight foot tables.  We each pushed two of those tables together, so we both had glorious 8 foot square spaces to work on.  In all my years of quilting, this is the first time I have had that much space to spread out, without bending over on the floor.  It was seriously awesome!  It made the whole quilt sandwich construction thing a piece of yummy chocolate cake!  We used the spray basting, but as I am by nature a pessimist, we pinned, as well.  Lindsay was working on a sweet baby quilt from a Denyse Schmidt pattern, and I was assembling the Blue Meanies quilt, with a pieced backing that I'm not prepared to show at the moment.

Tonight I started quilting it.  I'm trying a sticks-and-boxes kind of effect, quite different from what I've done before.  We'll see how it turns out.  This is the part where I always feel a bit daunted at how much there is to do.  I filled four bobbins to begin, but was appalled to see how little acreage one bobbin's worth is.  Felt like I'd hardly made a dent.  Oh well.  We'll get there.

Getting There

My brain goes to sleep when I'm fasting on Yom Kippur, but I did manage to trim and true all my blocks for the Whirlygig quilt without nipping my fingers off. There are 72 blocks at 7 1/2" square, to make up into 56 x 63" quilt top. So it will be twice as wide as the blocks in the photo and a bit longer. I'm trying to decide whether I want a border or not.

Last night we broke the fast at the home of some friends. I headed straight for the coffee, and boy did it hit me like a kick from a mule! My headache vanished immediately, and I paid elaborate compliments to the blintzes, kugel and smoked salmon. But I paid the price of that java jolt later by not being able to sleep at all. The battery from my laptop ran out at 3.40am, but not before I had spent a small fortune ordering fabric online. Oy!

Pinwheels

My daughter is sixteen and has requested a quilt.  I asked her what kind of quilt she wanted, because it had to be something that I could stand working on, natch!   She didn't want anything that had too much going on in terms of pattern, perhaps she's still in the ugh, don't let my carrots touch my brisket phase of life.  She looked at several quilts online and rejected many of my suggestions as too busy.  But pinwheels were simple and clean enough to suit her.

I'm using another roll of Kaffe Fasset from my LQS and other assorted blues, purples and greens.  The background is an off-white figured with a pale blue motif.  Here are some of the fabrics.

The blocks are 7 1/2" when finished.  I'm planning on using 72 blocks, which will make it a good size.  I really like how this pinwheel tutorial showed the template taped to the bottom of the ruler.  I hate using templates, because they are often so small and fiddly, especially homemade ones, and I'm afraid I'm going to rotary cut my fingers off.  But this one was perfect; just lay the ruler over the rectangle with the template lined up on the corners and slash away!  Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

Today after synagogue I got into my comfy drawers and pieced half the blocks.  Since the fabric was folded before I cut it, selvedge to selvedge, like normal, it means half the pinwheels will spin one way and the remaining half will spin the other way (we'll say they're from Australia).  The daughter wasn't too pleased with that idea, and reminded me she gets motion sickness.  Sheesh!

Issues so far:  my blocks are shockingly untrue.  I am using my twenty year old rulers which predate the non-slip finish that the new ones have, and this must be causing me some grief when I cut the strips from the main piece of fabric.  Although I don't recall such a problem back in the day when I was first quilting with them. Also, for the first time, I am not washing my fabric before cutting it.  That's because I did wash the 6" strips for the Valley of the Dolls quilt and the resulting shredding from the cut edges of 20 pieces of fabric had to be seen to be believed.  It took ages to pick each one apart from the rat's nest.  Still it goes against the grain not to wash the fabric.  I think you get a fine "crinkly goodness" anyway, since the batting is not washed pre-assembly.  Anyway, I feel like not washing makes it hard for me to find the true grain of the fabric, although this is probably just another excuse for hasty work that leads to errors.  Ah well, it will all come straight in the end. *fingers crossed*