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!

Blog Inaug!

There's no better way to inaugurate a quilting blog than by introducing a new quilt!  Here's the one I just finished.  I was inspired to do this one by the coin quilt-along on Flickr, plus the rolls of 6" strips of Kaffe Fasset fabric sold by my LQS.  I augmented with additional pinks from my stash.

The quilt is machine quilted with King Tut thread, variegated in pinks.  It's the first time I've done any free-motion quilting with my new (to me) Pfaff.  I'm more or less pleased, although there are some wonky bits.  As usual, my corners are a disaster (no photos of those).

I've discovered that if I set my laptop on my notions box, I can see the screen perfectly over the top of my machine.  So I have been a steady customer at the local independent video store while finishing this quilt.  I find that old movies are best, especially musicals!  One of my rentals was Valley of the Dolls, which I had never seen.  Quite a racy movie in its day, although it seems quite tame today.  The DVD box and the opening credit sequence was full of bright pinks and oranges, very similar to the fabric I was working with.  And so it seemed like the perfect name for this quilt: Valley of the Dolls.

 I wasn't sure about this quilt initially, and I made seat-of-the-pants decisions as I went.  For example, the original KF strips were 6" wide, so I planned 6 x 2 1/2" coins and 2 1/2" sashing.  I sewed all the dark and light pairs and then decided that the coins were too much longer than they were wide.  Does that make sense? They were more like lozenges than the effect I wanted.  The strips at the top and bottom were the original size of the coins, so you can see what I mean.  So I lopped off an inch and a half from all the pairs and was much happier with the size.  I have real problems throwing out scraps, so I kept those lopped-off nubbins.  When I was ready to do some kind of pieced detail for the backing, there they were!  So as I got further into it, it began to grow on me.  And now I think it's so glam and so fab, I hate to part with it.  If I have to pick a fault, it's a touch too small.  At 48" x 60", it's more of a lap quilt than a nap quilt.  

Plus, I wasn't as careful as I could be about block placement - there are coins with identical fabrics too close to others in places.  And the mitred corners of the binding.  Oy.  Those are my downfall.  

And there's a small spot in the middle of the quilt that seems not to have gotten quilted.  How did that happen?  But on the other hand, it's quilted with bamboo batting and has a delicious drape.

It's for my mother-in-law, a lovely with-it woman who loves colour as much as I do. 

P.S.  For those who observe, Shana Tova!