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!

Oldies But Goodies Part 1

When I was working on my PhD, I took an evening course in quilting offered by the local school board, for something to do as a relaxing change of pace from all the academic work.  I remember the teacher was a wonderfully skilled, older lady with many examples of quilts and quilted crafts.  On the first night, she gave us each a little block that she had prepared, with a preprinted mini-panel front, all nicely basted with Mountain Mist polyester batting inside and muslin on the back, and she asked us to use our best stitches to hand quilt along the preprinted lines.  She wanted to see what skills we brought to the class.  I remember being quite anxious as she inspected mine, and she told me I should strive for smaller stitches that wouldn't catch, although she did say that they were nice and even.  I still have that little square somewhere.  I used it for a needle holder for years and years.  I actually went looking for it to take a photo for the blog, but I couldn't find it.  I did, however, find some of the other things I was looking for.

This is a little lap quilt I made for my grandmother.  It's a bargello pattern that is much easier than it looks.  I did a one-day workshop at my LQS in Toronto at the time - and have very clear memories of hours and hours of rotary cutting and strip piecing like a demon, trying to get it all pieced by the end of the day, because the top was pinned to the design wall and couldn't easily be reconstructed at home.

On a student budget, I got all my backing fabric from the sale bin.  I was lucky to find one that fit so well.  Although it has faded a bit from use, the colours are brighter than they seem in the photos.

And here is a little vest that I made for my daughter when she was about two and a half.  I'm pretty sure this is the last thing I made before  my loooong hiatus from quilting.  I got a random vest pattern from the fabric store, Simplicity or some such.  I cut out the pattern pieces and eyeballed how big a pieced section I would need for the back and two front pieces in order to fit the pattern on.

I love the purples, greens and blues, and isn't it funny that those are the colours my daughter chose for her pinwheel quilt that I'm making now?

I came across the vest this summer when my husband and I devoted a week to cleaning out the basement.  Among other things, I tackled all the boxes of baby clothes, toys, baby bedding, etc.  For a while over the years, we thought we might use all that again, but the need never arose.  It was hard to say goodbye to the tiny shoes and sweaters!  I allowed myself to keep what would fill one large Rubbermaid tub.  I joked with my daughter that she could use this vest for her children, as long as she named them Maeve or Steve, since I could easily applique the extra letters on.  Here's the inside of this reversible vest.

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*