Whatcha listenin’ to?

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Music, podcasts, books – all great options in the background while I’m sewing or running. I grew up surrounded by music, mostly classical. My parents both played the piano and my dad loved listening to opera. I tried the piano, several times, and even got my Royal Conservatory of Music Grade 7 certificate, but I was just never comfortable playing in front of people. I was definitely not a natural! When we moved from Ontario to British Columbia in 2007 I donated our piano to the Conservatory to be used as a practice instrument.

In spite of, or maybe because of, my lack of musical skill, I love listening to all kinds of music. I have several playlists on my MacBook and I’m constantly updating my library with iTunes purchases. My choices include: gospel, country, oldies, movie tunes, rock and classical. Some of my current faves are: Nathaniel Rateliff and The Night Sweats, The National, Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran. On the iPod are custom playlists with tempos for LSD – (Long, Slow, Distance) – runs and for faster runs. Truckin‘ by The Grateful Dead and Bat Out Of Hell by Meatloaf can really help the legs turn over faster, as can Lose Yourself my Eminem. Nothing like a little angry rap music to speed things up!

So, here’s one of those questions that I both love and hate. (love because it makes me stop and think, but hate because it’s so hard) If you could choose only 10 songs to listen to, what would they be? Here’s my list, in no particular order:

Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen
Don’t Give Up by Peter Gabriel
We Shall Overcome by Pete Seeger
Lose Yourself by Eminem
You Can’t Always Get What You Want by The Rolling Stones
Sacrifice by Elton John
Free Fallin’ by Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers
This Love by Taylor Swift
Will You Be There by Michael Jackson
Messiah by Handel

Like I said, my choices are mixed! What would you have on your top ten list? Care/dare to share?

Thanks for reading.

Night For Life

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I made this blue quilt last winter and donated it to a friend who was organizing a gala for the Canadian Transplant Association as a way to raise awareness and express gratitude. My friend, Matt, had become very ill with an auto immune liver/bile duct disease called Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis, or PSC. In the fall of 2014 Matt had a liver transplant, and received a portion of his cousin’s liver. Both donor and recipient are doing well.

Night For Life

I’ve made this quilt twice and love its simplicity. It’s fun to make and goes together very quickly.

Back of Night For Life Gala quilt

I met Matt through an online group for people with PSC. Yes, that includes me. However, PSC affects people in many different ways and my doctors think that I will remain fairly healthy.

If you haven’t thought about organ donation, please do. If you’re procrastinating about signing the card, please don’t!

Here’s a link to some good info about PSC. Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis

Thanks for reading.

Start To Finish #1-The Idea

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My slate is almost clean and I feel that I can comfortably start a new project. The timing is perfect as it’s just three weeks until our guild has its annual quilt retreat. I’ll post more on the retreat later, but basically, it’s four days where all we do is quilt, eat and sleep.

I like to go to retreat with my project planned and my cutting done. With 40 women, you can imagine that there’s lots of distraction; not always conducive for concentrated thinking. We will have shared cutting tables set up, but I wouldn’t want to hog one of these by cutting a whole quilt.

This post is the first in a series that will follow a quilt from idea to completion. Each post will be titled ‘Start To Finish’ and will be numbered. You will be able to go back to previous posts via the Archives.

Since visiting India in 2013, I’ve wanted to make something that reflects the colour and chaos that surrounded us. Here’s a link to the blog that I kept during that trip: Samosa Sojourn . I’ve been collecting fabrics and tossing ideas around. Yesterday I laid out the pieces that I’ve found, then I culled the ones that didn’t work. It’s a good collection that includes brights from saris and markets, greens from tea plantations and rice fields, rusts and greys from the soil and the buildings.

I’ve been having trouble deciding how to put all these fabrics together. I want there to be confusion and busyness, as that’s how India is. But, there’s also such calm and beauty – how to represent that? I thought back to an own-design quilt that I made last year. (You can see it if you click ‘Finished Projects’ on the right side of the blog, it’s called Read Between the Lines.) It uses three different strip widths – 2″, 4″ and 6″. My mix of fabrics includes several muted solids and I hope that these will add a touch of calm to the riot of colour. To spice things up a bit I’ll add some random, narrow vertical inserts. With the amount of fabric that I’ve collected I should be able to make a king-sized quilt.

What a relief to finally have a plan. Now it’s time to get the fabric washed and the strips cut out. Can I wait 21 days to get started???

Thanks for following.

Collaborative Quilt

Adages

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Getting back into sewing, after a long absence, has been a real joy for me. I love the opportunity to create something unique – whether it’s to wear, to use, to sell or to gift. In my past sewing life I took on many challenges. There were Halloween costumes, drapes, cushions, kids’ clothes, ski jackets, skating costumes, stuffed sheep and my wedding dress.

Quilting is a whole new ballgame for me and my limited experience has brought to mind some well-known adages. The first is “slow and steady wins the race”. I think the quilt can sense if I’m in a rush or not focussed. Bad things happen; pieces get sewn together upside down or inside out, thread breaks, pieces don’t match like they should. Of course, the more frustrated I get, the more bad things happen. This is when it’s time to simply step away from the machine and put down any sharp tools.

Another way to express the above is “haste makes waste”. A recent project is a perfect example. I thought that there was a deadline to complete a certain something. So, I wasn’t paying attention and used a product that is not meant to be sewn. Why not, you ask? Well, this product has an adhesive on it and when you try to sew through it your needle gets all gummy and the stitches skip and break and look awful. I had to restart the whole project from scratch, and the original fabric is pretty much (s)crap!

How about “you get what you pay for”. Fabric and sewing supplies are expensive. Sure, there are good deals at the big box stores, but the quality generally isn’t great. I do use these stores for some things, where I know the brand. However, for fabric, I frequent a number of small shops where the service and quality are excellent. I’ll link my faves below. I’ve discovered a wonderful thread and am gradually using up my old stock and replacing it with Superior Thread. This thread sews like a dream and the colour selection for all of their products is amazing. Yes, it costs a bit more, but it’s worth every penny. Let’s face it, making a quilt is a lot of work, you want it to stay together and look like new for a long time.

Some of my favourite haunts for fabric and thread:

Cloth Castle in Langford. Husqvarna dealer and lots of fabric, not just quilting. Second floor is clearance and mark-downs.

Snip and Stitch in Nanaimo. Husqvarna and Janome dealer with good selection of quilt fabric and helpful staff.

The Cloth Shop in Vancouver. Small shop on Granville Island. Lovely fabric, good book selection, interesting kits and friendly staff.

Fabricana in Coquitlam. A well-organized big box store with good quality fabric, great book selection and friendly staff.

Cindy’s Threadworks on Vancouver Island. Online shopping.

Thanks for reading. Now it’s time to ”make hay while the sun shines”.

The Girlfriend Quilt – Part Two

Abbreviations

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Saturday is kind of a ‘wordy’ day for me as it’s the day that I tackle the cryptic crossword in the National Post. There are cryptic puzzles throughout the week, but I like the one constructed by Henry Rathvon and Emily Cox. Sometimes I can crack it in one sitting, usually I work at it throughout the week.

On the topic of words and language, I’ve been thinking about the abbreviations that have worked their way into my speech and writing. For example, in my sewing room right now I have two UFO’s, several WIP’s and I’m about to start some FMQ on one of the WIP’s! The UFO’s are UnFinished Objects. They differ from WIP’s (Works In Progress) in that they’re tucked away and haven’t seen action for several months. I really am working on the WIP’s. The FMQ,(Free Motion Quilting), will get me very close to finishing one of those projects. And, when I’m in need of supplies, I’ll check out my LQS, or Local Quilt Shop.

Abbreviations come into play in my sporty life too. Recently I signed up to race in the Ironman triathlon 70.3 race in Victoria in June. The distance is one-half of a full Ironman race, (140.6 miles), but instead of calling it a ‘half Ironman’, it is often referred to as a 70.3. Training has begun and that means it’s time to focus on my DPS, RPM and to throw in a weekly LSD run. DPS is Distance Per Stroke. Swimming is all about technique and greater DPS means fewer strokes, which equals less fatigue. RPM is for the bike and it is the number of Revolutions Per Minute the crank is turned. The LSD run has nothing to do with psychedelic drugs! Rather it’s a Long Slow Distance run, which is now 10 km, but will build to 20 km in the spring.

I love words and language. And right now I’m going to exchange today’s WIP for the cryptic crossword and a cold beer.

Bye for now.

Inspiration and Ideas are Everywhere

Pink Floyd Three Ways

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When I had made a few quilts, and decided that it was something that I’d like to carry on with, I mentioned to my two children that I’d love to make them each a quilt. It had to be something that they chose and, ideally, I hoped that they would participate in the making. That’s my practical side coming through – a quilt is a lot of work and I wanted to know that it would be loved and appreciated.

My son came up with an idea but was hesitant to share it with me, as he felt it was a tad complex. “Tell me,” I said, “how hard can it be?” Braden gave in and told me that he wanted a quilt that looked like the cover of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album. This one:

images

Not one to shy away from a challenge, I thought it would be fun to take this on. Together we drew, shopped, measured, cut and pieced. The black background is strips sewn together. They’re either 4″ or 6″ wide, (I can’t remember and the quilt isn’t here). We cut the background and inserted the white band and the rainbow. The centre triangle is black in the middle with graduated greys on the perimeter. It was made separately and then sewn on. We were super happy with the result.

Little did I know that the complex part of the quilt was yet to come. This had all been just a warm up exercise! Check out the photo of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here album cover. This one:

Pink-floyd-cover-1

Yup, Braden wanted this on the flip side of his quilt. How did we do it? Slowly, thoughtfully and with a great deal of patience. Braden made a full size 6′ x 6′ drawing, which we divided into 4″ horizontal strips. Each strip was traced onto freezer paper, then numbered and colour-coded, so we’d know what pieces to join together. Here’s what one strip looks like:

We added 1/4″ for seam allowances and then stitched each horizontal row together. We pressed each seam as we went along and there were several instances of ‘unsewing/resewing’, especially with the small, curvy pieces. As each horizontal row was completed we added it to the one above, to make sure we were on track. Here’s a photo of the first few assembled rows:

IMG_3655_1024

It was very fun to watch as it all came together. Braden added the jagged side edges and I think it makes a unique statement. Once the top was assembled we made appliqués of the two men and fused them to it. The appliqués were then stitched on using a satin stitch.

We cleaned up the loose threads, straightened the edges, layered it into a quilt sandwich and decided to carry on with the Pink Floyd theme and quilt it like the cover of The Wall, this one:

Braden had helped with all aspects of the design and construction of this project. But, by the time we got ready to quilt it, he had to move away for work. I got the quilting done and finished it off with a narrow black binding and a label.

What a sense of satisfaction! Sure, there are lots of things that I’d do differently, so as a learning experience it was invaluable. Best of all, it was a way to spend time with Braden; problem solving, sharing my craft with him and creating memories.

Click on any of the photos below to get enlarged views of the finished quilt.

: ‘A’ Side

: ‘B’ Side

: Label

The Girlfriend Quilt

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: Circa 1975

: 2015

I met Cheryl and Laura when our family moved to Victoria in 1969. We immediately became friends and have stayed best pals since then. Even though they live in Victoria and I’m in Vancouver we see each other often. Our husbands are close friends as well and we all get together for a couple of weekends each year.

Each summer the six of us gather at our home on Denman Island for a weekend. We often do a craft on those weekends. In 2014 I wanted to do a special project with the girls – a Girlfriend Quilt. The instructions were for each of us to purchase six fat quarters, (18″ x 22″ pre-cut fabric pieces). They could be anything that we liked, even if they didn’t go together, and could include one solid colour. No shopping together, and no sharing; this was to be a surprise.

I pre-cut the background strips, based on what the girls told me they’d like. When we were together we revealed our fabrics, cut them into 4 1/2″ squares and began to place them according to a pattern that I’d drawn up. This was the fun part because the ‘rules’ stipulated that we had to use at least one of all of the fabrics. Our tastes are very different. Cheryl loves muted tones. Laura loves bright and bold colours and I tend toward the unusual novelty pieces. It was hard to imagine how this variety of choices would look together.

Fast forward another month or so and the three quilts had been pieced, quilted and bound. I have to say that they surpassed my expectation. They look great and the girls love them. I have a vision of the three of us, in 30 years, sitting with our Girlfriend Quilts wrapped around our legs and laughing like we have for the past 46 years.