Canada Day

Happy Canada Day!

We live in a very small town in  Canada.  Our Canada Day celebrations are proportionate to our population.  This is the parade that marched on our small town's Main Street.

My husband and I walked uptown on Canada Day to participate in the celebrations.  We enjoyed a piece of this patriotic flag cake that was cut and served by the Mayor and Council members to all who attended the celebrations. 

We are not fans of the heavy traffic that seems to be on the roads on long weekends--everyone seems to be headed out of the valley.  Because of this, we tend to stay close to home on long weekends.  Low key, small town celebrations are just our speed it seems.

Western Washington Quilt Shop Hop

June 22 to 26, 2011 was the Western Washington Quilt Shop Hop.  I have seen this "hop" advertised in previous years, but I never made the trek before now.  This year, with my husband and daughter both working on Saturday, I decided I would venture out and use the "hop" as an opportunity to seek out and visit some new quilt shops south of the border.

There were over 50 shops on the list this year.  I only visited the 5 shops in the Lynden/Bellingham area:  Fourth Corner Quilts and Calico Country in Bellingham and The Needle & I, Folktales, Fabric-Etc, and Tangled Threads in Lynden.  I remembered to take along my camera, however, as I went to use it the first time I realized I forgot the memory card at home.  :( 

I also stopped at Joann's where I purchased the following black/white fabrics.  I have a plan in mind for these so they shouldn't sit in the stash for long.

These are some of my other purchases.  I am saving animal skin fabrics to make a quilt someday for my daughter.  The blue fabric is for a Hawaiian themed quilt I have in the planning stages.  The Warm Tater batting is to make a few microwave baked potato cookers.  The Shape Cut ruler is something I have wanted for some time and I decided to use my 40% off coupon from Joann's to purchase one. 

I also purchased a couple of patterns:



April FAB Birthday Challenge

Cher's birthday was April 27.  Life got in the way and we had to delay birthday party celebrations until June 16.  We had one two hour window in the evening on that day where all 5 FABs were available.

Cher opened each present and described the contents in detail until the pictures could be distributed through the e-mail system.

I made Cher place mats.  (pattern:  Take Four Place Mats by Something Sew Fine / Cary Flanagan).  I downloaded the pattern from Quiltwoman.com. 

I love the patterns that you can download from Quiltwoman.com--no shipping costs and no waiting for mail delivery to bring the pattern to your house.  You place your order on line and shortly thereafter, the pattern is available for printing from your e-mail Inbox. 

I made the place mats reversible.  Two place mats had Valentine's Day fabric on the back and two place mats had Easter fabric on the back.

 

To match the fabric on the front and back of each place mat, I made the binding reversible.

 For fun and because Cher's birthday is near Easter, I included one Easter place mat / table topper.  This Easter Egg pattern was designed by one of our Quilt Guild members during our Guild's Place mat of the Month program this year.

The egg is reversible as well.

My friend started to call these, Cadbury eggs.  I think the name is great!

A Short Trip

DH and I just arrived back home from a quick trip to the Prairies. On our way home we passed through Dog River (Rouleau, Sask)--home of the TV series, Corner Gas.

Town of Rouleau: http://www.townofrouleau.com/

I was glad to hear that the site is being preserved for future filming of new episodes of Corner Gas--not just because I enjoyed watching the show, but because there may be less incentive to tear down this wonderful icon of the Prairie--the old-style wooden grain elevator.

This was DH's first visit to Rouleau since the filming of Corner Gas started so we had to get his picture in front of the "station".

We stopped overnight at Canmore, Alberta. While in Canmore, we looked up the local quilt shop: The Sugar Pine Company. http://www.thesugarpine.com/

The Sugar Pine Company was a featured quilt shop in Quilt Sampler Magazine in 2005.

This quilt shop is located in the Rocky Mountains where there is no shortage of inspirational scenery.

The shop is huge with every nook and cranny full of quilty goodness. I could have stayed for hours, but I promised DH that my visit would be brief. :)

This was a beautiful quilt that showcases everything Alberta - from the wild rose to the oil rig.

I bought a copy of the pattern to make this cute little grain elevator wall hanging. This pattern is called, Golden Harvest and is by Joan's Own Creations (Joan Statz) of Alix, Alberta.

I picked up a kit to make the bear wall hanging in the lower right corner of this photo (wall hanging with two bears in the shadows of the mountains). The pattern is called, Three Sisters and Bears and is by Diane McGregor of Castilleja Cotton in Calgary, Alberta.

I loved this cat wall hanging.

The next morning, we were back on the road - headed through the mountains to home.

Halloween Contemporized Country Squares

This quilt has been finished since March 22, 2011, but I have neglected to post pictures.

This quilt is made from some of my Halloween fabrics and is called Contemporized Country Squares. I purchased the pattern from The Stitchery while visiting in Alberta last year. http://silverthimblequilting.blogspot.com/2010/08/alberta-holiday-i.html

Cacti BQ Quilt

Today was the last day of my 5 day Easter weekend holiday. Tomorrow, it is back to my day job. The weekend was filled with the usual weekend activities--laundry, grocery shopping, vacuuming, and dusting. Good Friday we enjoyed a special family meal in celebration of Easter. The extra long weekend also afforded time for quilting.

I finished off a super secret project that I can not share pictures of right now and I worked on a project for me.

While in Arizona in February 2009, I purchased two panels of cacti prints from the Santa Fe fabric line by RJR. I set the blocks together using the BQ pattern from Maple Island Quilts after seeing a quilt made by Kathleen Moorhead Johnson http://www.augustwindquiltdesigns.com/page13.html.




The dark Southwest print to the left of my quilt top is a fabric from the same line as the cacti blocks. Although I purchased this fabric with the intention of using it as a border, I am not sure I like it with this quilt top. I will have to think further on this. Also, I still have some more cacti blocks so I am thinking of adding another row of blocks before calling this one finished.

New Quilting Techniques

Yesterday I took a class taught by Maureen Wood - http://quiltworx.com/teacher/teacher.php?tchTeacher=maureenwood. The class was was on the Judy Niemeyer quilt, Desert Sky. These are the two blocks I finished in class.

Maureen chose this pattern because it would give us an opportunity to work on two techniques--paper piecing and curved piecing. I thoroughly enjoyed the class! I have dabbled in both techniques in the past but did not enjoy doing them so they remained on my list of things to avoid. Maureen promised us that we would enjoy the hints she had to share and we would leave the class changing our mind about the techniques. Maureen was right! Judy Niemeyer has simplified both techniques to the point that they are almost effortless when done her way.
Something else I have always wanted to do was reversible binding. After researching several sites on the Internet for this technique, I settled on the method described by Betty Cotton.http://www.americaquiltscreatively.com/episodes/AQc_202.pdf

These are photos of my little sample that I made to try out the technique. I will be sure to try this binding technique on a future project where the backing I have chosen dictates a different colour binding than the front of the quilt.

I enjoyed adding these new techniques to my quilting tool kit--paper piecing, curved piecing, and reversible binding. Not bad for a weekend.