It's There

I'm tired.

It's been a long day and a heart-breaking week -- watching as more of what made Canada's Neighbour (with a 'u') to the South great, disintegrate as the vote to impeach didn't pass, as DT continues his buffoonery and insults, as his smarmy face shows up next to that of an accused child molester and trafficker of whom he disavows any knowledge.

As much of his party refuses to condemn him.

It's heart-breaking.

Closer to home, I've been struggling for over 24 hours to clean the quilt I made for my nephew's birthday (July 5).

It was beautifully quilted by my long-armer; I picked it up Friday a.m. and bound it over the weekend.

Then I washed it.  And some **##@@$$!! PRE-WASHED red fabric bled into the white print that dominates the sashing and background.

Most of yesterday and today I have worked to try to fix this...with no change.  There is one last shot -- when I get to The Shop or to a larger grocery tomorrow to buy 'colour catchers' -- YES, with a 'u', because that's how we roll up here.

I took out part of my frustration by mowing my backyard in the 23 C of the early afternoon, at top speed -- I finished in 40 minutes what usually takes 60. 😮

I've eaten chocolate and had perhaps a drink or two too many.  I yelled (alone, in my house) at the Almighty, accusing HIM (it's always a 'him' when I am angry) of ignoring goodness here on earth and sitting back on HIS "cloud", being mightily entertained by HIS puny humans in some HIM-forsaken "reality show", not doing a darned thing about it.

And then...

I decided to crawl into bed with the new issue of Quilting Arts magazine that arrived in today's mail.  And there it was: a spread of Season After Season...the SAQA Global exhibit in which I have a piece.

And then there was the piece -- on page 20.  Who cares if the Americans can't spell "colour" to save their souls?  It's there -- full out -- with the blurb I wrote (misspelling notwithstanding)...

And suddenly...I feel better. 

Hopeful.

Maybe I really can get up tomorrow and go to work at The Shop.

And go back to the Sewdio on Friday for another stint at the "Wall-to-Bed Project".

Maybe I can keep on keeping on...and let HER take care of DT and DT's ilk...and all the problems they're causing for their country and the rest of human kind.

Just maybe...there's still hope.

Incarnation to Resurrection:
Celebrating the Colours of the Church Year
(C) 2018

Lucky 13

As it were.  I now have 13 miniatures ready for the Lacombe Art Sale -- and one mat left -- not counting the one that sold. I've been working steadily at these for the past several weeks, and it's been awhile since I showed my process, so I thought I'd keep track of the steps today.

It generally begins with a photo.  Here's the inspiration for my latest miniature, trimmed to eliminate some of the superfluous detail.  (I have a bad habit of getting caught up in the details, so if I can cut some out at the very beginning, that's a Good Thing.)

This tree is on the eastern edge of my back yard.  It's some sort of flowering fruit tree (not crab-apples; the fruit is too small), and in the spring it's chock-a-block full of pale pink blossoms.

Then I audition fabric.  In this case it was pretty simple: blue, white, and a brown-on-black print for the tree trunk:

I have trouble with proportion.  The great thing about these miniatures is that they're to be matted so that only 5" x 7" shows...so I print off my photo as a 5" x 7", and am able to trace from there and get the size pretty well right.  And yes, for this piece, I'm leaving out the clutter of the house on the other street and extraneous trees, etc.  :-)

Here's how it might fit inside a mat:

Next, I fuse everything down to a foundation fabric.  For the background, I apply fusible web to the foundation (light-weight muslin), and then iron down the sky and snow (in this case).  The tree had its own fusible web.

In addition to the tree, there are a couple of bird houses to add -- a bit finicky, even for my small hands, but I persisted!  Oh... and I wanted to put in some shadow at the base of the tree.

The bird houses have roofs, and one of the roofs has snow:

Once that was done, I moved to quilting.  Sometimes I have thread painting to do first but in this case, I did it as part of the quilting.  Sorry -- I forgot to take a photo of the quilting before I matted the piece!

Here's the finished piece: "Pristine II: For the Birds" -- quilted, including an impression of dear tracks off on the left-hand side, shaded with a bit of InkTense (C) pencil.  A bit of snow was added to the shaded side of the tree trunk, and a few branches quilted on using a combination of very narrow satin stitch and simple straight stitch -- by machine.  Bird house details were added with Pitt (C) pen.

In addition to this piece, I started on my 12" square for the SAQA Benefit Auction.  Having left behind the idea of doing "Can You Hear Me Now?" in a larger size, I got the idea to do a nearly white-on-white piece, based on the hoarefrost we've had here the past few mornings.  I took a photo of the ornamental crab in my front yard and trimmed it down to capture what I wanted:

Next, I printed it on ExtravOrganza (C),which I then fused with Misty Fuse  to a white-on-white cotton print.  That's where I left it for now...on my design wall.  I have to do some sampling with a couple of different metallic threads that I want to use to free-motion quilt some of the branches -- and I'll do that tomorrow morning when I'm fresh!

Taking a break, I spent about 90 minutes with Quilting Arts on a free webinar about social media as an art business tool.  The presenter was Jane Davila.  I'm pretty comfortable using just Facebook and my blog.  However, I figure I'd see if there were some new ideas and information, and I learned a few things.  I may just re-visit my Linked-In profile and spice it up a bit.  I also learned how to go on Pinterest to find out what bits of my work have been 'stolen' or pinned without credit...and to get the code to put on my blog, should I decide I want to stop it.  That was worth the time, right there!

While I was listening -- and taking a few notes -- I finished off the front of that sleeveless pullover I've been knitting.  All that's left is to join the shoulders, pick up stitches for the neck -- I think I'm going to do a mock turtle rather than a full one -- and then finish the sleeves and sew the side seams and ends.  Maybe it'll be ready for my trip to Santa Fe, eh?

Here's what the front looked like just before I finished it off:

The sun is high, it's close to 7 C out there, and I'm off for a jog.  Linking to WIP Wednesday before I go...so  take a break yourself and see what everyone is up to over at The Needle and Thread Network!

Last But Not Least

Week Three of my 10th "Blog-aversary" celebrations begins now -- and it's all about fabric -- or at least, quilting with it.

In the scheme of things, I haven't been quilting that long.  I learned to knit from my mother -- as I mentioned last week -- around age 8.  Mom knit till she couldn't see to do so (about age 85).  Her mother knit (Grandma D died in her seventies, when I was a toddler); my father's mother knit, my father's sister -- my dear Aunt A -- knit into her early nineties (she died at 94 in 2002).

But my Grandma R -- my father's mother -- was also a superb seamstress who created patterns out of newspaper and made her farm family's clothes, all on a treadle machine, and who quilted.  I still have a pink and white single Irish chain that she made me, which I used on my bed in my first apartment, but which was torn one summer when I was away and someone else was 'apartment-sitting' for me.  It now hangs on a quilt rack in my guest room, along with several of the quilts her daughter -- Aunt A -- made for me, and the Golden Wedding Ring given my parents (I commissioned it) on the occasion of their 25th wedding anniversary.  These quilts are pieced by machine, but all hand quilted by a group of women in my home town who met regularly around a frame.  I'm not sure if my Aunt A was one of them or not.  And most of them were constructed of fabric scraps -- many sent to her by me -- from garment sewing.  The only 'new' fabric bought for them, latterly, was for backing and maybe backgrounds or binding.

I still use several of these quilts on the two beds in my home, but they are wearing, and so I joined Bonnie Hunter's Mystery Quilt-along for the past two years so that now I have tops to replace them.  I enjoy the quilt-alongs so much, and have enough stash so that I can see myself doing this for a few more years at least!

I've sewn since about age 11, when I took my first Home Economics classes in Grade 6.  Half the year was spent cooking and half, sewing.  I'd just started to embroider at that stage, and still have the little felt needle-book we each had to make as the first project in our sewing class.  I think in Grade 7 we made an apron -- mine was turquoise and white gingham, and I think I still have it somewhere (it still fits!).  In Grade 8 we learned gathers and casings with a peasant blouse and gathered skirt.  By Grade 9 things were more complex, and I think that's the year I made a wool suit -- straight skirt with waistband and back zipper, and a jacket with a notched collar and bound button holes.  I wore that thing for years whenever I had to look particularly spiffy for lunch or a meeting or function.  My last year of Home Economics was, as I recall, Grade 10 -- I took 10 and 11 together and wrote my final exam at the end of that year.  The project was home decor-related and my first experience with a teacher (not the one who'd taught me to that point) who had no imagination.  But that's another story!

When I got my own apartment in university, my parents bought me a second-hand portable sewing machine that weighed a TON and had all kinds of fancy 'bobbins' for decorative stitches, which I rarely used.  I used that machine till one day, in my married-with-kids life, I dropped it, and it died.  I'd been making clothes for myself and the kids, but by this time my daughter was taking sewing lessons and making her own.  Her teacher was a neighbour who had a "Kids Can Sew" program through Husqvarna, and when after the first three years she had to turn over her sewing machines, she offered me one at her original cost -- and carried the warranty on it for a year.  I was thrilled!  It had a free-arm!  Now I could do set-in sleeves without sweating!

Of course, by then I was making fewer garments altogether, let alone setting in sleeves!  And my DH's Type 1 Diabetes was really starting to rear its ugly head, meaning that my stress level was going 'way up.

Enter two dear friends who are quilters.  They opined that cutting and sewing strips of fabric would soothe me, and give me an outlet besides knitting and cross-stitch (the type of embroidery I favoured at the time).  I fell for it, went to a couple of demo-type classes...and then found My Sewing Room (smaller then than it is now) and the Magic Tiles quilt pattern by Kathleen Bissett...and fell all the way down that rabbit hole.

I took a few classes in silk ribbon work and crazy quilting, having found the CQ block done by my grandmother -- Maria Flood McIntosh -- with her maiden initials and the date embroidered on it (1894).

Then I saw an exhibit of patchwork and contemporary embroidery by the City and Guilds students of Gail Harker (there was a class of 8 in Calgary, which she taught as a single group, even coming up from Oak Harbor, WA to do so)...and I said to one of those dear quilting friends, "I have to do this".  I met Anna Hergert there...took a class from her, and another and another...and..."The rest", as They say, "is history".

Here's the last of the three Goodie Packs I prepared as gifts for the Gentle Readers who, by virtue of commenting on blog posts through the past couple of weeks, rendered themselves eligible.  All comments from Weeks One and Two have been dispensed with, for a fresh start.  Again this week, the winner of the package shown below will be drawn from all the readers who leave comments between when this post goes 'live' into cyber-space, and about 8 a.m. Mountain Standard Time on March 1, when I make the final draw and the party ends...

Remember: your name is entered each time you comment, whether on this particular post or on subsequent posts through the week, even if you comment every day.  :-)

This last gift pack includes:

• A pristine copy of Quilting Arts magazine -- June/July 2012 (they sent me two!), which includes an article by cyber-friend and SAQA colleague, Regina Dunn, as well as others by Lyric Kinard and Jane Davila and my every-issue-favourite, The Goddess of the Last Minute, Robbie Joy Eklow;
• A pristine copy of quirky quilting: 20 easy and fun projects by Tomme J. Fent; 
• A pristine quilter's journal -- A Patchwork Notebook -- from quilting legend, Jinny Beyer;
• And the pattern and fabric for "4-Patch Furrows".  The pattern is from Quilt Country and the fabric is enough for the top, including the 'zinger' border (the blue) and outer border.  (You're on your own for backing and batting for this 70" x 99" quilt top -- or for whatever else you decide to do with the fabric!).

And just as in previous weeks, there'll likely be a surprise gift or two given away between now and next Friday...Y'all come back soon, y'hear?  :-)

Happy Anniversary...


To Quilting Arts Magazine!  This is the only commercial magazine to which I subscribe on a regular basis -- and I've been a steady reader since sometime in 2003.  A few years after that, I came upon many back issues at Out of Hand, one of my very favourite Calgary needlework shops.  There I was also able to add the reprint of the Premier Issue to my collection.  


I now have several magazine holders of the magazine, lined up in chronological order -- most with sticky notes applied as tabs to help me find favourite articles.  I've been reading it long enough to see in print articles by a cyberfriend, and several cyber-teachers: Susan Brubaker Knapp, Melanie Testa, Sue Bleiweiss, and Jude Hill...to name but a few.


And this fall, when my subscription ended, I renewed it -- in digital format.  While I dearly love the hard copy of this particular magazine -- so much information! So much colour!  So much eye candy! -- I now live in smaller quarters than I did two short years ago, and feel that online/save to CD is the way to go...(I still love hard copy books, so can't admit 100% to doing digitizing a magazine for nobler reasons than saving space...)


So far, I haven't been tempted to submit and article or tip, or to enter a Reader Challenge.  I did enter a Calendar competition a couple of years ago -- unsuccessfully...but no matter.  I still love and enjoy this publication, and wish Pokey Bolton and her entire staff many more years of successful publishing.  All the best!