Happy Campers!

It's been another good week -- even if (already!) we're deep into fall in these parts, such that there's a frost warning tonight and a major blizzard building for the part of the province that's 3 or 4 hours' drive south of here. 

I managed to get quite a bit of my garden put to bed, and with the weather predicted to warm up a touch later next week, I'm hoping to finish the rest.  I keep prowling walking around the soon-to-be-mine lots next door with a view to what I want/need to do in the spring.

I am plotting fences (rail), and Saskatoon bushes and assorted other trees to turn it into a grove that invites one to retreat with a good book or some spinning or handwork...

Ahhhh...It's good that I have several months of winter ahead of me to dream and plan and save $$!

Meanwhile, I was on hand at the "Behind the Words" fundraiser for the Lacombe Arts Endowment Fund on Wednesday evening -- to meet the purchaser of my piece, Watch that Sky!  The fabric foreground was a great source of fascination for all who viewed it before she took it home.

And on Monday, I shipped Prairie Quintet (aka the Wall-to-Bed Project) off to its new home.  I managed to take a few photos of it showing the quilting detail, post-laundry.  I just love the texture that washing it created!

Quilt Back

Part of Quilt Front -- Grass/Earth

Part of Quilt Front -- Sky, Trees

Thursday, while I was at work at The Shop, my client left a message on my home phone.  It was so lovely I played it over and over again; I teared up a bit.  And in the end I transcribed it and printed it out to put in my sketchbook for the project:

It's Jane calling.  I'm really sorry you can't speak to me right now.  I'm overflowing with excitement.  Your quilt arrived minutes ago -- long enough for me to check on your telephone number -- and I've just got to let you know how gorgeous it is.  It's just beautiful, and I'll send you a cheque in tonight's mail.  I can't thank you enough; it's gorgeous.  You must have been thrilled to make it, because it just shows love in it.  Such a beautiful thing.  Bye-bye.

That sort of response is worth every minute of the work, and is of greater value than any amount of money paid for it.  I don't know about my artist colleagues, but to move someone like that with a piece of work -- that's why I make art.

Linking up to Nina Marie's Off the Wall Friday...and wishing you all a great weekend!

A Very Good Week

There seems to be a great deal going on at the moment (and I'm not speaking of U.S. and Canada's political scenes! 😉)

First, earlier this week I got the call that the Wall-to-Bed quilt was quilted.  I picked it up Wednesday, made the bindings and sewed on the long-side ones that day.  On Thursday, at The Shop, I did the hand-sewing of those bindings.  Thursday night I applied the short side (top and bottom) bindings; Friday I did the hand-sewing -- again at The Shop because I was there on my own, holding down the fort, as the owner and the other clerk were down at Spruce Meadows Equiplex, south of Calgary, at the second of the two "CreativFestival" shows in this province every September.

Here's how the finished quilt looked...before washing:

Prairie Quintet  (C) 2019
Grass and trees on the grass, under the trees... 😉

Quilting Detail 1 (grassy areas)
Thread colour: grey (Brand: Superior Thread)

Quilting Detail 2 (sky)

Quilting Detail 2 (tree trunks)
Pattern: 'Geometric Swirl'
Long-arm quilter: Sylvia Sawyer,
Windwood Long-arm Quilting, Bashaw, AB

The washing and drying are finished now but...sorry -- no photos.  Trust me; it crinkled up in the most lovely way, and NONE OF THE COLOURS RAN! Hurray!! 😄 It will be in the mail to my client tomorrow!!

In addition, I now have a stack of 36 quilted string blocks (10" each before sashing) to assemble into the first of three quilts for the soon-to-arrive Syrian refugee family (no date yet!).   I'm torn between making the sashing so I can assemble these into a quilt, and starting the second of the quilts - another string quilt-as-you-go but with 8" blocks (before sashing).  It will be a quilt for a girl  this time -- around 9 years old.  The backing has red in it and so has been washed in Retayne -- just being cautious, you know! 😉

And then there's that Call to Entry that I've been thinking about.  Still no samples.  Not yet.  Is that a bad thing?

Wednesday evening I get to go to the "Behind the Words" fundraiser for the Lacombe Arts Endowment Fund, and hope that someone buys my piece.

And...tomorrow being September 23, it's not only the First Day of Fall in the Northern Hemisphere, but also the start of the 2019 SAQA Benefit Auction Section #2...and my quilt will be in this group that's on the block throughout the week:

Mac's Garden: A Tribute to Charles Rennie Mackintosh
(C) 2018 

Topping all this off...late Friday afternoon I got word that my second offer to purchase the two vacant lots next to my house had been accepted!!  The deposit to hold them has been made; money transfers are in the works, and I am dreaming about and doing research on how to deal with the trees and shrubs, long neglected, on the land.  Most of the labour will begin in the spring (after the SAQA conference in Toronto, thank goodness!) but there's snow removal (sidewalks) to think about etc. so...onward!

Here's what it looked like this afternoon, taken from the sidewalk to the north of the property. looking south:

That large "bush" in the centre is a willow -- two, really -- cut down about a decade ago by the previous owners, who neglected to remove the stumps.  Hence the "bush". It's home to lots of birds in season, and on occasion provides shelter to mice and/or shrews (to my cat's delight).  I am loathe to get rid of it altogether, but the branches are multi-branched and not (at this point) good for basketry...so I am undecided how to manage it.  Blessedly, I have a few months to ponder this dilemma!

The small trees off to the left are a Mountain Ash (still green) and a Manitoba maple (now gold); I believe the latter insinuated itself into the area in which the Ash (aka 'Rowan') is growing.  Ditto for the "bushes" at the back -- several lilacs and a honeysuckle, intruded upon by a Manitoba maple. There's a possibility in that patch for a quiet retreat -- a wee vacant spot surrounded by the lilacs...if I can deal with the maple!

And so you see...a week full of blessings of assorted shapes and sizes.

Linking now to Nina Marie's Off the Wall Friday -- and wishing you the same for your week ahead.  It's the first week of fall in the Northern Hemi, and there may be snow before long...

Stay warm!  Stay creative!  Have a great week!

Grass and Trees, Trees and Grass

That's almost all that's been before my eyes since my last post -- as I've worked hard to finish the top for the Wall-to-Bed Project.  Today -- it's done!

Here it is in its glory on my back lawn -- the only place large enough to photograph it in its present state.

I'm calling it Prairie Quintet because of the 5 trees.

After I photographed it, I went to great lengths to determine if it was even all around.  To do this, I had to fold it in half, and pin the end and side edges together.  That's when I discovered it was a bit out of whack on one grassy corner (bottom right of photo).  That's been trimmed now.

In addition, because of all the seams and bits and bobs of fabric in this piece, I decided to stay-stitch it at 1/4" all the way around, with the hope of preventing stretching and unravelling of seams.  Done! It now measures the desired 72" W x 86" L  plus a bit for seam allowance when I bind it. (It's not intended to cover the pillows at the head of the bed.)

Now I wait.  My long-arm quilter is away till September 7...so I've arranged with her to call on the 9th and take it and the backing over for quilting.  If I get it back within the week, I should be able to have it in the mail to my client by the end of the third week of September -- a good three to four weeks earlier than I initially estimated.

Also since my last post, I did up the final version of the piece for the Lacombe Arts Endowment Fund fund-raiser, "Behind the Words"; I delivered it to the City office on Thursday:

Watch that Sky! (C) 2019
Hand-dyed silk, commercial cottons, machine quilted
and applied to painted stretched canvas.  12" square, unframed.

All of the pieces contributed will be on show in the foyer gallery of the Lacombe Memorial Centre from September 1 through 23.  Then they'll be wrapped in brown paper -- hidden from view! -- and displayed with a poem or bit of verse written by local poets.

On September 25, there'll be an evening event at which people can purchase a piece they've previewed -- based on the poetry attached to the hidden piece.  Aha!  That will test the public's powers of observation and memory...

It's not an auction.  All pieces will be available for $150 each and as the event description says, "It's first come, first served!"  As one of the artists, I get to attend for free, and enjoy the evening, mingling with purchasers and joining in on their sleuthing fun.  😊

What's next?  Well...there's a small family of refugees coming to join their relatives here, and they'll need comfort, so there'll be three quilts under my needles soon -- two quilt-as-you-go string quilts for the kids, and a more formal design for their mom.  All no larger than throw-sized...with the faint hope they'll use up some of my stash, but you all know how that turns out... 😉

Linking belatedly (as usual) to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday...

And linking on time to WIP Wednesday over at The Needle & Thread Network.

Have a great rest of your week, everyone!

And Then There Were Five

Trees, that is.  On the Wall-to-Bed Project piece.  As you may recall, the original art piece had three trees:

Trio (C) 2012

My client wanted me to ensure that the look of the original -- with the three trees -- was the part that would lie over the top of her bed (approximately 40" wide).  That left me with the question about what to put on the sixteen inches on either side of the "top" that would go down each side of the bed.  Knowing that my client is well up in years (those of you who've followed this saga from the start may remember that she turns 99 in October!), this quilt may or may not be on her bed for a good long while.  As I mentioned in my last update, her heirs (or to whomever they sell it) may want to mount it on a wall.  Thus, it can't have simple, broad-swath, plain borders!

I decided to add two more trees to the left side, and landscape on the right side.  That would take the piece to 72" wide (16" on each side and 40" in forming the centre on top of the bed).  Then...tree trunks and grass for 16" that would need to be added to the bottom of the piece to take it from its current length (70") to the finished length of 86".  (These are all "finished" measurements; seam allowances are factored in as I work out the blocks.)

That's what I've been doing for most of the past week -- finishing the "drops" on either side.  The piece now measures 72 1/2" x 70 1/2" and is so large that I cannot photograph it anywhere in my house.  I took to the back yard and draped it over a bench.  Naturally, my Studio Supervisor had to ensure I was doing this properly!  😉

I hope Miss Pookie-cat approves!

And here's a photo without Miss P...

Before I resume work on this project, though, I have another deadline looming!  The Lacombe Arts Foundation is holding a fund-raiser in late September and has called for artists to contribute a piece.  At the Art Show & Sale in April I volunteered and was given a 12" square, 1" deep stretched canvas on which to create a piece.  With so much going on, I set it aside...until earlier this week, when I checked the deadline for submission: August 30!  OOPS!  Best get on it!

We've had some amazing skies this summer so I decided to use a photo I'd taken near the end of July, headed West out of Lacombe on a Sunday afternoon to visit my sister, then on holiday at her cottage in Sylvan Lake:

I just love it when the canola glows under a stormy Alberta sky!  But it's been a while since I've painted a sky on a canvas, and I didn't want to wreck the fine canvas I'd been given.  I routed out a less expensive canvas of the same size and took a stab at the sky, with a touch of the trees on the horizon:

When I showed the photo of this to my friend and colleague, Mary Wilton -- a painter as well as a quilter -- she responded enthusiastically, so I went ahead and sampled some stitching for the foreground.

Once that sampling was done, I completed the sample...and I have to say, I like it!

Under the Wide Sky 1: July Canola (c) 2019
12" W x 12" L
Commercial fabrics, thread painting, machine quilting --
applied to painted stretched canvas.

This means I can a) go ahead now with the piece for the silent auction; and b) have the sample framed, with the hope that it too finds a new home!

Creating the auction piece will be my focus for the next 24 - 36 hours...and by Monday I expect to be back on track making tree trunk and grass blocks for the Wall-to-Bed Project.  The weather here this weekend is supposed to be rather "iffy" -- sun/clouds/wind/showers -- perfect for studio work, and for making jam from the latest crop of very ripe raspberries I picked from my bushes on Wednesday.  😊

There'll be church Sunday morning, a SAQA Zoom call for the Western Canada Region -- the first ever! -- on Sunday afternoon, before warmer, sunnier weather is scheduled to arrive on Monday.

With Monday, there comes yet another deadline!  This one is not for me, but for the vendors of the double lot (52' x 130') that's for sale right next door to my home.  You can see the edge of the roof of my house on the right side, and the white building at the back is my garage.  This photo was taken in the early spring before the bushes on the lot leafed out -- they are very bushy now!

I consulted with my kids, a couple of friends and my financial advisor and determined I could afford to make an offer for the property, on which I'd not build anything more than a gazebo, and do some additional landscaping, so I could enjoy it into my dotage! 

Thus the deadline.  The vendors have until 5 p.m. on Monday to accept, reject or counter the offer. While I wait, I'll create!

I was planning to link this to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday -- on time, for a change -- but it appears she's taken this week off altogether...so with the hope that all is well in her world, I wish you all a lovely rest of the weekend!

The Tale of Two Quilts: Editted to Update!

When I posted last week, I was pretty frustrated...but my frustration had been soothed by some wonderful news (click the link to find out what).

And...it would seem that that news was just enough to get me to pick myself up, dust myself off, and keep going.

First...this...

Had become this...

DYE RUN!!!

And everything I'd done by Wednesday night hadn't improved it:

• Two soaks in Blue Dawn liquid dish detergent;
• Two soaks in Synthrapol;
• One soak in Palmolive Original dish detergent; and
• Two soaks in Oxy-clean solution.

 (Photo taken Friday...in the aftermath.)

In my last post I mentioned getting colour catchers -- specifically, Shout Color Catchers -- but you can't get them in Canada, unless you order through amazon.ca, and I'd no time for that.  So...at The Shop on Thursday (July 18) I picked up 2 boxes -- 2 envelopes per box -- of Dylon SOS Colour Run.  I used them both, following the directions...and managed to improve/remove the pink from some of the whites but that one fabric -- that one with the black figures on it that comprised the background of the centre star and all the sashing?  It stubbornly refused to budge.

What to do?  I gave up.  I dried the **@@!! thing and put it in the mail to my nephew (it was his birthday gift) with a letter of explanation and the hopes he'd still like it.

Sigh.

Editted to Update: Culprit found!

I thought hard about what red fabric could have caused the damage and concluded it was likely the newest one: the backing/binding -- even though it had been washed before using, just like the other fabrics.

I did a test with a small strip of the stuff in a sink of hot water and Blue Dawn...

The culprit!!

Yep!

As I still have quite a bit of this left over (who doesn't, after using 108" wide backing for a twin-sized quilt?!) my plan is this: soak the remaining fabric in Retayne, dry it, then test again.  I'll keep you posted!

Thus ends the tale of Quilt #1.

There was nowhere to go but up, right?

Quilt #2 is, of course, the Wall-to-Bed Project, which I am pleased to say is humming along nicely.

It's gone from this to this...

Two trees...

To this...

Three trees...on my kitchen floor!

And here's how it looks when tested on the 'twin extra-long' bed in my guest room:

Currently 47" W x 69" L

At last I was able to send my client another up-date.

Now I'm contemplating how to finish the sides.  The bottom is straight-forward as is the right side...but the left (the 'tree side')?  I'm thinking about adding two more trees with background in between, to take it to a drop of 16" (finished).

The right side drop is about 7" so only needs another 9" to finish it, while a full 72" W x 17" L strip needs to be created of trees and grass in order to finish the bottom and bring the entire thing to a finished size of 72" W x 86" L.

The thing is, I have a deadline for this piece -- the sooner the better! -- because my client turns 99 in October.  Whoa!  And I want to ensure that when she eventually passes on (the later the better!), should one of her heirs want it, and want to hang it rather than sleep under it, there's some artistic merit to the entire piece, that it's consistently designed, even though it's meant to be utilitarian.

SO...off I go to contemplate...leaving you with a link to WIP Wednesday over at the Needle and Thread Network, and soliciting any ideas you might have about that left side!  Have a great rest of the week!

ETU - Saturday, July 27: Preparing to work on the last of the right-hand side of this quilt later today.  Meanwhile -- because I still can -- I'm also linking to Nina Marie's Off the Wall Friday.  Have a great rest of the weekend!

Wall-to-Bed: A Progress Report

The past several days have been "iffy" as weather goes.  Sunday was the loveliest -- and it still included clouds rolling in and out and around the place, with threats of thunder storms.  I spent the afternoon weeding the veggie patch at my sister's cottage, dead-heading some of her peonies and ensuring her tomato plants had TLC.

Happiness is a well-tended veggie patch!

Though she's taken care to bring in manure and compost to enrich her patch, she still grows a mean crop of chickweed!  It took me a good two hours and then some to clear it out (and she'd already done around the lettuce and zucchini the weekend before!)

The great thing about the cooler, wetter-than-expected weather (aside from the fact that it meant I didn't have to deplete my rain barrels by watering my own gardens) is that I didn't feel guilty about staying inside and tending to the Wall-to-Bed quilt.

Following on from Saturday's work, I sewed all four rows of the "sky section" together:

Sky Section - original on the left, "logs" on the right!

On Monday I set to and created the "bush" section.  This was a case of 'one step forward, two steps back'.  It was tricky to make the blocks to include both sky and "bush".  Instead of four rows of four blocks each, I was using one row of three larger blocks.  Instead of working right to left, I chose to work left to right...after I realized I'd messed up the centre of the three blocks.  Sigh.

I realized that to get it right, I had to start with the highest bit of "bush" -- the block farthest left.  Using that as an "anchor", I made two more blocks, moving "down hill" as it were.  In the end it looked like this:

SKY...and "bush"

That done, I moved on yesterday to the "earth" (ploughed field) blocks, and finished them today -- two rows of four blocks each.









Comparing the two...can you see where I'm going with this?











By now the log cabin version is approximately 27" wide by 50" long.  Adding the green "grass" section will take it to 70" or so.  Then...Side Two: The Trees!

Again, I'm aiming for a 'top' section that's about 40" x 70"; borders will carry on the theme to complete the work at 72" x 86" (finished).

Yesterday I visited my long-armer to pick up the quilt I've made for my nephew's birthday...the one I made from red, white and black scraps as a Block-of-the-Month using a modified version of Edyta Star's BOM for The Quilt Show in 2018.

TQS BOM 2018 -- before quilting!

Well...considering dear Sylvia (my long-arm quilter) is going to quilt the Wall-to-Bed Project quilt, I took it with me to show her.

Turns out she's a fan of Katie PM (tell me now, who isn't -- once they've seen her multi-faceted wonderful approaches to quilting?!) and she's excited!  She's got one of Katie's earlier books and has now been motivated to look up Artful Log Cabin Quilts...so she can think ahead to when she'll be quilting the one I'm making.

Ya gotta love it, eh?

So...it's Wednesday evening.  Tomorrow I work at The Shop -- a chance to knit a bit and take a break from the sewdio.

Friday = grass on the Wall-to-Bed project.

I leave you with a link to the WIP Wednesday blog...and a wish for a happy and creative rest of this week.

Once again, Happy July 4 to my American readers...with prayers and a hug...just 'cause...well...you know...

This Just Might Work!

Since my last post, I've been working pretty steadily on my latest commission -- interpreting an art quilt as a bed quilt.  (I'm calling the project "wall-to-bed" as an easy way to summarize it!)

The art piece looks like this:

I spent the first few hours of the project working out grids and measurements, trying to figure out how to convert a "random" grid (one of the types suggested in Katie PM's Artful Log Cabin Quilts) into something 700% larger than the original printed on 8.5 x 11 paper.

Katie talks about enlargements as great as 400%, which could be done at a copy shop.  I checked out options online (my nearest shop is at Staples in Red Deer, an hour's drive from here) -- and decided to go with her "enlarge one block at a time" option.  Here's a glimpse at my sketchbook -- just a couple of the pages of drawings and calculations, with the grid and what I'm using now to make the piece "work":

The page with the bright yellow sticky notes indicates for each section, how many actual blocks I have to make, and what size.  The "sky" piece takes 4 rows of 4 blocks, 7" square (unfinished).  The next row (a bit of sky with bush) will take 1 row of 3 blocks, 9.25" square, also unfinished. 

Just above that sheet, you'll see a separate sheet with lines and text.  That's my time tracking sheet, saved years ago from artist Jean Judd, whom I met at my first SAQA conference in Denver, CO, in 2011.  (I've not heard of or from her in some time...but I think of her often and hope all is well with her.  If any of you Gentle Readers have news, please share!)  This is the first time I've actually used her worksheet to track my process; we'll see how that turns out in the end!

I thought I was on the right track...till I got into the first set of blocks -- for that large chunk of sky in the upper right of the above photo.  Researching types of log cabin blocks, I knew that making them rectangular could be done...but I just couldn't get my head around it.  I knew, though, that I could  'square up' wonky blocks -- so that's the route I've chosen.

As of this afternoon -- after a delightful sew day, wherein my friend and newbie quilter, Gwendy, joined me for stitching, lunch out and conversation -- I've finished the blocks for that sky section:

Next step: sew them together, and then move on to sky/bush, then soil, then grass -- all along the same part of the original piece.  I am leaving the trees/sky bit till later!

I know the lights and darks aren't an exact interpretation, but remember, this is an "artful log cabin bed quilt" being made by interpreting an art quilt that was created based on a photo...

Yes; I think this is going to work.

Whatever happens, I am sure to learn a great deal along the way -- and I owe a debt of gratitued to Katie Pasquini Masopust and her amazing technique.

Tomorrow?  A bit of a rest as I attend our Parish's outdoor service at a local ranch -- celebrating 100 years of that ranch's existence -- and follow up with a spate of gardening at my sister's cottage.

As Nina Marie opines in her latest Off the Wall Friday (to which I'm linking)..sometimes a rest is required!

Monday is CANADA DAY here...A national holiday, this year celebrating 152 years since Confederation.  Our nation is growing and maturing, recognizing flaws from its past and working to make them right.  And yet again, we've been voted #1 as a place/country in which to live.  See?  Weather isn't everything!  Winter can be bearable if the folks around you are terrific!  😉

So... Happy Canada Day to my Canadian readers, and Happy July 4 to our friends to the south.  Our hearts are with you...for so very many reasons, these days!  😉

Have a great rest of the weekend -- have a great rest of the week!

And thanks for stopping by.  More on the Wall-to-Bed Project as time permits....