Jun 17, 2017
Well the days are whizzing by, or at least it seems like that. I remember being told that time moves faster the older you get. I could never figure that one out when I was younger but I am beginning to see how that saying came into being. Of course being busy helps with time appearing to move faster.
The weather here in Victoria continues to be unusual or at least it seems that way. It appeared to jump from winter to summer overnight, a few wonderful days and then back to winter overnight again. So far we appear to have missed spring altogether this year.
Here are a couple of random photos taken while Cocoa and I were on one of our daily walks. We ran across this turtle behind the pond near where we live. He/she had come out to enjoy the sun that had finally shown itself that day. Don’t worry Cocoa didn’t harm it. I picked Cocoa up and we carefully stepped over the turtle and left it in peace to enjoy the day.
My crazy work schedule has slowed down a bit and that is both good and bad. Good as I finally have time to relax and do some planning and maybe actually quilt one of my own quilts (we’ll see how that goes), and bad because slower work means less money coming in. Oh well, I am enjoying having a little time to sit back and actually think about what I want re the future. Besides come July 10 the schedule will go back into crazy mode again so I need to just enjoy the time I have while I have it.
Recently I got the chance to work on this wonderful quilt. This was really fun to work on, the only drawback I had is that the silver Superior Sew Fine 50 thread I used as the background colour for a large part of the quilt ended up being back ordered. I had one small spool of the thread so I ordered a cone the same day I started working on this quilt and I didn’t receive the thread in the mail until 10 days later. Not great however it all turned out well and I love how this quilt turned out.
Even though I previously posted that I am not a huge fan of doing pantographs there are quilts that call for just an all over edge to edge design. I am very good at doing simple edge to edge for kids and baby quilts and I really enjoy those however I thought it would be nice to have a couple more sophisticated edge to edge designs available for people who want them. The Cloth Castle where I work recently brought some pantographs in so I purchased two that I liked. Both are by Urban Elementz, one is Deja Vu and the other is Bora Bora.
I have used the Deja Vu on a client king size quilt (which I forgot to take pictures of) and it turned out great and I have also used it on a smaller quilt for a client that needed a quick wedding present.
I did like the way these turned out. I just finished a custom quilt (one I completed from start to finish) with the Bora Bora pantograph which also turned out really well, however I am still sewing down the binding on that one so the client hasn’t seen it yet other than in pictures I have sent so that will have to be posted later.
Good friends are like quilts they never lose their warmth
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Feb 26, 2017
Whew, it’s been a busy week or so and it’s going to be busy for the next three weeks so I will have to try to slip a blog post in whenever I can. I have now started a second part-time job as well as the job at the Cloth Castle not to mention having more quilts to quilt as well. It’s all good though and things should slow down again by the end of the month so in the meantime it’s going to be a test of my time-management skills.
I just recently decided to purchase a new camera. Now, one might wonder why since I have a camera I use on my phone as well as a very good DSLR camera. I love my DSLR camera but it is big and bulky and it works well for video and tripod shots but not so much for just a quick photo. The phone camera is OK for that type of thing but has it’s drawbacks so my partner Kevin and I discussed it and decided to bite the bullet and get a really good point and shoot camera that takes great pictures in low light, takes good video and has a super zoom. It’s nice and compact so I can take it on holidays with me (the countdown is on). It’s small enough to just slip in my bag but not so small I will lose it. This is all a good thing as I won’t be taking my phone with me on this trip. Now I just have to find the time to figure out how to use it before Mom and I head out on the high seas.
One thing that seems to have been coming up recently while working at The Cloth Castle is about ripping vs cutting cotton fabric and the straight of grain. At the Cloth Castle we cut the fabric as opposed to ripping it. Now this is fine except that if you take the fabric home and wash it, sometimes that fabric will go off-grain. I had two customers come into the store last week with pieces of fabric that they wanted to complain about as it was all askew and if they cut it like that they would loose too much fabric. I took a look at it and quickly assessed that there was nothing actually wrong with the piece it simply went off-grain when they washed it and a simple pull corner to corner put everything right.
This got me to thinking, (I know dangerous at the best of times), working with fabric straight of grain was a very basic sewing lesson in first year home EC, however this doesn’t seem to be taught anymore and both woman I talked to last week didn’t even know what I was talking about when I said that the fabric was simply off grain and I showed them how to fix it. So, how many quilters or other sewists out there these days know about fabric straight of grain and how to fix it?
I think this is important and will follow this post up with another this week (when I have a little more time) explaining how to get fabric back on grain.
So look for that post soon. Meanwhile I had two client quilt finishes this week.
You can’t really see the quilting in this quilt as the fabrics were very busy and I used Superior Threads Sew Fine 50 in both top and bottom. I did a different design in each of the borders and used a new circle template for one of the borders. It turned out really nice but as mentioned the quilting didn’t show up in the pictures.
This was another client quilt about a queen size and she just wanted a simple design on it so I chose a simple loop de loop and star all over design done in Aurfil 50 thread in both the top and bobbin. Nothing fancy but it totally works for this particular style of quilt.
Our lives are like quilts – bits and pieces, joy and sorrow, stitched with love.
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Oct 19, 2016
Quilting is finally getting done! It feels good to get back at the longarm machine. I really needed to take that week or so off though. I think everyone sometimes needs to step back from things, regroup, and seriously think about why they are doing something. The opportunity I mentioned in my last post really made me think about that. I haven’t heard whether anything has come of it or not, but either way I have a much clearer idea of what I want my life to look like.
It’s funny how life goes, I had a lull in my quilting business and this opportunity came up so I decided to look into it. Nothing ventured nothing gained type of thing. The very next day after a meeting I had, I got called asking if I had time to quilt a quilt! Wow OK yes. The day after that another client called asking the same thing and then the third day this happened yet again!
So now I have several quilts waiting to be quilted. I guess the universe was trying to tell me to just slow down and stop worrying, things will turn out the way they are supposed to and it is all good. Patience my friend. New businesses take time to grow.
What the lull I had also taught me though is if I intend to continue down this path I also need to diversify so I will be putting some thought into what I want that to look like.
There is a mantra that I started using about 3 years ago, I sometimes forget to apply it though. I think it’s time to pull that one out again and pin it to my wall.
Meanwhile I finished one client quilt and need to get back to work now quilting the others.
This is Over the Pond an older pattern from Quiltmaker magazine. My client did it scrappy and it turned out well. It was just quilted with a very simple “water” design as we didn’t want anything to interfere with the pictures. I used Superior Threads So Fine 50 in a soft green that blended well with all the different colours going on. I think it was a good choice of design as you just get some nice texture without overpowering the cute frogs, bees and butterflies pieced into the top.
Happy Quilting
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Sep 30, 2016
Well, it looks like fall is here. The weather here in Victoria has been beautiful and sunny however the temperature is dipping down at night these days. I awoke early this morning to the smell of something burning, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out where the smell was coming from until I happened to glance at the heat register. I had it down low but not off and obviously the temperature dipped low enough that the register actually came on. What I was smelling was the dust burning off the baseboard element. Oh joy winter is on it’s way.
The complex where I live has a creek, park and trails right behind it so I take Cocoa for a walk back there most days. As the weather is getting cooler what we are finding is a lot of garter snakes are coming out of the grass to sun themselves. Cocoa has figured this out so he is always on the look out for them. Sometimes he sees them before me and it’s a good thing I keep him on a leash or he’d be gone.
Not sure if you can tell from the picture at left. I had to grab the camera fast so it’s not the best picture and you can just see Cocoa starting to lunge for the poor snake.
I took this picture yesterday however Cocoa and I saw at least 3 snakes on our walk today as well.
Every year the complex where I live has a craft sale in the clubhouse and this year it is happening on Oct 29, 2016. My partner and I decided we would go in it so we have both been creating things to sell at it.
Here are some of the things I have been working on. I saw this tutorial on the Crafty Gemini and thought I would give it a try. I have made 8 of these and will need to make more as they are so cute. They are fun to make too.
Another thing I have been working on is my church’s 2016 raffle quilt. I have finished sewing the binding on so all that’s left is a label. I am printing up the raffle tickets and will also need to create a postcard for this as well.
This quilt turned out much larger than I had anticipated as it measures 70 x 90 or thereabouts. Not quite a full queen size but as you can see in the above photo it does pretty much fit onto a queen size bed.
I was going to do some fancy quilting on this one for practice if nothing else, however I decided against it as for one it was for a raffle and for two you really couldn’t see the quilting at all. I used Superior Threads Sew Fine Thread in a neutral colour and believe me it was hard enough trying to see where I was going with just an easy overall quilting design I would have driven myself crazy trying to do anything else. In the end I decided to just quilt around the applique “pumpkin seeds” as well as just echo inside them and do an overall seed design over the rest of the quilt. I thought the seed design was fitting.
A quilt is a treasure which follows its owner everywhere.
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Happy Quilting
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Sep 23, 2016
Things have been busy around here. I have completed my Inspiration Journals for the craft sale and now on to the next item I have on my list. In the meantime I had been quilting using templates and my needle hit the template and threw the timing off of the machine so I had to have someone come in to repair it. Got that fixed and so I was able to finish quilting a client quilt.
She wanted an overall design so I did a playful heart design which worked very well for this quilt. The fabrics are quite busy so you can’t really see the quilting design very well. It was raining early today so I had to take the pictures inside. I am still working on where the best location is to take pictures of finished quilts. I see lots of quilters taking the pictures with the quilt draped over the frame however I can’t do that as there isn’t enough room to back up far enough to get a good shot.
On this quilt I used Superior Threads Rainbows thread number 805. It’s called Inca Pink. I got this thread through a special promotion and when I looked at it I thought where am I ever going to be able to use this. Well this quilt was perfect for it.
See what I mean. The thread had the same colours as the quilt had. I used Bottom Line in the bobbin colour 606 Dark Purple.
Yesterday was a beautiful day so my partner and I decided to take Cocoa for a walk along the beach at Esquimalt Lagoon. It was beautiful.
Somewhere along the way though I lost my drivers licence which I had stuffed into my pocket. We went back and searched for it but to no avail so down to the motor vehicle office I went today to get a replacement. Luckily it was fairly painless and I only had a 30 minute wait.
So now I’m off to help with the setup of the church’s Vintage and Treasures sale. If you are in Victoria tomorrow, Saturday check it out at 1600 Cook Street. It should be a lot of fun.
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Happy Quilting
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