Two More Sleeps!

Two more days until I take off on my "40th Birthday Cruise/trip" with my high school friends!!!   On Saturday I flight to Winnipeg, meet my sister in law for lunch at the airport as she is flying in from Thunder Bay that morning too.  Great timing.  Then I catch a flight to Vancouver and spent the night with my sister.  I am taking her the "Lizard" quilt so she gets an early xmas gift ( and this makes sure I have room in my suitcase for any shopping I might do on this trip).  Sunday I meet my friends at the port and board the Golden Princess cruise ship for 3 days at sea.  We arrive in Long Beach, CA on Wednesday and spend the next 3 days in this area doing all those touristy things.  Then we are renting a car, driving to VEGAS and staying for 3 days!!  Did I mention that my friends are just a little bit crazy?   Oh I am so looking forward to this trip!

My husband had a great idea that I personalize my ever so common black suitcase with something 'quilty' so I can easily identify it at the airports.  (Not only is he smart but he's cute too!!)  So I made this little quilt block out of some dyed scraps and velcroed it around the handle.  I think that will work great.

So I won't have access to a computer for the next 12 days so my blog will be quiet for awhile.  I have a cupboard full of quilts awaiting my attention when I get back so I am looking forward to getting at those once I return.

Scrappy Star Quilt #2

I have been dealing with a head cold all week and not been too productive.  I did manage to finish my younger son's Scrappy Star quilt and stitching on the binding was a great 'lay on the couch and veg' job for me.  I even let him use the quilt before I had to binding on as I didn't realize he had been impatiently waiting for his quilt to be done. His brother had a quilt....where was his?  I learnt this one morning before he left for school when I told him that I was going to finish piecing his quilt today.  He replied "well it's about time". LOL   Good to know... so I got busy.   I let him pick the panto design and he picked a new one in my collection called Tickle. 

I again used a wool batt, hand dyed the backing to match his brothers with no problems this time. Since I didn't have any more light coloured batiks in my stash I dug into my dyed fabrics and found a blue and beige and then dyed the green and yellow.   Surprisingly the quilts turned out very similar even though a lot of the fabrics are different. Here they are side by side. 

   





Butterfly Charm

 Hard to believe that it is only 5'C outside and I don't have too many more weeks left to display quilts on my dock. Need to find a new locations for taking pictures this winter, hope I come up with something good!
This is a clients twin size Mystery quilt and this pretty quilt will be for her granddaughter.  I used the Butterfly Charm panto and was very happy to be able to dig into my new supply of King Tut thread to quilt this one.   A few weeks ago I came across a post on a quilting forum from a lady selling all her King Tut thread for a great deal. I jumped on the chance and got it!!  So last week the box arrived and I was very please with the color selections...definately my taste. So I used a soft purple varigated King Tut thread on the top and a light purple So Fine thread on the botton.

Sampler Quilt

I don't think my clients Sampler Quilt could have match my carpet any better!!  It looked great in my livingroom but unfortunately I had to give it back :(   That is the down side of this job...seeing the quilts leave after bonding with them for a few days.  Actually seeing my clients face when I showed it to her for the first time made it all worthwhile.  I love that feeling when you know you got it right!  I must admit I did sweat a bit about this one as it was hand appliqued with a button hole stitch so a lot of time was spent on the piecing.    The piecer shared a cute story about how her sister thought the applique in the border looks like bunnies...I would have to agree with her sister, that is all I saw when working on the quilting.  So of course I had to quilt a bunny in this quilt!

Scrappy Star Done

I finished the binding on my son's quilt last night so it is now on his bed!! I used wool batting as they like their quilts light and fluffy and my son chose the panto design, he picked Happy Times.  Their room is starting to look more mature now that I painted over the bright yellow walls with light blue and bought them bunkbeds with a nice dark brown stained.  I repainted their red dresser a nice espresso brown and added some brushed nickle knobs.  It is hard to believe that dresser was mine when I as a baby!

Okay so now to my dyeing story.  I thought this time when dyeing a backing I would piece the fabric first and then dye it as one whole piece...sounds good right.  The color and texture turned out great but for some reason one piece of fabric didn't take the dye like the rest. ???  Sigh.  What did I do wrong this time?

After some discussion with my other 'dyer' friends about my backing dilemma it seems to be that I might have washed that one piece in regular laundry soap instead of our dyers TNA soap...who know it would make that much of a difference! It is the same fabric but from a different bolt so that could be a factor too.  So from now on I will only use fabric from the same bolt that have been washed together before I piece the backing together.  I loved how the texture of dyeing the whole piece hides the center seam, it is very hard to see.

I used beige thread on the top and navy on the bottom and to prove to those nay sayers that you can't use two different color threads on top and bottom here is the proof.  It is so important to learn how to use that tension knob, don't be afraid to turn it!!! 

Had a little visitor check out the quilting too.

Spooky Magic Tile

Okay it's not that spooky but my client did make a cute Halloween quilt using the Magic Tile pattern.  The orange fabric in the 'leading' of the tile blocks really highlights the Halloween fabrics nicely. I quilted with Black So Fine thread and used my new Plush pantograph.  
I have been dyeing fabric this week and made another grand discovery...you know the 'oops' kind.  I'll share that story in my next post. 

My tomatoes are doing pretty good and I might even get a few to ripen on the vine!

Evening Paddle

Two days ago my kayaks were delivered and today is the first time I have taken mine for a paddle.  What an absolutely beautiful evening to enjoy my new boat and take a few pictures.   I spotted an eagle, a few flocks of geese heading south, loon families, and the fish were really jumping.  No otters tonight, I have snuck up on them before and just watched them play. The leaves are already starting to turning but I hope we have a nice Autumn so I can enjoy my new toy for the next month.

Back to Work

It's September so time to turn my attention back to quilting for my clients.  I actually started this one a few days early as I still have a few of my own projects I want to quilt this month but have not dyed the backings for them yet.  Now that I have my new dye order I can get back to playing 'mad scientist' and dye some more fabrics.   My clients quilt above is a Stack and Whack and I just love how it looks against the evergreens.  I used the Maple Syrup pantograph on this one with a light green thread.

It was very cloudy and windy today so another tricky photo shoot.

I use my neighbours clothes line for many of my picture and they have sold their cottage as of October 1 so I hope the new neighbour keep the line up and let me use it!  I'll have to think of a great 'welcome to the neighbourhood' gift and casually mention how much I loved sharing the clothes line with the previous owners :)