6 Months Later

My loyal followers will recall that I redid my sewing room just after Christmas.  One of my smart ass friends (I have many) commented that it looked great, but she’d like to see it in six months to see if it was still tidy.  Well Joan, here it is:

My biggest downfall is ‘piles’.  I tend to put everything I don’t know what to do with in a pile but I have tried to be really diligent and look, Ma, no piles!

When I trimmed my Jelly Braid quilt, I couldn’t bring myself to throw out all the triangles that were cut off, so I made this:

My daughter, Sandra, celebrated her birthday on Saturday.  She is a real girly girl and shoes are her biggest passion.  I’d be embarrassed to tell you how many pairs she owns but she does have a room devoted to them!

Anyway, another friend made these cookies for her birthday – aren’t they adorable and so appropriate!

Ben thought they looked pretty good, too!

Is It Hot Enough For You?

I know most of the country is suffering through a massive heat wave but for someone with asthma, this has been brutal.  Snow is looking pretty good right about now!

It’s been too hot to sew as the air conditioning just can’t keep up – yesterday with the humidity factored in, it was 116F or 48C here.  Before this hit, however, I did get a few things accomplished.

I can now share the tea towels I appliquéd for my friend Joan’s birthday.  I forgot to take a picture before I mailed them, so she kindly sent me one.

If we have to do dishes, we should at least have something cute to do them with.

I also got my Jelly Braid top finished and it’s going in the ‘to be quilted’ pile.  That pile is getting a bit overwhelming, so I need to spend some time on Tillie soon.  At least she’s in the basement, so it’s nice and cool down there.  In fact, it’s downright cold!

You can’t really tell from the picture, but the flowers in the border fabric are a dark purple which picks up the purple in the braids. 

I just received the class lists for Houston.  I’m lucky enough to be going back this year and I thought it might be nice to take a class this time.  The list is overwhelming – this is going to need some serious thought.  Anyone have any suggestions on not to be missed classes?

Queen’s Quay

I met my friend Shirley at Union Station in Toronto on Tuesday and we spent the day on the waterfront at Queen’s Quay.  It was very hot and very humid, but there was a breeze from time to time, so we survived.

We took a boat tour of the Toronto islands and the view of the Toronto skyline was quite impressive!

The dome shaped building is the Rogers Centre where the Blue Jays play and to the right of it is the CN Tower which used to be the world’s tallest freestanding structure. Almost all of the other high-rises are bank buildings – that’s where all the money is!

We had a lovely lunch on the waterfront and watched the ducks and swans swim by.  The above pictures were taken with my phone as I didn’t want to lug my camera with me, but they turned out not too badly.

Blogging

Like most of you, I have a number of blogs that I follow every day – probably way too many!  One of these bloggers, who shall remain nameless, has started to have audio advertising on her blog, as well as print ads all over the place.

This really gets my goat, to put it politely.  Is it all about money?  I know in the past she has said in order to provide free patterns, she needs to have advertisers on her blog.  Why?  Lots of other quilters offer free patterns and don’t find the need to have ads all over their blogs.  It was the audio ads that did me in, though. 

I sent her a very polite comment, telling her I had been a loyal follower of her blog for many years, understood that it was her blog and she could do what she wanted with it,  but felt she had gone too far with the audio ads.  She didn’t bother to respond to my comment and she deleted it from her blog – I guess she only wants nice comments that agree with everything she says and does.

Is it just me?  Is there something I’m just not getting?  I understand why sites like Quilter’s Cache need advertisers but it is almost like a bible to quilters with thousands of block patterns.  It isn’t a blog – it’s a website.

Maybe I’m just in a bitchy mood, but I had to get this off my chest and what better place than my blog.

Ian took this picture of my baby yesterday – look at those eyes!

Construction Complete

I finished the Construction Quilt and gave it to Alex yesterday for his 3rd birthday.

He was thrilled with it and I don’t think I’ve ever given a quilt that was admired or appreciated as much.  Everyone at the party was enthralled with it so that just made my day.  Here is the birthday boy showing us on his fingers just how old he will be.

Lee and I had a sew day last week.  We decided we’d work on something we both had purchased so we could do it together.  This is what we decided on:

It calls for a Bali Pop and a package of clothesline.  You fold the 2 1/2” strip in half, then press each side into the middle, then you take the clothesline and stitch THROUGH the clothesline while trying to overlap the ends of fabric to completely enclose the clothesline.

After about half an hour, when we had about 6” of one strip done, we decided this really wasn’t a fun project and we’d cut our losses at the pattern and the clothesline.  It was frustrating as neither of our machines were going through all that thickness with ease and the stitching looked terrible. 

Then we spent the next hour or so going through all my patterns and books looking for something else we could use the Bali Pop on. 

Then it was lunch time :-)

We finally decided on this pattern since almost all the others required a background or other neutral to go with the Bali Pop. 

This is what I have done so far:

You can’t chain piece it, so it’s pretty slow going.  I also have my Mystery Quilt to finish as they have a big ‘Reveal Night’ in September. 

Sandra and I are going to see 9 to 5 tomorrow.  Let’s hope it doesn’t turn out to be another children's dance recital!!