Shannon's Quilt - progress report

After two hours of ironing, four hours of cutting, six hours of piecing and two hours of ripping out seams.  Apparently piecing rows of multiple tie-dyed fabrics is confusing for me.

A labour of love!

Early Snowfall

My backyard on October 15, 2009!  Fortunately, the weather forecast for the weekend is above freezing so the snow should all melt.

This is what my backyard is supposed to look like in October.  These photos were taken from the house through a window so they are not as clear as they should be.

Fall leaves are amazing. Below are photos taken October 2007 in my backyard.

That's all for today as cutting and sewing Shannon's quilt await!

Excellent News!

I donated two sewing machines to the Brandon Friendship Centre today.

1. Brother Festival 451 zig zag 
2. Singer 127 VS electric portable machine

~yippee... dancing around the room with glee. Now to start Shannon's tie-dyed patchwork quilt.

 

 

The background will be white and the ten fabrics above will be make up the overlapping blocks.

Thanksgiving Weekend in Waterloo

My daughter started her Masters in Biology at University of Waterloo in September 2009.  I travelled two hours east by car to the Winnipeg Airport, then flew to London, Ontario which is 2,054 kilometres or 1,276 miles by car.  I rented a car in London and drove to Waterloo another 105 kilometres or 60 miles.  We went to Stratford on Friday to enjoy the Stratford Festival.  We saw two live theatre performances  "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and the musical comedy "A Funny Thing Happened on My Way to the Forum."  The shows were great.

Photos are not allowed in the theatres.  Shannon took these with her Iphone.

 

Below is a quilt hanging in the lounge area just outside the balcony entrance.

 

 

On Saturday, after we picked up AJ (Shan's sweetheart) we went to St. Jacob's Farmers Market just outside of Waterloo.

 

 

The quilts are pieced by machine and then hand quilted. These ladies were demonstrating at a log cabin called Quilted Heirlooms.  They sell finished quilts as well as thread, fabric and quilting books.  The lady told me takes about 1000 hours to handquilt a queen sized quilt.   The quality is fantastic.

 

 

Shannon & AJ in front of a Quilted Heirloom with the horses for hire.
It was a most excellent weekend!

Congratulations to Shannon!

My first blog follower and the winner of this fine bottle of Mezza Luna red wine bottled by yours truly on October 31, 2008.

Look what I have been playing with.  I am practicing piecing triangles for Shannon's new tye-dyed quilt.

I am not very good at it, but it is fun to piece. I only used one tye-dyed fabric and white for the triangles.  These are more detailed photos.  I also played with the decorative stitches on my triangles which I later decided was a mistake because the top stitching hides my best piecing.  Oh well, I really like the pinwheel in the middle of this photo.

 

Shannon has given me creative license to design the border and backing for her quilt.  How about a border of solid strip followed by pinwheels and solid strip.  I'm thinking the binding should match the outside solid strip.  Input here would be appreciated though not necessarily used.

Or Instead of a solid border a solid strip followed by a zig-zag middle and solid strip.

Below is a sketch of the quilt top designed by Shannon* my daughter as well the 1st prize winner for being my first blog follower.

  Another most excellent day!

Brother Festival 451

I really was minding my own business.  My day started by donating an orphaned portable Singer Fashion Mate model 258 to the  local Women's Resource Centre.  First stop was at the fabric shop to purchase a thread stand for large cones, thread snippers and fabric scissors.  I brought an old cotton sheet for practice, a box of dozen bobbins, some threaded some not, white and black large cones of thread plus some smaller spools of thread.  After a short demo, I left my contact information if they need free sewing assistance.

I was not shopping for another sewing machine!  No sirree, not me.  At one dozen machines downsizing to maybe 8 favourites would be a good thing.  I was feeling pretty proud that I had gifted one away bringing the count down to just 11 sewing machines and one serger.

I also collect vintage sewing patterns and books.  This lovely 528 page instruction book was for sale for only ten dollars on ebrandon which is an electronic garage sale.  Innocently, I drove over to get this book published in 1976 with the technical assistance of The Singer Company. Now how was I supposed to know the lady also had a vintage sewing machine in a fancy blue flowered carrying case for sale?

Look at those stitches.. the machine came with a plastic box of accessories including a darning foot, there is a button to drop the feed dogs.  This machine was made in Japan, I do not know when.  This model also comes in hot pink!

Mine is tan with orange.  The entire shuttle hook and everything underneath the base is all metal.  It uses standard metal bobbins the ones with holes top & bottom.

The manual was not available.  The threading map is on internet for free.  There is also threading instructions for this type of machine in my Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Sewing book I just bought.

 

I was so delighted with my new to me sewing machine that I invited the lady to Stitch n Bitch, even though she sold her machine because she is not interested in sewing.

It was a stellar of a day!