Brandon Flood - April 21, 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=AKcQoQ2ctKw

The Assiniboine River has not crested yet!

The famous Souris Swinging Bridge.. approximately 40 kilometres from Brandon.

I miss sewing!

I'm sorry there is no sewing machine or sewing project to blog about.  At the moment, my husband is finishing up the laundry/winemaking area of  our basement.  Wine kits, bottles, carboys, Vino electric filter and corker are being stored under, on and around my cutting table.  The laundry room curtain is sitting on the ironing board while Doug has been busy drywalling, priming and painting the walls.  After that he has to install approximately 200 square feet of Allure vinyl flooring   Then we have put everything back.  As Doug works on the road most weeks, he has been working weekends only on this since the middle of February.  I miss sewing and puttering around in my craft emporium.  Hopefully, we will be back to normal by the end of April.

While the basement has been out of order, I took an on-line French course with 16 tutored hours from a school in Montréal.  My oral exam was on March 31, I passed the first module with a 90%.  There are 16 modules in the course and I am hoping to take a few more this year.  Learning French is a ton of work and quite challenging. 

I have also been busy with some details for our daughter's wedding.  I got my shoes, they are moonstone leather naturalizers.  Last weekend I printed, stuffed, stamped, labelled and mailed the invitations.  Shannon's wedding dress is hanging in her closet all ready for the big day.  This week I was shopping for my dress.  I bought two dresses from David's Bridal one is metallic marine blue and the other is Victorian Lilac.  Both dresses were a steal of a deal in the clearance outlet.  I plan to shorten them.

Once my craft emporium is useable again I'm going invest in a dressmakers form and start sewing more garments. First project is sewing a corset for Shannon's wedding gown.  I have the pattern, fabric and notions, just need her measurements and we are good to go.

Vancouver walk along the sea wall.

This is a floating restaurant surrounded by yachts in the marina. I took my niece Katie & her husband Kyle out to dinner here.

 One of the many luxury boats.

It was sunny and plus 15 degrees on Thursday evening.

 This is a clear acrylic sign with Cardero's hours of operation.

 A view from further down the walkway.

 

 

 The Seawall Bar & Grill is attached to the hotel where I stayed.

 A local sea gull out to impress the tourists...I was impressed!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The flowers and greenery were lovely.

 

 

 

 

The sun comes out in Vancouver

 

 

Vancouver March 2011

This is the view from the patio door of my hotel room.

This is an inside view of my room.

I'm off to check out the hotel's fitness centre.  Have a super duper day all. 

dog booties - the pattern

Wind chill warning for City of Brandon

Current Weather Updated: Fri, Feb. 25, 2011, 10:00 CST - Brandon Airport

Brandon, MB

-30

°C

• °C
• °F

Partly cloudy

• Feels Like: -43
• Wind: W 20km/h
• Sunrise: 7:31
• Sunset: 18:15

• Relative Humidity: 61%
• Pressure: 103.23 kPa
• Visibility: 24.0 km
• Ceiling: 23000 ft 

As I walk Lily every day, she has a genuine need for dog booties.  English Springer Spaniels are water dogs with webbed toes.  Lily gets ice balls in between her toes which makes it painful to walk when the weather is in the +5 to -10 range and frost bite when it is cold like this.  This is what her current set of booties look like.

 See how worn out the polar fleece is?  This is from her nails.

The materials required are :

• polar fleece scraps
• recycled leather from purses or old leather coats
• elastic scraps 4 - 2" pieces
• velcro (hook & loop tape) 4 - 1.5" pieces

Sometimes I take the leather off of existing worn out booties and reuse it for a new set.

The polar fleece for Lily's boots is 3.5" wide and 11.5" long.  The leather strips are about  6" long and 2.5" wide.

Centre the leather strips as shown above.  Cut four small rectangles of polar fleece to mount the elastic and loop tape end on.  These rectangles are bigger than then the elastic and velcro.  The excess is trimmed off after it is sewn.

I use upholstery thread, a leather needle and my  Pfaff 7510 to sew them.

Centre the leather on the polar fleece, then top stitch the leather in place.

 I use a 3-step zig zag stitch to do this rather than applique as it makes less holes in the leather.

Sew the scratchy side of the hook and loop tape one inch above the leather patch.  Sandwich half an inch of the elastic between the rectangle of the polar fleece and the soft side of the hook and loop tape.  Stitch the sandwich together.  Trim the excess polar fleece off the elastic tab.

Fold the leather and polar fleece bootie in half.  Then insert the elastic end of the tab in between the front and back of the bootie as shown in photo.  Stitch both sides of bootie shut and it is done.  Repeat process for all four.

 

Lily modeling her new booties!  Happy Saturday all!  Keep warm.

Shannon's Quilt - the pattern

In the fall of 2009 I made this quilt for my daughter.

The pattern was published in Better Homes & Gardens Creative Collection 15th Anniversary Issue - American Patchwork & Quilting magazine April 2009 Issue 91.  It looks like card trick but uses rectangles and squares rather than triangle pieces to build the card trick effect.  I scanned the pattern from the magazine and added Shannon's diagram and email cutting instructions for free downloading at google docs.

More photos with building instructions for Shannon's quilt are available by googling my blog for Shannon's quilt.

Enjoy!