Wendy’s Quilting and Life

I was blog surfing last week and came across this blog at Stitchin By the Lake where she asked how your flower beds looked….as of last weekend this is how they looked. This week has been a lot milder and thankfully alot of snow melted but we still have months to go before any planting will happen around here. (other than starting plants indoors of course)

my coworkers quilt is finished and was delivered this week.

Monday night was my longarm talk at Quilt Guild, I felt it went really well.

the quilt in the above picture was one of my very first quilts back when the girls were very small and I only had 3. I really didn’t know what I was doing, I had never met another quilter and only had a few magazines to go by. I had decided to quilt an outline of my girls hands in the hearts and quilt their name in the hand..my second daughter kept pulling out the batting where her handprint was so I eventually gave up and quilted it without. (I used a poly batt and now you can hardly tell theres batting in the quilt) Anyhow this quilt has a bit of a sad tale to it. Years after I made it and the girls and I were on our own, and I was going to college I was in a bit of a rush to get them to school and as we were leaving my 3rd daughter ran upstairs for something. When we all got home that night I discovered that something was that she was afraid that her hampster would be cold and so wrapped my quilt around the cage. Let me tell you that Hampster had made the prettiest nest in her life…all I could say to my daughter was lets fold the quilt up and put it in the closet and not talk about it. She was as upset as I was about it and I knew she had no idea that her hampster would ruin the quilt.

Next is my Elizabeth Quilt, I loved this quilt the moment I saw it at Fatquartershop.com and I had to have it I also had to have the charm squares. My oldest loved it too so both quilts now belong to her.

I love the wheel of mystery quilt. It was fun to piece and so nice to look at. It usually lives at Erik’s.

Just for fun I also showed my very first quilt. I made it when I was expecting my oldest daughter. It was a simplicity pattern and I used broadcloth. I couldn’t figure out how to finish the binding and at the time I didn’t know anyone who quilted. Somehow this quilt was used for all my girls without getting finished. I think I’ll sew the binding down before I’m a Grandma. Its amazing to me how fast 23 years can go by.

I’ve been working on Gail Pans Block of the month. I bring them to work with me and embroider during my lunch breaks. What a great stress reliever for me. I may make an extra set of blocks in the Peace on Earth fabrics I ordered from fatquartershop.com this week. There is only one complaint that I have about the Fatquarter shop and that is that its far too tempting for me. Their service is outstanding and its so exciting to get their shipments, everything is wrapped so nicely too.

One more finish this week. This quilt is for Erik’s Moms Birthday. Its so pretty and fresh looking. The pattern showed a wider binding but I found the red gingham fabric to be a bit too much for my tastes so I chose to do a traditional binding. I used wool batting for this one and quilted it using a panto called daisy swirl.

Saturdays really do fly by too fast. I have so much to do and all I’d really like to do is snuggle under a quilt and watch the Notebook.

Have a great weekend!

Wendy

You Have A Type B Personality

You’re as laid back as they come… Your baseline mood is calm and level headed Creativity and philosophy are your forte Like a natural sedative, you have a soothing effect on people Friends and family often turn to you first with their problems You have the personality to be a spiritual or psychological guru

I’m ready to start putting the borders on the Figs and Plum quilt. I had hoped to have them on tonight but I decided to get working on the customer quilt first tonight. I’m hoping to have the quilt all finished and bound by Monday or Tuesday which means of course the customer quilt needs to be finished. Today I did get the borders cut out.

It was raining today, so some of our snow started to melt. Of course it makes everything look a little gray and grimy outside. This has been a long and very cold winter which might explain abit of my shopping last month…

It all kinda started with the Quilt I’m making for Eriks mom, he suggested I make it bigger and so I had to order more fabric

and I made sure that I’d have more than enough just in case.. I also ordered enough of a coordinating fabric for the backing.

And because my Daughter was in Texas for a couple weeks and could bring home my order I added a few things..

I have always loved red white and blue together and I just couldn’t resist the Flag Day Farm line so I didn’t. I am Canadian but I have to admit that I’ve always wished they’d add a little blue into our flag.

I had to add the snippets charms to my order so I’d get free shipping (well I really only needed to add one pkg of charms but that wouldn’t be as much fun right?

I might want to make a BOM quilt that I’ve been looking at online .

and then there were these goodies that were on sale…

I also bought a couple of tablerunner kits from one of our local quilt shops one for my Mom and one for me. I’ll show mine when I get it done.

and then to be fair a few goodies from the other quilt shop in town. After all if we don’t support our shops and our industry what might happen?

Well thats my reasoning anyways.  I also read that Kimberly and Kevin owners of the Fat Quarter Shop are expecting Twins….

One more hour til Friday!!!

the weekend that is. Why is it that those two days of the week have to go so fast?

I love the weekends and this one was full

I got quite abit of the Figs and Plum quilt done. I finished piecing the half square triangles on Friday night and cutting the 4 1/2 squares Saturday morning. Then I asked my youngest and her friend to lay the blocks out for me while I worked on a customer quilt.  Saturdays are full days here, I like to make a pot of soup for my weekday lunches, catch up on the laundry and housework and get as much quilting done. But Saturday night is always for Erik and I. This week we had tickets to see B J Thomas. He put on an excellent show. His music has great memories attached for me.

We also celebrated my Moms Birthday on Sunday night. I made lasagna, and my oldest made Salad, and appetizers and the girls all helped with set up and clean up. Well not all of them, unfortunately with Emily in Edmonton she wasn’t able to make it. Anyways Happy Birthday Mom!!

My mom is on the right with her sister, my Auntie.

I spent the evening working on the quilt top and also got quite abit done on the custom job on my machine. There really are not enough hours in the day.

When I first started my Longarm Quilting business I remember other longarmers talking about Emergency Quilts. You know the ones that need to be quilted yesterday and most agreed that there really wasn’t such a thing.

Sometimes though life has some twists in it and although I am busy, with quilting for others and also a few projects underway I have to slip in an emergency quilt. You see one of my co-workers needs a comfort quilt and she needs it yesterday. Of course that’s how I feel, and I only wish that a quilt could really make someone all better. About a year and a half ago I lost one of my favorite Aunts to brain cancer and now my friend is in her own battle with it. She is too young and her kids are too young to loose their mom. Life is just not fair!

Anyways I’m taking a break from my piecing projects this week to make a comfort quilt that will hopefully bring some softness and warmth during this very difficult time.

My plan is to make a label and press it on freezer papers so that my coworkers can write her messages . I remember using pigma pens to do this in the past. Has that wheel been reinvented? Are there any better pens to use?