Call Me A Little Old Fashioned

It's unseasonaly chilly here today which is frustrating because I'm wanting to get out into the gardens. The up side is that it makes for great quilting weather.

Candied Hexagons has been sitting in the study all winter, and, with the exception of one or two brief acquaintances, not seeing much quilting action. So much so that I often wonder if I should start calling my hobby 'piecing' rather than 'quilting' because lately that's where the bulk of my energies go.

Picking up my needle was like greeting an old friend and I spent a couple of wonderfully relaxing hours watching stitches change the texture of this flimsie.

I love the old fashioned look of this quilt with its muted and warm colours. It's not modern or bright but more reminiscent of something that my grandmothers would have made.

As is the Oatmeal Cake that I made earlier this week. Yummy as it was fresh out of the oven, a day or two later it became even moister and denser. I haven't made an Oatmeal Cake in ages and this one didn't disappoint. Comfort food and again, a dessert reminiscent of an earlier time. Guess this week I was channeling days gone by.

There was a break in the quilting action to prepare dinner but seeing my progress from this afternoon has me anxious to get back to my stitches this evening....M

Dream Girls

Photo: Sharron Davies/CBC

I've got a tale that my sister Frances shared with me recently that will pull at your heartstrings. 

Last year a group of young girls from the remote First Nation community of Fort Hope in northern Ontario decided that they wanted their own hockey team - the first-ever girls' team in their community. They found a coach and equipment, and developed their hockey legs on an outdoor rink, then headed out to their first tournament. Unfortunately, while there, they were racially harassed, both in the arena and when they were in town. They vowed never to return there to play again but the drive to play hockey remained strong so they set their sights on playing in an all girls tournament in our nation's capital, Ottawa (a 90-minute drive from where I live).

Photo: CBC

It wasn't going to be easy - they needed to raise over $100,000 to fund the trip. As luck would have it, CBC radio did a documentary on their team and their quest and they captured the hearts of Canadians far and wide. Sponsorship and Go Fund Me initiatives started up and by March they had met their goal. Thanks to generous donors they were also going to visit the RCMP horse stables, attend an Ottawa Senators hockey game and enjoy trips to some of our national museums while they were in town.

Photo: Sharron Davies/CBC

The fun didn't stop there. A gal named Sharron Davies contacted them to say that she wanted to be their hockey mom while they were in town. And, no surprise, this generous soul also happens to be a quilter and a member of the Kanata Quilting Guild. To help show her support in the stands she made the beautiful quilt that you see at the top of this post.

Photo: Sharron Davies/CBC

AND, with the help of her guild she also gave every girl on the team her own quilt! How great is that? Shout out to the guild!!! The documentary stops after their first tournament and I've glossed over many of the details but you can read the story about the Ottawa leg of their journey here.

Hockey runs deep in our Canadian souls and it's wonderful to see these gals and their coaches pursue their dreams. It is equally good to be reminded of the power of the kindness of strangers, quilters included. Take a few minutes to listen to the documentary, maybe as you sew - it is heart wrenching but good for the soul all at the same time....M

What To Do? What to Do?

A few months ago Anne gave me a pile of lovely 6.5" blocks in this pretty green print (she thinks that they may have come from Jane) and, despite having a list of projects the length of my arm on my wish list I became obsessed with doing something with them so that they didn't sink into oblivion (if you saw my sewing room you would understand!).

I knew that it would be a charity quilt and I also knew that I wanted to make the most of the pieces that are cut - 32, I believe. So, what to do?

I trolled Pinterest long and hard and had made up my mind on a pattern several different times...

...finally landing on Puss in the Corner blocks to alternate with them. It means that I don't cut into the existing blocks and hopefully also means that it will work out the way I think it will.

I'm using up lots of yellow scraps and think that I will incorporate blues and greens into the borders to pick up on the other colours in the print. Still have to plan the layout but at least putting these blocks together is a start....M

Pretty in Pink

Quilts can hold so many mysteries. Betty and Steve were visiting with Steve's cousin Anne and her husband recently and the conversation came around to a quilt that mom had quilted for Anne's mom.

Anne is not a quilter but she has a beautiful, delicate pink cross stitched quilt that her mother left her.

We know that mom did the quilting but there's no one left to tell us who did all of that beautiful cross stitch. Anne feels that her mom paid someone to do it, but who?

All of the quilting is also done with pink thread...

and the backing is pink too, which nicely shows off the quilted pattern.

This quilt is reminiscent of one that I started years ago in blue but I have no idea what happened to it. That was another lifetime ago. It came from the Mary Maxim catalog (Betty recalls many fond hours flipping through those catalogs, as do I) and I suspect that this one did too.

Isn't it great that Betty and Anne's friendship is made that much richer with these shared stitches, even if there are a few pieces of the story missing? The ties that bind....M

Waiting for Armageddon

A bad ice storm has been raging south of us for much of the weekend and we are expecting it to land here later today (the rains have actually begun as I type) so it was a good day to spend inside, warm and dry, with Minnie.

You will recall that the pattern I'm working from shows four sets of four-diamond blocks bordered with a single colour...

...but I've been toying with just placing smaller four-diamond blocks and not doing the larger outline around 16 hexies. I bounced the idea off of Betty and she voted yes. Decision made.

So I've been playing with different layouts.

Funny, I thought that I had lots of four-diamond sets done up but there's only about eight or nine. Still, it's enough to get me started....M

Churning

Upon doing the math for Omigosh I realized that I need about 99 of the nine-patch blocks and the same number of Churn Dash blocks. Feeling the need for speed, I decided to shift gears and spend a little time on the Churn Dash blocks rather than the tiny nine-patches so I cut all of the pieces that I need for those blocks.

I've stacked them in groups of 10 and pick one or two to sew whenever I have a few minutes. To prevent boredom from setting in I mix the colours of prints in each bundle of 10.

And surprise, surprise, I have been known to fall asleep once or twice while making these blocks as well!

I'm really happy that I opted to make all of these blocks in shades of brown.

My pile is now up to 34. Still a ways to go but at least I don't feel like I will be six feet under before I get even close to finishing all of the blocks that I need for this quilt.














The occasional nine-patch block slips into the rotation; this one needs a good pressing....M

Two Treats

Thanks to a shot of inspiration/motivation Snippets is now together, and I love it. All of those happy spring colours just make me smile.

I was in need of a smile because we got a wild winter storm the other day and now everything is white again. If it wasn't so pretty it would be depressing - I'm ready for spring bulbs to show.

It would have gone quicker if I hadn't needed to fix a thing or two (there's always one, isn't there?)...

but it really didn't slow things down that much.

I think it will look lovely on a bed.

I had it laid out and the blocks of columns sewn to use all 54 blocks but it was looking out of proportion to me so that last row of blocks will become the beginnings of a baby quilt. Now for the backing. Ugh. Not my fave. Oh well.

The second treat is a jar of Peach Lavender Jam that Jane gave us for Christmas. We opened it up on the weekend - delish! - and I'm giving it full credit for giving me the get-up-and-go to finish Snippets. Thanks so much Jane....M

Hoppy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone! If you celebrate the holiday I hope that you and yours enjoy a wonderful time together.

Our family celebrations were yesterday so there was lots of hustle and bustle on the food prep front. I decided to dig up a recipe for No Bake Cookies and make them into little nests. It has been years since I've made them but they were a favourite when we were growing up.

This recipe has a little peanut butter in them, which is a nice combo with the chocolate. They are tasty little morsels and have oatmeal in them too, so I like to think of them as a little healthy, but I'd forgotten just how sweet they are; I think they need to be enjoyed with a cup of tea.

It's beautiful and sunny out today but the temperatures have taken a real dive so I'll be sitting down to enjoy some hand stitching on Minnie.

I keep a supply of hexies handy, all prepped and ready to sew into diamonds and pick them up when I have a few minutes, so the pile continues to grow, but I think that today it might be time to work with larger diamonds and maybe even try putting a few of those together. We'll see. I've been threatening to do that for a while but it's always so easy just to pull out the makings of another little diamond and whip it up. It's got to become a quilt some day though.....M

p.s. A big shout out to my sister Frances who has just launched her blog L'abeille Francaise, sharing her love of all thing French, particularly Paris. Her inaugural post is all about macarons and Ladurée's new Toronto shop. Sweet!