Wednesday, March 24, 2010

A Better Idea

As a U.S. citizen living in Canada, I need to have a Permanent Resident Card. That allows me back into Canada when I travel. So today I left home just before 8 a.m. to go into Calgary to pick up my new card, four months after I sent in my application.

The sky was heavily overcast, and at times snow skiffed across the road. Near Carstairs I ran into fairly heavy fog. But I arrived at the Harry Hays building in Calgary before 9:30, found a good parking place and was well on time.

There were about forty of us waiting there to pick up our cards, and only three or four were as pale skinned as I am. The rest ranged from champagne to ebony. The three clerks who helped us announced right away, "We ask you to forgive us if we mispronounce your name!" They called us up one at a time, or a family all together. When all the cards were distributed, I was still waiting to hear my name called! One of the clerks managed to find my card in a box. Thank Goodness!!! I didn't want to have to come back another day for it.

I was impressed by the variety in this group, and happy to be part of such a colourful mix. Good for you, Canada, that you draw all these attractive people to be part of you!

After stopping for groceries at a SuperStore on the way, I was home on time to fix our "hot meal" by 2 p.m. And what a feast that was: Quick Food ala Grammilou. Put a cup of water on to boil, add 1/2 cup brown rice. Put another pot of water on to boil, add cut green beans. Melt a little butter in a frying pan, add onions and fresh Steelhead Trout filet. Rinse some fresh spinach, add onions, sliced almonds, and dried cranberries. Spritz with Hellman's Raspberry Vinaigrette, and you have a delicious, healthful meal ready in about 20 minutes. Yummy!

So this afternoon I thought I could goof off a little. I experimented again with paper piecing for the wall hanging. But this time, instead of cutting strips and ending up with bias edges, I cut 4" squares and 2 1/2" square. Here's the first one I made. If you're familiar with paper piecing, you know that you lay the material face side up on one side of the paper. Turn the thing over, and stitch on the lines on the reverse side. Flip the stitched piece and press. Well, there was a small problem with this first one: when I trimmed the extra, I also trimmed the front piece off! I had a good laugh over that! I picked out the seam and used another small square to replace the one that got butchered.

This method is going to work much better,
especially because when the square is finished, you can trim it very accurately from the back. Here the paper side is up and you can see the two diagonal lines where the seams go. After trimming to exactly 4" square, pull off the paper, and your square is ready to go. Four squares make a block, and 25 blocks make a wall hanging.

Next week I'm going to visit Dear Daughter #2 for five days, and I plan to take along a sewing project. So this evening I began cutting the squares I need for the second version of the wall hanging. I have over 50 4" squares cut already out of the 100 that I need, and 36 2 1/2" squares out of the 400 needed. When I made the first wall hanging, I had a stash of 4" squares I could dip into, so that went pretty fast, plus I had cut many of the 2 1/2" squares a few years ago. This is showing me how long the wall hanging actually takes, when you start from scratch.

I was asked to donate a quilted item to an auction in support of a mission group. I'm hoping to finish this new project, a wall hanging for that. It's due by the 10th of April.

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