A DARLING QUILT FOR BABY

Two years ago I invited a friend to our quilting club's final "Show and Tell" party at which our members display the quilts they've made that year.  I posted earlier about the one we had this year.

S. was not a quilter at all.  She had other hobbies and interests.  But she won a door prize that night, a few fat quarters of nice fabric.  "Well," she thought, "I guess I'd better do something with these."  She started making quilts.  Her first one was a lovely raggy quilt.  It turned out very well.  Since then she's made many, many quilts and given most of them away.

Her chief delight is appliqué, and she's become very good at it!  She does very careful work and her quilts turn out extremely well.  Here's a picture of her latest, a baby quilt along with a doll quilt made to match.

I was delighted that she took the time today to bring it here to show me, and happy that she gave permission for me to share it with you.

IT TAKES ALL KINDS!

When you run a business open to the public you come into contact with all sorts of people.

There is one little old lady in town (for all I know she's just same age as I am) who comes every year toward the end of our selling season and spends at least an hour scrutinizing plants, asking prices, poking around looking for something she might consider buying.  The season is not complete until she has made her visit.  Today was her day.

She showed up with two other ladies just like her!  Jim approached one in the greenhouse (our helper S. was busy in the sales building) and asked if he could help her.  With her nose in the air and her mouth pursed she said, "No, I want to have the owner."  Jim went and called S. out to help.

Pretty soon it was time for S.'s lunch hour and she left.  The trio spent about 45 minutes examining plants, poking at pots and asking prices.  Jim answered.  "Our" little old lady said, "That's really expensive!!!"  "Oh yes," said Jim, "VERY expensive."  (He didn't tell me what it was.)  I wonder if she heard the sarcasm in his voice.

Jim came into the house to attend to a few matters and left the ladies to continue looking.  After some time they were finished.  They had two tomato plants and were digging into their change purses to see if they could come up with the right amount, arguing in the meantime about how much the GST would come to.  He rang up the sale: two tomato plants at $4.50 each: $9.00 plus $.45 tax.  To his surprise, "our" old lady took out a twenty dollar bill to pay.

When he told me this tale I commented, "You have to feel a little sorry for old ladies like that."  He said, "If you live to be 120 you could never be like that!"

Actually Alberta, Canada is a pretty good place to be a little old lady, even a little old lady who really does need to pinch pennies.  Everyone in Canada is covered by the universal health care.  When we see a doctor or go to the hospital, we don't get a bill.  The government pays.  How is it funded?  Everyone pays a fee according to their taxable income.  An extremely fair system!

Plus the Canadian government sends seniors a monthly check, again, adjusted according to their taxable income.  The amount I receive each month would be enough for me to buy my groceries (if I were single) and even go out for a meal a few times in the month.

Alberta also helps us by co-paying our prescriptions--for seniors I mean.  For a needful drug, such as my thyroid medication, the most you pay for having a prescription filled is $25.  There is a limit to how much medication you can get at once: a three month supply.  Unless that is, you are a "snowbird"--one of those fortunate people who get to go south to escape some of the Canadian winter.  In that case, the pharmacist may give you enough pills to last until you come back.

There is a limit to how long we can be gone out of country without losing our benefits: it's six months, or seven months, depending on which province you live in.

When we lived in Oregon in the early 80's people spoke about the Canadian system with horror as "socialism."  Well, if that's socialism, a system that takes care of people even when they are poor, I'm for it!

P.S.  When S. came back from her lunch break, she said to Jim, "You can go relax now. The Owner is back!"

"COME INTO MY PARLOUR...

said the spider to the fly...."  A little drama unfolded beside me in a sunny windowsill.

A fat fly became entangled in a tiny spider's web.  He buzzed and wriggled and tried to fly free.  The spider danced around him--climbed right onto his back.  Much buzzing and jiggling.  The spider had a wild ride.  But in the end that little spider, scarcely bigger than a pinhead captured the fly.  

Do tiny little spiders have poison to kill a fly?  Or did the fly simply get too tangled and exhaust himself?  The whole drama took just a few minutes.  I was impressed.  The one fly should feed that spider for many, many days!

I prefer spiders to stay outside, but now I have conflicted feelings about the doughty little fighter.  What odds the little beast overcame!

JUST DO IT!

Sometimes when I run into trouble with a quilt I put it aside and let it moulder for a while.  That wasn't an option this time, so this morning I sat down with the stitch ripper and carefully removed every third stitch of the seam joining the rippled border to the pinwheel quilt top.  It took a while because the seam is 84 1/2" long.  Pick, pick, pick and finally it was finished.

I removed the loose threads--a lint roller is helpful for a quick job--resewed the ends of the cross seams that had given way when the border was simply ripped from the quilt, pressed everything nice and flat.  I laid the quilt top out on the floor, took the border piece, which is exactly the length of the quilt and pinned it VERY carefully, about every six inches.  This time when I sewed the border on I (smartly) used the even feed foot.

All that care (that should have gone into the process the first time) paid off.  The border is just how it should be:

Three other borders to go and then layering the "sandwich."  I hope to get to the machine quilting stage today.  We have an overcast, drizzly day, which probably means the garden center won't be too busy today and that will give me more time for sewing.  YAY!!

REALLY BUMBLING AROUND

I had some fun this afternoon at the local quilt shop picking out several pieces of fabric to finish some of the quilt tops I've been working on.  I bought this nice brown cotton for the borders of the Pinwheel quilt.  It was only $9.99 a meter, so I bought enough to cut the long borders on the lengthwise grain without needing to piece them.  It's a very useable brown!

I cut the long borders at 85" as the quilt had measured 84 1/2". That would give me just a little margin.  I marked the halfway point on the border and pinned it to the halfway point on the quilt.  I smoothed out the rest and pinned it at intervals.  Then I sat down to sew the border to the quilt, with the border underneath and the quilt top on top.  That way I could see just where the points were.

I sewed the whole seam and, to my dismay, found it was 3/8" too short!  It seemed like an awful lot of stitch ripping, so I loosened the first block and a half, and then I took hold of both sides and RIPPED THE SEAM OUT!!!  Scary, but fast.  It worked fairly well, except that several of the cross seams also ripped open about a 1/4".

I cut another border section of 4 1/2" width and this time 86" long.  The strip was actually 105" long before I cut off the end.

I sat down at the machine and sewed this new border strip on.  AND THE SAME THING HAPPENED!!!  The blooming border was 3/8" short.

I should have given up at that point, but wasn't smart enough to do that.  So I tried to work around it by taking out the last 15" of seam, cutting off the end piece of the border and sewing on a new, long piece.  Most borders are pieced, eh?  There finally was enough material to reach the end and then some.

But when I turned it over the truth of the "shrinking border fabric" became evident.  THE WHOLE BORDER WRINKLES ALONG THE EDGE OF THE QUILT.  The sad truth is that I now need to take my stitch ripper, sit down and take the whole seam out, stitch by stitch.  OUCH!!!

I think I need to do a little repair on that stressed out edge of the quilt, and then carefully pin the border in place and attach it, but this time let the border be on top and the quilt underneath.

I think I'll leave that for tomorrow.  I've had enough for today!  The good part: I have oodles and oodles of border fabric.  

TRYING OUT SOME BLOCKS

That photo in the last post is quilt #12 for this summer.  I bought some more strips to finish it, but couldn't resist trying out that pattern in some other fabrics--the ones the pattern was actually meant for.  I'm really, really liking this combination.

There was hardly any time to sew last week, with all that cleaning, which included the   garage.  But yesterday afternoon I did find time to get into the new fabric.

Around 6 p.m. I made a stupid mistake and decided it was time to quit.  Here are some of the strip sets and you'll see the one on the right has one of the seams facing the wrong way.

This morning I spent time picking out all of those stitches, 42 inches worth, pressed the strip flat and resewed.  Well, sometimes it's possible to be just too stupid!  I sewed it on the wrong way again!  There's some pickin' out ahead!

WHOLE WHACK O' CLEANIN' GOING ON

Yesterday I didn't sew at all, which is pretty unusual, especially considering I'm trying to finish a dozen quilts before summer.  But on Monday, having finished the Boxy Stars top I had to try out the next pattern, "Tradewinds" by Cozy Quilt Designs.  This is a super easy pattern and goes together very fast.  You make strip sets of 3 strips and of 2 strips, cut them into triangles and put them together with a triangle of background.  Four of these blocks make a complete big block.  I made all of these in one day.  These were made using a bought strip set.  Looks kind of 70's, doesn't it?  Then I ran out of strips and had to wait until I was in town again to get another set.

In the meantime, it was a lovely sunny day on Tuesday and I was inspired to do some heavy duty cleaning.  Got out the power washer and attacked the garden shed which was direly dirty!  Mouse droppings and dirt and grease, all gone!  Well, there are a few soaked-in greasy spots on the floor, but the shed is transformed!  AAAAH, satisfaction.  

But the weather was still nice and I was still inspired, so I carried the deck furniture that had been stored in the shed out to the deck, sprayed them with Fantastik with bleach and power washed them.  Doesn't this look inviting?  Just needs a pitcher of lemonade and a plate of cookies on the little table.

 Still felt ambitious so I did the same with the furniture on the back patio.  By that time it was 6:30 and time to quit and enjoy a well deserved rest with some diet coke and lots of ice!




I just wonder how I could still feel ambitious about cleaning this morning, but when you're on a roll, go for it!  So I filled a bucket with some hot water, dishwashing liquid and ammonia and attacked the linoleum with a stiff scrubbing brush.  Fortunately I have one with a long handle and am able to scrub standing up.  Then down on hands and knees to mop up with hot water and dry with an old terry cloth towel.  OH BOY!  Do I love a clean house!



In the meantime I will share a few comments that came through my email.

Sharon wrote: "...more or less keep up the good quilting work and stamina...ha, ha and also show us your completed work!!  I also enjoy seeing the nature comments and cooking, green house, etc. etc."  

Betty wrote: "My opinion of the boxy stars is that it should be shown somewhere - it is so clever, the colors seem perfect to me."

Shirley wrote: "The Boxy Star top is really pretty.  Maybe I will try that one day because it is paper piecing.  I do lean toward the blue border but the purple does look good too."
(I happen to know that blue is Shirley's favourite colour.)

Thanks, Friends, for sharing your encouragement and comments!