Barn There, Raised That...

Let's see...what else came out of my Secret Society of Barn Builders adventures?

Well, last fall I took part in a swap with my guild and made a pretty cool quilt for my lil friend Linda that was modeled after her families fish store in Prospect, Nova Scotia.  I'll share the process pictures here again but won't rehash all the details about it because I blogged about it in this blog post that tells the whole story...it was a very special momento for my pal and she got a little misty. It was so hard not to spill the beans about the book at that time! Knowing how much she would love this made the building of it so much more exciting...sometimes the connection is the really special part of a gift like this.

In the picture above you can notice that I made the door on the left really short. Why? I have no idea...it's not like the folks of Prospect are all little people...I guess I was just not really paying attention. Linda recently consoled me after one of my seemingly frequent stunned-as-me-arse moments by saying, "Don't worry, at least you're cute!" When I noticed my mistake, I just added on a chunk to the bottom and made it bigger. That's the beauty of free piecing! Add more on, take some off...do what makes your heart sing!

This building is just a bit fancier than the 2 that went to Julie for the gallery...this one has more dimension as it's not viewed straight on. For Ale was only marginally more challenging to build...I just had to consider the angles of the left side so that the perspective would be right. I am still loving the fabric choices with the bird laden sky and the fish infused water under the wonky wharf stays (that's local wharf rat speak for poles). Here in our oceanside villages the gulls are a dime a dozen, they are ever-present. The fish? Not so much...but it is still pretty commonplace to look down over the side of a wharf into the water and see some pollock swimming around.

And then at Christmastime the SSOBB decided to do a Secret Santa Swap, I got paired up with Julie. I'm so over-the-top busy in December with hairdoos that she graciously agreed to do our little exchange after the holidays. So right after, I got to work building her something special.

My regular readers by now have a pretty good idea that I am typically unimpressed with the amount of snow fall we've had the past few years; I have come to call this fair province Snova Scotia and am admittedly jealous of Julies less than frigid, open winters in Tennessee. So, I just knew I had to send her some snow...

I did a little scrounge through my stash, because at that time The Stashpocalypse had come upon me and I wasn't fabric shopping. I found lots of treasures and potential bits and pieces kicking around to put into play. With these in hand and a rough sketch on the table I was off!

See that little angled empty area under the door? It was a big gap left in my free picing fury. When I stepped back to take a break I decided I didn't really want to cut off the bottom of the building so I very carefully set in the ramp piece...measure twice (don't forget to account for your seam allowances), cut once! Those Y-seams are sometimes tricky but if you're careful you can put them in lickety-split.

In another of my stunned-as-me-arse moments I penned the date on the label 2015. I suppose the whole swap started then so that's why my "cute" lil brain defaulted to 2015...but I made this thing start to finish in 2016 and by the time I noticed my blunder I couldn't exactly scratch it out. (*Sigh... Sorry Julie.) Maybe one day I'll be not-quite-so-cute...but what then? Just stunned? Dog help me.

Free pieced barns and letters...what could be better?

I thought she'd be able to use it with her seasonal decorations on a table somewhere, but she liked it enough to hang it in the cozy spot where she does her writing.

How about you? Have we inspired you to attempt building a barn of your very own yet? Let me know with a comment below about a barn that might have tickled your fancy enough to give this barn building gig a go and I'll enter your name in a random draw to win a signed copy of the book so you can get started!

Leave a comment before the morning of June 19th to be included...I'll draw for it while I'm partaking in my weekly, bleary eyed Sunday morning ritual of brown holy water, a lap full of springy things and Johnny Cash on the airwaves.

Sunday Morning Coming Down

It's no secret that I LOVE Johnny Cash...listening to Cash, having some coffee and a lil chocolate makes a pretty perfect lazy morning in my eyes.

My Enabler Peep gave me this little gift...a new vessel for the Brown Holy Water.
Must have been made just for me, it's like the designer knew me.

Hard to believe it's Sunday already, time does have a way of sailing by when you're having fun! Yesterday was the monthly sew-in for my guild, the Maritime Modern Quilt Guild. Lots of us braved the winter slush covered roads to enjoy a day of laughing and stitching together...there wasn't even too much bitching going on yesterday, but then again there was plenty of chocolate around so I guess our souls were soothed.

I hadn't put any prior thought into getting ready for the day, so in the morning I just threw a bunch of stuff in my bag, grabbed my machine & some sweet provisions for the day and went on my merry way. After helping to baste The Enablers quilt top,  I sewed the last border on Kaleido and messed around with the charm squares from last months swap. All the squares were dots and stripes which made quite a selection of colourful modern madness of the cloth variety. What to do with them? 

 

Make funky fishes! Of course I jumped right in with my cutter and started slicing things up...6 weird little fish and a handful of wonky letters came together in a table sized mat over the course of the afternoon. It's so freeing to just see where you end up once you toss out your compass and move forward in a general direction; blaze the trail. Some of my peeps we're excited about the process, some were overwhelmed by the idea of not having a map to the finish line. I was trudging along, just enjoying the chocolate, until things took a slice in the wrong direction...

One hap-hazard cut too many I guess.

Back in November I had a similar catastrophe with my cutter taking the side of my finger and nail clean off. That was the first accident I had ever had in 20 years of quilt making, and it made my hair-doo-ing day job rather difficult for a long while. My poor finger had just started to feel normal & the nail had decided to grow back quite nicely. Seems I have unleashed a sharp, slick demon this winter. 

Clearly the universe is trying to tell me something...and in true Valerie style, I am simply not listening. I shall pour whiskey in my wound and carry on.