The Blue Room

 It's funny how we give things nicknames. Each room at the Inn has gotten a call name... the Purple Room, the Taco Room, the Blue Room... even though they're all painted white.  The last bit of stuff I made for Sister PurpleBoots was for the Blue Room.

I've have been hanging onto this octopus fabric from Cotton & Steel for quite a while, I picked up a couple of meters of it on a trip to the Lunenburg Makery more because I loved it than because I had any plan for it. Come to think of it that's how most of my stash has been accumulated... see-it-love-it-buy-it. Sister PurpleBoots loved it too and asked if it could be used for her Inn projects.  She has this super cool leather daybed that's a similar blue to put in the third bedroom and it seemed to me that the fabric would be an ideal candidate for some kitch so I reluctantly agreed to cut into it.  I'm sure that I'm not the only hoarder of cotton that feels a bit of a pang when the blade hits a long-loved hunk of cloth. It seems ridiculous, after all that's why we buy the stuff, but there's something kinda sad about letting go... it's like saying so long to an old friend.

Anyway, the fabric pull for this room was based around those cute sea critters. I really wanted to showcase the fabric so I decided to keep the patchwork pretty simple for this one.  I cut charm squares that blended nicely with a Free Spirit print that couldn't decide if it was a stripe or a border print. Had the yardage been printed with the design running the length of the bolt it would have been a fabulous border print but instead the designer ran it across the width of the yardage and so, stripe it is.

I pieced the back too of course...all these bed runners are essentially reversible. I like to peek at the back of things on the frame as The Robot works his magic just to make sure things are going along properly... and it occurred to me that that's a view you guys seldom see so I snapped a photo to share with you. (I know... exciting, eh? Try not to wet your pants!) The Robot did a beautiful job stitching out a design called Marmalade on this runner. Simple patchwork calls for beautiful quilting!

As for pillows, more octopus fabric!  All these little 3" triangles are more of a nuisance to cut than they are to sew so this pillow definitely took some time.  Voodoo Duck was happy at last to be part of the fun... with so much improv on the go here lately there hasn't been much demand for his services.  I ran the quilting lines on the same angles as the triangle patchwork which made for some groovy diamond shapes in the top part.

I'm glad to have some scraps left from this project...not sure what they'll work into or when they'll surface in my work again, but I do know that seeing a few bits in my scrap bin makes me feel better about setting those octopuses loose!

Weight of Love

Valentines day. Love is in the air...

What better day to dig into the Jack tin and set to work on the "Weight of Love" quilt that I started in November when the MMQG brought quilter extraordinaire Libs Elliot to town for a workshop.

I pulled some yardage from my stash with these incredible fishies swimming in a bright orange sea and then dug into the shelf of fat quarters for a bunch of supporting fabrics. True to my "just giv'er" style I didn't plan, count or otherwise predetermine anything about the fabric placement. I am always happiest just winging it!

I fussy cut all the fishes and cut up a whack of triangles and half hexies to prepare myself for the workshop, packed up Voodoo Duck and all my gear and headed off to the classroom.

Libs says that Y-seams aren't supposed to be cry seams. I've never really had trouble with them so my progress was uninhibited by the little buggers. Things went together quite smoothly until I got bored with the monotony  of repetitive sewing. Y'all know how much that bothers me. I think I got 6 or 7 rows completed that day.

I've pulled it out a couple times since but haven't really felt compelled to jump back in the fish bowl and do anything with it.

Until today...we've entered back into the hell that is Snova Scotia in February; yesterday's storm has dumped in excess of 50cm of snow and my back is too sore to shovel. So, I'm off to swim with the fishes instead.

The Ducks Ass

I've long loved using the saying, "That's the cats ass!", when something is particularly pleasing. My recent adventures with Voodoo Duck have now changed my wording ever so slightly...the addition of this button to his butt just makes me giggle. The button was part of the MMQG swag bag goodies and it needed to live somewhere. Appropriate, no?

Quilting never ranks high on my list of summertime priorities but there has been some action in my sewing corner over the last month or so. I made a couple Gallery Tunics for myself, finished up the skull quilt flimsy and whipped up a second Star Bright baby flimsy for our upcoming quilt show raffle prize. The Skull quilt is from a book by Boo Davis but I chose to alter/round out the corners of the skull & jaw and I used random width strips in the background piecing. Close inspection of the skull quilt reveals a couple carefully placed fabrics in the mouth...seemed fitting to have crowns on my teeth.  The ducks ass, right?

The biggest excitement was the smallest finish: a mini-mini that was made to swap with the MMQG peeps...super cute, I hated to part with it. A little bit of free piecing together with some applique and a wee pieced binding...also the ducks ass.

Remember when I took my mental health road trip with Daisy and tagged along with the Jeepers? I wanted so badly to go to parts unknown with them but couldn't because Daisy is a city Jeep. Well...not anymore. She's on her way to the darkside. I had her lifted and am currently working toward making the big $$ decision on new wheels and tires. I've been creeping the Facebook wall of the Nova Scotia Jeep Club for some time now and finally got brave enough to go out and meet some of them in person. (Great folks by the way!) We participated in our first Jeep run with the club on Canada Day. We crawled through mud, over rocks and crept our way through trails so tight that the branches tickled her sides and tree trunks barely passed by her mirrors without kissing. The happy trails took us back to the shoreline at the Bay of Fundy. Remember when I showed you Halls Harbour? Well, were pretty close to there. So. Much. Fun. It was the ducks ass.

Oh. And there's been big progress on that damn tee shirt quilt I was commissioned to do. My avoidance was shelved yesterday and I forced myself to get the top together. I lugged all my stuff to Adriennes over at Chezzetcook Modern Quilts to spend the day stitching and bitching with her...and can you believe that I forgot to pack my Pfaffs foot pedal? Stunned-as-me-arse, I tell ya! So I commandeered her ole faithful Kenmore into service and with a little help from Voodoo Duck and Charlie Dog, I managed to come home with a completed flimsy...well, it may get a border. And though I'm not a huge tee shirt quilt fan, I must say this one is...you guessed it...the ducks ass.

Tonight we're partying with The Stanfields right around the corner from here...how cool is that? One of my favourite bands in my neighbour's garage! And, to make a good thing even better, I found a great new addition to the Jack lineup last week that'll be certain to make my evening full of good-duck-assery.

Technical Difficulties...First World Problems

Is there anything more frustrating than not knowing how to make a computer do what you want it to do? If only I had more experience with all these gizmos's and gotta-haves; I have just enough knowledge of computers to make me dangerous and not quite enough to make me efficient. The world might well be at my fingertips, but its the curse words on the tip of my tongue that are glaringly obvious at this moment.

I have always blogged using my Samsung tablet, but this morning it was downstairs keeping the Robot company so I decided that I would attempt to write using my new laptop; a whizzy new thing that is loaded up with Windows 10...which I might add is a beast of a learning curve for someone who is still thinking in Vista terms. Because I am an Android user and all my "stuff" is linked to my Google profile I wanted this laptop to default to my Google settings. I know there is likely a simple way to make this thing do just that but do you think I can figure out how to get rid of the seemingly default "@hotmail" user settings? I can chose my Google account, but I can't make it default. Clearly an equally forceful troop of Gremlins possess the Microsoft world as they do the Google world...damn Gremlins, foiling my every attempt to make this mornings blogging an enjoyable experience. If my laziness were able to thwart my stubbornness I'd have gone to the basement to retrieve my tablet an hour and a half ago. But, here I am typing for the first time on my laptop; virtue seized, but not rewarded.

All I really wanted to do was tell you about the Maritime Modern Quilt Guilds sew in yesterday. The Enabler hosted it in the top floor sun room at her condo building that overlooks the Bedford Basin...what a view! I stayed up way too late the night before watching the Robot work its magic on Ellies quilt and didn't get much of a chance to prepare anything really new or exciting to take with me so, on my way out the door I put the Metro Twist pieces that I had been working on in the Jack Daniels tin, tucked in Voodoo Duck and took off.

I decided that I would totally wing the placement of these blocks...so with wild abandonment (think shaken AND stirred) I tossed all the pieces into two big bags that I could reach into sewing together what ever units came to hand. I sewed and sewed...I even pressed the center seam of the finished blocks open! Surprised? Yah, I was too...try not to wet your pants, sometimes I do things properly but I do complain the whole time.

The result? 25 finished blocks of pure random delight and a fabulous day chatting with the peeps from the guild. I love these ladies. We covered a lot of topics yesterday...everything from the working in the justice system, the price of fabric, the importance of having a job that "works" for you, new babies, secret Santa gift exchanges, the hopefulness that Canada seems to be feeling with our new government and the importance of chocolate chip cookies that bend with out breaking. You know, the big stuff!

The Kinda Quick Curve Ruler

The Quick Curve Ruler came into the house a couple years ago,  a souvenir from our Ottawa/Hamilton family road trip in March of 2013. I saw it at The Running Stitch quilting shop near Ottawa next to an oh-so beautiful sample quilt and just had to have it. You know how those "had-to-have-it" things often play out, right? Often, at least in my world, I figure out pretty quickly that I was wrong and the highly coveted "latest and greatest" sits and sits.

Such was the case with this Quick Curve Ruler. Everytime I opened the package my eyes crossed and I quickly put it back in the drawer and slammed it shut! Gah, so confusing! I simply couldn't focus on the instructions,  too much text for my ADHD afflicted brain to compute. Then my little Maritime Modern Quilt Guild offered up a workshop using this ruler last weekend...so I pulled it out, dug out some fabrics, loaded my stuff and Voodoo Duck in the Jeep and off we went!

Our guilds PEI leader, Heather Jarmyn, is quite the master of the QCR and taught us what we needed to know to get our curves on. The night before the class I had precut my fabrics into the necessary rectangles required for the pattern "Metro Twist" and so once she showed the ruler in use, I was pretty well good to go. I am very much a visual/hands-on learner...show me, it works every time.

So I kicked off my boots and away I went.....

All the gals at the work shop were working away...each of us excited about the others fabrics and pattern choices. All of us pleased with our new found skills and curvy goodness. The temporary design wall gave us a spot to share our blocks...

The Metro Twist pattern calls for 160 curved patches that sew up into 20 blocks...that's  a LOT of repetitive sewing for someone who hates repetitive sewing...80 curves in one orientation and 80 more in the other ...b-o-r-i-n-g!!! That would have given me a quilt that measures about 40 by 55 inches. So did I stop there? Nope, of course not. I am a sucker for punishment. What the heck would that teeny weeny quilt be any good for? I didn't use baby appropriate fabric and you clearly cannot snuggle a springy thing in a quilt that would barely cover your lap, now can ya? So, I decided that I'd  make even more curves and add another row to the width of the quilt. Can I break that down for you? That's 5 more blocks which equates to another 40 curved patches...or 40 more reasons to pour some Jack down my throat.

So that's where I am. All those wretched curved patches are sewn & trimmed...and yes, the stacks are uneven in number of course because I cannot count with my eyes crossed and have the tendency to get carried away with my cutter.

One day, when my eyes uncross, I'll lay them out and stitch up a flimsy. Until then, I'll slam that had-to-have-Kinda-Quick-Curve Ruler back in the drawer.

Hello My Name Is...

Kona Nerd, of course!

I have been playing with ideas in my head for Project: Kona Nerds, Unite! fairly steadily for the last couple months. Lot's of blocks have come my way and I have to start figuring out how they're all going to play together.

I decided I wanted to make one final block as an anchor for this project,  so I set off on an epic journey of sketching and applique that landed me squarely in my happy place. I just love this block. This block is going to be the focal point on the front; not exactly a medallion, but a spot for the eye to land in a sea of busy words and colours so it had to be perfect.

It didn't come easy... getting the letters right was tricky. I was able to generate the print text up top by printing an enlarged copy of an actual label. But the cursive lettering...oh my...I am simply not computer savvy enough for this kind of work. I printed what was probably 5 or 6 versions of scripty fonts without hitting the mark in my minds eye. Of course, because I am my own worst enemy, this meant I had no choice but to draw the letters myself. All I can say is Thank God for erasers and take out pizza. A brain on fire moment cannot be interrupted with trivial things like feeding one's family or scrubbing pots.

It took a while to get them "just right" but as soon as I saw the shape emerge in my sketching I knew I had it. I also knew that machine applique was going to be a lesson in patience with all those nice curvy bits & pointy corners but I stayed the course, pivoted my little heart out and got it done. Voodoo Duck laments my current frequent use of fusible webbing, he says it robs him of his sense of job security. I managed to insist that he is more than a stitch recipe holder and that his pins were invaluable to the project to secure the tear away stabilizer behind the stitching area. Silly Duck, what would we ever do without pins?!?

There are lots of Kona colours being represented in the quilt now... I haven't counted, but there are 9 colours in this block alone! The fabulous peachy pink lettering packs quite a "punch", don't ya think?