Two Saturdays ago Dwight and I spent a wonderful day at my son's place, baby sitting our grandsons. This time it was just normal baby sitting, no crisis. We took the kids to the nearby park and had so much fun. Gabriel is always so excited to see us (especially his Grandad ) and Eli at three months gives us big smiles, and coos when we talk to him.
This past weekend I was supposed to go to the Canadian Health Food Association Trade Show in Toronto but I came down with a virus. I decided to listen to my body and stay home to rest. Dwight caught the virus on Saturday. We had been going to visit my aunt, but she had to make do with a phone call instead. She sounds like she is doing o.k. I'm going to look for some wood to touch after I type this but I think things are settling down somewhat in the family.
Apart from the first day, the virus was pretty mild so I managed to finally spend some quality time on Eli's quilt and get the top finished. It's fun isn't it? Its the POD quilt by Elizabeth Hartman. I made the lap size but added an extra row of the smallest whales to the bottom to give it a bit more length. I'm linking with the OMG link up at Elm Street Quilts.
It feels really good to have this quilt top finished and I'm excited to start quilting it. I will be ordering some backing fabric from Fabric Spot along with my fabric for the Wayward Transparency Quilt Along and my friend Cyndy's fabric as well. This will make the order big enough to avoid shipping charges which is always a bonus!
I'm trying not to take on too much in terms of new projects but I'm excited to quilt along with Yvonne on this one. We will learn a lot about fabric choices for transparencies and will get an awesome quilt out of the process.
My co worker and her husband have finally settled on a name for their baby and I'll be using this next little grouping for Rory's quilt.
Tessa wanted a lot of colour to brighten up his room. I'm thinking of Sawtooth Stars with the animals in the centre of the stars. What do you think?
This is a short post to let you know that no I did not manage to finish my August goal and yes I am rolling that goal over to September.
This is the latest block I've made for this quilt. I finished it this evening. I like the red block and look forward to making a few more...maybe tomorrow morning. Here's hoping I'll have a complete quilt top by the end of the month. I'm heading over to the OMG link up to see what others have planned for the month. Then on Wednesday I'll link check out the Let's Bee Social link up and see what's going on there.
A couple of days ago my daughter in law posted Eli's 3 month photo on instagram and remarked that these three months had been the craziest they had ever experienced. I agree. It seems that my new normal has been responding to crisis on an almost weekly basis as three different members of my family have been in and out of the hospital. In the midst of all that came an oasis of calm when I took a weekend for myself to attend Quilting with your Walking Foot with Jacquie Gehring.
If you ever get a chance to take a workshop with Jacquie, please do. She is a superb teacher very clear and calm and with an easy manner that makes you feel like she is your friend.
We learned a lot of technical stuff in the workshop, and for me this was a lot easier to learn in real life than in a video or in a book. We learned how to mark our walking foot feet to help us in stopping and turning and yes going evenly along those curves in the spiral.
We practiced designs using minimal marking (two lines are marked in the sample above) and we learned to sew from point to point without a line. This skill which teaches you to look where you want to go not at your foot is one which will help me not only with my quilting but with my piecing. I've always had trouble sewing on a line. Sewing on the line is where we ended our sampling with this design which is made entirely of straight lines which are marked.
Jacquie brought along many sample of her work which was a great way to show us how the designs we were learning would look in a quilt. Jacquie's work is really inspirational and I left the workshop with a desire to look at where my quilting is going and where I would like it to go. My time is so limited now that I feel I need to be more selective with what I work on. I'd like to focus more on specific skills and creative design.
Jacquie was really good at helping us to recognize our skill level, to work within that skill level but also to break out bravely and learn new things.
I went to the workshop with Deb, who I met at the Toronto Modern Guild. I couldn't have chosen a better person to go with. She was a great room mate and it was fun getting to know her a little better on this trip. Maybe there will be future quilting adventures for us. I'm sharing this post with Beth at Main Crush Monday. Happy Labour Day everyone.
