Happy Halloween!

I would have to say that our first Halloween was a success. We didn't go too overboard. I carved a pumpkin, put up some spider webs and wore a tiara - pretty low key. We had lots of kids (which we expected), and I may still have some leftover candy for myself - mmmmm mini chocolate bars...

All in all a great Halloween.

Finding Balance

It seems that a post a week is about all that I can manage lately. When I started this, I was hoping to do about 3 a week but I'm finding there's not much time in the evening once I get home and I don't even have kids! I'm really impressed by the people who finding a balance that works for them and are able to blog quite regularly. I'm sure my balance will come in time.

This week, I'm very excited since I've joined a swapping group called Chain of Hearts. It's a crazy quilting group where you make 6 inch hearts that are embellished to swap. Right now I have two naked hearts that need some embroidery and two more foundations that I can piece on.


It's interesting how I seem to be attracted to a lot of crafting by hand lately. When we were in the apartment, I was quilting in our dining room, which is essentially part of the main room. I was in the center of all the action and could cook and sew at the same. In our house, now that I have my very own sewing room (which I still love). I'm finding it harder to do other things around the house and sew at the same time and so quilting is seems to be taking a back seat.

Right now, I'm off to scrub my bathtub and wash some fabric. See you next weekend.

Procrastination

There's nothing like looking out my window and loving the view. Since we just moved in June, each of the seasons holds something new which makes me love our house even more. Right now, its the vibrant colours of our trees.



We have a birch and a maple tree in our front yard. I'm really loving our maple just for its red leaves. The maples at my parents are mostly orange and yellow - it's not very often I see red trees.

Besides procrastinating by looking our my window, I've been procrastinating with my quilting. Instead of quilting this...

I've made this block instead.

I picked up the landscape as a kit on our honeymoon to Banff and Jasper. Outside of Banff National Park, there a mountain range called The Three Sisters which is shown on this quilt. It's put together with fusible web, which was really easy, but now I'm afraid to machine quilt it. This however has happened before, the last quilt I machine quilted sat for over a year before I got the courage to quilt it. It's funny that I can piece/applique most projects without hesitation, but machine quilting scares me to death. You can do something but the perfectionist in your head makes you think that it's going to get screwed up and then the entire quilt will be ruined. I keep thinking that I should take a class and that might help with my confidence, but I still haven't gotten around to it.

There's really only one thing to do... take a deep breath and start quilting.

Book Review - Fabric Art Journals

I found out about this book from a guild member and after seeing Soulemama's book she had posted, I had to take a look myself at Fabric Art Journals by Pam Sussman. It's a beautiful book that tells you how to make your own Fabric books.

I think this book is written for people who already do some bookbinding and want to get into using fabric instead. It's really heavy on quilting basics and really light on bookbinding basics. There are some terms which she throws around that don't have definitions but you can figure out on your own.

There's a really extensive section on embellishing using tea dying, image transfers, embroidery and using beads and buttons. Each section gives you a lot of options to generate the effect that you would want.

The projects that are in the book all deal with different ways to bind your book ranking from easy to difficult. All the instructions have simple figures and I found I could follow them fairly easily in my head.

At the very end is the gallery which showcases a variety of artists books which are all stunning. It's a really beautiful book that goes into lots of detail and shows a lot of ideas that you can do with your fabric books.

All in all, the projects in the book are really beautiful and has tons of ideas for what you can do with fabric books. Most of the fabric books are small art quilts rather than something sentimental which could be made for other people (which is what I could see my self doing with these), but I think it would be really easy to translate the ideas from the book into a "story".

P.S. Soulemama's fabric book can be found in the September archive

P.P.S I apologize for the crappy pictures - taking pictures at night, flash, and really glossy paper is not a good combination

Random entry

I seem to have a desire to post a entry, but an idea for content is a bit lacking today. Right now in crafting, there's a lot of thinking and dreaming and not all that much doing (although I've been procrastinating with applique that has no need of getting done). I'm almost thinking a list of my potential projects would be helpful and maybe even motivating (I apologize - this entry is mostly trying to get some stuff out of my head).

Current (and active) projects
-landscape from my honeymoon (~75% done)
-applique a nutcracker block (my procrastination)

Projects that I have all the materials for
-iPod holder similar to Amanda's
-purse which I saw for $100 that I thought "I can make that myself"
-embroidery quilt

Projects that are still in my head (and on paper)
-miniature bargello (see previous post)
-double wedding ring quilt
-storm at sea quilt
-quilted diamonds

See you later this weekend.

It's been a while

Hello again!

It's been a while since I posted, but I do have a good excuse. The mister and I went to Algonquin Provincial Park on a canoe trip for four days. Not only did we enjoy the fall colours,

we also waded through swamps on floating logs and travelled over beaver dams. This was our most adventurous canoe trip so far. It was a great challenge with long portages and a rainy day, but it was a perfect, quiet trip.

As for crafty things, the Oakville Quilter's Guild (of which I'm a member) had their first meeting. Christine Fries-Ureel gave a fantastic talk, and brought some of her quilts. The pictures on the web pages doesn't do them justice - the detail and love that she puts into them is simply stunning. I've always been interested in learning how to do thread painting, but her work has inspired me to maybe do something about this.

At the meeting, I also had some fun designing a new quilt.
It's going to be a miniature bargello. I think the smallest pieces are going to be 1/2" by 1/8". I think the bargello part will be around 10"x12". This was the first colour combination I tried and I fell in love with it instantly. Now comes the fun part - finding the right fabrics. There's some local shop hops so I'll have to see what I can find.

I've also started a block of the month at my local quilt shop. It's a Christmas themed quilt, where each month you get a pieced and appliqued nutcracker block to do. The pieced one has to be finished for the next class otherwise there's a penalty. I finished my first block last night.
Instead of making one big quilt with all the nutcrackers (which would probably be a bit too Christmasy), I think I'll make smaller quilts to give away.

It's funny how in a week I can go from having one project to now having all these projects as well as other ideas that I'm thinking of starting. It's amazing how seeing other people's work can fuel your own creativity and can act as a jumping off point for so many other projects.