UFO #2 QAYG Sampler 1993

Way back in the Dark Ages, in 1993, I got a do-it-yourself book teaching how to quilt. I bought some fabric for about a dollar a yard then, when I did not have enough to finish, it sat forever in a box. Then on a quilt shop hop in the summer of 2005, I came across the exact fabric in a shop in a remote town on Lake Huron when I was visiting my niece. I hoped I had bought enough. 

I needed another light pink and found it on Ottawa St in Hamilton. It ended up costing me $25 for each of the 2 yards that I bought. I got a parking ticket in a rush hour zone. I cried all the way home because I could not afford that but I was guilty. Today, $25 a yard is common. But not in 1993. I was so proud of myself as I made blocks. I had taken a class in Quilt-As-You-Go at Mary Maxim. I used some of the blocks for a 9 patch setting for a lap quilt. I actually did complete the thing, but loaned it to a missionary family that stayed with us one summer and it did not come home when they did. So sad. 

I often used these blocks as samples when I taught beginning quilters here at the Farm. Not sure why I never completed it.  I hand quilted each block, often while my daughter was at swimming classes. We were given a square quilting frame to quilt up the square blocks. I later made a dozen of these for a 4-H class I was teaching to hand quilt. I have a whole pile of them here that would be useful if I could find the lug nuts for them. 

Blessings,

Chris

linking with throwback-thursday

UFO #1 Dolls of the World 1979

A lot of years ago (probably 40), I did textile painting with Tri-Chem. It was not anything original or artsy. Mostly paint by number. I painted up many Dolls of the World blocks intending to make a quilt some day. That day has not yet arrived. I gave  some of the blocks to one of my sisters. I wonder what she did with them? My first born daughter Denine died around that time and this ended up in a box somewhere and found recently in a mass de-clutter. 

At a local quilt guild meeting several years ago, the guest speaker was a quilt appraiser. She explained how appraisal and actual monetary value were not the same thing. She had in her collection a few unique, one of a kind quilts. One of them was the aforementioned Dolls of the World. At that time, I wondered if I still had the blocks. I did! I do. I seem to recall I planned to sash them in a solid red. 

I always had this thing in the back of my head telling me that when (not if) I completed quilts, they had to be a minimum of 72 x 90 inches in order to qualify showing them at my local fall fair. Seriously. Then, my adult kids got queen sized beds and I was trying to figure out how to grow the quilts I was making to fit on the larger bed. Then, my son got a king bed and I quit trying to figure it out. 

I did another similar to this with fairies flowers, completed it and hand quilted and donated to the Home where our daughter lived the final year of her short life. 
This is a poor fuzzy picture, but I could not scan it and it was a photo that "just happened to show up" the other day. 
I recall I had a birds of the world kit I made up and thought it would be nice to make it up with fabrics, but at that time I did not know how to applique and wondered why anyone would spend that much time making it anyway. 






Dolls of the World will be a throw size. When it is completed.  Any of you modern quilters out there have creative ideas how I could finish this ?

Blessings,
Chris

linking to throwback-thursday

New Series of Posts About UFOs

One of the things I wanted to do this summer is downsize my quilt stash. Its more of a massive hoard. I have bought hundreds, ye, thousands of yards and pieces of fabrics over the years. But in reality, I will not be able to make all the quilts I wanted to. Something about choosing the more difficult hand appliqued samplers in the past few years that take more than a weekend to make and I have progressive osteoarthritis that slows me down.

 I thought about doing a one month challenge for August to write about each of 31 never before mentioned ufos including kits purchased and their journey. I have a notebook I have kept over the years listing, in order, all the quilts I have ever started and those I have completed as well as how and to whom they were given. I even figured out how to pre-schedule posts. 

One of the reasons motivating this great task was that I will be celebrating my fifth year of blogging on Sept 4th and thought it would be nice to have it coincide with my 500th blog post but I would still have to write up another 131 posts, so, instead, I started to prepare 31 posts.  In June I started doing a treasure hunt in the massive quilt cupboard and taking pictures and writing what comes to mind. It has been quite the nostalgic journey. I also have been doing more research for my second book and so much has fallen into place with this quilt ufo journey. 

Mid July I decided to take a break from blogging and reading blogs. After all, it takes time to read and comment and interact with bloggers, which I love by the way.  I thought I would have some time without little people and I planned to be writing. Mid August I had one week and thoroughly enjoyed some quiet time, started chiropractic treatments 3 times a week and had 2 painful dentist appointments. The little children all returned at once and the summer is now over. 

I am celebrating my 5 year blogging anniversary and will post about my ufos sporadically. Stay tuned.

Blessings,
Chris

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September One Monthly Goal

September brings a lot of new activities here at the farm including showing cows at the local fairs and now, meeting the school bus 2-3 days a week. The little girls and their dad are settling in to living at the farm. Can I set a goal for their quilt blocks? If they get enough sewn together in the next 2 weeks, they can show them in the school fair. I think I will make my OMG goal to help them get their tops sew together.

 How many blocks actually make a quilt top? They each have 80 seven inch pre-cut squares. Earlier this summer the girls went to Fair Camp at our local fair that is 3 km up the road from the Farm. They each made a bunch of crafts so they are ready to enter and win lots of $$$. We will aim for at least 36 blocks each. That would make them 39 inches square. Maybe there should be more. We shall see. After all, they are only 5 and 6 y ears old.

Blessings,
Chris

Newest and Youngest Quilting Students

This past summer has been a joyful, if exhausting, time of all five of the little grandchildren here for sleepovers and adventures on the farm. My youngest granddaughter had been asking me so often to teach her to sew on the real machine. I have two toy machines that all the kids have played with. One of them has a secret compartment in which are an assortment of fun buttons.  I found not one but two packs of pre-cut  I-Spy blocks in the massive quilt cupboard and finally got them started.

 Five year old Devan started first.  Looks like she had her hand placement guiding that block perfect. Look at that right finger. We used the Bernina since it has a quarter inch seam guide and it can be set for half speed. 

Why do the girls all want to trim the threads off the sides before they can start? 

Gramma's hands were close by until six year old Elly  got the hang of it. Then she chain pieced a whole bunch of blocks and told me she could do it all herself now without my help. Okay. 

Putting them onto the design wall is exciting.

So far the blocks are  sewn together in twos. Eventually we will sew four together  then more. 







We did put a large book under the foot pedal so their short legs could reach. And a regular chair. The chair on wheels just rolled them away when they tried to use the foot pedal.

Devan created a "Book" with a whole stack of her blocks so Grampa could read the story. 

Blessings, 
Gramma Chris 

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End of Summer

I opened an upstairs bedroom window a couple of weeks ago and heard crows. Yes Crows. The second week of August. Crows cawing are a September thing here at the Farm. Then the other night there was a cricket in my bedroom. A loud cricket. Really loud. Under my bed. Late at night. Sigh. Our hot wet summer is coming to an end. The nights are cooler. The days are getting shorter. The ragweed and wild cucumber vines are choking out all the flower beds. I guess if I had pulled weeds earlier that would not have happened. The goats do not especially like rag weed or thistles. 

Goats you say. Yes goats. The Farmer's niece milks 400 goats for a neighbor. She rescued a few in the spring and brought them home and had them in a portable corral that she moves around the yard every few days. They cleaned up all the fence rows around the farm house and yard. They were really cute until one discovered she could escape. So she did. Every day. Then the others followed. Nibbling my hostas and rose bushes. She even tried to get into the house. Did not happen. 

So summer is nearing an end. The little boys will be here next week for vacation with Daddy and Mommy. His parents are celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary so we will be babysitting one night. Then they will be going fishing with some friends and the African Lion Safari to see elephants and lions and monkeys. Little David phoned yesterday asking if Grampa will take him on a ride on Gramma's tractor. That's the cab tractor with air conditioning and a radio. He likes that one the best.  

I did not complete any quilts. I did not complete many blocks. I did work on a few and prepped the new Dear Daughter blocks. Another 4 will be released on Sept 1. 

I have been leading a small group at church called Hearing God. We take one lesson each week in the workbook and take time to sit quietly listening to God and journal. It has been an amazing journey. 

I am looking forward to making the 5 hour drive to Upper Canada Village in Cornwall, Ontario mid Sept to a quilt show with my high school quilting friend who went to Shipshewana with me. 

The following week is our Canadian National Guernsey Show and I am going to a ladies retreat and taking my daughter away for the whole weekend. She deserves a treat away from responsibilities.  

Plans are afoot for our Quilting at the Farm retreat end of Sept. Anyone interested in joining us? I have a couple of beds in one of the guest rooms. 

Also, I am working on the details of my ministry trip to India in November. There will be 2 of us going for 2 weeks to encourage women.  

And we have been decluttering and laying a new floor in 2 bedrooms because our son and his 3 little girls will be moving in with us for the coming year. This will be the 4th move in a year for the little girls and they will all be starting in new schools in Sept.

So, summer is coming to an end. I am trying to not make any further commitments and creative plans. But you never know. I made a banana cake from scratch last week and it was so amazing that I plan to make another today since I have some brown bananas. 

Blessings,
Chris 

Mid Summer De-cluttering

My daughter completed  her Master of Social Work in Strategic Leadership and she has taken the little boys home. They will be back with Dad for a week's vacation at the end of the month.

My little sister from China came to visit for a month and after we took a week to visit family in Saskatchewan, she went back home to start her school year as a grade one teacher. I had exactly one day without house guests before the three little girls return for two more weeks. They were here for three different weeks in July. 

For my birthday last month, my daughter and sister gave me a gift of time for a whole day of de-cluttering and organizing. They were relentless. They emptied out two rooms of all the stuff we collect over the years and do not know what to do with or cannot find because of so much stuff. Two ancient solid wood dressers were loaded onto the truck and donated plus many bags of clothing, several boxes of dishes. They kept one dresser, but not sure it will stay. The problem with them, besides being so big, is they were used for many years in houses heated with wood stoves and have a particular fragrance that they generously share with anything stored in them. So out they went.

A new floor is being laid. My son found some flooring on sale for a dollar a square foot. I was looking at some for $3.50. He is laying it in two of the bedrooms and hopefully, there will be enough to do the upstairs hall also. 

So what did I do with a whole day to myself besides drive tractor for two hours? And chase goats out of my yard? And eat ice cream and cookies and made an amazing smoothie? It had five green things - avocado, cucumber, celery, kale and spinach plus apple, orange, radishes, yogurt, protein powder and enough water to make it drinkable. 

I read blogs. Listened to worship music. Read up on facebook happenings and did some correspondence. I washed bedding from six beds and dried it all. I even washed one comforter. It is in the dryer now. No. I do not hang laundry on the clothes line. It is too hard to carry the hampers out and reach up to hang things on the line, then remove them later. So into the dryer they went. I have not folded anything yet. But why fold them if they are all going back on the beds? The little girls return tomorrow. I will get them to help make up the beds. 

But the biggest thing was to pack up, organize and remove at least 15 project boxes and organized four boxes of Go dies  as well as five boxes of children's books I rescued from the little boys a few months ago. We took down one of the eight foot tables and put it out in the hall so I had room to work in here. My sister had been working on her quilt and we had both long tables in the middle of the room for her. 

All these boxes were under the tables. Kind of out of the way. Sort of. But now they are out of the room. All the projects I had been working on over the past few months and many I wanted to work on. They have all been put away. Some in the hall closet. Most in the quilting cupboard upstairs. Well, almost in there. Have to squish some of them closer together. 

What did I keep? Dear Daughter. I am behind on the last eight blocks. Dear Bright Jane 2. I have five orange blocks ready to work on. And the Huguenot blocks. Yesterday I machine appliqued two tiny circles with red silk thread. That's two more than last month. They will get put away tomorrow when I clear all my course work off the card table by my desk. 

While rummaging in the cupboard upstairs, I found two packs of pre-cut seven inch I-Spy blocks. There are 80 different fabrics in each pack. I have this scathingly brilliant idea to help my youngest two granddaughters each stitch up their own quilt tops. After all, Devan has been asking me all summer to do some sewing on the real machine. We will use the Bernina since it has the quarter inch foot with the seam guide and it can be set to half speed. But first, I will have to take out the red silk thread. 

Blessings,
Chris