Hello everyone!

One thing that has interested me for a few years now is the possibility of creating a body of quilt block patterns that are Canadian themed/Canadian invented. There are so many blocks named for American places, people and ideas, but I haven't come across many, if any, that are named for Canadian places, people, and things - that's crazy! So for the next while my blog is going to be primarily focused on Canadian quilt blocks.

I was lucky enough to receive EQ6 last year and I began designing blocks that had their basis in things Canadian. I also picked up a couple books about the history of Canadian quilts, and slowly, slowly, I'm learning and creating.

One block that is considered to be Canadian is the maple leaf block

In Quilts and Other Bed Coverings in the Canadian Tradition, Ruth McKendry includes a photograph of a green and white quilt that uses this block (4 blocks across and 5 down on the diagonal facing each other), stating that it is "... considered to be of Canadian origin". It was made somewhere between 1875 - 1900. I created a mock-up of it on EQ:

In Pieced Quilts of Ontario, Dorothy Burnham includes a quilt made in 1840 in Ontario that uses the same block placed in the same way (4 across, 5 down, facing each other), but with an appliqued vine border. She claims the block is derived from the "Delectable Mountains" block, but has been altered to represent a maple leaf, and she states, "... Perhaps here we have a very rare thing, a genuinely Canadian quilt design".

This is a great block and can be manipulated in so many ways to make exciting, beautiful quilts. Here are a few examples

In traditional Canadian colours

Using prints from the 30s

Negative/Positive

And a few others

with sashing

It's also really nice with a dark November-sky background

Or as a Christmas quilt

Like all good block designs, it can be used to create beautiful simple or complex quilt designs.

In Ontario's Heritage Quilts by Marilyn Walker, she shows an example of another Canadian-created maple leaf block design. She states that it is from Quebec and was taught to young women in convent schools in the late 1800s. She names it, Madame's Maple Leaf. Unfortunately, the photograph she has of the quilt is quite small, but she states that the leaves are appliqued onto the white background and set on the diagonal. In the intervening squares, the quilt-maker appliqued realistic maple leaves in a lighter colour. Here's the one I mocked-up on EQ:

And here's the block itself

I think it's quite lovely.

Next time, I'll share a block I've designed, but until then

keep your foot on the dogs

Lookie here at what I found at a used clothing store!

It is set on a 4' x 7' piece of silk. and I think it was all hand done, although, it's difficult for me to tell. I briefly studied Ancient Greek art in university, my partner studied it much more than I and he still keeps up with it, and saw on so many friezes and vases images like this. But this is probably Hindu and the tag said it is from India. I assume the image depicts a woman leaving her family probably to be wed to the man driving the carriage. The woman seems rather nondescript - nothing to identify her as a particular goddess or queen. The man is holding both his bow and shield and there is some type of animal to his right: it looks like a snake's body but it has ears. Interesting.

I was having a coffee in a local Second Cup afterward and one of the counter people was a gentleman I thought was Indian, so I asked if he were Hindu. No, Muslim from Tanzania. Man, was I off. He asked to see this piece and he said it should be framed, but he didn't know who it depicted, although he thought the woman was a queen. He suggested I cut off part of the silk to make the size more reasonable and then frame it. I was toying with that idea as well as I could use the silk in a crazy quilt or to make embellishments. But I won't touch it until I know what it is. I'll have to convince my partner to email some pictures of this to his friend in India and see if he knows what it is. Perhaps it's just a generic pre-wedding scene. We'll see.

On another note, I was wearing my homemade backpack when I visited the shop in which I found this marvelous piece, and the store owner took interest in it and asked to see it. She examined it very carefully and tried it on saying that she wanted to make one for herself. I said that I had designed it and it was easy to make. Later of course, I grew concerned that she would make lots of them and sell them off. I don't mind people making some for themselves but given that I might at some point like to sell the pattern and make and sell some bags, I would take great exception to her making and selling them. Copyright. How do you deal with it? Do you worry that your ideas will be used for profit by others? Maybe you don't care?

This weekend I'll be working more on the yellow quilt - I'm growing quite fond of it - and my mother's unfinished quilt. I'll get some pictures up of the yellow quilt blocks that I've completed. Until then, keep your foot on the dogs.

Stores

Jacquie brought up some good points about shopping: 1) it's more fun to do so in person rather than online, and; 2) many stores that one can get to carry 'old-fashioned' type fabric and not "fun" fabric.

I agree with both points. I am only beginning to like the flowery old-fashioned fabrics but have always preferred the wacky ones, like this one that I call Surfin' Skele's and that I bought 20-odd years ago:

I just picked this one up and think it's fun - sorry for the blurry picture:

And this one I recently picked up at Fabricland for $3.99/m - and it's a nice quality fabric! Can't beat that price.

While inexpensive fabric is exciting to find, I realize that it isn't always the best thing to put one's money toward - for several reasons, not the least of which is that it rarely supports the small, local quilt shop.

Here are some fat quarters I bought at Andjareena's Place near Trenton, Ontario during a recent visit out that way:

She has a wonderful selection including some wacky fabrics, that I didn't pick up, in such a small place! And she has lots of tools, templates and patterns. Plus yarns, pieces of hand-dyed wool, and on and on. Quite a fun shop.

Do you have a favourite quilt shop? Why is it so good?

I'm off to iron and wash and get ready for work. Hope you all have a great week!

Keep your foot on the dogs!

Delivered!

Well dad's finally received his finished quilt. It only took what, 20 years to finish? I washed in gently, too, and dried it outside. It dried in remarkably little time. Of course, I neglected to take any pictures of it all finished and spruced up, but there you go.

Next two projects are a lap quilt for my daughter with a yellow background and this pattern. I have only recently come to appreciate antique quilts with yellow backgrounds and now find them bright and cheery, not dingy and cheap-looking as I used to. Like this one. It's difficult to find pictures of beautiful antique yellow-background quilts. At least I find it difficult. But I digress. I thought I had enough of one yellow that I bought at a yard sale in Ithaca, N.Y., 20 years ago, but turns out I don't. I'm now up to using 4 different yellows that I've collected over the years. And I'm using some new and old fabrics for the block pieces.

I went on a HST sewing rampage and then was somewhat discouraged when I saw the big pile. Let me explain. I have found that for whatever reason, I have trouble creating hsts when starting with squares of the proper size. For example. to end up with 2" hsts one is supposed to begin with a 3" square. If I start with a 3" square, my 2" hst may end up being slightly short somehow, or not quite right in some other way. So to avoid this, I added 2 inches to the finished hst size instead of 1 and ended up with huge hst patches that all need to be cut down to 2.5". Lots of cutting, but hey, isn't that part of what quilting is all about? I just wish I or my machine were more accurate - that way I could use 3" squares and not have to do as much cutting and I wouldn't be wasting as much either. Oh well.

The other project is my mother's quilt. The quilt-as-you-go quilt she began the year before she died. I would really like to have that on our bed this winter and it will only take some hand sewing so it is definitely doable.

Another quilt store closed here in Toronto. It's depressing. I have only bought one thing online from a quilt store as I prefer to go to the stores to browse and soak up the ambiance, but there is now only one store that I can get to within one hour. Pretty sad for such a huge city, I think.

Oh well, pip, pip.

Keep your foot on the dogs.

So, I'm visiting my father this week, and guess what? I haven't finished his old quilt yet! So for the next few days, along with everything else I have to do, I will be focusing on getting it finished and ever so gently, washing it.

Remember the quilt?

I went to FabricLand yesterday in the sweltering heat, on my bike, primarily to pick up some of their pre-fab drapery panels. They had some that weren't completely awful for $7.99 each. Can't beat that. We needed them to separate the living room, that now has an air conditioner making it liveable, from the kitchen that doesn't. Here's a look:

They had such an amazing sale happening, with just about everything at 50% off. They had linen and cotton and silks and quilting cottons (although they never have alot). It isn't so hard to decide what to buy, but it's horribly difficult to decide what to leave behind. I just bought three fabrics to makes dresses/skirts from. Unfortunately, I've never really made clothes so when I got home, I also bought Sewing for Dummies from Amazon. I thought I'd leave off buying anything for quilting as while I'm up at my dad's I can visit the quilt stores in Trenton and Belleville. I'm looking forward to that.

Last week my bad cat, Lenny, started his spraying-in-the-house season, hitting my partner's briefcase and our old metal filing cabinet. Again. I have toyed with the idea of putting him on medication to stop this behaviour, but I always balk at actually going through with it. What right do I have to put him on mind-altering medication? But after last week, I just felt too fed up with having to clean up after him. Plus, he came home on Tuesday with a dislocated toe that was too painful for him to walk on, so that cinched it. Off he went to the vet. They knocked him out to re-locate his toe and boy was he high when I brought him back home. Look at this:

He sat like that for awhile - too much effort to make it up both steps. And this week we started him on mood-altering meds. They seem to have make him rather spacey and he isn't cuddly anymore, so I'm not sure if I'll keep him on this medication. Yes, there are others, so I may end up trying on of those.

Better get going and get on to everything. Hope your Sunday is going well, and remember,

keep your foot on the dogs.

Helllooooo . . .

Sometimes I just need a long break from things, in this case, blogging.
I haven't been doing much quilting, but I did get the embellished bag finished. I started with two pieces of found fabric, the same pattern of leaves in two different colourways and made from a heavier cotton. Last summer I stumbled upon a few boxes of various upholstry samples being offered gratis. I rooted through them and came away with some wonderful pieces, including these two.

I envisioned a backpack bag that was slim and folded like a paper bag. I started altering the fabric by running some beautiful, multi-coloured metallic thread in an ambling pattern all over the front piece. On the back piece, I used a lovely variegated green thread. I really like both these threads and they are both from Gutterman. I found the metallic easy to use with no breaking or fraying. On the back piece I also used some brown to zig-zag over the stems and other colours to outline the leaves. I did the leaves in more detail on the front piece using colours that blended with the leaves in rayon thread.

Then I began adding some beads. I have beads from my mother's collection (she had LOTS) and some that I have picked up here and there, and I used them in a few of the leaves and some of the flower buds. I found some great beetle beads in metallic blue/black and wondered how many to add. I was thinking of having a line of them up a stem, but after adding just one, it seemed fine, so I left it alone.

Also in the boxes of found fabric were several small pieces of silk and I used two of those to make the body and wings of the dragonfly. I used beads to fill out his body and the same metallic thread to outline the wings.

I lined it with a nice cotton fabric that I bought at a yard sale last year - 10 metres for $5!!! Can't beat that.

I ran into a problem when sewing the top edge hem as at the corners the wad of fabric was just far too thick for my little Bernina to get through. So far I have just left the corners unsewn.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out, but because I know it can't be washed I have been very selective about when and where I use it.

This week I have started on a 40" X 40" lap quilt for my daughter. I'll write more about that anon.

I have been fairly quiet and semi-hibernating the past few weeks. I don't know why and after trying to figure it out, I've gone on to pondering more useful things.


I went to the beading show at the Convention Centre last weekend. Now, I live right down at Queen and Spadina streets which means I live in the heart of Toronto beading country. There are maybe a dozen beading stores on Queen street (I may exaggerate a teensy bit), and they carry all sorts of mundane and fun beads. There is even a Swarvorsky crystal bead shop, oooh sparkly. But all these stores sell beads that you can get just about anywhere. So what, big deal. Okay, the exception to that is Arton Beads which sometimes has some really fun beads. So I went to the bead show hoping to find some different beads, maybe some hand-made beads. Well I did find some, but out of all the vendors there I believe only 3 or 4 were people who made their own beads. Disappointing, but I can't imagine that bead-making brings in much dough, so the lack of bead-makers is understandable. I did get three wicked beads though, keeping in mind I'm on an extremely strict budget - you know when governments say we have to tighten our belts, well mine's so tight I've nicknamed it Anaconda. So having to pay $8 to get into the show meant $8 less dollars to spend on beads. Too bad, cause I would have bought another one of these

Yes siree-bob, that's a bone. Made by Erin. She had a few bones left, some with rusty shiny looking bits, but I liked this metallic-y silver/blue/white bone. Very cool. And I found these made by Alicia Niles (no website)

I have a "thing" for ladybugs. Maybe one day, I'll tell you why, but not today. The pink bead is just a knobby pink thing that reminded me vaguely of some spy robot from Dr. Who, so of course, I had to buy it.

Amy Waldmansmith had some very fun beads, but I had reached my spending limit by the time I got to her booth. Too bad.

I have been working on a new project, a small, self-closing backpack, but I'll wait until it's finished to post pictures. I came up with the design from various inspirations including a cardboard box that held a case of cat food (great size for a small backpack).

After posting my tagged post which included some pictures and info on some of the plants I have, I stumbled across a great plant blog, Plants Are the Strangest People and was ecstatic to discover on his site that the "cactus" that I thought may be a torch cactus, is in fact, not a cactus at all, but is a spurge called euphorbia trigona - African Milk Tree, and various other common names. I really was ecstatic and wandered around work talking about my euphorbia, and when at home I kept gazing lovingly at it and cooing sweet euphorbia nothings into its leaves, or at least in its general direction. It's as if I had rediscovered an old friend. I love plants.

Allrightythen, keep busy, keep happy, and,

keep your foot on the dogs.