Reunion visit

Scott and I are camping over near Niagara Falls where he was able to meet up with a friend he grew up with out in Alberta. They haven't seen each other in over forty years.

Needless to say, there was a lot of talking and catching up happening. We weren't sure just when they'd be able to meet up during the five days his friend was visiting at the falls, so we booked a campsite at Rock Point Provincial Park.


The weather forecast...... Rainy and cold for the next two days, while the Shepherds are camping. The day we go home, sunny and warm. So, we're going to spend the rest of today hanging out in the trailer trying to keep warm and dry. Scott will likely play some computer games, and I will work on my slow Sunday stitching, and maybe watch a movie. We brought a small TV and a DVDs player, since we knew before we left home that the forecast for this weekend was pretty rotten.
In the meantime, I brought a new section of La Passacaglia to work on. I managed to get one of the large rosettes all cut out and prepped before we left. I'll be working on it for most of the rest of today. I'm starting to get the hang of this blogsy app, but I can't remember how to do the linking thing, even though I did look it up before we left home.

We also went on a small road trip earlier today, to a quilt shop called the Quilting Bee in Fonthill, about 30 minutes from where we are staying. I found some more fabrics that will look great in this project.

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Alice's One Block Wonder

This beauty of a quilt belongs to Alice. Although, if I remember correctly, it is eventually going to be a gift for her son.  I was really disappointed that the pictures I took of it didn't turn our all that well. They certainly don't do this quilt justice, at all. It was an incredibly windy day and threatening rain, when I was taking these, so it was difficult to get good pictures. This quilt required a lot of thought for the quilting design. It had to be something to enhance all the over all look of the quilt, without taking any of the focus away from from either the fabrics or the amazing piecing. In the end, we decided to go with a very simple straight line quilting 1/4 inch away from the seams in the body of the quilt. The red border got straight lines 1/2 inch away from the long seams.
The we decided on large swirls for the outer border.  This quilt was a joy, and a challenge, to work on from beginning to end. A lot of starts and stops, and a lot of ends that had to be tied and buried, but it was worth all of it.

Kathy's Bricks and Stones

Kathy made up this quilt using 1930's prints and a white background, always a wonderful combination. She wanted it to be used for a comfy lap quilt for her couch and so didn't want anything too tightly quilted  or fancy. We decided on an over all wavy diagonal cross hatch. I love the texture it gave to the quilt. It was a bit of a challenge, making sure I didn't miss any of the squares or rectangles while doing the cross hatching. But it sure was worth it.

Alice's Woven Strips

Alice brought me this wonderfully bright and fun quilt to do.  The fabrics are primarily Kaffe Fassett designs. I love the optical illusion in it, that makes it seem as if the strips are woven over and under each other.  There's a lot going on in this quilt, so all it needed was something over all to pull it all together.  We decided on a large circular swirl to soften the edges of all the straight lines. It was still the dark, damp and cold days of April when this quilt was done, and it was a welcome bright spot during those days.

Charlene's Scrappy Hexie Flowers

Charlene has this thing about making hexagons. She's always making them, and will put them into a wide variety of quilts. And I really like the effect it makes. They work really well in the place of any kind of pieced block, or even appliqué. This is a quilt that she made for one of her grand daughters. Charlene's instructions when she dropped it off were to do "something simple". This is my version of simple..... and really, it was. It started off with putting petals into the hexagons, and then echoing around the hexagons. The rest of the quilting took off from there. There are large roses in the floral fabrics, so the rest of the quilt got a variety of large scale rose floral type quilting. It was fast, and fun to do.

A catch up post.......

I am still working away at getting La Passacaglia, a design by Willyne Hammerstein in her book Millefiori Quilts,  sewn together. I just have the green rosette with the owls, in the centre at the bottom, left to stitch into place, and then I can start making more rosettes. I put a strict ban on myself, not allowing the beginning of any more rosettes until this was all stitched together. So close.......... I can soon start turning more fabrics into swiss cheese by having all kinds of fun fussy cutting. 

When not working on this, I've been working at the long arm. I had a couple of quilts that were needed by the beginning of June. Considering their summer schedules, and mine, it was a bit of a rush to get them done. The last of them went home today. So, I can start taking it a bit easier now. Due to that schedule, there hasn't been a lot of stash reduction happening. Just the fabrics for two of the rosettes in this project that were finished.

Used this week:                          .4 yards

Used this year:                             41 yards

Added this week:                        0 yards

Added this year:                         37.75 yards

Net stash busted:                          3.25 yards

I don't think there will be much stash busting this week, either, considering we are heading out in the trailer for five days over the weekend. We're heading out to an area of the province we haven't explored much, and will be staying at Rock Point Provincial Park. I now have a blogging app on my iPad, so I hope to get a couple of posts done while we're away, telling a little about our travels. I might, just maybe, see if there is a quilt shop, or two, in the area. 

I'm going to link up to Judy's Fabric report and also to her Design Wall Monday. I'm a little late for it, but I'll also link up to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching. I didn't actually get to do any stitching yesterday until late in the evening. Most of the day was spent outdoors working on getting some planting done. However, I didn't get all that much done, in spite of spending most of the afternoon at it. My stamina for physical exercise is way down. I had to keep stopping to sit down and catch my breath. It was such a long winter, without much activity. I'm way out os shape.

I think I'll post this, grab La Passacaglia and some reruns on netflix, since the alternative is hockey.

Sunset over Georgian bay

What a glorious weekend it was. Once the rain finished on Friday, it was warm and mostly sunny. However, I have made a note to myself to purchase some rain boots. It was pouring down rain as we were setting up the campsite. I was wearing my bright yellow rain coat to keep most of me dry, but my feet were so cold and so wet.