Happy St. Patrick's Day !

Luckily my Scottish Mum has no idea how to use her iPad or the internet so I can safely post something St. Patrick's Day related !  And besides, my children have their Grandma McKenna (on their Dad's side) so I must celebrate for their sake too :)

Here is the result of an afternoon a couple of years ago playing with scraps of green fabric...

Honestly who can go into a Dollar Store in March (well February sometimes) and not want to pick up something festive and green to celebrate?  And any excuse to buy Guinness helps, though really I need no encouragement on that front.

And here are a few of the crocheted shamrocks I love to make... we can all use a little luck, in whatever form it may visit us.

Scrappy Swiss Cross

Sometimes the urge to play is overwhelming.  What starts as a let's see turns into piles of fabric everywhere as I seek, not of course knowing what I am looking for.

I have seen scrappy swiss cross quilts on Pinterest... I never thought I could become so addicted to pretty image after image after image.  After spending entirely too much time ogling other people's creations, I wanted to see what I could do.

I have a pile of 5" squares cut from scraps.  That was where I started but of course as these things go... what is immediately to hand is seldom enough so additional fabric fell to being cut into more 5" squares.  I played until I came up with two options.

The IKEA fabric as the background was OK but not stellar.

Then I found a bright yellow linen fabric that I knew was just the ticket, the golden yellow ticket if you will.

This is as far as I managed to get... I did pick the squares up off the floor in neat piles, safe from marauding cats, ready to be sewn together, soon.

One more thing to mention, I found that using a camera is an excellent way to see the composition of your quilt.  It somehow condenses the image and lets you see it as a whole.  Neat.

Jessie's Afghan

One project I have been mulling over for some time involves one of my Grandma Jessie's crocheted afghans. From what I know my Grandma was a creative woman who had little time to indulge in her endless ideas. She cooked, baked, gardened, crocheted, rescued furniture for refinishing, read, wrote and kept a list of her favourite quotes!  How silly of me to think I was the first and only woman in my family to follow these paths.

One part of Jessie's creativity extended to colouring with crayons and pencils to come up with combinations for her afghans.  I believe this afghan was one such project... brown, coral, green, aqua, lavender and yellow.  As long as it has been draped over a chair in my studio it has looked like a quilt waiting to happen !



It was a plan that was just that, a plan and so it waited...

Until the day I visited the Quilted Cardinal in Beamsville - www.thequiltedcardinal.ca

They have a lovely selection of solids and as I had brought my Grandma's afghan with me.  I was able to match the colours nearly perfectly.  Quite an accomplishment seeing as the colours my Grandma chose were probably from the 60s or 70s.

My next step... break out the crayons and pencils and start drafting the pattern :) Jessie style !

And because I have a passion for history along with quilting, here are two photos of my Grandma, Jessie Hay, with my Grandpa, Jim Denyer.

If I am learning anything about my Grandma it may be this...

 

Apertura... an opening, a commencement, a beginning...

Pondering apertura, in the form of windows and doors.  Apparently I have always had a desire to look out on my world in this way.

The door of St. John's Anglican Church in Ancaster, Ontario.  I have decided to call it "In the Beginning"... because it is the beginning of this series of work that I feel will extend over the next few years, and for the Biblical play on words too.

Then the Paris Plains Church in Paris, Ontario.  Built in 1845 and made of cobblestones gathered from the fields around the site.  Below is the quilt as far as I have it done, pebbling soon to commence.  I will call this one "Perseverance".

I have ideas for future quilts... one of a set of windows at Alhambra in Granada, Spain.

And the outside wall of the Mosque at Cordoba.

Then closer to home again, there is McNab Presbyterian Church in Hamilton, Ontario. These are a few of the windows.

And as I thought of windows and doors, I remembered an old photo I had taken of my childhood home, 311 Sutton Avenue in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

This is the picture and the sketch I doodled to see where a quilt design might emerge...

And not finally, but last for this post is my Great Grandmother Bridget.  This is a picture of her door at 37 Kelvin Drive, Shotts, Scotland.

Apparently she used to paint her steps red, a Scottish practice?  I have to research this but her door and front steps will also feature in this series, as it is also part of my story.  She tells a tale of these very steps in a family letter... but I will wait to reveal her story until her quilt is done.  And one more note about Bridget, apparently she loved to quilt and preferred to work with her own patterns. I only found out recently.

Apertura, Latin and Spanish for opening.  Windows, doors... openings that represent a myriad of things that enter our homes and our lives.

"...it sings because it has a song." - Maya Angelou

During the summer I bought some gorgeous fabrics from Hyggeligt Fabrics (London, Ontario). Bright pink and orange and green, flowers, vegetable leaves and polka dots by Kaffe Fassett and other Rowan fabric artists.  They were magically delicious!

I was not sure what to do with them but I had to do something, they were calling and calling me, like birds as it turns out.

I needed to quiet the voices in my head, I thought of using my own quilt design, Sliding Doors, and it looks like this.  It was a great way to use the fabrics while testing out my written design.

As I worked on the blocks I was not convinced I had it right, not the pattern but the colours. This was probably because this colour scheme was so far from the original.  But as I do, I kept going, not giving up.

I finished the top in a few weeks and put it away.  I was not entirely enthusiastic with the result.

That was until I took it over to my sister's.  When she opened the door she looked at the folded top in my arms and said I assume that is for me.  She does have quite a number of my quilts.  As I opened the quilt top, my littlest niece Lola, reached out her hands for it.  If anything was going to ensure this quilt was hers, that was it. Granted my sister's decor is a lot of black and white and grey and maybe Lola was thirsty for some colour, but it does not matter.  What Lola wants, Lola gets.

Next was the step of deciding on the quilting.  I did not want to quilt it with the word quilting as on my original Sliding Doors.

I waited patiently for inspiration to strike and it did with the magical combination of Lola and IKEA.  While following Lola around IKEA on her triumphant march through the merchandise (she has just learned to walk with some confidence), I saw a pattern of birds perched on lines. Hmm.

It stuck in my head.  Later as I sat in the car with Lola, waiting for my sister to pick up faucets for her new bathroom at Rona, I drew this.

Then when I got home I drew this.

Then I started quilting...

The back of the quilt is white seersucker and yellow gingham.

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song."  Maya Angelou

A Lola doesn't walk because she knows where she is going, a Lola walks for the pleasure of it. Couldn't we all learn from that?

p.s. This is Lola, she sent me a message... she wants her quilt !

Let It Be

Here is my third Union Jack quilt.  This time I re-drafted the design a bit, making it paper pieced. It could be my British heritage, the graphic nature of the design, whatever it is, I can't stop making it.

When deciding on a machine quilting design I looked into Celtic and Anglo Saxon designs, eventually settling on a triskele...This is my version.

I also wanted to add some words from the Beatles, Let It Be.  I find that as popular as Let It Go is right now, let it be is more me.

Let it be.  Don't go poking your nose in.  Don't think everyone wants your help as much as you want to give it.  Leave things alone.  Let sleeping dogs lie and all that.  OK so it may sound a little much, but I am learning that the people and situations that want your help will indicate in some way.  My habit has been trying to fix/help everything, whether it wanted my fixing or helping or not.  Things can work out fine without my help, truly.

Hmm this post is more introspective than I had intended... perhaps January is the time in the year for introspection to surface more easily.

And finally... I changed one of the lines in my quilting to - "For though WE may be parted, there is still a chance that WE can see, there will be an answer, let it be."  I believe WE are all in this together :)

http://youtu.be/xSmZyRP_ZX0

p.s. This quilt is for sale on etsy

https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/TalullahLou?ref=hdr_shop_menu

Swiss Cross - the finale (for now...)

Swiss Cross part 3... as though you had not heard enough.

This is what can happen in the days after Christmas, what I feel are an endless stream of Sundays.  If one does not choose to shop, clean the piles of dishes and pots, put away decorations... sewing is a lovely option :)

After I had made the two blocks shown in an earlier post, I had to see what more blocks would look like.

I used the cream and red fabrics I already had....

Eventually I ended up with 12, one reversed in the interest of variety.  My curiosity is endless.

Here is my Swiss Cross Quilt !

On my kitchen table, yes I swept the floor before taking these pics

The quilt measures approximately 60" square, off white quilted in the off white/cream and red quilted in the red.  The cream on cream did do a number on my eyes though until I got used to it !  I continued the cream/cream and red/red in the bobbin but it does not show up strongly on the reverse but I know it is there.

My eyes are not what they used to be, honestly they were never great

I used the remaining reds to create the binding and the backing is an IKEA red and white botanical print.

Trying more simple modern quilting designs, started as doodles on paper

I hope you were able to enjoy a week of Sundays as well, stay tuned to this channel for continued news of what else I accomplished during the week of Sundays.

Thanks to my sister for letting me play with her cool camera !