Northern Needles

I did make some progress in my piecing this weekend.

I worked on my Great White North stitching bee.  July is about batiks and postage stamps and magic card tricks.

My favourite?  The postage stamp. I love all those little squares!

I worked a bit on my doll quilt swap, I post pics of that later.  But I ran across a photo that I forgot to show off before!  This is for my Bee Balm quilting block.  This was for June and it’s a pinwheel in the most romantic fabric!

Have a great day!

Well, we certainly haven’t been having the warmest summer on record.  Cold, wet, cloudy.  We do tend to get sunshine though about suppertime for a few hours, thank heavens!!!!

I had such high hopes for July.  I had so many quilty things I wanted to get done as my girls are off visiting my family.  Not to mention yard stuff, basic household stuff.   I didn’t realize how incredibly lonely the house is without them!  I’m so used to having someone following me around, chatting about girl stuff.  Now it’s just Vaughn and I…what the heck are we going to do when the girls grow up and move away? 

So I made a promise to myself that I was going to sit myself down at my machine and just play this weekend.  No pressure about things that need to be done (like going through our stuff and putting together a pile of things to donate, things to throw away, and things to keep - we may be moving or downsizing or something in the fall).  Just look at the pretty colours and dream.

In an effort to get in the mood, I checked out one of my favourite people in the world.  Her name is Coral and unfortunately she lives an entire world away.  I would love to be her neighbour, but I will just enjoy being her cyber friend.

Stop by her blog, http://astitcherslife.blogspot.com/ to get a taste of her creativity.  She is amazing.  She stitches and she quilts, in fact she just finished a McKenna Ryan quilt top that was entire done by hand!  Yes ladies and gentlemen, by hand.  I have such wussy hands LOL.

Have a great weekend everyone!

(miss my girls!)

Have a great fourth of July all my friends to the south!

Shelly over at Prairie Moon Quilts is having a special giveaway for quilters on her blog.  It’s Americana/Patriotic, so if that moves you definitely check it out:  http://prairiemoonquilts.wordpress.com/

Shelly is such a generous spirit.

July 1st is fast approaching, HAPPY BIRTHDAY CANADA!!

To once againce celebrate our fantastic nation, I am making available a chart that I designed several years ago.  Only a few people have actually stitched this (shout out to my needlework guild ladies…you go girls!) and I really hope you enjoy it.  If you are comfortable with blackwork you’ll know how many strands you prefer to use.  Otherwise, depending on your fabric stitchcount, you may want to try 3 strands for the straight line areas and 2 lines for the filler blackwork.  Or 2 and 1…or maybe the same amount of strands for everything!  Whatever floats your boats, it’s all up to you.

I am interested though in seeing what colours your pick…I can see a lovely handdyed silk in red…or the classic black.  Email me with a photo, I’d love to see it!   YukonViv@moose-mail.com

June 30/10 - edited to add:  The stitchcount is 98 w by 50 h…if using a 14 count/28 count it is 7.14″ x 3.71″, make sure you add enough for framing!

Rightclicking, saving to your computer and printing from there should work.  However, I am not that high tech in a case like this..some things just stump me…so if it doesn’t work please visit my photobucket page and you may save it from there to print off.  ( http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/YukonViv/2010/BlackworkCanadaFlag.jpg )

As this is a complimentary gift to you, my readers, please respect my design and not claim it as your own, sell it as such, etc.  Thanks, I appreciate it. 

Enjoy everyone and see you out there celebrating the 1st!!!

One happy Canadian, Vivian

PS:  check out my June 2009 posts to find another Canadian complimentary chart!!

What a lovely weekend I had!  Absolutely filled with fun, friendship, food and fabric!  what could be better. 

Our quilt shop celebrated our near 24 hours of sunlight days (I really don’t know what the actual amount of day light was…but seriously, even the middle of the night was light out…if you go further north in the Yukon you hit actual 24 hours of daylight…but I’m not going that far north).

It all started friday at 9 a.m…we could stay as long as we wanted, but I could only make it till about 10 p.m.  I had to get home and bake bannock anyway for my contribution to the next day’s food.

Saturday was more of the same…9 a.m. till 11 pm this time!

And sunday was an early day… 9 till 3pm.  We ate constantly, we laughed more.  It was perfect.  And I won prizes!  I got a small rotary cutter and 3 fat quarters of bali batiks (two have a sunflower image on them).  All in shades of yummy browns and golds.

My tablemate had traveled from Australia!!!!  She was up here visiting her daughter and had managed to get signed up for the retreat.  It was so cool to meet someone so exotic.

I finished my snake quilt top.  YES!!!  Wahoo!

This is slithery snakes.  The heads are added after the quilting has been completed to give it a bit more dimension.  Some of the heads will actually be in the border…so they’ll appear to be slithering right off the quilt.  I chose a blue fabric for the backgroud that has a foliage print in there, to me it sort of feels like a pond where you can see the water plants coming up to the surface.  I chose the border fabric b/c I liked the overall colour of it, plus it had flowers and leaves.  I imagine the snakes are slithering across the water to hide in the undergrowth. 

I really enjoyed making this quilt top.  I’m hoping to pick up the backing fabric and batting next weekend and get this quilted before the end of July. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Vivian

Tansi my friends! 

Today is the day we celebrate National Aboriginal Day.

Unfortunately I had to work but I did take some time to attend the welcome and prayer ceremony this morning.  It was held in Shipyards Park right across the street from work so I could just pop over.  APTN was there filming so if you are watching you may see me and my co-worker when they welcomed the Cree Nation. 

You can learn more about the national day here:  http://www.nadottawa.ca/

Masi cho everyone,

Vivian

There is a father/kid golf tournament happening today.  Fortunately a dear friend of ours was able to step in and play with our second daughter so everyone got to play.

Which means I’m alone.  It’s cloudy and a bit gloomy so there really isn’t anything for me to do but brew a pot of tea, put on a good movie (just watched the Shooter and now Matrix Reloaded is on) and do a little stitching.

Have a great evening!  Vivian

Yay us!

and today I got the name of the person who I am to make a quilt for.  How thrilling!  Now to read and look at everything I can that this person has done so I can make sure I do something absolutely fitting.

For the person who gets me, what can I say?

I love the look of modern quilts, although, I’m not too sure what actually makes it modern…is it the fabrics?

I love a vintage look and enjoy traditional quilts.  I’m in a virtual quilting bee and my block is July.  I will have on my blog later in the month photos of the block of I’ve chosen.  Its a disappearing 9 patch using what I would consider traditional fabrics.  I used charm squares called Wildflower Serenade by Kansas Troubles for Moda.  It’ll make a wonderfully vintage looking scrappy quilt. 

I also have a love of red and black.  My first quilted item was a wavy table runner in asian fabrics - reds and blacks.  One of my past exchange partners made me a beautiful quilt with teacups using similar aisian fabrics so now I have a theme in one area of my home LOL.  One small area.

One of my favourite swap quilts I’ve made has to be my Icy Bear Paw…it’s turquoise/blue batiks with a touch of purple. 

And living in the Yukon, surrounded by wildlife (there are foxes and moose right outside my door!), I love the cabin and nature fabrics.  We are hoping to build a cabin someday…something that would fit in our little corner of the world, surrounded by the mountains and trees and wilderness.  Some day.   

If you read my blog a bit you will hopefully learn more about me.  In the meantime, I’ll be working on my flickr photostream to get some “likes” together and if I can figure out a mosaic I’ll post that too!

I’m quite open to anything, I look at these swaps as a way of trying out new things on a smaller scale and I hope you do too.  Have fun!

Viv