Kit gets a chair

My American Girls Doll, Kit, received a new chair today, courtesy of a yard sale :-). We dropped in at a yard sale in our town shortly after 7:00 a.m. and there is the cutest small replica of a leather arm chair for $2.00. I couldn't resist that unique item and thought perhaps it would fit Kit. She looks like she's enjoying her chair a lot.

Sorry about the washed out photo...too much white in the background for the camera flash. But it gives you a good idea of the detail in this chair:

Someone suggested that it's too masculine of a chair, so maybe I'll have to look for a boy doll for it?

More spring on a COLD day

My sister in law brought a very pretty bunch of tulips over on Friday. Nice to enjoy them on the kitchen table to try to convince us that Spring is really here. It's so cold here today, it feels like snow in the air.

Spring has sprung!

Mother's Day yielded some colour for our mud surrounded house :-). Nice to see flowers and plants through the windows.

Son in law, Brian, snuck up to the house on Saturday evening and hung these two pansy bags on the coach lights of the garage! We had company and never noticed a thing...what a surprise to walk outside and find flowers had sprung from the lanterns :-).

Ben and Heather brought my Mother's Day, birthday, housewarming gift over..two lovely lilac bushes (we were just planning earlier in the day where we'd like to put some lilac bushes!) and a beautiful Geranium.

The Geranium found a nice spot on the bench that my grandfather made when he first visited from Holland when I was 11 years old. I remember watching him build that bench. When it is warm enough, I will give it a coat of paint to match the house.
Jake fabricated a couple of wire hangers and we hung the pansies on the lights...I'm thinking they look pretty good hanging there.

I'm moved, I think!

We have just moved to a new house and are loving it! We moved in two weeks ago and I've been busy unpacking things and finding lots of items that have been packed for several months. We stayed with my sister in law for 5 weeks between places. It worked out well and I even had my own sewing room there :-). We built a raised ranch so that we could have large windows in the lower level which is where my sewing room and Jake's office are. So, we basically live down there. We put in floor heating in the basement which makes it very comfortable. We hope to put a laminate floor in the sewing room this summer, so I have set up the room temporarily. Here are a few pictures.

Here is the Dear Jane sewing station. I have my Singer 28 handcrank set up in a library table. I received the laminated poster of the original Dear Jane quilt from my friend Amy last Christmas and hope to hang that on the wall above the machine.

An old Husqvarna cabinet (the machine is long gone) is serving as my light box work area. I'm working on some embroidery and need to do a little more tracing, so now it's all set up to work.

My Bernina 614 electric and the trusty Singer 15-88 treadle are set up right under the windows with my drawers of supplies and UFO's close at hand. The ironing board and cutting table are close to the sewing area.

Here is the sewing room looking from the back to the front of the house. There is lots of natural light. My old kitchen table (with four leaves) minus the casters will serve as a sewing table until I find some individual tables. We also hope to make a cutting table this summer. I'm contemplating the design :-).

The sewing room looking from the front to the back. The wall between the two book cases will be my design wall. It will have shelves along the whole wall for my fabric and we hope to put sliding doors in front that will serve as the design wall.

Now to find time to actually sew in the room!

A basket

Today was a very rainy day so I treated myself to a little hand piecing of a little Easter basket. It's not totally smooth, but I'm going to leave it as is :-). I forgot to put registration marks on the freezer paper to match everything up easily. And, since this is my practise block, I'm not doing it over. Finished is better than perfect right??? I may try one with applique as well. A sub group of the Dear Jane list is doing a block of the month basket starting in September and this is a block to get us started.

Gift from a friend

Wow, my fourth post today :-). About time I updated my blog. Isn't this just the cutest little gift I received from my friend, Christine? She made this little card holder from selvedge edges of various fabrics. This is the outside opened up:

Inside with spots to put your quilt shop bonus cards (found out from the pattern link that they are called 'loyalty' cards) and guild membership cards:

The wallet folded closed:


Christine told me she found the pattern in the internet, but I didn't know where...thanks to Peggi, here's the link for the pattern in case you are interested in making it :-).

Another UFO finished!

The blocks for this quilt were also exchanged on the Treadleon sewing machine collector's list in 2001. The blocks are made two at a time, making it a quick block exchange project. The colours for this quilt were scrappy and we had to use muslin for the small triangles to write our name, place of residence and which antique machine we used to sew the blocks. I made 64 blocks and received 64 different blocks in return. The setting on this quilt was named, "Trail to Treadleonia". This quilt needed navy blue to put it all together :-).

Some of the quilting on the quilt. I quilted diagonal lines along the centers of the large triangles into the border and straight rows in one direction and along the individual blocks in the other direction:

The center blocks (I put the block from a fellow Canadian in the center!):

Quilting in the border:

Wonder how many more UFO's I need to complete? :-)