Always Believe

Arlene Neely of Rabbits Haven has a beautiful line of fabric called "Always Believe."  Arlene is one of very few Canadian designers of fabric.  Her fabric company, Red Rooster, provided this pattern using Arlene's fabric.

It is a very soft pastel Christmas quilt!  I'm certain one of the granddaughters will love it.

I had pieced this quilt at retreat and finally found some time to get it quilted.  It is hanging at Katja's right now.  Hopefully the fabric will all sell by Christmas, and this little beauty can come home.

Speaking of Katja, the two of us are off tomorrow to Houston, Texas.  We will be attending Quilt Market once again.  I can hardly wait!  Next week I should have a few pictures to show you.

Paper Foundation Pieced Wee Loon

This Wee Loon pattern is from Silver Lining's newsletter.  Be sure to check it out and sign up for the newsletter.  This years patterns are treasures of the rainforest.  I collect all Linda's free patterns, because you never know when you might need them.

Previously I had posted a picture of a Wee Bear.  I used both of these blocks for a row robin that I was participating in.

I added a couple of trees to fill in the space, and my row was done with a couple of days to spare!

This is Rosemarie's rows.  Her theme was the great outdoors.

My theme was my garden.  I pieced the row on the bottom with a little bit of a Nancy Halverson panel included, to set the tone.  I am very happy with the finished results.  A quick note for the non computer geeks.  Double click on the pictures and they should open in a new window so you can see them better.

These two sets of rows belong to Carol and Lorraine.  They both used stars as their theme.  They look very different because of the choices made for the backgrounds.

Row robins are always a lot of fun, as well as a bit of a challenge.  We all agreed we had a lot of fun participating.  Thanks to all for my wonderful rows!

Sorrento Retreat

I thought that today I should share with you some of the wonderful projects that the women at the retreat were working on.

First up is this wonderful homespun pineapple quilt.  Each woman attending sewed a block, with Loraine and Barb sewing it together.  The fabrics used were donated by Kathy, who has since passed away.  The quilt will be completed and given to Hospice, in honour of Kathy.

These two quilts were pieced by Carol.  I was told I couldn't put her mug on the blog so I was forced to cut it out.  Carol is a wonderful quilt fabric recycler.  Both of these quilts were made from blocks or fabric that someone else no longer wanted.  Wonderful!

As you can see, a lot of quilts were completed.  I didn't get pictures of everything, but this gives you an idea of the variety of quilts that were present.

Now every retreat needs a little entertainment.  These three were singing and dancing for our amusement.  I'm sure we all laughed so hard, we almost wet ourselves.  There is nothing like the sound of 24 women laughing.  The perfect retreat.  Lots of laughter, good friends, great food and time to sit and sew!

Mini Shop Hop

On the way to retreat this past weekend I completed a mini shop hop of all three Quilt Shops between my house and Sorrento.
To start off, I visited Heather's Fabic Shelf.  The shop is in the new Library building on Tranquille Road.

Heather, Bill and Herman own the Fabric Shelf.  A wonderful friend had given me a gift certificate for their shop, so I had to spend it!  Bill is very proud of his little smart car, wrapped like a quilt.

Next up was Katja's.  I was meeting Katja and Sonja here to go for tea, before we headed out of town.

Sharon and Carla were left in charge.   As you can see, they have a difference of opinion on where to purchase their favourite drink!

The last stop was Dianne Jannson's shop, Diversity.  The shop was very busy, with lots of women stopping on the way to retreat.  I'm sure quilters account for at least half the traffic in Pritchard.

All three shops are wonderful places to spend a little time, and yes, a little money too.

Kate Spain's Terrain meets Vintage Memories

This week has been very productive.  It's amazing what I can get done when I don't have to go to work everyday.  Oh well, back to the grind next week.

Today I finished quilting a quilt that Katja featured on her blog.  The fabric that she chose for the pattern, is simply stunning.  Kate Spain's Terrain has wonderful movement in it.  The sashing fabric was cut on the lengthwise grain, and some of the fabric was fussy cut to make wonderful patterns within the blocks.

It will be a block of the month program through Katja's store.

Tomorrow I'm off to retreat, with a little mini shop hop thrown in.  More details to follow!

Susan's Quilt

This wonderful Christmas Quilt will be in the mail tomorrow to Susan in Charlie Lake (just north of Fort St. John.)  She can't wait to see it, so here are a few pictures.

This quilt was a very large project that deserved some fussy quilting.  I had fun quilting it but, in the future, Susan will be quilting her own.  She owns a Long Arm machine but because of where she lives she hasn't had any help available to get going with it.  Next summer she will be down my way and we plan on getting together to get her quilting up a storm.

A Hoppy Quilt

On one of my visits to the Katja's I saw the cutest frog fabric.  I just had to make it into something, I'm sure you all understand.

I used a charm pack of "happy" to make the four patches, a little Moda lime green for the sashing around the blocks, and lots of frog fabric.  The border fabric is printed on the crosswise grain of the fabric, making if the perfect size for a baby quilt.  Carla picked out the cutest striped fabric for the binding.

I am on count down to retreat this weekend in Sorrento.  The projects that I plan on working on are starting to stack up on my ironing board.  The goodies I will be taking are in the planning stage.  The anticipation is building, I can hardly wait.  Great friends, great food and time to quilt!  What more could I want?

Quilts of Valour

A special thanks to Lezley for picking up my quilts for the Canadian Quilts of Valour Society. The quilts are distributed to injured Canadian Forces member, both active and retired.  If you have a quilt to donate, Lezley will work with you to find the best way to get it picked up.  In my case, she picks them up when she travels through Kamloops on holidays.  What a gal!

Here the quilts are, all washed up and ready to go.

A wonderful friend Carol, hosted a quilting weekend last year at her ranch.  The plan was to use Carol's plentiful stash to make a few quilts for charity.  Jane pieced this beauty, then decided it reminded her of her Dad, who had served in the military.  She gave it to me to quilt, she bound it, then gave it back to me to give to QOV.  Thanks Jane and Carol.

Next up is this Snowflake quilt.  Neila had pieced it years ago for Katja's Quilt Shoppe.  For whatever reason, the quilt was never quilted.  Katja gave it to me to finish up and donate. Thanks to Neila and Katja.

Wow, Deanna donated this quilt.  I had challenged Deanna to work with a bundle of fabric that was way outside her comfort range, when she pieced this quilt as a sample for a workshop I was giving.  After I quilted it, the quilt was Deanna's to keep.  After a bit of consideration, she decided that even though she loved the quilt, she wanted it to go to QOV.  Thanks!

Last winter there was this lonely little panel that no one was buying, because they didn't know what to do with it.  I love to play with panels, so I just had to take it home and create this quilt. The panels sold immediately, and I have this lovely quilt to donate.  It is the perfect size for a wheelchair quilt, as a lot of the QOV quilts go to veterans in care.

This is the last of the quilts for this year.  This was pieced from some fabric donated by Noeline.  It is from one of the Nickel Quilt books and was pieced on the weekend at Carols Ranch.

As you can see, I have a lot of wonderful friend who helped a lot in making the donation to QOV possible.  Thanks to all of them, I couldn't of done it without you!

If you are asking why Quilts of Valour, I would like to share a little story with you.  My son Harvey is an active member of the Canadian Forces, stationed in Edmonton.  When he was stationed in Afghanistan, he received a couple of quilts.  The woman who sent them to him, had met Harvey sixteen years previously, when he was a ring bearer at Preston's wedding. This woman (sorry I don't know her name) had heard from Preston that Harvey was overseas. She made him two quilts and shipped them to him during the Christmas season.  One for Harvey, and one to give to a friend.  The weather in Afghanistan was extremely hot, but this kind woman knew that the men would use them for privacy curtains in their cramped quarters. Such kindness still brings tears to my eyes.  She though of my son during a difficult time in his life, even though she had only met him once many years ago.

This prompted me to think that I should do something for the military men and women who do so much for all of us.  I googled and found Quilts of Valour.  Lezley explained that luckily not that many of our soldiers are injured, so a lot of the quilts go to veterans.  I said that was wonderful, and how do I help.  The rest is history.

Paulette's Lover's Knot Quilt

This wonderful hand pieced Lover's Knot quilt was made by Paulette.  Paulette is the Queen of scrap quilts and this beautiful quilt is a perfect example of the amazing work she does with scraps.

Roxy was kind enough to forward this picture to me from Paulette's Bits and Pieces class on Saturday.   The quilt is a wedding gift for Tom and Sarah.  I understand they were married a bit ago (Paulette made me promise not to tell how long ago.)  I'm sure they will love snuggling under their quilt this winter.

This quilt gave me lots of lovely spaces to fill with feathers.  The outlining  of the curve was a little tricky with my longarm, but I gave it my best shot.  I was so lucky to have the opportunity to work on this unique quilts.  Thanks Paulette!