Friday, April 29, 2011

Progress

My first official post! It has been a long time coming, but something about leaving a place makes me finally get around to tying all those loose ends up. By finally contributing here I am also making a statement… a statement that says we will stay in touch, and will craft together again soon.

I am excited to exit Edmonton and settle into a small town climbing life in Squamish, even if it is ridden with thesis writing stress. I’m also excited for all the new sewing projects a move produces. John and I plan to recover his parent’s first sofa set for our new place! Yup, old school wooden armed sofa is going to soon meet with a melding of mine and John’s fabric choices… so far we have agreed on little except a Canadiana print with moose and bears…. We decided to sleep on that one for a while and see what inspiration Vancouver fabric shopping may bring. I think I will finally get to my 5 cushion covers that I have been planning for months as well, once another chapter or two is written of course!

I am truly going to miss you ladies and our crafting fun. I look forward to craftcation 2012, and would like to plant a seed for a craftcation Squamish sometime in the fall of 2011. October will be lovely out there!

The crafting group has done me well. One major achievement: The infamous pajama quilt is complete! This quilt, my first, was started about 10 years ago and has seen a number of adventures over the years. I was moving out of my parent’s house, headed off to grad school in Nova Scotia and trying to clear away the junk in my old room. I just couldn’t throw away all of my old pajamas! Complete with penguins, flowers, and Garfield in plaid these were a selection of pjs brought by santa over the years. Five years later, Garfield and his friends accompanied me on a drive across most of the country. Alberta bound!

A new apartment and 2 more years later, it was time to make a quilt sandwich. I wanted to stick with the recycled nature of the quilt so used an old duvet cover for the inside, instead of batting. The duvet cover had been two sheets I sewed together previously as a first attempt at crafting. It had served me well but was ready for its second life. I’d decided that it was time to retire my 8 year old sheep sheets as well but I couldn’t bear to part with them… now I needed backing material… the match was made! Blue flannel with little sheep in different positions, they made me chuckle every time I crawled between them, now they would be joined with plaid Garfield and the penguins. Finally, a few months ago, free motion quilted and binding attached, I declared this project complete!

There is something to be said for a deadline too. 10 years to make a quilt, 2 days to make some trivets.

It also took just a couple of nights to get a baby book for my new niece Analeigh all but bound together. This would be complete, however I learned the hard way that hand sewing while watching a movie can mean mistakes. I sewed the rainbow in the wrong order! Even so, this was one of the most fun projects I have done to date; crazy quilt squares are stress free!

I replaced the orange for pink in this rainbow. A new girl needs a little pink!


Here's to more sewing projects and a blog on which to share them from across the country!!

5 comments:

  1. Yayy for completed projects! I love them all!! I would love to see a full picture of the pyjama quilt. The book finished beautifully, the cover is amazing.

    Also, your trivets are fantastic, are those the ones you made? Did you freehand the tree!? I would love to learn how to do that! We should all really get our trivets on the website. I can't wait to show off the ones I got! They have been serving me well since I got them. Who would've thought that trivets are actually useful? The addition of new burn marks to our kitchen prep table has come to a screeching halt!

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  2. P.S. Please don't leave :( (Though, I must admit, the addition of new potential and awesome craftcation sites is pretty exciting.)

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  3. I still absolutely adore the color book. Such a great gift! Safe travels, Kim! You'll be missed, but Squamish sounds soooo much better than E-town.

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  4. Pajama quilt - amazing! So glad you got'er done:) I love the free-motion quilting. I think it turned out great!

    I'm the lucky recipient of those amazing trivets. She appliqued whitebark pine trees for me, because these are clearly the best trees in the universe - not that I'm biased, I'm just spending my entire graduate student career studying them! THANKS KIM!!!!!!!

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  5. Yup, I appliqued the trees on one side, then used that as my guide to free motion onto, which shows up as the thread trees on the other side. So much fun!

    I'll see about getting a full sized photo of the PJ quilt... right now we are still 2 days from internet access! Oh how I miss emailing from the comfort of my home!

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