It's a Party at the Circus!

We delivered "The Circus is Coming" and "Party Time" to Alexa and Emily last weekend. These little girls are adorable. Alexa is just 11 months old (or almost) and Emily is three. Jodi is their Mom and Dale is their Dad.

Joe loves little kids - he always lights up when he gets to play with them. Here he is with Alexa.

Alexa was making the rounds, so here she is with me! Joe and Emily, below.

Jodi and Dale with their girls.

OMG - February Already!

I was sick over Christmas, but made up for it with a trip to Mexico (above) and then a business trip that came up rather suddenly to Marina Del Rey (below). These two trips have spoiled me - I now want to wake up to palm trees on a full time basis.
However, in real life, I have managed to get some sewing done in the last couple of months. I finally was able to get the kids quilts done, finished. Hope to begin delivering them next week.

One.

Two.
Three.

Four.

This is a small bird house project (not finished - needs some applique). It will be for my friend Jacquie. They have bird houses around their property - one for each grandchild.

I also made another quilt from "Dare to be Square" - the clock I've named Time Machine.

Today was another Divas Day. Here is Joan showing off yet another of her fabulous creations.

Dorothy retired from ATCO last week. We bought her EQ7 as a retirement gift - but told her she may not retire from the Divas!

Gourmet Diva Sue was back in action with another version of squash soup, carrot salad, lasagna and some sort of yummy dessert.

Sue found a Sock Monkey wine holder. Perfect for Dorothy, who, you will recall, was making sock monkeys for all the kids in her life.

The Quilt I Didn't Want to Make

Last month, our good friend told us she had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. It's one thing to talk about cancer in a generalized way but I know and love Marla - she's not an abstract statistic. What do you do when your friend has cancer - other than utter the usual words of support and encouragement? It's a very helpless place to be in.

I make quilts - so probably more to relieve my own stress regarding the situation, I made Marla a quilt. I hope she'll find it a comfort and then when she is fully recovered (because that's what I want to happen), she can either keep it or pass it on to someone else.

I'm going to call it Marla's Magical Quilt because if I could imbue it with magic that would instantly cure her, I would.

The Last One!

Here is the last of the four kids' quilts - Party Time!

Now I must get on to Harley!

Back to Kids

I still have my list of kids to make quilts for. I really would like the kids (now between about 8 months and 4 years) to not be teenagers by the time I get to these quilts so am determined to get these quilts made! Soon! You may recall I did make one awhile ago (The Circus is Coming). Here are a couple more. Obviously started with the same panel then added the borders. Which one do you like best?

One thing about panels - they never seem to be square and these ones were also very close to each other so not much wiggle room around the edges. I had to add some fabric to square them up so tried to match it up as well as I could. In the bottom one, I added quite a bit to have it match up to the border (another example of my non-planning!).

I think I'll call them Day at the Zoo and Day at the Zoo, Too.

On to Harley!

Mary Bakes Christmas Dessert!

No - the Gourmet Diva did not make this! I did! I really hate baking but I spent most of Friday and a lot of Saturday in the kitchen baking cooking and cleaning up - the things you do for your family! :) I do love them, after all!

Anyway - this is a Bavarian Torte. It looks healthy - but no healthy food allowed for Christmas! Nope! This is a layer of shortbread, a layer of cheesecake topped off with a layer of apples in cinnamon. It is really good! This is what it looked like after it came out of the oven and cooled a bit. Now it's pretty much gone!

Hope you and your special people had a great Christmas and all the best for 2011.

Christmas Sewing Wrap Up!

Here is Legends of the Ivories all done for my Mom. Mom taught piano for a billion years, lead choirs, played organ/piano for various churches, etc. Most recently she accompanied a quartet of singers in the Kelowna area - over a number of years, they put on concerts at various venues. Since they had to rent the venues, they charged for tickets and donated any funds left after they covered their expenses to the Food Bank. They raised something like $75,000 over the years!


Here she is!

I quilted the centre piano on my new Janome. It worked very well. I did the outside part of the quilt on Harley - tried doing a sort of "straight line" design - but Harley is definitely not designed to do straight line quilting so I'm not too thrilled with that part, but way too lazy to pull it out and do it again. Another live and learn experience.

Here is A Hunting We Will Go - for Dad. All done.


Carol and Dan showed up unexpectedly, so I stayed up late to finish stitching the binding on Skulduggery. Dan seemed pleased with it - whew!





I found some Maxine prints when I was in Denver so picked up 1/2 yard of the bubble print and then a panel of the blocks. I didn't know what I would do, but thought it would be amusing to do something for the Divas. I ended up making 8 inch blocks - one of the bubble and one of the block for each of six little minis. I guess they can be used as a hot pad or a place mat for a cup of coffee and a cookie plate or something. I had some colourful fabric left from another project to "fill in the blanks" with. Tops above, backs below.

Close up of "bubble" print above, "block" below. One for each Diva and one for Pam.