Blogger Quilt Festival: Snapshot of Skiers Pillows

This entry is for the small quilt category of the Blogger's Quilt Festival being hosted by Amy at http://amyscreativeside.com/ . Although individually each pillow would fit in the mini category they were made as a pair as a wedding gift and I felt that the small category would be a better fit. These pillows finished up just over 20" square each.

The skier block was designed by Amy Friend of www.duringquiettime.com. It is a paper pieced block with a huge amount of teeny tiny pieces. I wasn't sure I had the skills necessary to make it, but after a couple weeks of very careful sewing they came out great.

The quilting on front was mostly stitch in the ditch and echo quilting the mountain lines. The ski poles were quilted using 30wt purple thread as were the pillow backs.

The original plan was to have plain purple borders, but as I was sewing late at night I realized I had used more of the purple fabrics that I had calculated for. I choose to extend the mountain range beyond the green frame and I think provided a great finishing touch. 

The backs were done with a simple patchwork which overlapped across the envelope style closure. 

The pillows were gifted to the newlyweds at a beautiful mountain ceremony at one of their favourite ski hills. 

And now they have a new home on a loveseat where they are greatly loved by a pair of avid skiers.

Quilt Stats:

Name: Snapshot of Skiers Pillows

Size: 20" x 20" (each)

Pattern credits: Amy Friend from During Quiet Time for her Vintage Skier Paper Pieced Block, the rest of the design is my own.

Piecing: Skiers, paper pieced using 60wt Presencia Thread, Patchwork and borders, pieced using 60wt Presencia thread

Batting: Quilter's Dream Select (pieced together scraps using batting tape)

Quilting: Quilted on my Grandma's Husqvarna Viking Sewing machine. Thread used white 60wt Presencia, light green 50wt presencia and 30wt Wonderfil Mirage variegated purple thread. 

Binding: Machine stitched. (The machine wasn't super happy about going through 8 layers of fabric and 3 layers of batting on the overlap of the envelope, but it survived)

Thanks for having a look and enjoy the rest of the entries to the Blogger's Quilt Festival. 

Leatina aka GeoMama

House, Life and Everything Else

As some of my regular readers may have noticed I sort of disappeared for most of the last 2 months. To put things lightly, it has been crazy busy. Through September we did renos at our new house, packed the old one, ran into problems with the new basement and eventually moved.

Since then we have been getting settled into new routines and trying to get things unpacked and organized (which is WAY harder with toddlers around).  

Up until now I had been working part time at the local quilt store learning to be a sewing machine technician and I only worked every other day. As we had to change childcare around after moving we decided it was probably time to put the kids in daycare full time.  This has proved to be way harder than I expected.

Monkey is in a toddler room where most kids nap every day, and now she is napping some days and not other days. The days she naps she stays up an hour later than her normal bedtime. She had been quite liking the alternate home/daycare days before and is not enjoying going to daycare 2 or more days in a row.

LB on the other hand seems to be adjusting just fine. He wasn't going to bed well at the other house and he still isn't. But he is ending up in our bed more often and longer in the night. The daycare ladies have told me that he is doing great while he is there.

Just to make life a little more fun the kids have had 2 colds in the last 3 weeks. GeoDad and I have had to take turns staying home with them (since you definitely can't go to daycare with a fever).

Due to the location of the new house I would need to take a bus and the train to get to work and it would probably take longer than I think it should. So since moving I have been biking the ~5km to work. It is only taking 20-25 minutes depending on the day and it is very refreshing to get some exercise a couple times a day. All in all I am enjoying being at work full time but I am exhausted by the end of day.

Can't complain about biking past this twice a day.

There is lots of sewing I would like to be doing but most nights by the time the kids are sleeping I am too worn out to even think about it. And some of my free time in the evenings has been spent on wedding planning as our wedding is less than 5 months away (ack... so much to do and figure out still).

Closer to workable.. Need to unpack and make a spot for the ironing board.

Anyway, I think the blogging/sewing slump is coming to an end. Last weekend my brother laid some beautiful laminate flooring in the sewing area and I finally have a spot to sit down and sew. Tonight I finished putting the binding on the Tools Baby Quilt that I longarm quilted a couple weekends ago (so here's hoping I get a finished quilt post written this weekend). 

GeoMama

September is slipping away

We have been busy. Not normal busy with toddlers... super busy. September 2nd we got keys to our new house and since we planned to have 4 weeks of overlap with the 2 houses it means that I have been splitting my time between them. Attempting to keep up with normal things like laundry and dishes at the current house and painting, demolition and construction at the new place.

Lots of ugly valences had to be taken down.

Along with the horrible wallpaper

So far we have striped wallpaper off of 6 walls, 2 in the dining room and all 4 in LB's room. I had family down for one weekend and they painted all the closets on the main floor (and closets are super slow to paint). We also got 2 coats of red on one of LB's walls, 2 coats of light pink on Monkey's 1 wall, the first coat of white on 2 walls in each kids room and the first coat of dark pink on Monkey's 4th wall. The dining room and half the living got both coats of white done.

Nice white closet will feel to unpack our clothes into

White done on walls, not sure what happened to the one strip of baseboard but they got it the second try.

Since they were around I finished painting 2 coats of blue paint on LB's other wall and another coat of dark pink in Monkey's room.

Monkey is 3 and was only ok with looking for a new house and the idea of moving because we told her  we could paint her walls pink.

I was only going to paint LB's walls 2 shades of blue, but we are letting our 3 year old make design decisions and she said her brother wanted blue and red. So thats what we did. The red wall is my favourite of the 4 coloured walls.

We tore out a wall that had some ugly mirror tiles and scary texture on it, and my brother re-drywalled and started mudding it. We removed bifold closet doors and replaced a few with new ones, which also needed a coat of paint.

We also found a opening for a doorway, so we installed a new door.

My brother also started to build me a super awesome new cutting table/fabric storage system.

GeoDad has been on furniture building duty (some new dressers for the kids from Ikea) and switching out all the light switches and electrical outlets (as the old ones were yellowish from age, and new ones make the place feel so much cleaner).

It was all going very well, except for a small (we hoped) moisture problem in the basement... Turns out after having a contractor from the condo board in and an air quality specialist, we have a bigger problem than we hoped. We are still working on how to solve it and hopefully we can get it mostly dealt with before we move in next week.

As if all that at the new house wasn't enough, I got a call to do some contract geophysics work. Not stellar timing for how much was on my plate, but the extra cash will definitely help with the basement demolition.

We also had to deal with the collapse of our gazebo at the house we are currently living in during the freak September snowstorm which is being called 'Snowtember' throughout Calgary.

So after the first 2.5 weeks of chaos, I finally needed a down day. I let the kids watch cartoons and run around all day and I sat and sewed. It was a wonderful break. I have almost completed a quilt top for my new nephew, and hopefully I will get a chance to write a proper sewing post about it after we have moved.

Thanks for making it through it this rather wordy post and I look forward to sharing pictures of rooms as we get them set up.

GeoMama