March 17 ART plus

 I've been using up pre-painted canvas boards and playing with paint again, with varied results.  None of my efforts are any where near anything I might like to frame and hang on the wall, but it keeps me sane and busy and otherwise out of trouble during the endless Covid days. Although the restrictions here are easing up quite a bit, there are still too many new infections reported, many of them attributed to the variants, and new deaths every day.

I've also completed the needlepoint project that I started sometime in the 1990s. It sat in a sewing bag in the basement for a long time before I retrieved it. Now I have to decide what to do with it. Perhaps a 12"x12" frame?

Now that the clocks have changed to the daylight savings, I was up early enough to see the sun coming up behind the trees. That doesn't happen often. I mean me seeing the sun, not the sun coming up. That seems to happen on a regular basis whether I'm there to see it or not.

And today is a big day for me.... the hair salons are finally open and I am going to get my first proper haircut since the middle of November. I can hardly wait!

Scrub Caps

I'm proud to say that I have been a part of a team of busy people who have cut, pressed, sewn, and delivered more than 600 scrub caps to local hospitals over the past 3 months.  A great way to keep busy and be useful during the pandemic lockdown days. Well done everyone!

Some bloggers couldn't see the photo.... I hope I've fixed it now.

Window Works

I've been a very lazy blogger recently.... my excuses are totally pathetic. Christmas, New Year, and the horrible COLD weather intervened with my creative thought processes, such as they are. I've been attending ice hockey games and practices, some medical appointments, and just generally being a lazy good-for-nothing so-and-so, as my mother would say.
So now, back to blogging, fire up the synapses, it's Twentyeighteen!

When OlderSon and The Equestrienne bought their house a few years ago, her dad built some cupboards either side of the fireplace. And I decided to make some stained glass windows.

Can you guess, she's a horse person?

Stuff Sorted

I've been a really bad blogger recently, no excuses, I know. January and February weather does that to me. It has been a surprisingly mild winter, with not even one huge blogworthy snowstorm. And I haven't been to Florida, or Arizona, or anywhere hot to get away from Old Man Winter. But tonight the clocks "Spring Forward", the evenings will be longer and signs of Spring will start to appear. Hooray!

Stuff Sorted over the past few weeks:

1. YoungerSon, my techie genius, helped me change my internet provider to one that gives me 6 times more download room than I had before, and for a much lesser price. And he also set up getting rid of my expensive phone land line and connecting an internet phone. So far it's worked perfectly...... fingers crossed.
2. Finished making a multicolour baby/toddler quilt for a baby expected on May 1. No, not my family, but very dear friends are becoming grandparents for the first time. So exciting.
   
3. While I was in the sewing mood, I cut multicolour strips of leftover cotton quilting fabric, and started making another toddler quilt. Stay tuned for pictures.
4. Set up a weekly "Dinner Date" with the grandies who live just down the road from me. The 3 of them are always together, so they take it in turns once a week to come to Nana's house for dinner after school. It's good to have some one-on-one time with each of them, and they can't wait until it is their turn. Last week it was Isaac (6). Dinner was sausage, egg, chips (that's French Fries to the non-Brits) and Heinz baked beans (has to be the one with the green label) and ketchup.... mmmm gourmet dining.
5. Our Art Group has been asked to display paintings at the Town Offices.... there are about 30 paintings exhibited until March 31. The moo-cows are mine.
   
   
   
6. Grandie Callum celebrated being 8 years old by inviting 14 6 to 8 year olds to Laser Lounge for 2 games of laser tag. It was mayhem!  Warriors are divided into a red team and a green team, outfitted with vests with flashing lights in the appropriate colour, and given laser guns, and the battle is on! The battle ground is filled with smoke so the laser rays can be seen, and parents can watch through the window.... looked like so much fun creeping around shooting people that next time I want to play too. The kids ended up red faced and sweaty, but still had enough energy to consume 8 large pizzas and birthday cake in the shape of a Star Wars robot. 
7. Birthday parties weren't anything like that when I was 8.

Happenings...

I lost my blogging ambition for a couple of weeks, lots of reasons. Did you miss me? Hmmm... I thought not.
Reason One: the weather has been so cold. We even had SNOW on the ground two days ago. I thought this was spring! I know I don't have to write my blog outside, but somehow the really un-springlike weather completely brought me to a standstill.
Reason Two: I was sewing, and once I get the sewing machine warmed up I have to finish. I made a pretty summer dress for my only granddaughter, the beauteous Emma, and made a funky Tshirt for me, made from 4 recycled Tshirts from the Sally Ann Thrift Shop. Oh this is such a bad picture.

Reason Three: Some surgery. Parathyroidectomy. Sounds very impressive, doesn't it. Just one night in hospital, lots of TLC from the nurses on the 11th floor and the hospital food was surprisingly edible. Home the next day, feeling great now. I was in Toronto for a follow-up appointment at the hospital so I took my camera along.

Toronto City Hall. Designed by Finnish architect Viljo Revell and built in 1965. Home of Toronto City Council..... and former home of notorious Toronto ex-Mayor Rob Ford... remember him?

The Countdown Clock for the Pan Am Games to be held in Toronto July 10 -26 2015.

The CN Tower was completed in 1976 becoming the World's tallest tower... but lost that title in 2010. It's now the 3rd tallest. The light on top of the weather beacon on the Canada Life building glows red for rain, green for fine and white for snow, and the lights on the actual pylon scroll up or down according to the forecast temperature. Clever.

The Red Rocket ... one of Toronto's many streetcars, 248 of them in fact. 

Outside the law courts.... the lion and the lamb. Every Individual is Equal Before and Under the Law and has the Right to the Equal Protection and Equal Benefit of the Law without Discrimination.

SuperHeroes

The sewing machine came into use at Christmas. I made all three of my grandsons Superman capes for Christmas. Black with a yellow felt Superman logo.
Callum wears his to his skating lessons.
Emma got a special cape.... red with a pink felt Princess Crown on it. Max loves dashing through the house wearing the Princess cape more than his own, so Emma has to wear the Superman.
And the capes are reversible.... red on the other side with their initial and a lightning bolt. The big boys seem to like the red side best.

SuperCallum and SuperIsaac taking a break from their exhausting SuperHero activities.

North Challacombe Farm

I've been taking a couple of acrylic painting courses, and sadly they have now finished for the summer. I've really enjoyed meeting up twice a week with all the other participants and exchanging ideas with them. Everyone had a different style of painting, and our teacher was so encouraging. I'm sure even if you produced the worst painting he had ever seen, he would always find something good to say about it!

This is a farm scene near where I grew up in England. I found an old photo of the farm that had been posted on the internet. I should think this farm has stood at the base of the moors for close to 200 years.

First I blocked in all the basic shapes, and then started to add more colours and more details. It had numerous changes over a few weeks. The farmhouse changed colour about five times. It's called artistic licence!  In fact the greenish house you see in the framed version is now a lighter grey, giving more of a focal point.

The green detail in the foreground is pages torn from the 2013 Niagara Falls Tourist Guide.... the colours were just right!

Pipe Dream

YoungerSon has recently been building furniture using black iron pipe and plumbing fittings and recycled wood.

So far he has built a curtain rail, a coffee table and a bench, and they really look good... sort of "Industrial Domestic".

I saw this bedside lamp at a street fair in a nearby town. All made of plumbing fittings. It had been made by a local welder for his teenage son's bedroom. He was also building a bed and some bedroom furniture along the same lines.

I really liked the lamp so I'll show YoungerSon and perhaps he might like to try his hand at building his version of the same design.

Would you have a lamp like this in your house?

Quilted Cover for Ipad Mini

A special request from grandson Callum to make a cover for his Ipad Mini so the screen doesn't get all scratched up.

So here it is.

Sorry, Blogger won't let me rotate the photo.

If you're feeling ambitious and want to make one of your own, I adapted the pattern from here and here.

Arty Farty

Last year I signed up for a course in acrylics... I thought splashing paint on canvas would be fun. And it is! It's something I haven't tried since I left high school.
Ann will probably recognise this scene.

I'm not very good at it. In fact, I haven't really finished anything to my own satisfaction. Still experimenting. But I'm finding out that I like the bright colours and using different textures. This one includes paper from my shredder, strips of newspaper and a bicycle cut out of Zoomer magazine.

I've signed up for a couple more courses starting in April. 

I don't think I'll ever be invited to exhibit at the National Gallery, but I'm having fun. 

Getting Creative

I've recently applied for a table to sell some of my Baby Quilts at the local Arts and Crafts sale to be held in November. It is the annual fundraiser for the town Art Gallery. I haven't been told if my work will be accepted yet, but now that summer's over (almost! it's still sunny and warm out there!) it's time to get back to the sewing machine.

Pretty pinks and white, just right for a sweet baby girl.  Just a couple more pinwheel blocks to sew and then I'll start putting it all together.

I love the combination of all these assorted blues, and the tiny red and yellow squares give it that "POP" that it needs.

The fabric collection is Ten Little Things by Jenn Ski for Moda Fabrics.  I love the owls.... and the trucks and traffic signs..... I wish I had more of this fabric!  It's just right for a baby boy.

These projects will show up on my Etsy shop as soon as they are completed.

Repair * Reuse * Recycle

I purchased six used T-shirts for $0.50 each at the local charity shop. Grand total $3.00.... no tax.   There was a pink one, a blue one, a brown one, a stripey one and two black ones.

These T-shirts were beyond Repair, and definitely beyond Reuse, so the only action left is to Recycle.

After some strategic cutting and sewing, I have a new summer dress. The text says "Here comes treble" under the treble clef.... musical joke! Yes I know it's backwards.... it's mirror writing!

The pattern is from Linda McPhee.... Canadian sewing guru and pattern expert and star of Canadian TV sewing show (which I've never seen as I don't get that channel).

Sorry about the blurry photo. That's what happens when I try to use the camera and look into a mirror at the same time.

Update: Hilary awarded me one of her coveted POTW recommendations for this post... Woohoo!  Thanks, Hilary.

Pink to Make the Boys Wink

Auntie J gave baby Emma a sweet little yellow summer dress.
When I looked at it, I thought "that's an easy pattern. Hmmm... I wonder if....."
Out came the tissue paper, pen, scissors. and pins. I had some leftover fabric from one of my baby quilts. Pink, of course.
I found advice on the internet on how to sew a neck placket. Never tried to sew one before.
My new sewing machine sews buttonholes all by itself. Whoopee!
And I had a button with a sparkle in the middle. Perfect!

YAY for me! I did it!

Canada's next Top Model.

So we had a fashion show.

Dolly Mixture

I've been making some baby quilts recently, and there is always a mixture of colourful fabric scraps leftover, and I hate to throw anything away if it could be useful, so I stitched some of the scraps together to make a little doll quilt.

Dontcha just love the backing fabric? It was a remnant at Fabricland. You'll have to click on the pic to see the details!

O Canada!

Another One!

The only one of my four (four! WOW!) grandchildren who didn't get a crib quilt made by Nana when he was born was Callum, so I had to remedy that ASAP. And here it is. It has his name and birthdate embroidered on the back, just like the others. And a message telling him that his Nana loves him.

I know, he's three and a half and doesn't need a crib quilt now that he's a Big Boy, but I just had to make one for him.
And I've enjoyed making these baby quilts so much that once I get going, I just can't stop.

So I went shopping and added to my fabric stash. (Fabricland had a sale!!!) Today I washed it all, ironed it and folded it, ready to start cutting. Watch this space for more quilts coming this way.

Scrappy

Lots of tiny scraps and strips were leftover from my recent baby quilts, plus I seem to have aquired more fabric than I need by rummaging through the remnant bins of the local fabric stores, so I created some placemats.

Crazy wild colours and my first attempt at freehand machine quilting... not entirely successful as my Singer is almost 45 years old and probably not really suitable. However, I'm learning.

I used metallic thread for the top quilting. Hard to work with, but it got easier as I got the hang of it. I found quite a few tutorials on the internet, e.g.: how to make perfect HSTs, and how to mitre the corners of the quilt binding.

The placemats weren't made with any specific patterns in mind, they just grew according to the scraps I had left. And it's amazing to me that they all ended up roughly the same size without a lot of planning.

My next project, now that my grandtwins have arrived, is to embroider the babies' names and birthdates on their quilts. And then I start on the next quilt!

On The Shelf

I love poking around in thrift and second hand stores and I picked up this funny little shelf in a used furniture shop for about $12 a couple of weeks ago. It looked like it had potential but it was in rough shape with layers of drippy brown paint and a few dings and scratches.

I ended up spending more than twice that amount in paint stripper, sandpaper, stain and varathane finish, but I think it was worth it.

Now it's home to the caribou carvings from Labrador (click here to read their story). The smooth beach pebbles are from Middle Cove Beach in Newfoundland and the rock is citrine... my birthstone.

Sew Sew Sew

A couple of months ago I got my faithful Singer sewing machine out of the cupboard where it had been gathering dust for a while, chose some colourful fabrics, found my quilting tools and started designing a baby quilt. The last quilt I made was for Isaac's arrival two years ago.

It's the sort of project that I love. My own design, my own choice of colours, and I can take as long as I want to make it. Here's the final design, photographed on my bedroom floor, while I stood on the bed.

And then I decided to make another one, this time in autumn colors. Again, photographed on my bedroom floor, you can see the toe of my not-so-elegant slipper!

The quilts were finally finished last week. They consist of the pieced top, a layer of soft cotton quilt batting, and the back of the quilt is a layer of one of the fabrics used in the quilt top. And to hold it all together, I machine quilted the three layers together.

The edge binding is sewn by machine on the front and then finished by hand on the back. The whole binding could be sewn by machine but I think the hand stitching is so much neater.

And there was a finishing touch that was made to the edge of each quilt.... well... not quite finished, a little bit more to add, but that will have to wait for a few more days....

Any guesses why I've been so busy? And why did I make TWO quilts? Hmmm....

Sock It To Me!

There's nothing like a pair of handknitted socks to make a pair of cold feet feel comfy and warm.

I'm not a very accomplished knitter, but I look on knitting socks as a challenge.

My mother used an antique sock knitting machine just like the one pictured here, probably dating from the early 1900s. But it worked and she allowed me to turn the handle as long as I didn't turn it too fast. She was able to run off a pair of wool socks for my dad in just a couple of evenings.

Not me. My handknitted socks took me at least a couple of months each!

The striped socks on the left were knitted on 5 needles using pre-striped yarn and a pretty easy pattern found free on the internet.
The other two pairs are more intricate, with fancy stitches requiring lots of concentration and a paper and pencil close by to keep track of the rows. I blogged about the pattern here.
I've had a go at baby socks and shoes too, here.

One Of A Kind Show

The One Of A Kind Show happens in Toronto twice a year, at Easter and Christmas. I went with my neighbours yesterday. A very special place to do some Christmas shopping for unique handmade items.
Aisle after aisle of colourful well-stocked booths selling everything from tobogganing Christmas geese for your roof.....


....to a lifesize woodnymph emerging from a treetrunk, with driftwood hair blowing in the breeze.

Beautiful quilted table runners and placemats......


.... and gorgeous handmade quilts and teacosies, in vivid colours that lift your spirits and light your home with gladness.

Oh boy, I wish I was one of the rich'n'famous.... I'd buy one of everything!

And a special treat.... I met fellow blogger Shawn of Island Sweet in her booth. Shawn knits and spins in Newfoundland and creates beautiful handmade textiles and yarns. She told me she had sold all her stock, and was taking orders.... visit her at Island Sweet to see the gorgeous things she makes. Lovely to meet you at last, Shawn!