I meant to post this sooner than this — it’s now a week since I was at the Festival!

There’s a vendor who is always at the Creativ Festival called Len’s Mills Stores. I hardly ever go into their area as it is usually mobbed. One could get hit on the head by the flying bolts of fabric! Well, okay — not quite but you get the idea.

On Saturday, I found an aisle in the Len’s Mills area with next to no people in it and decided to take a good look. I am SO glad that I did. I found two batiks that are absolutely perfect background for the two-fabric applique patterns! Although this fabric didn’t photograph well it will, I think, be just right for the Seahorse background.

This next one is rather interesting. It has got a gold metallic coating on it — rather a lot of it, actually. I’m thinking a fair bit of the metallic will wash out so am undecided right now which side of it I will use. This is the side with the gold dust. This is for another of the two-fabric applique patterns. My choice is between this (and it is much darker in person than this photo shows — I think the metallic is affecting how the camera reads it):

and this, the side with no metallic:

For some reason, the camera will not take a good picture of the batiks. The first one has much more of a blue cast to it than the photo is showing.

The second appears much much lighter in the photograph, even though the flash was turned off, than it actually is. I’ve now washed it once and the amount of gold metallic that came off was incredible — and there is still a lot of it left on the fabric. I think I’ll let it soak for a few hours tomorrow and see how much more of the gold comes off. I have a feeling that it will be substantial. I love the fabric no matter what happens as far as the metallic bits go, so this is more a matter of getting it off the fabric now rather than having it coming off on my fingers when I’m working with it.

I have read about these Bohin mechanical chalk pencils, but wasn’t expecting to find one! When I did, I immediately grabbed it. I tried it out on a bit of fabric and I’m impressed. The chalk definitely comes off the fabric without a problem.

It was a very rainy, dark day Friday. What do the kitties do on rainy dark days? Sleep. I couldn’t resist getting this shot of Lester.

I got mail today. Look what arrived!!! It’s my quilt from the Four Seasons Swap — made by Anne Ida. It is absolutely fabulous — and irises, to us, so definitely mean spring! It’s gorgeous — and the quilting on it is just super!

Not only was the Spring Iris in the envelope — but this wonderful card, chocolate from Norway, a beautiful piece of fabric and a little blue bag that contained?

It contained this thimble! Our camera doesn’t seem to care for photographing things like thimbles, but I hope you can get the idea from this. It’s very pretty and has “Norway” written on it.

Thank you so much Anne Ida! I will treasure this and think of you every spring when the Spring Iris is put up on the wall!

The little flower bed surrounded by ribbons of flowers is now ready to go off to its new home. It’s washed and all I need to do now is a quick rollover of it with the kitty hair remover and off it goes in the mail tomorrow morning. I hope its new owner likes it!

A picture of the label on the back. I love the 2″ hexagons as labels — they give just enough room!

It’s quite a bit cooler here again and the cats are curled up in cozy spots sleeping. Smudge, as usual, was quite aware the camera was focused on him! 🙂

Yesterday, the tree butchers came. I refuse to dignify these guys with the name tree surgeons! What they did to the trees on the roof garden is appalling!!

There are 3 trees in front of windows at our end of the roof garden — lovely, mature trees with tons of foliage. Oops — make that they had lots of foliage, as you can see by this shot of Lester in the window. We won’t get any shots like this again!

As a result of the shade from those trees, the grass below the trees hasn’t been growing well. This is not a big deal to most of us because it has seemingly stopped the nosy ones from getting too close to the building and trying to peer in windows. However, management apparently decided they want luxurious grass. Grass instead of leaves on trees, which help the environment so much more than grass. Grass that will get wrecked by the window washers anyway when they pour their window washing pails out on the ground, rather than in the drain that’s there.

Back to the tree butchers. They cut off huge limbs as well as many, many branches. The difference it is going to make to us is enormous. In the past, during hot days when it hit 105 and was humid as can be we haven’t needed to put on the air conditioning because we had so much shade from the leaves on the trees. This year?? This year I bet we have to put the air conditioning on a lot.

Trees are so environmentally friendly and do so much to help clean the air that I just cannot believe they did this for some silly cosmetic reason like grass. My bet is that grass will look nice till the window washers have arrived (which will be soon) and then it will be horrible once again. And this in a city that has pollution alerts every summer and fall? Makes absolutely no sense to me at all.

I shall be in the management office tomorrow morning to register my displeasure with what happened this weekend. If they dare say anything about doing things for Earth Day on Tuesday, I will remind them what they did against Earth Day! What an absolutely vile example to set!

To keep this somewhat quilt related, last night I finished back-basting the batik ovals. This will be my summer stitching, I think. If I head out to the roof garden, I’ll just grab a few blocks, a pair of thread snips, some thread and needles. If I do that consistently through the summer, I should have all the blocks appliqued fairly quickly.

Do you want a chance at winning some very pretty note cards that are definitely quilt related? Go check out Quite Quilted – she has a great giveaway going on for her blog anniversary!

The Four Seasons spring quilt top is done. Now to sandwich and quilt it. I ended up appliqueing the flower bed on to the border fabric as I really didn’t want to try and match up those curvy stripes! Thanks to the sewing lines of Inklingo, I was able to use a variation on backbasting that made the appliqueing go super quick!

As there are stitching lines on every piece, I just took the thread out of the sewing machine and stitched along those stitching lines on the outside pieces of the flower garden. Then, I quickly basted the flower garden to the border fabric and appliqued it while we watched the Masters. Thanks to the perforations from the stitching, the turning under went really quickly.

I love the backbasting method for applique, so was thrilled when the light-bulb moment occurred and I figured out a way to get the same sort of assistance when appliqueing the flower garden on to the border.

It was cold and rather miserable here for a lot of the weekend. They say spring is coming, but I’m starting to wonder! However, Smudge doesn’t care — he’s comfortable and warm and continuing with his endless poses!

The little flower bed centre of the Four Seasons spring quilt is now done. I used the .75″ hexagons from Inklingo collection 3 and love how these Oriental prints look. Now to finish the outer edges of the flower garden and then attach the border. With any luck this will all be accomplished this weekend and the quilting will get done as well. I’d love to have it to the stage of putting the binding on by the end of the weekend.

I just realized no kitty pics to speak of this week! Here’s one of my favourites of Lester — you’d never know I had just combed his ruff. Within seconds he has it looking rather scruffy!

And Smudge sleeping with his head on the arm of the chair. Normally he’s upside down but this time I caught him sleeping like this.

Thanks to all the comments I received on the last post, I was able to make a decision — and decided to go with the Oriental GFG blocks. The picture above shows the border fabric I’m going to use and the fabric I’m using to set the little flowers into a rectangle.

This gives you an idea of how the flowers will look against that background fabric — I’ve started putting it together and hope to have it ready so I can attach the border by the end of the week. With any luck, I’ll get the borders on and the quilting done this weekend. That’s the goal, at least.

And, just because, yet another picture of Lester — about 5 minutes after I had groomed him. He loves to chew on his ruff and his fur within seconds of being groomed.

Up until lately, I have shied away from red fabrics altogether. Funny — I love the look of red in quilts, but was always hesitant to buy or use any reds! I’m nervous they’ll bleed, I think, as the reds I’ve bought in the past have bled a lot.

Then I saw this on Wanda’s blog and fell in love with red!! So I’ve combed through my stash and found some reds. I’m really not sure where I’m heading with this other than the fact I’m playing with the idea of doing some postage stamp baskets and am thinking of making all the baskets red. The green is in there because I want to do something with it — maybe the handles for the baskets? And the cream — well, it’s just there ’cause I love it! There are, I know, a few more reds to be found in my stash and I’m going to dig them out in the next few days and see what I have.

This is all in preparation for the Creativ Festival later this month. I have a list of things I want to find this time: the Gypsy Gripper, which I’m told really helps hold a ruler steady; some red prints obviously; a few more Oriental prints and definitely some cream-coloured tone on tones. I was really disappointed in the fall when none of the usual U.S. vendors were at the Festival. I hope some of them make the trip up here for the spring festival!

Yesterday I thought spring was here. We had temperatures around 13 Celsius and it was heavenly. Short-lived, though. The wind picked up rather drastically and by the time night came we had a wind chill of about -7. We went for a walk yesterday afternoon and the air definitely had a feel of spring, although some of the wind gusts were incredibly strong.

I love getting mail these days! Look what arrived today — a gorgeous sewing kit from a friend in the U.S. I was expecting the parcel and the fabrics you’ll see in a minute but this sewing kit was a fabulous surprise!

When opened, there are oodles of pockets in which to put scissors, a small cutting mat and ruler, a pen, rotary cutter — you name it! I know this will get a lot of use. But I oh, so love the fabrics she used to make this! It’s very rich and warm looking.

These are what I had expected to find when I opened the envelope — some more fabulous black prints for the black and white stars seen here.

On Saturday we had gone up to the LQS where I had picked up a few more black prints. The black and white quilt is going to be, I think, really quite striking when it’s done. This is a picture of the fabrics that arrived today along with those I found at the LQS this weekend.

I have decided though to add some larger star rectangles to the mix. Along with the small ones, I’m going to make some with the 1.5″ diamonds. This week I plan to get these black prints cut and printed with some of both the 1.5″ diamonds and .75″ diamonds and the related setting bits and make some of the larger ones.