Around the World Blog Hop

My dear blogging friend Paulette of Sweet P Quilting and Creations invited me to come and play with Around The World Blog Hop.

I'm not sure when I became aware of Paulette's blog but as a fellow Canadian and B.C. resident I was delighted to come upon another Western Canadian blogger.

I was born in Vancouver B.C. and currently live in New Westminster just a few miles/kilometres away; which was our province's first provincial capital.

I have four questions I'm supposed to answer, the first is What am I currently working on?

Well I'm rather like a crow attracted to a shiny object, that being a sewing needle either in my hand or in a sewing machine.  I love to do handwork and when I can spread out do some machine piecing.
Currently wool applique is my current project along with some cotton applique and piecing.
I'm working on a Block of the Week by Primitive Gatherings which I'm way behind because it also involves piecing.

 This what the quilt eventually will look like but with my initials and date; this is a picture from Primitive Gatherings Quilt Shop in Wisconsin.  The quilt is called Sunflower Gatherings.

I'm also working on another wool Block of the Month from PG

 The first class I ever took about quilting was at the Cloth Shop in Vancouver in 1988; happily the shop is still open and has some lovely designs.  This year's Block of the Month is call Mika and when I saw Maria working on it I was hooked.  Not my usual design aesthetic or colours but I knew I wanted to play.

 There is such a nice balance with the Japanese fabrics and Maria's creativity.

 Here is picture of the finished project...once again I'm behind, but because I'm choosing to do freezer paper applique and not fuse the pieces.

 Question 2 How does my work differ from others of it's genre?  Well one thing is that crow and shiny object obsession, I bounce around and have fun and get Out of the Box a la Mary Lou Weidman.  I've taken a couple of classes and workshops with her the first one was through my guild for her Hoochy Mama style of blocks, then I took a Flower Power retreat with her and then a Story Quilts one.  The result is my Road Trip quilt depicting my mother and myself on one of numerous driving holidays we've taken together.  Bright clear colours and whimsy all the way.  This quilt top was generated from a sketch I made of things with meaning from some of our trips.  You can't see the flowers on the outer borders.

 Here is another picture while it was in progress before I added the facial embroidery.

 This is a Kim Diehl mini quilt I made, bright not a country colour to be seen.

When Primitive Quilts and Projects magazine started I fell in love with Lisa Bongean's Crow and Pumpkin.  In September I finished the base quilt for the banners to hang upon.

 This is as folksy colours as I can get, but rather than cut the templates to this pattern I redrew them and made them via paper foundation piecing.  When I utility quilted it I put some sunflowers in the borders on the side, a crescent moon and star along with bats in the top border and a vine along the bottom.

 On a road trip to California I saw this quilt in a shop and wanted the pattern.  By the end of the trip I had it but when making it I added a couple of twists.  First I flipped the moon to a C shape and added the witch button.  I also changed the bottom of the ghost.

It was one of my first machine quilting pieces and I added the spider web and spider pin.  I also changed up the picket fence and chose a different brown for each slat.

 BOO! says the ghost.

 I've also been fortunate to take a machine applique and design class with Jane Sassaman and this is my Weekend in October with Jane quilt.

 I'm all ready for Winter with my Snowman PG banner with the Spring and Summer ones partially planned to be stitched this winter.

 Another snowman wool piece I found thanks to the Internet.

 Question 3 Why do I write/create what I do.  Mary Lou put out a challenge with her Out Of the Box cow pattern to come up with your own modification.  My initials are SHH which I have always thought of as "Quiet now the moon is out time to sleep."  That made me think of the cow jumped over the moon.  I like to challenge myself to try and be a bit different than anyone else, yes I'm influenced but often don't do kits.  If I do a kit it often has some twist that makes it mine.  In the wool and spool flannel blocks I showed above almost every wool block has a bit of a twist on it.  I have some more done but not photographed but will share them soon.

In 1999-2000 our guild did a round robin block style exchange.  The idea was to draw a grid in a horizontal or vertical orientation and make a feature block of 16" square.  You sent some rules around about theme, colours and any fabrics you wanted to include for inspiration.  I had been down to Sisters Oregon and gone over to the coast for a vacation and came across a shop located in the bottom of a house in Cloverdale just off the highway.  BJ's Fabrics was the place and I pulled a bolt of black and white striped fabric and won a free yard of fabric!  The theme was Quilting Safari as I recalled and on the small brochure made from a 8 1/2" by 11" piece of fabric this zebra was seen.  I had my theme block.

 Each member who participated made one block and several filler blocks to equal a 16" square as I recall.  Our group was the Wild and Crazy group and my quilt is named Out of Africa.  This is almost exactly as I received it back with the blocks pinned in place.  The green hippo is actually leather.  This piece is hand quilted.

 I used to go to a retreat in Sorrento B.C. about 5 hours drive from home.  There were two classes by two teachers that ran at the same time.  The class I took was Curved Log Cabin.  We were given some different sized curved log cabin directions to make different blocks.  The resulting abstract piece was made that resulted in a very Out of the Box shape for me that I named Colour Storm. I took it to a workshop with Melody Crust for some machine quilting suggestions.  I've made 3 pieces using black and whites and the yellow, pink and aqua.  One is a bargello that I don't have any pictures of and the other is pinned waiting for me to quilt.

 At the same retreat in another year I told Dianne the instructor I was only going to make one of the leaves for the teaching quilt as I had some other projects I needed to finish up for guild commitments...yeah right I ended up making four of the blocks using mainly scraps from the previous three black and white and coloured quilts.  I had yardage of the Mary Lou Weidman black background with white stars, the white on white frame and the multicoloured batik.  I call it Dianne meet Mary Lou. This one is also machine quilted using the same threads I used in the previous quilts.

 Question 4 How does my writing/creative process work?  It just happens, I'm not a regular blogger, I blog when I think I have something fun, whimsical or important to share.  It can be the lovely gardens that I enjoy along the quay where I live along the Fraser River.  It can be a road trip that I've been on or are on depending if I can get a Internet connection to work.

I love meeting up with people who have similar interests.  Through quilting and blogging I've friends I've never met and some I have; creativity has spurned a lot of interest.  I love travelling and going down that road over there, you probably will never see me on a cruise ship unless I'm the one who is sailing i; the first time I went to Europe my parents wanted me to take a...if this is Tuesday you must be in...no I choose to backpack with a friend and ended up flying to Kenya for a month to stay with a family of 7 I babysat with when I bumped into the grandmother in London.  

I like quiet time to reflect and create and wonder what if I try that.  I have some great mentors who have helped guide me along my quilting road.

I've also made and designed Mohair Teddy Bears, done a lot of Cross stitch over the years and sewing.  I love being inspired by things I see on the web and people I met.  

The next step is to pass on the torch of the blog hop to three other people.  Sadly many of the people I contacted could not commit to this or didn't bother to answer my request.  I did have one brave soul agree to carry on the torch and that is Tami Levin of Lemon Tree Tales  again I'm not sure how I stumbled upon her blog but have chatted and commented with her for some time.  When I first started following her blog she was living in California, then she moved to Colorado and back to California.  She makes some wonderful dolls and modern quilts.  She recently has been teaching herself how to handle a long arm quilting machine.  Tami is going to do a blog post on October 13th.  Canadian Thanksgiving or Columbus Day in the U.S.A.  Please stop by and pay her a visit.  Please consider looking at my blog places I love to visit and maybe I can introduce you to some else new to you.

Thanks for dropping by for a visit, here are four of my Teddies, the Four Seasons they are about 6" tall.  Maybe I should share some more and start making them again..

..................there is that crow looking for another shiny object.....................