Life and Times of Jill

Ambivilence

2012-01-22T21:42:00.000-06:00

In a word, that is how I feel lately about the whole going to work / staying home deal.

When I was at home full time for all those years, I thought my brain was melting away to nothing. The sheer tedium of simply raising children was going to kill me. Quilting, sewing, blogging, baking bread and obsessively reading parenting books were all strategies I used to keep myself engaged in some way. But it seemed so boring. So under stimulating. Here we go to the park - again. Here we sit down to a snack of bananas and cheese - again. Here we are wiping smeared banana and regurgitated (on purpose) cheese off the baby, floors, and walls - again. Here we are breaking up the same fight over the same toy - again.

Then I had to go back to work. And suddenly, the last place I wanted to be was out of my house. I wanted to be the one who said when my children went to the park. I wanted to be the one reading "The Busy Spider" for the 500th time. I wanted to be the one breaking up the fights, handing around the healthy snacks and cleaning up the mess. Because while I was there I could be sure my kids were getting to the park, being read to, eating healthy and learning the ropes of rudimentary civilization. Not that I was particularly good at cleaning up, keeping things organized or being a disciplinarian. But at least I was responsible when things went wrong, not someone else.

The last year and a half have been a lesson in letting go. In allowing other people to share the burden for my children. In allowing my children to adapt to different situations and different parenting and care giving styles. And we are all okay.

I realized I had made my children, and my role as mother, into an idol. I was putting my role as Mother, and my children's needs -real and perceived - ahead of myself, my marriage and God. This was not a healthy state of affairs for anyone.

But now I come to another impasse. I love my current job. I love the students, I am having fun teaching my courses, and I like the people I am working with. I love the action and stimulation and quick thinking required to be a high school teacher. I love the repartee, the funny things teenagers do, and the necessity of outsmarting them before they outsmart you. For me, although teaching is serious business, I am at my best when I treat it like a game. It energizes me in a way that staying home does not, even as it drains away the energy I would love to be putting into my own children's lives. Yet the possibility of having an impact on even a handful of students every year over the life of my teaching career is thrilling. To think I may have helped them through the hell that high school can be - that I have given them hope, helped them to feel like they belong, inspired them to learn, to grow, or to become kinder or more responsible human beings - is a huge payoff.

In two months, I go back into the role of stay at home mom. Back to that new baby place full of mindless, sleepless repetition. Back to trying to nurse the baby while you read to the toddler and do a puzzle with the 5 year old (and help the 7 year old with his homework). Back to trying to get everyone to sleep at the same time so I can get enough sleep to make it through the day (or night). Back to that place where excitement means you went to the library before the grocery store instead of after.

Yet it also means going back to the world where I can be the one guiding and caring for my children. Where I can truly get to know them and build the solid relationships that will allow me to keep being influential in their lives as they grow and change. Where I can learn patience, discipline and organization and hopefully pass on a little bit of it to my kids. Where I can be there when they leave on the bus, and when they come home and when they go to bed. Where we can take our time in the mornings, instead of rushing everyone out the door by 8:30. Where my kids don't ask me, "Do I get to eat breakfast with you this morning, mom? I miss eating breakfast together."

And how do I feel about going back to that world? Ambivalent. On the one hand, I want to stay home with my kids until they hit grade school. That was always my plan - to be there for them in those early years. On the other hand, I love to teach, and I know I will miss it as much as I miss being at home now.

I suppose the best I can do is to go back into that stay at home mom world with a fresh perspective. Remembering what a privilege it is to stay with my kids and raise them. Appreciating the relationship that will be formed between myself and my children by putting in those endless hours or reading, puzzle building, breastfeeding, changing and feeding them. And keeping this new balance between the real needs of my children and the needs of my marriage, my personal well being and my faith that I have been discovering in the last year and a half.

So my friends, here's to my last two and a half months of teaching high school. And to a hopefully more balanced return to full time parenting. Wish me luck.

Wonky trees . ..

2012-01-22T21:06:00.000-06:00

I know, I'm a little obsessive about finishing these, but I don't really want to start on something new until I get at least one of my 3 or 4 UFO's finished. I don't like to be working on too many things at once, or I spend so long deciding what to work on that by the time I choose something my time to work is done. So, here are my wonky trees.

Mel's in grey and orange:

And mine from my stack of brights:

Right now I've sewed the two trees together, but I might unpick them and use them in separate parts of the quilt. I have a lot of blocks with this background fabric right now, enough that the other blocks look out of place. So I put away all my blue fabric and decided that the last 3 blocks will not contain any blue, in an attempt to balance out the colours in the quilt.

Remaining blocks to make: two log cabins, two teacups, two houses and one gnome. Then I will mail off Mel's blocks and put mine aside until I've made my Fab Doll Quilt and a baby quilt. I think Baby #4 should get his quilt finished in time to use it for late Spring trips to the back yard and park, don't you?

Things not to say to a woman who is six months pregnant . . .

2012-01-22T20:53:00.000-06:00

- Are you sure you still have 3 months left?
- Are you having twins?
- You look like the baby's going to come any day. April? Really?
- I thought you were at least 8 months pregnant.
- Wow! You get bigger EVERY day.

Seriously, friends, students and neigbours (not to mention husbands). This is my fourth child, so I'm not tiny, but I'm no Goodyear Blimp over here. Give me a break already.

this moment . . .

2012-01-20T09:37:00.000-06:00

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
(via soulemama.com)

Fixed the link

2012-01-11T18:28:00.001-06:00

from the last post, which will now lead you to the Fab Quilt Swap. Thanks for the correction, Shannon!

Cool Invite . .

2012-01-09T20:25:00.001-06:00

So, I got a cool invite a few days ago, which I couldn't help but accept! I received an email, asking if I would like to join a by invitation only doll quilt swap. The swap mamas hand picked some quilters from a variety of swaps whose quality of work they appreciated, and invited them all to this swap. I was bowled over that I got asked to join in! You can see their Flikr group here .

Even though it is a little thing in the big picture of life, it is still really encouraging. I have been stalling out on sewing a lot lately, partially because I don't have much time, but partially also because I feel like I don't want to keep sewing if I'm going to be mediocre. This is, of course, my own issue - I don't like doing things I'm not extra good at. I also am one of those ironic people who fears both success and failure in equal measure. Although my friends often tell me they think I'm talented, I think, "Well, of course you say that, you're my friend."

To have a few really amazing swap mamas invite me to a group of really top notch quilters (I feel like I must have been number 99 out of a hundred or so, but none the less) is confirmation. Other people who make quilts think I'm doing something great.

I am also happy to have a creative challenge after the total lack of creative energy I've been putting into sewing lately. Because let me tell you, to meet up to the standard of some of these amazing doll quilters is going to take everything I've got. Bring it on, I say. Bring it on.

Despite the little time I have right now, I've signed up for the first round. After all, life is just going to get busier in April, and I'd like to at least do one round . . .

Made in 2011

2012-01-08T17:53:00.001-06:00

Made in 2011
Originally uploaded by davenjilly

Despite all my whining about how little I sewed this year, I guess I did a few things after all. I made one twin sized quilt, finished a lap quilt, made progress on my windmill (toast and tea) quilt, and made a number of smaller projects.

I guess it just felt like I didn't sew much because I wasn't sending multitudes of quilts to new parents this year. Of course, there weren't a multitude of new babies to make quilts for, so I guess it evened out.

And really compared to my productivity in past years, it was a slower year. I am proud of the few things I did make, though. They all added to the cheer of my own or someone else's home, and that's the main reason why I sew.

Sewing Day!

2012-01-04T18:00:00.000-06:00

When Dave asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I said I wanted a day to sew. And so today, when Aaron and Emma went back to daycare, Andrew went to the Biodome with Dave and I got to sew! After fortifying myself a bit:

I got to work on my blocks for Sarah and Molly's free piecing study. They finished in November, and I still have half my blocks to do. These girls were the block I was the most afraid of, and I had been avoiding the rest of the blocks after her because I wouldn't let myself do the easy ones until I had finished her. Ironically, I was just telling my students a few weeks ago that they know they are learning when they reach the edge of discomfort and fear - that is where the creativity and learning happens. So I had to take my own advice and push through these blocks. Here's Mel's girl - her blocks are all actually 10.5", so I made a second block for her after the first one ended up too bog.

My girl is a little bulky. I think she needs a neck.

Next I tackled the other one I had really been afraid of - the gnomes and mushrooms. This gnome guy looks complicated, but he is actually exceptionally easy. Same for the mushrooms. I might switch out the bottom fabric in my blue mushroom - not sure I like the two tones.

Here is a close up on Mel's grey, yellow and orange mushroom. These ones were really fun to make.

The last one that I was really nervous about was my name, so I did that one last for the day. This green is less putrid in real life - it just looks funny in contrast to the cutting board green.

And lastly, here is Mel's version of my name. I have loved working with her colours - they are super bright and fun.

One thing I regret is that I didn't use white or black in any of these blocks. I think it would have added somewhere for the eye to rest. Oh well.

Remaining wonky blocks for this study: log cabins, trees, houses, teacups (they used my tutorial - how fun!). Then I'm done!

So glad for the holidays . . .

2012-01-03T21:47:00.000-06:00

We have had a busy, but really good week and a half of holidays. The first part was hectic - on Christmas Eve we drove 7 hours during the day (the kids were amazing ) and landed at my brother-in-law's house for a whirlwind visit. During 3 1/2 days there we managed to do some of this:

Followed by a lot of this:

And of course some of this:

Followed by stories with Grandpa.

In the next two days the kids and their cousins managed to roast hot dogs:

Eat ice cream ( I love this photo - it looks like the mini pops version of an indy band cd cover)

Plus lots of playing outside:

And finding places to play inside:

And a visit to the family favorite buffet restaraunt:

Whew. After the busy month we had, and our super packed trip, the kids were ready to go home. So home we went, for some more laid back time that looked a bit like this:

We did all our favorite slow, relaxed, just being together activities (and I did some frantic I-haven't-organized-the-shelves-or-mopped-the-floor-in-weeks type cleaning). Pajamas have been worn all day. Stories have been read. Forts have been built, played in, knocked down, and rebuilt.

Lego has been constructed, broken, rebuilt (well, some of it), mixed together (Jack Sparrow and Joshamee Gibbs are just out of this photo, riding on their carriage to confront the evil empire (or possibly steal from them)), and remixed with blocks and train sets.

Play kitchens have been assembled, and ridiculous quantities of tea and cake (real and imaginary) have been made and drunk.

Art supplies (especially these great pirate and knight rubber stamp kits I got the boys for Christmas) have been re-organized and used.

And I've been able to make food with the kids again. Emma is so proud because that is her very. own. pizza. It is amazing, because I don't think I've done this since the summer, and this was the first time she was big enough to actually help spread out her own dough, put on toppings (five of them) and cheese and help me put the pizza in the oven. I have missed spending time with her, and I was a little sad that making food with Mom was a new and novel experience.

Here's the boys with their pizzas:

As well, friends have been visited, phoned, and hosted. Sewing has recommenced. Snow men have been made. Life has been full but boring in the last week.

I remember when this used to be my every day stay at home mom life and I was sooo bored of it. But now it all seems so fleeting and precious.

Tomorrow Aaron and Emma go back to daycare (I have some prep to do and I want a day to just sew and be alone in the house with CBC podcasts all day) and Andrew will be off here and there for the next three days. Then we go back to our seperate, busy lives again. Dave has a Master's Thesis proposal and essay to write. Andrew has school. I have work. The other two have daycare (blessedly only 3 days a week). It won't be months before I can settle in to my home like this and just be with these precious people. But I am glad to have had this time to feel refreshed after a very long, busy year. Ahhhh

New Years' Resolutions:

2012-01-01T21:01:00.000-06:00

This year I resolve to give birth to our fourth child.

I resolve to do what I can to keep our family life running smoothly and on the right track.

I resolve to take care of myself so I can take care of those around me.

Life is shifting so much lately that I can't tell you how those things will actually work out in practical terms.

Often I will center a year or a given time around a word. When I was a new mom, that word was joy - I needed to find the joy in the transformation of my lifestyle from inner city highschool teacher to stay at home minister's wife. Then after that is was creativity, as I tried to find a way to bring more personal satisfaction into the repetitive routines of life with young children. Our third child and our move to Montreal has caused us to focus on survival and faith. The last six months there has been much going on in my life that has required learning about grace.

For this new year, I think the word is going to be renewal. Renewal of my relationships and of my faith. Renewal of my very tired, very sore soul. And hopefully renewal of my creative energy.

Hope your new year brings much joy, hope, and renewal.

Have Yourself a Merry Christmas!

2011-12-21T15:57:00.001-06:00

I am working right up to Dec. 23, and then travelling to Cambridge the same day (to a wireless free house). So, I think I am wrapping up my blog until the new year.

Hope you all have a lovely Christmas / Hanukkah / Id / Winter Break! Blessings on you whether you travel or stay home, spend Christmas with just a few people or the entire extended family. See you soon!

Jill

This moment . . .

2011-12-16T20:57:00.000-06:00

So Much to say . . .

2011-12-12T22:41:00.001-06:00

This is the best of our attempt at a cute-kids-around-the-Christmas-tree photo

Ack! Have I really not posted since Nov. 19!?!

I guess its been a while because I got a spammy email asking me if I wanted someone to write a cooking column on my craft blog . . . anything that starts with a "I really liked your last post" but then nothing about your last post is definitely spam. And seriously, when is the last time I mentioned cookery on this blog?

In any case, I have 2 yr old birthday crafting and knitting and holiday photo attempts and some (possibly excessive) stashing and Christmas preparing to show you. But not right now.

I must say that this working and parenting simultaneously thing is kicking my butt. Sorry, bloggy friends that you are the ones to suffer.

I do love this space, though. Don't give up on me yet!

"I Have Heard The Mermaids Calling Each to Each . . . "

2011-11-19T22:30:00.000-06:00

so goes a line from one of my favorite poems, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (in which J. Alfred never actually gets up the courage to mention love, since "there will be time, there will be time"). I love how TS Eliot layers images to create atmosphere and feeling in his poetry - I think if he'd been born 50 years later he probably would have been a film director instead of a poet. In any case, that line has always stuck with me through the making of this quilt. I wanted it to, partially, look like the mermaids were swimming through the layers of coral and bubbles and seaweed, playing a game or calling to one another as they swam.

As I sewed this together and started quilting it, I realized that the front is not really water coloured at all. But it does resemble the sunset reflecting on tide pools and sand at low tide. So I decided that the less erudite name for this quilt was the "Sand and Sea quilt". Imagine exploring tide pools on a December day when the tide is out at sunset. And then later, of course, when the tide comes in . . .

. . . all that remains is the watery surface of the ocean. Were the mermaids real or a dream? Who can tell?

Okay, done waxing poetical on you. As you may remember, if you are a regular around here, I put the front of this quilt together improvisationally. Since it had all warm colours, I decided to put cool, purple - blue tones on the back only. No red, no yellow or green -y blues allowed. This required picking up three fat quarters at the local fabric store, but otherwise the back came from my stash. A lot of these prints were ones I had been loathe to use because the patterns were so big, so I'm happy to have them displayed in all their glory on the back of the quilt. The most fun thing about this quilt is having it all wrapped around you and seeing both sides like this:

You can't really see the quilting, as I finished binding it the same day our washing machine broke, so I haven't washed it yet. (Although you can get the idea if you peek up at the photo of the back) I started by quilting it in random horizontal lines, but they ended up being really far apart. By the time I was done that I had thought of the sunset - tide pool connotations, so I decided to follow the lines like the ripples left in the sand by the waves. Hard to explain - maybe I'll show you once its washed.

It is really long and skinny, but I went by Jane Brockett's theory that sometimes a quilt is done when you run out of fabric. I thought about putting borders along the sides to make it wider, but in the end, everything I had in my stash that worked colour-wise made it look busier, so I called it done. Emma used this as her snuggle quilt on our way to Cambridge last month, so she has claimed this quilt. She calls it "boo quit" (blue quilt) which I suppose is as good a description as any.

Not a Handmade Christmas this Year . . .

2011-11-17T12:52:00.000-06:00

I'm feeling a little bummed out this year. I'm so busy with work and family that I don't think its going to be a Handmade Holiday this year. I love to make people gifts - it is one of my favorite things to do is sew for my friends and family. But right now I'm really trying to just focus on getting enough sleep, being well prepared for my classes, and keeping my house and family sane. For the next month, Dave has papers due, so we have put the kids in daycare full time. This should, theoretically give me more time, but I have also picked up an extra class at school, so I am almost working full time. It means that when the kids are home we like to focus on spending time with them, and that they are staying up later thanks to long afternoon naps every day. So, sewing and crafting are taking a back seat to keeping us all sane. Sigh.

Ah well, I do like teaching. It brings out a different side of my personality. I can be loud and use my slightly cutting wit (much more effective on teenagers than it is on 5 year olds) and invent clever assignments for the students. But it doesn't give me time to focus on the more contemplative, reflective, artistic side of my personality. Well, I can't do everything all the time, can I?

I suppose not. Hope you're all having a fun November. We're supposed to get our first snow tonight!

Oh, October, how I love you.

2011-11-02T10:49:00.000-06:00

I really do love October. Not only is there all the beauty of leaves and the fun of warm weather clothes, but there is my birthday and Halloween. This year Dave was very, very sweet and threw me a surprise party with 15 adults and about 15 kids, all crammed happily into our little house. He managed to get everyone into the house with food and convince them to clean the house in under an hour. Impressive, no?

Here is me, with my mouth open (as always - that's why you never see photos of me - I'm always talking in them) chatting with some of my friends. I didn't have anyone's permission to post photos on the internet, so I figured this was pretty unclear of everyone else.

This past weekend we went to visit the cousins in Ontario. They had a LOT of fun, and both the drives were pretty decent. Here we are at "Crossroads" - the buffet resteraunt Grandma and Grandpa love to take us to (I remember going to it when I came out to meet Dave's parents when we were newly engaged).

The other great thin about visiting the cousins is the space - Dave's brother has a big house (compared to ours) and about an acre of yard that back onto a neighbouring farmer's woodlot. He's been given permission to make paths through the woods, so its a really fun place to play. The kids could be loud, they could run around and they could have a kind of freedom we rarely get in the city. It was great.

Finally, we had Halloween. Here are the finished Jedi costumes. I decided to pick up some brown fabric and make the full Jedi gear. The underneath part is the yellow upolstery fabric I already showed you. The brown is a great basket weave brown cotton gauze that drapes really nicely.

The full costumes were a little too much for me to take on. I spent all my spare time for over a week sewing these, and the house was turned upside down by the time I was done. I've almost go it back in order now.

Emma wore the ancestral cow costume. I don't have blog photos of it, but both Andrew and Aaron have worn this costume for Halloween. Emma went to about half the amount of houses as the boys, as I had to carry her and I'm not that spry right now, but she had fun, anyway.

We went out with two of Andrew's friends - a twin boy and girl. One is in his class this year, and one was in his class last year. Our street is not much for Halloween, being mostly apartment buildings. But one street over and one block south it is Halloween central, as it is all houses and all the kids from the apartment buildings need to trick or treat somewhere. In three blocks (both sides of the street) we had lots of fun and candy for my still quite little ones. There were lots of costumes to look at (both kids and grown ups), decorations everywhere and even a haunted house set up in someone's yard. A super fun time was had by all.

The not so fun part of October has been the appliances break downs. I think I mentioned that our fridge broke down over Thanksgiving weekend? Well, last week, just as we were getting prepared to go away for the weekend, our washing machine broke down. The part Dave thinks we need is on order. Sigh. I was hoping to sew this afternoon, but instead off I go with my four baskets of laundry to hang out at the laundromat. Sigh. Have a great week!

You Know You Haven't Been Sewing Much When . . .

2011-10-20T12:56:00.000-06:00

your 7 year old mentions it. Yesterday, Andrew said, "You sure don't have much time to practice your hobby anymore, Mom."

Yes, its true. First trimester pregnancy plus working plus a husband with two grad school seminars in two weeks plus grabby, non-sleeping toddlers have worn me down.

Fortunately, first trimester is over and I'm starting to regain my energy, the seminars are finished (and papers not yet begun) and we've decided that non-sleeping toddlers are to be rocked to sleep by DADDY. Ah.

First on my list: finish my mermaid quilt.

Just the binding left to go. I plan to sew it on the front today and hand sew it while watching the finale of Project Runway Season 7 (have you seen that one yet, Sharon?).

Second: Jedi robes

I know, its yellow not brown. Trust me, I've heard about it already. But the brown was 19.99/m and this was 3.99/m. Doesn't Yoda have a yellow robe, and Obi Wan at some point? I'm going to finish the robes, and try to find photos of Jedi in beige robes.

Third: a Cheeky block for Kat and finish up Sarah and Molly's Free Peicing Study blocks

Fourth: Quick change trousers in cordory

Also, in case you're wondering how to study Philosophy in a house with 3 small children, here is the solution, as presented by Dave in the midst of preparing a seminar last week:

Yep, that is earplugs worn under noise dampening headphones. That's my hubby, the stylish one in our family. And yes, that is what my table usually looks like . . . sigh. Okay, off to sew before I start tidying the table instead.

5 Things To Be Thankful For

2011-10-10T17:33:00.000-06:00

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving, all!

Here are 5 Things I was thankful for today:

5. Sunshine
4. That the Fridge broke down this week BEFORE the weekly big grocery shop.
3. A Clean, Working (knock on wood) Fridge now.
2. A Quiet Thanksgiving with our Immediate Family
1. A New Baby on the way in April.

I know, I said I was done at three . . . but how exactly the "done" was to be accomplished was an item for further discussion for just a little too long . . .

In any case, hope you had a lovely day, with no disasters of any kind.

Smock, smock, smock (and also scarf)

2011-10-10T12:31:00.001-06:00

Sometimes it amazes me that Kris and I grew up half way across North America from each other, as we often think of the same "cultural" references. We were born within a month of each other, so that must be why. In any case, she remembered and posted the exact comic I always think of when I hear the word smock. I believe there is actually a whole week of comics about smocks and their value as a symbol of "true" artistry (how I love Calvin and Hobbes).

This is my smock. Its my version of this fantastic tunic which I have been drooling over for several years now. The base fabric is cotton something or another than I picked up at Fabricland a few years ago. It is a little stiff and linen-like, so it works well for this smock. The pockets are a hope valley print and a Free Spirit solid.

The pattern is a very modified Summer Blouse from Weekend Sewing, mashed up with the Simple Dress from simple sewing for Baby. Basically, I loved Emma's little girl on a swing dress so much that I wanted one myself. I loved the shape and the placement of the darts on the Summer Blouse pattern, but I didn't want to construct it the same way as that blouse. So I cut out the front of the Summer Blouse, then cut the back with an extra 1/2 inch on either side. I sewed up the middle, leaving about 5" at the top to make a button closure (this is how it is the same as the Simple Dress - I love the ease of this construction. I accidentally made really thick bias tape, so I decided to let it become a collar on the neck line, and use it as regular bias tape on the arm holes.

See? I was thinking of making it a dress, but I really liked it tunic length, so that's how I hemmed it.

The scarf is from one of Anna Maria Horner's project packs . She sends you the two lengths of fabric and you sew them together. Instant scarf! It was super fun and I love it. At first I thought it was ridiculously long, but actually its a pretty fun length.

So there you have it - smock and scarf. Of course, at Curriculum night I didn't have jeans and my hair was dry, so I looked a little more professional. In any case, somehow I always feel like clothes are cheating, as they come together so fast, so I don't always mention them.

Reminder to Self: Why I Sew

2011-10-06T23:28:00.000-06:00

So, I dont' know if you've noticed, but I've had sewers block lately. Yes, of course I've been busy, and of course I have a million other things to do, but I've also just felt stuck. Like I don't like anything I've made lately and I look at the piles of fabric I really want to use, but never seem to have time to used. Like I have so many ideas swirlng around in my head that I can't decide which one to start on. And by the time I decide, my sewing time is up. Like why should I keep sewing when I never get any comments (or very few, anyway) on Flikr and no one in Montreal ever says, "Oh wow, that's a cool bag / blouse / scarf" because everyone has cool bags / blouses / and scarves that came from one of the many cool boutiques that are everywhere. Like why am I doing this anyway?

Then I have a night like tonight. When I have to get dressed up to do "Curriculum Night" at school, and the best outfit I have is a smock that I've made myself (I love the word smock - have I showed you my smock yet?) and a scarf that I've also sewn myself (have I showed you my voile scarf either? No? Bad blogger. Bad blogger). Did anyone comment on their awesomeness? Nope. Did I still feel great wearing them? Yes.

And then I phone my friend Barb (for whom I made the mini quilt last week) to say that I won't be at Bible study this week (as I have to talk for 5 min. at Curriculm night) and she tells me how much she loved and appreciated the tiny quilt I made for her. And how her family put it on the very first page in the birthday book they made for her.

Suddenly, Flikr comments and stranger adoration fade away into the background. And I am happy with my little corner of the internet, and my little happy sewing projects that make my home cozy and my friends feel special (not to mention me look cool and artsy on Curriculm Night).

Tiny Mini for a friend

2011-10-01T13:16:00.001-06:00

A friend of mine from church is turning a signifigant age (starting with a 5) soon. She didn't want a big party, but her family wanted to find a way for her friends to honour her none the less. So they sent out an email, asking people to write a few words or make a few images, less than 8X11, that they could compile into a book. I decided this would be a fun opportunity to make her a mini quilt. This is what I came up with on my afternoon off this Thursday. The blocks represent her warmth (teacup), faith (cross), love of the imperfect and whimsical (wonky heart) and hospitality (Montreal houses have flat rooves, although I think this one is a little exaggerated). I hope she likes it.

It was nice and satisfying to do a little project in an afternoon. It made me miss my mini quilt swap days, although I don't have the time to reliably swap right now.

This finished off around 7X7,a nd the backing is the same as the binding -- I simply folded it over and machine bound it, because I was in a hurry. Don't look too close or you'll see where I zig-zagged the folded over corners flat so I wouldn't break my needle.

In other news, October has decided to announce its presence. We woke up to a chilly house (we've only had to turn the heat on for two days so far this year) and a cool, grey day. Happy fall, everyone!

Reasons Why I Hate Sending My Kids to Daycare

2011-09-24T19:48:00.000-06:00

1. They don't sleep at night because they slept too long at nap time.
2. They don't sleep at night because they missed their toys / parents / brother and want to stay up and play.
3. They are sick at least every second month.
4. They are clingy all weekend and every evening, meaning that all my time is taken up with comforting / holding them.
5. I feel like a terrible parent because I don't know things about them anymore or understand them (mostly because they are speaking French).

But, 3 reasons I send them to daycare:
1. My husband is in school, so
2. Someone has to work and
3. Therefore, someone else has to look after my kids.

Now, perhaps if they would sleep and stop being sick and clingy, I could actually not be grumpy and not mind the whole work / daycare thing. Because I really do love my job. A lot. Sigh.

Okay, back to trying to get my sick daughter to sleep for the third hour straight.

Finally some time . . .

2011-09-23T18:34:00.000-06:00

I know I've been working part time, but there's been a lot to catch up on (mostly sleep and tidying). I feel like I've kind of caught up, and got over feeling guilty for not doing something "productive" while the kids are at daycare and finished reading "the Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents" (Terry Pratchett is one of my weaknesses). Also, I finally got paid enough to buy quilt batting (oh yeah, I guess that would be the real reason). And so I came home after my half day of work today, put a border around this quilt, considered making a second border (and then didn't) and basted this baby.

I never like quilts at this stage, and I'm always uncertain if they're going to come together or not. I'm a little nervous about this one, especially since I used my entire Mendoccino stash on it. Oh well, I'm sure I can find someone to give it to if I don't like it once I'm done.

Happy Weekend.

Two Smart Things In One Day

2011-09-10T20:45:00.001-06:00

Ironically, today I was just emailing to Kris, telling her that I don't post over at Clever Mamas anymore because I feel like I just don't know what I'm doing as a parent. And then, I do two smart things in one day. Score. You want to hear them (of course as soon as I write them down they will never work again, but oh well).

Emma is feeling sick today (although this photo of her falling asleep at the table is from this weekend at the Smith's house). At bed time she just wanted to nurse and nurse, and since she's almost two I'm trying to wean her. I went to get her a cup of water as a substitute, and I realized that I had lemons in the fridge. What is more comforting, and gets rid of yuk quicker than honey and lemon in warm water, I thought? So I put a dab of honey, a squeeze of lemon and some warm tap water in her sippy cup instead of plain water or milk. Two sips, one cough, and she was off to sleep. Why didn't I think of that two children ago, I ask you?

Often, my children really are like this photo: they play together pretty well. Although you must know that the contents of two of those bowls were all over the couch and floor as soon as I turned my back to load the dishwasher.

But sometimes they fight, especially the older two. Often it stays at the "you're a poopy head" "You're a baby" level, which is frustrating enough, but other times it degenerates into physical fights. Right now, Andrew has a much longer reach than Aaron, so he can pin him and win almost every time. Aaron is one of those "Bad attention is better than no attention" kind of kids, so he will bug his brother just to get any attention from him when he hasn't seen him lately (like, for instance, when he's been at school all week).

Lately, because Andrew has a loose tooth and is extra grumpy, he tends to loose his temper and pound on his brother a lot. Like, several times a day a lot. Today I was tired of it, and I needed a new solution. So I decided that I would take one lego guy away every time he lost his temper with Aaron. This worked for a few times, until Aaron figured it out. Well, what is more fun than watching your brother's lego guys get taken away because of you? So Aaron started pestering Andrew.

After I took away the fourth lego guy, I got wise to the deal. So I said, "You know what, I am tired of hearing fights and insults coming from this room. You must play over here by the bed, and you must play over here by the bookshelf. You are not allowed to talk to each other until you have something nice to say. If I hear insults or threats coming from the room, I'm moving someone out of the room."

What do you think happened? Silence for a while. Two boys who really needed a little space from each other but didn't know it playing happily in their own worlds. And about 20 minutes later, their two games meshed into one and they were playing together again. And they played together happily the rest of the day.

So I guess not being able to play with your brother unless you can be nice is the most logical consequence for constant bickering. It just took me a while to work it out.

And here is a cute photo of Emma with the crown Aaron got her for her birthday last year, because he loves dress up, so he wanted her to have some dress up of her very own. He pulled it out of the bottom of her toybox and she had fun wearing it the other day. Awww.

Are you still out there?

2011-09-09T21:19:00.000-06:00

Ah, dear readers, was it really Aug 23rd that I last posted here?

Well, yes, it probably was. As I had a job interview that week and was then terribly discouraged that I didn't get the job - it was perfect: English and Drama, 12 min. walk from my house, full time until February.

And so I was plunged into the depths of despair.

And a lot of frantic getting-ready-for-our-new-tenant work of the "Oh, we still didn't paint the bathroom? And we have to finish putting up the ceiling tiles, find a fridge, clean the insulation off the walls and floors, paint the entry way, and clean the window wells and bathroom? What? When is she coming exactly? And the children are still home for another week? Who decided this?

And of course there were 7 duotangs (one yellow, one blue, one green, one grey, one white, one puce and two red - okay, not really puce) to buy and a bunch of other stuff.

And I needed glasses and a doctor's appointment.

And my daughter's immunizations were 6 months behind (ahem).

And then after I got all that done, I got a call from the school I interviewed at. They asked if I would be interested in just teaching the drama half time. Plus supervising homework time. Plus, eventually, being in the "Planning Room" at lunch. And because it was reliable work for 5 months and the subject area I have the most experience teaching and 12 min. walk from my house I thought about it for about 10 min and then said yes. Reliable, close part time work is definitely better than another 5 months of helter-skelter all-over-the-city coming-and-going not-ever-knowing work or full time but far far away work.

And then of course I had to start the next day, because school started in two days.

And Andrew started school.

And we went to Prescott for the weekend.

And, um, other than a half-stitched elephant pocket that Aaron has forgotten he wanted, I haven't sewn all week, so not even any exciting photos to show you. Sorry.

But a job with lots of room around the corners for sewing! And another maybe work-in-progress that is still secret for a few more weeks.

Thanks for sticking with me, y'all. Hope all your back-to-schools and fall time ventures are going well (or Spring time for those of you on the other end of the globe).

Trimming the crust off my toast . . .

2011-08-23T19:30:00.001-06:00

The thing that I hate the most about HST is the trimming. It is super tedious, and I'm always afraid that I will trim one 1/4 inch too small by accident (in fact I think that's because I've done it before . . . )

Never the less, since my sewing machine front cover / plate wiggles and falls off at the slightest breeze, I have difficulty sewing and accurate 1/4 inch seam these days (especially since there is often a toddler on my lap trying to dismantle the machine while I sew). So, I must make these bigger and then trim them all down to size if I want a clean, relatively accurate looking quilt.

This is the "still to do" pile.

I was going to make myself trim the entire stack before I did anything else quilt-y. Then I reminded myself that this is my hobby, and that this quilt is for me, so I have no deadline for it. So I finished about 15 more and put the rest back in the ziploc bag for another day.

Instead I spent the day stitching my mermaid quilt together and I'm presently trying to back it from stash (and convince myself I really don't need to just order 3 more yards of this Innocent Crush print to back it). I'll show you it another day, as my quilt testers were busy all through the process of trying to piece the top, so it needs a good pressing before it is presentable.

Reminder to My Former Self . . .

2011-08-18T20:51:00.000-06:00

. . . from Grade 9: I know taking Grade 11 Ancient Civilization in Grade 10 sounds like a lot of fun, but really Mr. Kowkenan is going to skip the middle ages entirely as well as all the fights. Also you'll meet this girl who will ruin your life for the next two and a half years while you think she's your really good friend. Take French instead. Trust me, you might need it some day.

. . . . . from yesterday: I know your new shoes are pretty killer and seem perfect for handing out resumes in. But when you get to all the schools downtown you're just going to want to park your car and walk between the schools. This will not be the best time to break in new shoes. Trust me, walking bare foot with blistered feet on hot pavement covered in who-knows-what in downtown Montreal is not fun. So bring comfortable shoes.

This is what happens when I try to do crafty things during the day . . .

2011-08-18T20:46:00.000-06:00

So, there is this fun English Paper Piecing Hex-Along over at Lily's Quilts and I decided to try a few blocks - there are a lot of fun variations on the standard hexagon / star patterns. I'm not good at drawing straight lines, so I decided to just work with the templates she's found (they're listed in the QAL instructions) from the quilt that inspired the whole idea.

Well, being lazy and, as I said, not very good at drawing straight lines, I decided to take the template sheets down to the local copy shop and have the guy there photocopy them onto card stock for me - thus alleviating the need to copy them onto index cards or cereal boxes. Inevitably when I do that I start with even sized diamonds / hexagons, and then they slowly get more and more warped until they will hardly join together.

So today I was taking a little break and cutting out my templates, when I had a little bit of company decide to do his own project with the hexagons:

Because who wants to just watch Mom cut out hexagons when you can co-opt the scissors, cut out your own hexagons and make them into a monster (he did the big hexagons - one is ripped in half for the head - and I did the small ones and of course made the arms).

Do you see the template labels on this side? Fun, no?

Aaron is at that age where he is brimming with ideas, but doesn't yet have the motor skills to make what he can see in his head. Its that glorious age of, "Mom, I want to draw a knight!" "Okay, draw a knight." "NO! I want YOU to draw the knight!"

So you draw the knight, and half way through the four and a half year old bursts into tears because the knight is not RIGHT. It is not precisely the knight he has pictured in his head . . . Sigh.

Apparently the hexagon monster was just right, however. So, now fun sewing to show you, but one contented little boy.

I really want to make this my new banner,.

2011-08-12T20:56:00.002-06:00

Just resizing this photo . . . no new mugs yet.
Originally uploaded by davenjilly

but blogger keeps telling me that the Flikr url is not a valid address and telling me I need to add an image. Arg, arg, arg! I hate computers sometimes. Ah well, my computer is probably grumpy today because Emma pulled about 6 of the keys off with a spoon handle, so it probably just wants a rest (yes I did figure out how to put them back on).

In any case, anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

Stars and another flower (for Mel this time)

2011-08-12T20:47:00.000-06:00

I would love to say that this catches me up on these blocks, but it doesn't. Here's my two blocks for MelSews. I thought I would take a break from the crazy yellow / orange borders on every single block for her and do a few with just simple grey. They make me itch - I want to trim them and add more colour, as I'm not a minimalist (have you noticed?). But I think they are neccesary to balance out the other blocks I sent.

I tried to make it look like there were leaves below the flower. Don't know how successful it is.

And here's my star too:

Next up are a shoofly and then some trickier ones that I've been avoiding: a girl, a gnome, a tree and a house. I don't know why I'm so intimidated by them. I guess there's just such cute-ness potential that I'd hate to make a mess of them instead of making something really great. I"ll have to take a few deep breaths and make the plunge before school starts!

Rail Fence Quilt - finished!

2011-08-12T20:35:00.000-06:00

As I've talked about the process of making this quilt quite a lot, I'm going to mostly show you photos (of course mostly, you can't expect me to actually be quiet for a whole post, can you?)

This quilt makes me happy for a few reasons. First: its been sitting in pieces for almost two year nagging me, and I finally pulled it out and just finished it.

Second, I love the quilting I did on it. It pulls the quilt together beautifully (if I do say so myself) and its my first time free motion quilting where the back didn't get all messy.

Third, I love that I had the backing in my stash and its one of my favorite prints and I got to use it large scale.

Fourth, I had forgotten what I made this tiny-ish quilt for, and then once I was finished I remembered it was supposed to be for the stroller. Although I also like to use it to keep my legs warm when I'm sitting on the back patio.

And I love all these prints. Each of them seperately makes me happy. Together they sing me a happy song every time I see this quilt. How much better can it get than that?

Well, lastly, I love this quilt and I actually get to keep it. I mean, don't get me wrong, friends, I love all the quilts I've made for you guys. But I never get to see them or touch them or think, "Damn, I'm good" (though you all know I do just that every time I visit someone with one of my quilts). I'm just happy to have made a quilt for me!

Spicing Up the Kitchen Swap - Received!

2011-08-11T20:08:00.000-06:00

Sometimes, in swaps, you just get super lucky and your partner is amazing. In the Spicing Up the Kitchen swap, there were a lot of really fantastic crafters. As I watched things being made, I kept thinking, "Ooh, maybe that one's for me. Its really great.", only to see them sent to other people. I am used to this, as it usually happens in swaps. This time the swap happened in the middle of the postal strike, so by the time my package arrived, most of the packages had already found a home. As I looked through the swap packages that I knew had not yet found their way to their home, I remember thinking, "Those really awesome oven mitts that would match my kitchen perfectly still haven't landed anywhere. Wouldn't it be awesome if they were for me?"

Guess what I got in the mail when I got home from camp?

This lovely, lovely swap package! Hedigoneaussie made me not only a pair of beautiful patchwork oven mitts, but a cute apron out of one of my favorite fabrics ( I have the teacup print in white and I use tiny bit of it all the time because I love it so much) and a hot pad that contained one of my current favorite blocks - this x and + block. (Speaking of which, you should check out Heidi's photostream to see lots more of these blocks - she is making a really amazing quilt out of them). I was totally wowed by this package.

Here is the other side of the oven mitts and the hot pad. Emma was convinced for a few days that the hot pad was for her, and used it for everything from a doll quilt to a placemat. I had to put it out of sight for a good week before she forgot about it.

I made a slight modification to the oven mitts by adding some ric rac loops to them so they could adorn a little slice of blank wall (some of you may remember it from this post ) close to my oven.

And this is how I use the hot pad to brighten my day first thing in the morning (when a certain toddler hasn't confiscated it):

Isn't it lovely? Sometime the kindness of crafty strangers just bowls me over!

Landlord-ing

2011-08-07T20:27:00.000-06:00

Are you still there? Still waiting to find out what Jill is doing aside from her much-neglected blog?

Well, mainly I've been tidying and cleaning and straightening and visiting and getting the last hurrah of playing with the kids before summer is over and I have to start convincing principals that they need and English/ Drama / Ethics teacher JUST LIKE ME for that one empty position open at their school (schools open Aug 15, so I only have this next week, really).

Part of the way we've been keeping ourselves afloat this year is by having tenants. Yes, indeed, we are landlords. We have an upper duplex, and a basement suite as well. It just so happens that this month, all our tenants left. Which is okay, because now we can pick tenants that are hopefully more in line with our manner of living (ie - that don't come home at 9pm and listen to music / watch movies in foreign languages until 2am or bring all their buddies home after a rowdy night of clubbing at 4am so they can all swear at each other loudly while I'm trying to sleep). But a lot of work, because none of our tenants left their places very tidy, and they both left stuff, and both places need a fresh coat of paint. Also, the downstairs needs some insulation so that I don't hear our next tenant's music / movies / conversations and MOST IMPORTANTLY, they don't hear my small herd of elephants thumping around the house at 7am.

So, late night painting and cleaning have been in order, thus cutting into my precious and limited blogging time (not to mention the sleeveless tunic that needs one more seam sewn before I can wear it during the heat wave . . . ). And there have also been random people showing up at somewhat random times to look at the suites, often with interesting and slightly improbably stories to tell . . .

But all that is over. We have found two tenants who seem to be good fits (Hooray!). I only have to clean the upstairs kitchen and my list of tasks is done, as the new lady who will be living upstairs wants to do her own painting (double Hooray!). Dave, of course, still has a ceiling / floor to insulate, but he has recruited a friend to do a work exchange, so by the end of the week all the serious and intense landlord-ing should be done for a while. Whew!

New Quilt Project . . .

2011-07-30T18:45:00.001-06:00

I used to try to just have one project on the go at a time, but I think I have four quilts, a tunic and a dress in progress right now. This is going to be a quilt for our bed, which is a king size:

I have been hoarding this fabric since I bought it here , and adding co-ordinates as I found them. In the winter I bought the solids from Anna Maria Horner's shop in a lovely stack, and just recently I started looking for a pattern. At first I was going to just do a random-square-and-rectangle type quilt, but that didn't feel quite right. I wanted something with a little more structure to it. I like how this pattern is simple, but not too simple, will show off the big patterns in the Good Folks prints well, and allow me to play with fabric scale, colour and value.

I bought the two fabrics on the far right just the other day because I needed some more lights (I never have enough calm, neutral fabric . . . I just forget to buy it) and I wanted to pick up some at my local fabric shop. The creamy one has tone-on-tone silhouettes of kids playing and a giant cloud turtle. It is so fun to cut into these giant triangles as you can see the pictures if you look closely.

Before I cut my entire precious stash up I decided to make a test block to see if I liked it.I have only partially sewn this together, and I think I do like it, although I mis-cut the large white triangles that make up the big outer star, and it means my points are all going to be lost in this block. Ah well, it will be my vanity block:

I like how the colours are refreshing and relaxing at the same time. More updates on this quilt as I work on it. If I actually put my mind to it, I think the piecing will be very fast.

During this busy month we've been . . .

2011-07-30T09:38:00.002-06:00

Keeping busy at home while Dad was away . . .

building cities in the sandbox after the rain

at the local awesome splash park

playing outside the new pool on the ramp

Then venturing off to Bible Camp to hang out with our friends (nothing like having a beach right there during a heat wave ) . . . .

spending our 25 cents at tuck

got my friends to take this one to show my awesome multi-tasking abilities (notice the half bound quilt on top of the stroller?)

Andrew and Aaron were especially glad to see their friends from church whose parents are volunteering at the camp for four months

oh yeah, and recovering from the stomach flu (I will spare you the gory details of two sick children in a tent - fortunately / unfortunately this was the night Dave showed up back from Italy) . . .

you might be wondering why there are no blankets or sleeping bags in this photo . . . don't ask. Really.

and, of course, setting up a Lego brain surgery lab . . .

I have a finished quilt and an amazing swap package to post about, too, but they deserve their own posts.

Rail Fence Quilt

2011-07-09T21:24:00.000-06:00

So, I got this far on the back of my rail fence quilt, and decided that this has to be its own quilt. First, this is too stunning to be on the back of anything else. Second, two sides of different strips sets would be majorly overstimulating. I do love this quilt top, though, and I'm going to sew it together just like this:

Fun enough, the only thing I picked was which side I was going to add new strips onto. Even this final layout was just how they ended up on the floor after being laid out with very little thought. I love the mixture of chance and intuition that made this quilt top. It is going to be very fun to finish later this year.

In the mean time, once I had decided not to use this as the back of my rail fence quilt, I realized that actually the Nicey Jane print I had bought meters of for another plan that fell through would work perfectly with the blues in the Meadowsweet prints on the front of the quilt, and provide a nice calm balance to the front:

See , isn't that better? I think so too. I'm in the middle of quilting this in organic squiggles that run the opposite direction of each strip set. So far it is a really effective way to pulling all the fabric together in the quilt. The quilted squares look much more finished. I'm using a light pink thread I already had, which strangely enough, seemed to work with the quilt and add something it needed as well.

I'm really excited to finish this quilt. I want to be done everything but the binding before we go to Family Camp at a local Bible Camp next week. I figure that binding the quilt will be a fun, manageable take-along project. I'm a little hesitant, since we can only afford to tent and make our own food, which will be a bit of a hassle, but lots of the other families with kids our age from church are going, so the boys should have fun and be fairly easy to manage. Its a good way for me to keep building a new support system here, and it should be fun even if I'm making our food and tenting. Another family we know is doing the same thing so I think we're going to divy up meals and take turns feeding each other's families.

In any case, I'm excited to have this quilt for me. Andrew was giving me a lecture today about how I'm not allowed to give anymore quilts away. "You give all your best quilts away, Mom. No more swaps, and no more giving quilts away." I was thinking about how I do tend to give away my best both in quilts, energy, time and ideas. In the tradition I grew up in that meant I was really spiritual. Sometimes I think it just means I de-value myself and don't think I deserve to enjoy the fruits of my own labour.

Can you tell I've been the only adult in the house for two days now? I'm totally rambling. I promise I'll be more pithy (as my Dad used to like to say) next time.

The Girl on a Swing Dress

2011-07-09T21:05:00.000-06:00

Remember how I mentioned that I had been doing some clothes sewing? Here is one of my favorite results: the Girl on a Swing dress. My local quilt / fabric store had some of this cute fabric from the Sherbert Pips line in stock, and I decided it was perfect to make a little something for Emma.

Although she didn't feel like posing when I was taking the photos, she loves this dress once you get it on her. This fabric is really light weight for the summer and it is loose and cozy. One of my favorite features (if I do say so myself) is the red bias tape I made for the neckline and sleeves - it makes it look like a Chineese dress.

Also, the sweet polka dotted pocket and ric-rak trim are pretty cute, too. It goes perfectly with these leggings, which cover Emma's knees. This is essential these days. After all, when you're just learning to run and you have two big brothers to keep up with, you fall and scrape your knees. All the time.

Just a sidenote: U2 is playing Montreal tonight. I'm not there because Dave is in Rome, and I would have wanted to go with him, but I can hear them from my house. They are at the Hippodrome, which is not too far from me (maybe a 10 - 15 min. drive depending on traffic). I heard the rumbling bass and high tenor singing when I came into the kitchen after putting the kids to bed and thought, "No, it can't be." But then they played something with the famous guitar reverb (possibly "Where the Streets Have No Name") and I knew it was them. It is just on the edge of hearing, so I can only sort of make out what songs they are playing, but it is pretty cool none the less. And I can definitely hear the crowd cheering.

Quick Update!

2011-07-08T21:03:00.000-06:00

Hello, everyone! Thanks so much for all the comments about my Grandma. The funeral was really good and I was glad I went. She was 93, had outlived all her friends, and was fading to the point where she could not remember anyone, and did not even remember how to knit anymore. She had such a full life, and was such a firecracker, that I am sure she is happier now.

The trip was good; I got to catch up with my brother, sister and neice, who I drove up with. I saw my cousin who I haven't seen in years and got to know my aunt. I felt sad that my family wasn't closer, but distance and strong personalities meant that I didn't know my grandmother as well as I might have otherwise.

Now I'm on my second Odessey - 10 days without my husband. He's gone to Rome to do a research trip, lucky duck. I'm sure he'll have tons of amazing architecture and mosaic photos to inspire me when he comes back.

The mermaids are awesome, and deserve to be their own quilt, so I picked a different (and totally obvious, now that I think of it) backing for the rail fence quilt. It is rambling its way through the sewing machine as we speak (well, not right this second while I'm typing). Excited to show it to you soon.

2011-07-02T11:46:00.000-06:00

This quilt back is coming together really quickly. I love the juxtaposition of the yellows / oranges with the purples and browns. The concept is that the strips will look like coral or seaweed and bubbles waving in the ocean currents, with the fish and sea creatures and swimmers peeking through the vegetation.

Wether it "works" or not, I love the colours and it will be a fun quilt back. Or maybe this will be the front . .?

My grandmother died a two days ago, and I found out yesterday morning. We were not super close, but I am going to the funeral. I'm taking a bus to Ottawa, then driving up with my brother Rob and sister Kim. Its 9ish hours across Northern Ontario to New Liskeard. I kind of feel like I'm about to enter the plot of a Can lit novel or road trip movie . . . wish me luck.

Now that I have some time to sew again . . .

2011-06-30T21:01:00.001-06:00

I have a few things on my "to sew" list. Lately, I've been making clothes for me and Emma, simply so I could have some summer clothes - I think I still need to blog about some of them. In any case, I like sewing clothes, but I don't find it as creatively satisfying as quilting. There is a lot more freedom to mess around in quilting, and not so much anxiety about wether its going to look good in the end. A quilt can always be balled up and flipped over and otherwise manipulated to show off its best points, or just used for picnics and the beach if its really terrible. Clothes -- not so much. They either fit or they don't. They look good and you want to wear them every day, or you want to cut them up and reuse the fabric for patchwork. I like making clothes because its fun and I can get exactly what I want, but its not play for me, like quilting is.

In any case, I wanted to finish up a few quilts that I've had in process for a while now, as unfinished quilts always weigh on my mind. I'm not one of those people who likes to have fifteen or twenty projects laying around. That just discourages me and makes me want to start a new hobby. One or two is okay, but too many and I just get frustrated.

So, my first work in progress is these Meadowsweet blocks. Remember way back in January of last year when I was strip peicing these? I bought the fabric for me, then ended up using a lot of the blocks in this baby quilt because Olivia was very premature and in ICU and I wanted to send some comfort to her parents right away. But the other half of the blocks, the half I kept for me, sat for a long time. You see, I used the blocks that balanced well in Olivia's quilt, and kept the ones that weren't quite doing it for me. I always planned to either make two more sets of blocks (6 more total) and make a bigger quilt, or cut the blocks up and stitch them back together again in some fancy way that would make them more interesting. The idea of making more blocks was leaving me feeling frustrated, and the idea of cutting them up and finding a way to sew them back together again felt too exhausting right now, so instead I came up with a third option. This:

I decided, on laying the blocks out again that the problem was the busy-ness of the quilt. There was a lot of colour and pattern and not much to ground it or hem it in. Olivia's quilt was stablized by the owl fabric (I put it all in her quilt and the scraps are in Aaron's quilt) and the umber Kaffe dots, but I didn't have any of either of those fabrics left to work with. I didn't want to interupt the rail fence pattern, but I did want a fast way to make it come together, without putting a ton more energy into this quilt. I didn't want it square, but it felt too long and skinny as a rectangle. So I added these two 6" brown strips along the edges. I am planning to bind this quilt in these same fabrics, thus creating a frame of brown to hold all the riot of colours and patterns together.

While I didn't want to do any more work on the front of the quilt, I don't have a big piece of fabric that matches with the front to put on the back. But I have a LOT of fabric in the same general colours as this quilt, as I was planning to do a really cool quilt with lots of Mendiccino fabric in it, and so I'd bought a fair stack of fat quarters as well as some other stuff to co-ordinate with it. This is one of those stacks of fabric that I have had grouped together in the back of my stash for over two (three?) years now. I have occasionally sketched a really complex pattern for it involving lots of fussy cutting and inset seams and hand sewing. But lets get serious here. I have three children and no wall space for a design wall right now. Anything that complicated is never going to get done.

Not only that, but I've been feeling like I need a release from this obsession with fabric lately. Like these bits of cloth are just becoming way too precious to me. And like I'm becoming too anxious about finding just the "right" fabric, or about people thinking I'm too lazy or not a good quilter because I do a lot of square and rectangle quilts (as per the big web blow out a few months back). So I decided that I was going to use this Heather Ross fabric (that is now worth about three times the price I bought it for -- fabric speculation - who knew) as a symbol for my creative and spiritual release. I trimmed all my fat quarters to 16" lengths, and cut it into strips:

Yes, there it is. No plan or rhyme or reason, just cut up. I'm going to piece the strips improvisationally and use them for the back of my quilt. Here's the rules of the game (these are not mine, they are taken from "Last Minute Patchwork and Quilting". Joelle Halverson borrowed them from Denise Schmidt.):

I'm going to put all the strips into this paper bag.
I will randomly pull out pairs of strips and sew them together end to end and press them. Then I will put all the pairs of strips back into the bag and do the same thing until I have sets of four. Then eight.
Only when most of the strips are sewn into blocks of eight will I lay them all out and arrange them into the size and shape I need for my quilt.
The only restrictions are that the two strips can not be the same colour or the same pattern in a different colourway. That's it. Otherwise, its all up to the paper bag, baby.

I am so excited to see what happens with this quilt back. Even if its a total flop, I love all the colours and patterns, so I'm sure it will at least be nice to scrunch up and look at when its done.

Latest blocks for sarah and molly's

2011-06-30T17:35:00.000-06:00

This month was crosses. Last month, one of the blocks was flowers. I had the idea of a giant pink flower. It didn't quite come out how I had envisoned it, but I think its pretty cute anyway. I'm glad I made it first so I can make some cute little flowers for my partner.

Spicing Up the Kitchen Swap -sent!

2011-06-30T17:30:00.001-06:00

Well, I finished my swap package! My partner likes red, cross blocks, sherbert pips and she wanted a tea cozy. So I started by pulling some fabric and scraps:

First I made a tea cozy. I meant it to be a stripy tea cozy, but I measured wrong, so I then had to make it into a coin strip tea cozy. I think its pretty cute none the less:

Cross blocks were the block of the month over at sarah and molly's free piecing study, so I decided to make some cross blocks for my partner. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with these -- it was one of those days when I just needed to sew something without thinking too hard:

In the end I made a fourth block and made a little mat for the tea pot (I'm sure there's a proper word for such a thing, but I don't know what it is. Trivet? Hot pad? I don't know). I think the grey binding is one of my new favorite blender fabrics, and that it really pulls the disparate colours together in this one:

Finally, since we are supposed to have one "big" item (tea cozy and mat in this case) and one "small" item, I decided to make some matching potholders. They are a little wonky in real life, but that simply adds to their charm, right?

Now that the post office is open again I went and sent these off. The postal workers were literally up to their elbows in backlogged mail. This one has to go internationally, so hopefully it won't take too long to wing its way to its final destination.

Hello again!

2011-06-30T16:58:00.000-06:00

Well, summer has finally started, and I am feeling like I've caught up enough to blog again! I spent the early part of the week catching up on sleep, de-cluttering all the toys and clothes we don't need anymore and re-arranging the boys' room. Where we used to have the bed, I made them a little reading / playing nook:

And the bed is now against the inside wall of the room, making it feel a little more cozy (note how nicely I got them to make the bed this morning . . . )

I had a lot of clothes to declutter. Its not that I've bought a lot of clothes since we got here, but two things have happened:
1. the children decided to grow. I know they do that way too fast. and since Emma is probably baby number last, we don't need all those baby clothes anymore.
2. people gave me clothes. I love it when people give me clothes. The problem is that the boys are developing their own styles now, and won't wear clothes that don't fit into their personal styles. So about half of the clothes we can use, and the other half we can't.

My apologies for the picture quality -- our camera is slowly dying

The other big new development is Emma's budding independence. For a while she would start screaming and fussing whenever I went to put the tray on her chair so she could eat. I thought she wasn't hungry. On the contrary, she just wanted to sit at the table.

On Tuesday we took the Metro to check out the kids' section of the Jazz Festival (which was awesome -- too bad that due to construction it is far away from any music that was playing at the time), and Emma insisted on doing everything herself. She wanted to go into the bouncy castle with the big kids. She wanted to go down the slide with the big kids. On the way back she insisted on walking down all the stairs to the underground tunnel below the Place Des Arts herself, on getting on the metro herself, and - funniest of all - on sitting in the seat not on my lap, but all by herself. Here she was, this tiny little girl in little dress, sitting next to a huge lady. She was looking up at the lady as if to say, "Yes, that's right. Here we are, two big people sitting on the metro together." It was priceless.

For the first week of summer, Andrew is at a Day Camp put on by Crosstalk Minsitries at our church. I sent Aaron, too, even though we're paying for 3 days of babysitting. The topic is the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts, and Andrew is fascinated by the idea of the Holy Spirit. He has a lego flame, and he has taken to sticking it on the head of one of his Lego guys and pretending that the guy is filled with the Holy Spirit. We have to discuss wether the Holy Spirit would win in a battle against Storm Troopers, and I hear him yelling, "I can defeat you because I have the power of the HOLY SPIRIT!" Its pretty funny.

2011-06-26T08:11:00.000-06:00

I will not sign up for DQS11
I will not sign up for DQS11
I will not sign up for DQS11 . . . .

But if you want to, sign ups are open right now. Read "quilt" quilts only, no art quilts this round.

I would love to sign up, but I usually end up taking 10 or so hours to make my quilt, and I need to spend that time making a quilt for my own bed this summer. Yes, I know, a finished quilt for me. Do you think I can manage?

2011-06-11T05:40:00.000-06:00

I don't usually post a lot of parenting stuff, or a lot of links, but here are two really lovely posts that have encouraged me this week:

This one speaks to my "style" (??) of housekeeping, and comforts me that I'm not alone in sort of loving creative chaos
http://sugarcityjournal.blogspot.com/2011/06/wabi-sabi.html

And this one is heartening to me as I begin to rediscover my identity in this new place and stage of life:
http://www.soulemama.com/soulemama/2011/06/souleful-mothering-with-tara-thayer.html

I might actually get to sew and blog a little more now. I'm done with the teaching-of-the-students part of teaching, and on to the marking-of-exams, tallying-of-marks and invigilating-exams part. And boy, do I have a lot of exam supervision next week. Sometimes up to 6 hrs a day. So much for getting home earlier. Although I supervised what was supposed to be a 3 1/2 hr exam yesterday afternoon, and all the kids were done after an hour and 45 min., so it might not be as bad as I'm thinking it will be.

Have a great weekend!

Finished Scotty Dog

2011-06-04T14:39:00.000-06:00

Yes, my little dog is done. She has a split personality, and so it was necessary to give her two different colours of ribbon for her collar. That's okay, though. I think she's precious. I made her for Emma, who liked her. But Aaron has swapped his old black kitty for the dog for the present. I would actually like her for myself, so I can take her to school and remind myself that sometimes being a female dog can be a beautiful thing . . . . (you have to do things like that when you teach high school, its how you stay sane).

Bilingual fun

2011-06-04T14:33:00.000-06:00

It is awfully fun hearing your children learn another language. I do know some French, as all Canadians have to take it in school, so none of them have surpassed my vocabulary yet. I have the kind of French that can scan most documents and generally understand what its saying, or understand what people are saying if they talk slow and make lots of hand gestures. Sometimes I can even respond in a proper sentence.

Andrew has been in French Immersion for almost a year now, and because he is a perfectionist, we are just starting to see some of the results of that. When he speaks French, his accent is perfect. He won't speak to French speakers as he's afraid that he won't speak "properly", but he will talk at school. He has spent a lot of time with a lovely tutor who has worked closely with him to help him learn the French phonemes he needs to be able to properly pronounce the language.

Aaron and Emma have been in a French speaking daycare since January now. Aaron is finally starting to come out with some French words, but it is a much more casual, random French, the kind spoken in every day conversation. His accent is more slurred and sometimes we don't really know what words he's trying to say.

Emma is in that language - learning stage, and she is somewhat behind where both my boys, who were only hearing one language, were at her age. She babbles a lot, sometimes in something resembling English, and sometimes in something resembling French. Sometimes her few words are English (Dada, eyes, berries) but sometimes they are in French (bebe, maitnant (now), bas (socks) and regarde (look!)). It makes it fun trying to guess what she's saying sometimes, as its a bit or a garble.

The other day something flew by our yard, and Aaron was outside. He yelled, "Look! An el-co-tor! An el-co-tor!" Andrew came running out and said, "You mean un hel-cop-tour, Aaron." Yes, they saw a helecopter. And both only remembered the French pronunciation.

2011-06-04T14:23:00.000-06:00

Did you ever have one of those days that were so sweet, you couldn't dare feel it? Like you were afraid that the bitterness must be there, hiding around the corner somewhere? Today is like that for me. We are all home, together. It is sunny. The grass has finally grown in so we can play in the backyard. We are celebrating Dave's 37th birthday, which was yesterday. I am home with all my precious ones, after a long week away. And Dave got a new cd, and every time Emma hears this song, she has to get up from whatever she's doing and dance . . . . (wait for it, it does kick into the song proper eventually)

Latest awesome quilting flikr meme

2011-05-28T17:06:00.000-06:00

I don't know, is it called a meme when a whole bunch of people start to sew the same thing? Or is it a trend? Are X & + blocks "trending"? Is trending an official word yet? Should it be one . . . oh, right, I digress. You really must check out Strawberrylicious' awesome quilt in progress . In fact, check out the whole flikr group of people working on these blocks . I totally want to make some. Do I have time right now? No. But I'm staring at my scrap basket dreaming of it all magically transforming into these beauties. Sigh. Maybe a summer project? But before or after my teacups? That is the question.

What's a long weekend for

2011-05-24T20:16:00.002-06:00

Done half the half square triangles
Originally uploaded by davenjilly

if not to give you a chance to finish up some projects. This weekend is Victoria Day (as in the former and much loved Queen) in Canada. In Quebec, its called Fete des Patriotes, and is a holiday that I think relates to the separatist movement. Not sure, really.

In any case, either way, Monday was May long weekend. I finished my skirt (photos another time) and played around with these. Just a few more half-square triangles to stitch, lots of trimming to do, and about a hundred tea cups to make. Oh, and I guess I need to stitch the triangle squares into blocks, too.

Okay, so maybe "just" is the wrong word?

Anyone feeling generous and want to make me a teacup? Just saying . . .

SUTK Swap Mosaic

2011-05-24T19:56:00.001-06:00

SUTK Swap Mosaic
Originally uploaded by davenjilly

Hello, all! Well, my latest swapping adventure is the Spicing Up the Kitchen Swap. This is my mosaic for my partner. Hi, partner!

So, here's the story. I would love a table runner, or some hot pads or an apron. I don't actually have any of those things and any of them would be fun. I adore all the motifs and colours in all these pictures. Yes, I know I'm ecclectic and not very picky. But I figure that gives you lots of choices to express yourself creatively, right?

So, take any of my mosaic photos for inspiration and just run with it. Have fun. Do your favorite thing. Or do something new. Or do something old that you love doing. Play. Enjoy yourself. I am sure I will love what you make and happily display and use it in my kitchen.

Thanks so much for your thought, care and time in putting together something for my kitchen. I can't wait to see what you come up with!

A Little Tinkering

2011-05-21T08:39:00.001-06:00

Well, the days have been busy around here lately. My schedule looks something like this:

5:00 boys wake up and climb into bed for a snuggle, causing much noise and chaos
5:10 boys get kicked out of bed to go play
5:45 my alarm goes off and I get up and get ready for work
6:30 I leave the house and walk up the block to catch the bus
6:50 I transfer from the bus to the metro
7:30 I transfer from the metro back to the bus (with the bus driver that flirts with me every morning despite being a good 20 yrs older than me)
8:00 I arrive at work and deal with argumentative and rebellious teenagers with a serious sense of entitlement (as in "Just because I haven't handed anything in all term doesn't mean you can fail me.")
12:30 lunch
2:40 done teaching and so I clean up, get everything ready for the next day and rush off to
3:30 catch the bus back to the metro station
4:00 transfer from the bus to the metro
4:25 transfer from the metro to the bus

4:50 arrive at the top of my block and walk down the hill to my house.
If its a daycare day, I then:
5:00 get in the car and drive to pick up the kids
5:15 start supper
5:45 eat supper
6:20 do homework with Andrew, while Aaron and Emma have a bath
7:30 start putting the boys to bed (usualy mostly Dave's job)
8:30 start putting Emma to bed
9 - 10 fall asleep with Emma

Occasionally in that 9 - 10 block, if Emma is not falling asleep, I will do a little bit of sewing while she plays (or watches and tries to sew her hands to the fabric). In that way I have had a chance to stitch a little here and there on various projects:

As you can see, I have been tinkering with a bunch of things. The pink and green thing is my dysfunctional flower for sarah and molly's free piecing study (glad I made mine first, not Mel's). The blue fabric is my unhemmed skirting the issue skirt (pattern and fabric Anna Maria Horner). The scotty dog shape is, well, a scotty dog in the making (following the free downloadable pattern on Denyse Schmidt's website).

This is the other thing I picked up last week: an embroidery kit. I thought it could keep me busy during my commute, or when the school year starts drawing to a close and I have nothing to do at work (since I don't know where I'll be next year I'll have some free time on my hands in between invigilating exams - On a side note, I love the word invigilating. It sounds so sinister.) The embroidery patterns are from the Black Apple. I think I might stitch a hedgehog and rabbit having tea . . . not sure what for yet. I also want to use the cute little village for something, eventually, but I'm not sure what yet.

What have you been doing in those little spaces in your day?

A Little Clarification

2011-05-15T13:44:00.000-06:00

So, I don't know how much those of you who are from other countries know about Canada, specifically about Quebec. So here's a little background that might make our situation a little more understandable.

The thing about Canada, is that it started as a colony not of England, but of France.

What is now Central Canada was once valuable property because it was full of wild animals, and fur was THE hot fashion item. Not only were there lots of furs, but Canada had (still has, actually) this great system of rivers and lakes that meant you could travel all through the forests by canoe. And there were lots of people here who would gladly swap you valuable furs for some shiny glass beads or an old cooking pot.

Once England found out what a killing France was making, they had to get in on the action. So, two different parts of this big land mass were settled by two different groups of people. One section English, one section French. Some parts having both English and French settlers. A little while later there was a battle about this. Guess who won? England. But they were nice enough to let the French stay.

Fast forward a few hundred years and you get the complex politics of Canada, especially Quebec. While most of Western Canada is mainly English (well, technically its new immigrants from all over the world that are told they have to learn English to fit in), and much of Central and Eastern Canada is bilingual (speaking both our official languages), Quebec is aggressively French speaking. So much so that there are laws about signs, language, education and cultural protection. So much so that dyed in the wool Quebecois (decendants of the original French settlers) want Quebec to be its own country. There's even a political party whose mission is to seperate Quebec from Canada.

In the midst of Quebec, there is Montreal. Back in the day when boats were still the main form of transportation, most Canadian immigrants funneled through the port city of Montreal. Many stayed. Many were Irish, Italian, or Jewish. They chose English as their preferred language of choice. When things got sticky with Quebec, and it became aggressively French, those English groups (who had also been here for generations) became a minority.

So, in Montreal, the Western side of the city (closest to Ontario) speaks mostly English, while the Eastern side of the city (closer to the rest of Quebec) mostly speaks French. English speakers around here are called Anglophones, French speakers are Francophones, and people who grow up with both languages are known as Allophones.

And that is your lesson on culture for the day. How does it relate to us?

Well, Andrew is in English school. In order to get into a French Immersion school in the English school board here, we had to fill out all kinds of paper work to prove that we had gone to school in English, otherwise he would have had to go to a straight French school. Andrew and Aaron's daycare lady is from Guatemala and speaks French and Spanish. Its hard to get official things done because all the websites and government workers and phone company people are French and sometimes you can get a translation. All the signs in the stores are French. When you walk into a store in the mall, you are helped in French.

Did I mention that the last time I took French was in grade 8? And it was mostly fill-in-the-blank-congigate-the-verb style French lessons? Yeah. Its been a bit of a stressful year trying adjust. In many ways, Quebecers have succeeded. Even in Montreal, although we are still technically in Canada, it does often feel like we have moved to a new country.

One of the fun things about Montreal . . .

2011-05-15T13:07:00.000-06:00

is that I've got to meet friends like Mark. He's an artist, and he's going to do an art installation in Korea for the next month. Want to find out what he's doing and how you (one of my vast plethora of readers) could help him fund his project and get yourself an art print? Check out his video with details here and see what you think. Sounds like fun to me, and I think I could afford a 4x6 from his project. How about you?

2011-05-02T18:30:00.002-06:00

One of my least favorite parts of my new job is the commute. I spend about an hour and a half on the bus/metro/bus each way. My classroom doesn't have an overhead projector, but it does have a video projector hooked into the ceiling and a screen. So I've taken to typing out my notes in Power Point and carrying my laptop to and from school. This means my laptop travels with me on the bus / metro / bus twice a day and all around the school, since I don't have a key for my classroom (which is another story altogether). So, this of course means that my laptop needs some stylish protection.

If you combine this with the fabulous half yard of Echino fabric that came with the fat quarter pack I ordered from Pink Chalk Studios , the answer was obvious:

This was a really cool piece of fabric. The front and the back of my laptop case were each strips, with green and purple "fields" of fabric in between them. There was just enough to cut it into this laptop sleeve.

The pattern is from Oh Fransson's blog ( on her small projects page), and as with all her patterns and tutorials, the instructions are easy, the method of sewing is elegant and the results are beautiful. This blue topstitching is, I think, my favorite detail. See how it matches the birds' wings? The best thing about it was that it was accidental: I was being lazy and didn't switch out my bobbin thread when I was sewing the flap. I liked the look so much that I switched out my thread to topstitch the top of the laptop sleeve, too.

I'm not showing you the inside because it is pretty plain. The pattern calls for flannel, and the only non-juvenile flannel I have right now is a natural cotton colour. I figured the outside is dramatic enough.

Even I can admit that sometimes there is such a thing as too much drama.

My Doll Quilt arrived!

2011-05-02T17:20:00.000-06:00

I got a lovely surprise in the mail today (lovely must be the word of the week)! My doll quilt winged its way from Australia today! It is a very cheery and bright bottled rainbow / ticker tape quilt.As you can see, Megan picked some of my favorite colours and some beautiful little scraps and put together this quilt just for me. It is super cheerful and fun in person (if rain wasn't in the forecast for the next three days I would wait and take a sunny photo).

As well as this cheerful little quilt, I also received some Amy Butler Love, a handmade card, and a really funky broach. It fits perfectly on my black felt hat, where the old button had fallen off, and it really makes my hat super classy (and if Aaron hadn't stuck his fingers all over my camera lens trying to get it open to take a photo, I would take a photo of it -- it shall have to wait for another day).

Also, check out that cute, cute tape she used to wrap it up in. Thanks, Megan. Cheers.

Whew! Real Life has been Busy!

2011-05-02T17:12:00.001-06:00

Hello, friends! Well, this full time job thing is busy, especially when you throw Easter in the middle.

These are Easter eggs we dyed at church -- I took all the Sunday School kids and did this craft with the help of the youth group so all the teachers could sit in church on Easter. It went pretty well, except when word got out among the moms that we were taking the kids to the park and they panic-ed about Easter dresses getting muddy.

These are the Easter baskets I gave the kids -- they only got a few candies and some lego guys (that was their request) so everything is gone already. These are based on the pattern by maya made. I bought this organic duck canvas a long time ago at tonic living , and didn't ever get around to using most of it, so I was happy to use it to make these cute little baskets.

I've been shopping in the shed this weekend. These are, ironically, clothes for Emma - leftovers from her brothers. I figure with a few cute flower appliques and ribbon trims and we can have a cute little brown and blue and grey wardrobe for Emma. Fortunately I was more given to buying the boys brown over blue. And a little blue never hurt any girl's wardobe, now did it?

I also found some shoes that might fit Emma (well, the yellow boots were hers already). Can you tell she likes shoes -- she started grabbing them before I could even snap the photo. I love these little See Kai Runs so much I may have to pick up a girly pair. The pair that does fit her are the completely wrecked blue and red ones.

The boys had a perfectly lovely day pretending that they were soldiers -- complete with lego guns, goggles and helmets, hidey holes behind the couch and in the bike storage (and even in their fort for a while -- imagine that). And, of course, as you can see from their lovely faces, war paint and blood. Sigh. Boys. But they were happily busy all day long with this game, so I didn't complain, I just scrubbed them up well before church.

bp nichol was a genius

2011-04-16T12:11:00.000-06:00

This is an early computer program / poem by one of my favorite Canadian poets:

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Finished Summer Blouse!

2011-04-10T14:33:00.001-06:00

So, I finished my summer blouse from Weekend Sewing. I had read a lot of reviews of this pattern and they all said to shorten the front facing and the sleeves, lengthen the body and lower the neckline. I had also heard that this voile was really slippery. So with all that in mind I did all my proper sewing things: I made a muslin, I pinned my pattern onto the fabric (instead of just laying it out like I usually do), I used actual dressmaking pins and cross-pinned (put pins vertically and horizontally to keep things in place), and sewed relatively slowly. And the result:

I like what I've got. The body is a little unstructured and boxy (this is another complaint about this blouse), but I like it that way because I don't have a waistline to show off in any case. I must have freakishly long arms because I shortened the sleeves and they are more like 3/4 length for me when I'm actually doing things, and I should have done them full length. This fabric is soft and drapes beautifully and this makes for a nice, casual summer blouse. Now I just need to stitch on a button.

The skirt is also made by me -- its a repurposed pair of well loved jeans. I love this skirt, too, and so I had to add these patches this morning when I pulled it out of the closet as there was a big hole where the two original pieces of pant leg cross over. Because this was kind of a weird place to patch a skirt I added a few other patches to make it look more like a design decision rather than an oddly placed patch.

And, just so there's another photo, here's my fabric pulled for my messenger bag:

I'd like to get this put together for tomorrow since I start work and I need a bag for hauling files and marking and the like back and forth to and from school on the bus / metro. But I somehow don't think I'll get it done tomorrow morning.

After 6 1/2 years of more or less staying home, I'm a little nervous about going back to teaching full time. But I'm really excited, too. I love being a teacher -- its always been my dream and passion to inspired students to live well and learn actively.

I'm feeling very blessed and a little overwhelmed today. Life is about to change dramatically for us and our little nest. Wish us well.

It A Beautiful Day . . . Don't Let It Get Away

2011-04-09T08:38:00.001-06:00

Good day, friends! Spring has sprung in Montreal and after 7 months of looking and substituting and interviewing, I finally got a sick leave fill-in, teaching grade 9 and 10 English. This morning was a good day. The sun was shining, the temperatures were warm, and the kids were excited about the world. So excited that I had to send them out to play at about 7am to stop them from thumping back and forth on top of our basement tenant's head. Emma had to go out, too, although she mostly stayed on the deck:

She loves her yellow boots and her little baby right now. Lots of "Boos! Boos!" and "Bebe! Bebe!" (with proper French accents, I might add). The sun was so warm and beautiful.

The boys were busy hacking at the snow and swinging sticks around and jabbing at things.

Meanwhile, with the door open I got to stay inside to make pancakes

and drink tea from my favorite new cup. I really need a cool tea cozy for my teapot, don't I? I keep meaning to make one, but I can't decide what I want it to be like. Maybe I should just be like Jane Brockett and make about a dozen of them.

All this was possible because of this great door we have between the kitchen and the rest of the house. That way we could shut the door and keep all the cold and noise and sand in the kitchen (it was "warm" -- as in 5 degrees Celcius ). I love the stuff on the wall in that little corner, and shelf, but there's stacks of paper there right now, so I'll save it for another day.

This is the sweet beam of sunshine that visits our back deck in the early morning. I think this spot is going to need some chairs and a table for early morning tea / coffee sipping in the summer. Stay tuned for changes here eventually.

Well, I'm off to make seating plans and read the Quebec Sec 4 English Language Arts Curriculum. Is it weird that I get excited reading about learning goals, reader response and literary techniques? If there's such a thing as an English nerd, I am surely one.

Finished my Doll Quilt!

2011-04-04T17:22:00.001-06:00

Well, I can finally show you this finished quilt since it has reached its new home in Texas! My partner Cindy loves all things colourful and whimsical (which makes her a great partner for me) and has a little white kitty named Took. When I was looking through her photostream for ideas of what to make her, she had a whole gallery of cat photos that she loved. She also had a lot of funny images in her mosaic (including a nod to Calvin and Hobbes' snowmen), so I thought I would do something silly for her.

This is the full quilt, which I couldn't show before or she would have seen her cat in it. As you can see, the cat is knocking the wonky mug over, creating "broken dishes", which is the name of the quilt blocks on the bottom half of the quilt.

Here is a close up of the cat. He is raw appliqued in brown thread with a little bit of extra thread painting to give him some "fur". I essentially drew the shape, traced it onto fusible web, fused it to the fabric and ironed it in place, then sewed around it in brown thread.

Here is the back. I had extra triangles, and I knew Cindy is really into rainbows right now from her favorites, so I thought I would give her a little rainbow hit on the back of her quilt. I was too lazy / busy to drive up to Fabricville (didn't feel like braving Hwy 15 which is always congested and crazy) so I embroidered the label. "Canada" just about killed me with all those a's, I tell you.

Here is another look at the wonky cups. I don't know if you can see, but little red riding hood is looking worried, because she's the next to fall . . .

And here is the bottom of the quilt. I was a little scared of making these blocks because I actually cut out the triangles so I could have more control over the tight composition, instead of making half-square triangles from two squares. The bias wasn't too bad to work with on such a small scale, so I didn't need to worry (they are not perfect, but the whole quilt is a little wonky on purpose, so I thought it would be okay).

I was really nervous sending it off that Cindy wouldn't like it, because she hadn't commented on it in process much, but she was really thrilled with it. It always brings me a big smile and warm feeling to know I made something for someone and that they really loved it, so I couldn't be happier.

So that was my doll quilt. It was a lot of fun, but a lot of stretching and thinking went into that little quilt, so I think my next few projects are going to be some fast clothing for spring, and a laptop cover and my next sarah and molly's free peicing blocks. A few easy things before I do any more heavy design lifting.

Trying to sew a spring blouse . . .

2011-03-27T07:23:00.000-06:00

and you would not beleive how complicated this is.

I want to use a pattern I already have, something simple and quick. So I decided to use the summer blouse pattern from Weekend Sewing. So I copied the pattern off the pattern sheet and made a few adjustments.

Well, everyone, including Heather Ross, the designer, says you need to make a muslin of this baby and alter it before you make it out of nice fabric. So I did (see the beige fabric? that's my muslin). So I made a muslin, which went quite quickly because I didn't finish everything. Then I adjusted my traced pattern accordingly and put it away on my shelf.

Last night I thought I had time to cut out my fabric. So I ironed my fabric and lay it out on the floor only to discover that my traced pattern pieces had gone missing.
By the time I searched the living room and looked behind all my stacks of fabric and discovered it was missing and decided I was going to have to deconstruct my muslin to re-trace the pattern alterations I had made, the boys were out of the bathtub and running across my fabric, the baby was waking up from her usual late night nap and my sewing time was over.

And that is the way it goes around here these days, and this is the state of my spring blouse.

Then

2011-03-26T14:33:00.000-06:00

Emma got her first set of barrettes the other day. Aaron was kind enough to open the ENTIRE package for her, so she then insisted on putting every. single. barrette. in her hair. She was a little butterfly head.

Some days I wonder if this girly girl is really my child.

But she's cute, so I think I"ll keep her.

I finished my sewing machine cover, finally. I had thoughts of doing some fancy-smancy quilting around different sections of the cover, but I'm feeling a little burnt out, so I just straight line quilted it instead, then machine stitched the binding on to make it go fast.

I think it looks cute anyhow. It makes me happy to have it done and on the sewing machine.

Aaron tried to pull it off and use it for something, and said, "Hey, how come this thing doesn't come off?" Um, so you can't mess with my sewing machine anymore, son.

These are some new fabrics I picked up from Fabricworm.com to be part of Emma's big girl quilt. But then I decided that I need to make these into a little drag-around quilt for Emma instead. I saved out some yellow / orange ones to go in her big girl quilt, and pulled a few from my stash to co-ordinate with these purple / red / pink fabrics. These are so sweet. The pixies are lovely and whimsical, and both the mushroom and dandilion prints are so detailed and subtly coloured. I really love this collection.
When I first got them out of the wash and was folding them, I was trying to distract Emma while I did something else, so I gave her the stack and told her they were "Emma's fabric". She had so much fun unfolding them and laying them out. Then she would lie her head down on the pile she had made, put her head up again, pick them all up and then lay them out in a different order. I think she might have seen Mom play with fabric a time or two . . .

And just to be fair to all my children, here is Andrew. He is definitely moving into the "real boy" stage now. Silly humour, expansive energy, and random teeth coming in and out of his mouth are all signs of a new stage in life. Then again, the energy is nothing new, is it?

So Much to think about . . .

2011-03-24T20:57:00.000-06:00

Hello, friends. Sorry I haven't been in this space much lately. There are several reasons for that:

1. My brain still hurts from making my doll quilt. I put so much time and energy and care into that thing, and so my crafty batteries need to be recharged a bit before I can produce anything else ( a laptop cover, red cordoroy messenger bag and a couple of voile blouses are stewing next).

2. We've all been sick. Again / still. I think I need to start carrying hand sanitizer when I substitute and make the kids wash their hands whenever we get home from anywhere. I have never been this sick this often in a winter. It must the kids in daycare / me substitute teaching in all different schools (mostly for people who are, you guessed it, sick) catching up with me.

3. I have been getting work. I have actually had to turn down jobs because, well, we've all been sick. And for some reason Andrew's school has about a hundred pedagogical days in March, and I've chosen to take those to spend with him. But they're different than the days at the school board where I'm working, so I keep getting called in on those days.

4. I am still / again trying to sort out my feelings and the practicalities of this whole work / day care / Dave's school balance. I hate the fact that my baby didn't go to daycare today because she was sick and she had a tantrum because she didn't want to be with me. I hate that my 4 year old understands what she's saying beter than I do and that she refuses to eat any solid food for me right now, because she just wants to nurse when I'm around. I hate that our household rhythm is always in disarray because my work is so irregular and that we forgot to discuss who was picking my son up from the bus and he spend an hour at the neighbour's house last week because neither of us showed up at the bus stop.

5. I am trying to spend less time on the computer and more time with my kids when I have it, because I have less time with them.

6. I keep forgetting to bring my camera / running out of batteries / having a full memory card lately. The Hetkes were here and we wandered around Old Montreal and I forgot my camera. What is the world coming to?

7. I am considering how this blog is going to change, and if it is going to continue, and if it does what the content is going to be as I go through this life change that is moving to Montreal and going back to work and changing what we all do and how we do it.

Please bear with me. Later this week I should have some doll quilt photos and also I'm almost finished my sewing machine cover, which is pretty colourful and crazy, but I love it.

Also, I must say, I loved this conversation with my husband the other day:

Me: What do you think of a red corduroy messenger bag? Is that to crazy?

Dave: Who are you making it for?

Me: Me.

Dave: Oh, in that case, nothing is too crazy.

I love how my husband has grown to love my creativity over the years.

This moment

2011-03-11T17:27:00.000-06:00

16 months and she already stands like me. This is what terrifies me about having a girl . . .

For more moments, head on over to soulemama .

First Montreal Thrift Find!

2011-03-09T21:07:00.000-06:00

So, I went to the Renaisance Thrift store just down from my neighborhood. There was a lot of general thrift store randomness, but also this pretty pillowcase and these two mugs.

I am in love with this one.

The bottoms says "Handpainted Silkscreen". What a fun little painting.

This little cup winged its way from Norway. I wish I knew the story behind it. In any case, it is lovely, and I shall enjoy it until such time as it is tragically smashed to pieces on my tile floor. I wish I could say making it a "mommy only" cup would lengthen its lifespan, but I'm just as bad as the kids.

Doll Quilt Sqap 10 update

2011-03-05T18:40:00.002-06:00

Well, I am soldiering away on my Doll Quilt. I realized that I haven't showed you all what I've been up to in a while, I've just been posting over on Flikr. So, I have now pieced it into three strips -- the bottom, and two rows of cups. The next bit is to decide what colour to make the shelves:

I thought grey or black, but I've tried both, and they are too dark. They cut up the top of the composition too much, and stop your eye from moving around the quilt. So this is my new idea: Yellow.

I realize that in Jill land there can never be too much yellow or orange or brown, and that this is not the case in most people's worlds, but in this case I think its legitimate. It makes the "shelves" visible, but not the center of attention.

In any case, I figure that anyone with whitewashed walls like that, and such an ecclectic selection of mugs is probably decorating in a Skandinavian style, and so they want the white walls with light pine wood effect. Right?

I'm probably going to stitch it together (for the third time) with the top yellow for the shelves, and then start working on the cat.

Giant Battle Buddies

2011-03-04T14:47:00.000-06:00

You know the guys we were working on earlier? Well, Andrew and I went to Fabricville (the French Canadian version of Fabricland, but with much better selection and fabric) and bought a giant bag of stuffing so we could finish them up. Here they are, all stuffed and stitched. Aaron picked his fabric and helped stuff the arms of his, while Andrew cut out his guy and ran the arms and the body through the sewing machine.

These are, of course, for snuggling with and hugging. At least, that's what we like to pretend.

We all know that they're real purpose is to be a substitute for beating on your brother. Here's a few action shots of what these battle buddies will really be used for:

After giving the Battle Buddy a test drive, it was time to sew a face on. Aaron is at daycare, so Andrew and I just did his. Andrew cut out the felt for the face, and threaded one of his trusty needles:

Here are the other three. The one Andrew is threading is Larry. These three are Moe, Bob and Unicorn. Since the needles each get tired after about 6 stitches, they are in heavy rotation.

And here is the finished guy. You can see that Andrew also got tired after stitching the bottom right corner of the face. He was going for a clone soldier face, although I think it looks kind of like a primitive mask of some kind.With classic 6-year-old-boy humour, this guy's name is Power Blood Man. And yes, he does have an arrow sticking through his head.

Unlike most kids, who are bored by this point on Spring Break, Andrew has just got going. At present he's doing science experiments, mixing common household items together to find out which ones explode . . . , all the while muttering little phrases to himself in French. Classic, I tell you.

2011-03-03T12:06:00.000-06:00

When things get stressful and busy I find that I need something creative to keep me grounded. Last night, I decided that I should squeeze in a little sewing, even though it was really late. I made my next two blocks for sarah and molly's free peicing study.

Since it was February, sarah decided to show us how to make hearts. Here's mine:

And here's the one for my partner:

I am having so much fun with these. Every time I make one of these blocks they just make my heart sing. I really find the end products satisfying, and I"m so happy to be working with these colours. They gray, yellow and oranges for Mel are fun to play with, and the really saturated blues, purples and pinks with splashes of green just cheer and soothe me at the same time. I can't wait to finish these so I can get this quilt together. If you pop over to the flikr group you can see all the other fun blocks, including Mel's amazing blocks for me.

Hi there!

2011-03-02T16:33:00.000-06:00

Just wanted to give a big shout out to my new followers. Hi! Nice to meet you all. Thanks for tagging along for the ride, and for all the comments and little notes you've dropped me. You guys are great (as are my old Followers, of course).
In any case, Hi!

Spring Break!

2011-03-02T15:38:00.000-06:00

Sorry to be so absent lately! We were all sick, then I actually got a few days of teaching work last week, and now we're on Spring Break.

My oldest son, Andrew, is the most extroverted of all my kids. He likes to get out and about and do things every day, so having him home for a week is a full time job.

On Saturday we went skating. We're really excited because Andrew has started skating by himself as of a week or so ago:

We got him new skates, which means Aaron inherited the old skates. Saturday was his first day, so he was mostly trying to learn to balance:

We have also been making giant softies. They're inspired by the giant creatures Lotta Jansdotter makes in Simple Sewing for Baby. We got the arms sewn and stuffed, but then ran out of stuffing:

On Monday it snowed again and it was wet, heavy snow. Andrew was keen to go out and start to build a snow wall:

Emma and Aaron had "enforced outside fun" because I thought they needed the fresh air. You can see Emma was thrilled:

Aaron was also super excited to be there. He cheered up when I came out and helped him build a snowman, but other than that he was pretty grumpy.

Yesterday we went over to visit some friends from church. They live upstairs in a smallish space (considering there are four girls and their dad's art studio in their appartment), so there was a lot of shushing. Other than that it was a lot of fun.

Today Aaron and Emma were at daycare, so Andrew and I went for an adventure on the Metro. I wish I had brought my camera, but as usual I forgot. The thing about the Montreal metro is that it connects a bunch of other underground tunnels that run throughout the downtown core. Mostly the link up malls and office buildings, but we found a cool glass enclosed square, and we were also lucky to be wandering around during a giant art exibit. All through the tunnels and in the buildings they lead to, there are art installations set up right now. Everything from huge photographs, to video installations on big flat screens, to plants hanging in the middle of a subway tunnel (it will be interesting to find out what happens to those by the end of the two weeks), to giant woven sculptural tapestries attatched to the wall. It was really fun, because there are orange signs all over the floor with arrows pointing to the next exibit. Andrew wore out after about an hour, so we didn't get through all 6 km of tunnels, but what we saw was really interesting.

My Tax Dollars at Work

2011-02-19T20:53:00.000-06:00

That's what they put on signs in Canada when you're driving into a big glut of road construction. Like its supposed to make you feel better about having to stop ten times on the drive between Wawa and Thunder Bay on a hot August day when the regular drive time is 8 - 10 hours already.

Now, here is a better example of my tax dollars at work.

Yes, Canada is the kind of country that pays to have artists play with geometry and music in a studio all day long.

The little film I linked to, "Quilt fever" also defines part of why I love the quilt. The dizying play of patterns and the endless possiblities of simple shapes just blows my mind. Funny how I was so bad in geometry, but I love quilts, isn't it?

Sometimes small adventures are good . . .

2011-02-19T12:59:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, I had a plan. It was 10 degrees C and everything was melting. I decided that today, I would pick up rubber boots for the kids and we would go wandering around the neighbourhood puddle jumping. I had visions of blissful early spring fun.

Then the temperature dropped. Today it is -5, and the wind is really freezing cold. So you know what we did? We played on the icy snowbanks in the front yard, and then we went to Loblaws.

The Loblaws grocery store is a little ways away from us. It has a clothes section and a little calfeteria and a section with organic / vegan foods (that means cheese Andrew can eat). Best of all, they had free samples.

What could be more exciting than a smiling young lady giving you free chocolate milk and cheese sticks? And getting new rubber boots? And getting chocolate muffins? And getting to scream at the top of your voice outside white chipping away at snow?

Seriously, who needs the zoo or the park or the library when you can go to Lawblaws?

Also, I'm listening to Wire Tap right now, and it is seriously cracking me up. It is the funniest thing on CBC radio (which I suppose is not saying much, but none the less, very funny).

Okay, off to make pizza dough so we can make pizza and watch a movie this afternoon.

Happy Valentines Day!

2011-02-14T16:28:00.000-06:00

This was the afterschool valentines day mayhem today. Usually I dole out the candy, but since he shared with his siblings, I let them go at it all at once -- that way we're not arguing about candy for days.

It made me laugh when Dave went out to "pick up some things for supper . . .um, do you need anything for supper?". It reminded me of when I used to work at a Garden Center and all the men would show up between 4 and 7 in a mad rush. Valentines still makes me think of the smell of shaving the prickles off of long stem roses . . .

Good etiquette for the modern blogger week

2011-02-14T05:14:00.001-06:00

Good etiquette for the modern blogger week
Originally uploaded by Flutter from.Kat (Mummastimetocreate)

Guess what? Kat over at Diary of a Flutter Cat is hosting a lovely, helpful week about how to keep yourself in everyone's good books in blogland and on Flikr.

This is a sensational idea, I think. Even more sensational is the fact that she asked little me to share my two cents. My post is on Thursday, but please hop over to Kat's blog
and check out the whole week!

Tutorial: How to Make a Wonky Tea Cup Block

2011-02-11T08:53:00.000-06:00

Ready for some fun? Looking for a fun block to add to a mug rug, kitchen wall hanging or table runner? How about some wonky tea cups? These are really fun and easy to make, once you get the hang of it.

Just a note: some of my photos from my first blue block didn't work out, so a few photos are from another, purple cup. Don't let it throw you off -- its just different fabric, but the same process.

Fabric you'll need:

One coloured square 4 - 6"
Two white or background coloured squares 2 - 3"
Two coloured strips 1" wide and about 8" long
One white strip 1 - 2" wide (depending on the size of handle you want) and about 8" long
extra white fabric to be cut later

Please sew everything with a 1/4 inch seam.
First, lay one white square over the corner of your teacup on the angle of your choice, and sew. Trim the corner off.

Press the white back over the coloured fabric.

Trim to a square.

Now, do the same thing on the other corner of the square.

Now, set aside the "body" of your teacup and start on the handle.

Sew a white strip across the top of your teacup body.

Sew the long white strip to one of the long coloured strips.

Press open.

Cut into 3 pieces.

Lay the strips perpendicular (on an angle) to one another, so that the coloured strip is facing down on the top strip, and to the outside on the bottom strip. If you want to add a little bit of an angle, feel free to do so. Lay the top fabric on top of the bottom fabric right sides together, and sew.

It should look like this:

Press open.

Now, line up the first part of the handle with the teacup, so you can eyeball where to put the bottom piece of the handle. (Note: this is a tiny teacup, about 3". The handle will be easier on a bigger teacup).

Line up your third strip section so that it makes a handle that fits on your teacup body. Remember that an extra 1/4" of white will be added to the space you see now, so adjust your piece accordingly.

Put the two pieces right side together, and sew. Check that your handle is a good length, then trim off the excess fabric.

Press your handle open.

Line up the body piece of the block with the handle piece. Adjust until you are happy with the way the length of the handle and its placement on the body of the teacup. Place right sides together and sew.

Press your handle open: You now have a teacup!

Square your teacup up by using a rotary cutter and a ruler to straighten the edges.

Sew the second long coloured strip to the bottom of the teacup, right sides together. Press open. Now your teacup has a saucer.

Make your teacup block into the quilted item of your choice. Enjoy!

Hope you like this tutorial. Drop me a note if you use it for something, I'd love to see your teacups. Thanks.

Wonky Cups

2011-02-09T15:11:00.001-06:00

So, Jill, on days when you don't get a substitute teaching job, and your kids are gone to day care, what have you been up to?

I've been making mugs. And teacups. Yep, that's right:

This is my first batch of wonky mugs and tea cups for my Doll Quilt. They are, of course, tests for the five million of these babies that I'm going to make for my toast and tea quilt. Wow, these are fun. They're like chips or popcorn. Once you've made one you just want to make more and more.

Lucky for you, I'm in the midst of making some tutorials for you all. Want to learn to make a wonky tea cup or coffe mug? Stay tuned. As soon as I get some time, I shall write up the instructions.

Aren't you glad I'm using my time wisely?

2011-02-05T12:54:00.000-06:00

So, remember how I was telling you about the snow in Montreal? And I said that the cars on the side of the road were going to be buried? I thought I would show you what I mean. This was Thursday, looking down our street:

This was during the day, and there were No Parking signs (as they were going to clear the snow) so there's no cars parked, really, but you can see how it piled up.

The thing is, that because the population is so dense, most people don't have a driveway. Or the driveway belongs to their downstairs / upstairs neighbour, or they live in an appartment building. So when it snows, and people are parked on either side of the road, and the snowplows come and plow snow over their cars, and there is a foot or more of snow around their car, then you have really thin lanes for traffic to actually drive through.

On the main streets it is even crazier, because delivery trucks are stop in the middle of the street to deliver things, and people are trying to get in and out of parking spaces that have a foot or more of packed snow covering them and people are digging their cars out and shovelling the snow onto the road and busses are driving by and the roads are a little slippery where its been plowed. We even saw someone gently bump into the person in front of him, but because it just hit his bumper the guy didn't even stop.

This is Sherbrooke street, the main street by our house. In the background that is Dave helping someone get out of their parking spot.

Then there is the snow harvesting (no photo of this, sorry). Basically, the snow just needs to be cleared away as quickly as possible, so what they do is post no parking signs on the streets they are going to clear the next day. Eveyone who does not move gets their car towed. Then they bring along a giant grater which heaps the snow in piles. Then a huge snow blower collects up the piles and blows them out a chute into giant dump trucks. I think its funny because it looks almost exactly like harvest time in Saskatchewan with the giant blowers and the big trucks.
In any case, today about half the streets are already cleared and the rest will probably be clear by Monday. It is above 0 celcius today, so the snow is melting in any case. As long as it doesn't all freeze icy (which is actually easily solved with a day of salt and sunshine), everything will be back to normal by next week.

Ha! The curtains have not defeated me.

2011-02-02T12:57:00.001-06:00

Well, as in much of Central North America today and yesterday, it is snowing here. It started this morning, and it is supposed to snow all day and night, ending with about 15cm of snow. Its not a ton, but its enough to throw the city into chaos, because there are high winds, so visibility is not super good and it is slippery. One of the two main highways that cuts through Montreal (the 20) is closed down with a 5 car accident already, and its only 1:30 in the afternoon, so I can imagine things will only get worse by this evening.

This is the view out my front door (inspiring, I know -- all the geometrics on the buildings actually fascinate me). You can see that most people have already dug their cars out for the day, so it will be more of a mess tomorrow morning.
This is part of the view out the back -- I love these spiral staircases, they are everywhere in Montreal.

Oh, right, this post is about curtains, isn't it? In any case, I wasn't keen to drive out to the West Island to substitute teach today and get stuck for hours in traffic, so I'm having a snow day even though all the kids are hither and yon and Dave is at school. I spent the day to finally finish my curtains! (You can see my first attempt had a lot to be desired).

Yeah, so this is the tiny nook that we have our couch and shelves in. There is a chair across from it, tucked between the coat closet and the door to our room, and then my sewing desk - -thats our whole living room. We need smaller furniture in this space, I think, but in any case, I was telling you about the curtains, wasn't I?

Yes, so curtains. I dismantled my first curtains and bought new white fabric from Ikea, and more of the orange Joel Dewberry fabric. I stitched it all back together again, then pulled them apart and stitched it together again because all the seams were crooked or there wasn't enough orange at the top or it had too much white along the bottom . . . you get the idea. We also changed the curtain rod -- we were going to suspend them from a wire, but it wasn't working, so we got this thick rod instead. I like it better. I think the chocolate colour adds a bit of darkness and grounding to the space.

The finished curtains just cover the windows, which makes them fit sleekly into this small space, and block the view of the side of our neighbour's house without blocking out all the sunlight. I will think of someway to open them later . . . for now I'm just happy to have something on the windows and not have to rip the curtains apart again. If you notice any errors, please don't tell me.

Happy Doll Quilt Sewing

2011-01-29T15:01:00.000-06:00

Okay, so I've finallized my Doll Quilt Swap idea. Part of this is inspired by my original kitty idea, which wasn't working, and part of it is inspired by the toast quilt plan. This is my sketch:

The rows at the top will be wonky, free pieced cups that will look like this (this one is for my toast and tea quilt -- more on that later)

Here's the bright, colourful fabrics I'm using:

And here's the start -- I now have more blocks stitched. The smaller blocks are really small -- the finish off at 3". This is my first time in a long time actually sewing triangles on the bias, instead of sewing squares together and then cutting them apart. I forgot that my sewing machine likes to eat triangle points, so I'm stitching these one at a time instead of chain peicing them. I really wanted to have complete control over what went where because this is such a small quilt, so I think its worth it.

These are so bright at cheery in real life, and Montreal is really grey and gloomy and snowy these days (it being January in the Northern Hemisphere), so they make me happy every time I look at them. I hope they make my partner just as happy when its done.

And on a completely different note, you know you're deperate for milk in your tea when you use the last tiny bit of milk left in your son's Cheerio bowl . . .

Mel's wonky log cabin house

2011-01-25T06:02:00.000-06:00

Tea anyone?
Free peicing is so fun. Every time I learn a new block (admittedly, only two so far), my mind starts whirring with the possibilites for more and more and more blocks and potential quilts I could make with these blocks. So glad to be doing this.

Settling into January

2011-01-22T21:01:00.000-06:00

So, we're having a bit of a shake-up in routine around our house again. Dave started back to school two weeks ago, and the two younger kids started day care last week. This Wed, Andrew starts to stay after school one day a week until we can go pick him up. All this so that I can work every day possible and not reject jobs because I won't be able to get back and pick someone up or because Dave has stuff to do later in the week. So now I can potentially work every day.

I'm not working every day.

But I COULD, if I happened to get called or find some subbing in the system every day.

It also leaves me free to spend a lot of time applying to jobs, sewing, keeping the house very tidy, and wonder what I'm going to do if I don't find work teaching. The thing is, I could probably get some non-teaching job, but then I would limit my teaching options, and the pay wouldn't be nearly as good. So I just have to keep accepting whatever jobs I can find (I have decided to draw the line at Primary French Immersion -- I am NOT a primary teacher, let me tell you. All the ice packs and crocadile tears and tattling drives me crazy) and leave cards everywhere in hopes that more teachers will put me on their call list.

Thus the exponential rise in sewing or late.

In any case, its been hard, my friends to send my little ones off to daycare. The lady they are with is very nice and I can tell she is good with kids. But there is nothing worse than holding down your struggling, screaming three year old as he yells "I don't want to go. Stay home with me. Please, mom!", and strapping him in the car and then getting to the lady's house and he finally calms down and then your baby starts crying when you hand her over. Then you go to work at a different, strange school every day only to be abused by class after class of 13 year olds who think the funniest thing they could possibly do is make a substitute teacher cry. Then you drive home and wonder what this is all for . . . Sigh.

There are signs of light at the end of the tunnel. Aaron thought he was done after the first week (after all, he'd now been to daycare) and was dismayed that he had to go back for another week. Hopefully this third week will be better for him. He seemed to be back to his old self on Thursday night and Friday (ie - making messes, pestering his brother, spreading paper clips all over the house, drawing on the sewing machine cover, etc, etc), so I think he must be starting to feel more comfortable. Cutest of all was on this Friday morning when I woke Emma up and got her dressed and started walking towards the door to get her winter clothes and she ran to the door calling, "Aaron! Aaron!" because she know that now is the time for her and Aaron to go together. She still cries a bit when I leave her, but obviously she is now getting into the routine, which is good.

I really hope that when I get a permanent job it is close by. There are all kinds of private schools in the neighbourhood next to mine, and a few in my neighbourhood. There is a school board with highschools close by that I'm not in with, and the school board I am subbing for is on the West Island, with schools anywhere from 15 min away to 45 min away, but then with traffic some of them can be more like an hour or more to get to. It seems to inhumane for my kids otherwise, to be in daycare from 7:30 until 4:30 or even 5:30. That is over 8 hours away from us. On days when I'm away late like that, I basically wake them up, get them dressed and fed and send them to daycare. Then I pick them up, get them fed and changed into pj's a put them to bed. Its ridiculous. So hopefully I'll get something a little closer so I can drop them off more like 8 or 8:30 and pick them up closer to 4, and be here to meet Andrew after the bus so he doesn't end up in after school care.

The good thing about Dave's schedule right now is that its pretty flexible, and he's not too deep into things yet. We're hoping that he'll be able to find some funding before he gets to the super intense part of his PhD, like the thesis writing part, so I can be home more and take care of everything else and he can focus on his studies.

So we had a rough couple of weeks with more illnesses (me and Emma and Aaron all with bad colds) and all the newness of our change in routines. But I think we're through the worst of it. We'll see when Wed. comes and everyone goes their seperate ways, won't we?

More Free Peicing

2011-01-22T20:22:00.001-06:00

Well, I did attempt number two on Melissa's block, and it was much more successful. Check out this cute little chickadee - type bird, frolicing amidst the flowers and butterflies! She's a little busy, but I like her.

The second block we are doing is a log cabin house. I decided to do this one in green / blue / pink. My plan is to use purple / blue / pink or green / blue / pink for all the blocks and then mash them together at the end. I love both colour combos, and I think they relate, but I'm not sure the green and purple can co-exist in the same block -- it makes me squint when I put them next to each other.

So here is my house. The cat looks so surprised, obviously, because there is a giant blue bird outside of his house.
And here's the two blocks for my quilt plus the one for Mel Sews and the rest of my random design wall. Do you see Darth Vader?

That was my thank you gift I guilted Andrew into giving me after I spent three hours putting legos together for him. My blocks are also being watched over by the Castle Peeps, who I beleive I mentioned may be in my Doll Quilt.

Toast, anyone?

2011-01-20T14:29:00.000-06:00

So, here's the first four blocks of my toast and tea quilt. I decided to go scrappy in my light fabrics rather than doing all white. I know that all white or cream is what all the cool kids are doing right now, but I've never really been very good at being one of the cool kids. I didn't quite have enough white or cream to stick with one solid colour, and I really wanted to get this quilt going, so I decided to just add some other neutrals rather than maybe run out of one fabric and have to order more.

I don't know wether I"m going to keep these blocks together to let their secondary patterns "sing" or if I'm going to seperate them with wonky teacups. We shall see once I've got more blocks done.

Sewing machine cover

2011-01-20T14:25:00.000-06:00

I finished peicing my sewing machine cover. This has ended up being a little bit of a crazy scrap adventure, and I'm going to have to quilt it carefully to add some structure and clarity to the improvised design. But I think it will look pretty cool when I'm finished. My castle peeps in the maze didn't work on this small scale, so instead I started with the Owl and the Pussycat out to sea at night with stars. Well, I was thinking I would have a lot of negative space and have the girls and mermaids swimming below them in the ocean, but that just wasn't working. So instead I just started sewing things together improvisationally and pulling scraps out of my bin.

Its pretty crazy. I'm regretting the cream butterfly, as it takes away from the "pop" of the three stars, but you never learn if you don't experiment, right?

The top is a row of leftover strip scraps from Olivia's quilt:

And I really do love this side -- I think its much more successful. I can always put this side on the front if the other side really irritates me once I'm done. Now I just need to quilt it, add ties on the side and bind it up.

DQS10 Ideas

2011-01-20T14:19:00.000-06:00

So, I'm trying to think of something really fun for my partner. I must say that both the ideas I have so far are sort of more "brainstorming" than anything -- they are probably both really too complicated to accomplish in 24" square. But still, its fun to dream. This first one is based on fussy cutting Castle Peeps fabric. I tried to make a maze with them for my sewing machine cover, but it didn't work. I thought it might be fun to make a multi-level castle, including a portrait gallery, a peasant in a field and a swirly magic block:

So it would be a rather kooky mix of patchwork and applique. I'm not sure it would really work or not.

My other idea would mostly require applique and thread painting. It is titled "When the Quilter's Away . . ." and obviously speaks to the messes cats love to make of fabrics, quilts and threads. The two "quilts" would be done by appliqueing tiny pieces of fabric onto fusible web and sewing around them, and then the cats would be appliqued and thread painted on top. I would do some peiced blocks on the top and bottom just so there's a bit of traditional patchwork in the mix.

Right now I'm leaning towards doing the cats idea, but maybe just focusing on the cats on the quilt and the cats on the chair / quilt stack. That would simplify the design a little without losing the humour or whimsy of the peice. I think I would also pick one or two blocks to use in the border on the top and bottom for the sake of simplicity.

My third idea is to do a spiderweb quilt, which I want to try too. I'm considering adding some spiders to it, but we'll see.

Anyway, I'm going to think on it for a few days before I start experimenting to see if I actually have the technical skills to do any of these things. Wish me luck!

Dear DQS 10 Partner . . .

2011-01-16T15:45:00.001-06:00

DQS10 Mosaic
Originally uploaded by davenjilly

Hello! Nice to meet you! I'm so glad that you are making a quilt for me. As you can see from my inspiration mosaic, I really like bright, colourful, whimsical quilts. If you click through to the mosaic, I left some notes on Flikr about why I love these quilts.

Please take these as a jumping off point. Take anything you like from the mosaic, mix it up with your own muse, stir in some of your favorite techniques and fabrics and I'm sure I'll love whatever you make!

To answer a few of the anxiety questions that often get posted on the DQS site, I like washed, crinkly quilts, but if there is some reason that your quilt would be better smooth and unwashed and ready to hang on the wall, I would be okay with that, too. I love both wonky and precise piecing, so I'm not too worried if everything is not impeccable. I have highlighted some of the colours I love the best, but there are no colours or mixes of colour that I hate, so use what works best with the project. As long as it is made with care and love and fun, I will love it.

Please have fun, be creative and enjoy the process of making a little quilt for me. Thanks in advance for your thought, care and work.

Jill

So excited to be in . . .

2011-01-14T05:50:00.000-06:00

Woo hoo! I haven't done any swaps in a long time because life has been so busy. Life is slowing down a little, so I have time for just ONE swap. Repeat that again, Jill. JUST ONE. (The abseloutely amazing {Urban} Home Goods swap is also open for round 3 and I'm really tempted to play). So if I'm going to be in one, I'm glad to be in such an awesome swap. Can't wait to get my partner and get to work!

Made in 2010

2011-01-11T09:33:00.001-06:00

Made in 2010
Originally uploaded by davenjilly

This is not a huge, huge mosaic like some you might see on Flikr, or like some of my past years. But look closely -- there are 5 baby quilts and one twin sized quilt in the bunch, and it doesn't include the two picnic quilts I put together too. And I made a few more baby items, I do beleive (have I ever showed you guys Emma's adorable dress?)

Not bad for a year that contained a new baby and a cross country move, if I do say so myself.

Fun with Sarah and Molly

2011-01-10T21:23:00.001-06:00

Sarah, otherwise known as krommama, has started this super fun little quilt-along. She is showing us how to make liberated quilt blocks -- one or two a month between now and October. Some of us have partners where you make a block for yourself and one for your partner, while others are just playing along when they feel like it. Our first block was the mondo bird. This is my little bluebird of happiness, who I am quite pleased with:

Unforunately, Emma has been super fussy lately (except for right now, when she's sitting under the table foraging for food and refusing to eat anything I give her that is actually edible and not old and dirty) because she's getting many teeth and has a cold at the same time. This effected my sanity when I was picking out the fabrics for my second block, and also she kept knocking the loose bits of my sewing machine off, which resulted in much aggrivation and lack of concentration. So this is the block my partner will not be getting:

I think I shall make a grey bird and a yellow one and ditch the background fabric altogether. Ah well, I am always telling Andrew that we learn by making mistakes and then trying again. And its not like I don't have any more fabric to play with . . .

If you're interested in joining in or following along, you can find the group here.

And no, there are not supposed to be loose bits to knock off your sewing machine. My sewing machine has been a bit . .. altered by three children.

I Did Make a Few Christmas Gifts . .

2011-01-07T21:48:00.001-06:00

None of the main gifts were made by me, since I'm not so good at creating the plastic molds used for creating legos. Although I did BUILD enough Lego on Christmas day that I should now be considered a Jedi Master of Star Wars Lego construction. Seriously, if only I could use the Force to put all those tiny pieces together . . .

On a complete tangent from the gifts I made, I was super proud of Andrew because he actually put together Plo Kloon's starfighter almost all by himself. He did get frustrated at one point, but that was because he had made a small mistake (that I also made when I went back to rebuild it for him) about fifteen steps before he got frustrated. So I unbuilt the ship, and rebuilt it (twice) up to the point where he had made the error, then handed it back to him. He did almost all the rest himself. That was some pretty intense building for a 6 yr old.

Okay, right, so what was I talking about? Yes,what I made for Christmas presents. Well, mostly I made these for the boys, plus one I have no photo of for my neice:

These are the Child's Colouring Wallet pattern that I bought at JCasa on Etsy. It is pretty easy to follow -- I made three simultaneously in about an hour and a half, so I'm guessing that you could make one in about 30 min, maybe less if you had made some previously. One of the most fun things about this pattern is matching the fabrics for the outside and the inside.

The brown dinosoars / dots one is Aaron's, while the space on is Andrew's. Kaylee's was an irridecent orange Tina Givens print with crazy birds, plus hot pink polka dots and this cute alice in wonderland print on the inside (in other words, colours only a 4 yr old girl could love).

I also made the two year old cousin a sweet little playmat and pouch, but the photo of it is on the dearly departed Lappy. If you really want to see it, its on my Flikr stream. I just can't seem to figure out how to pull it over here from there right now when I'm typing with a sick baby on my back. We added about half of the boys' car collection, because they never use their cars anymore. The other half we'll keep for little car-obsessed guests.

Predictable.

2011-01-06T14:23:00.000-06:00

So, we have made many purchases on EBay, and Dave has never had a problem with any of them. Until now. You know what is so predictable about this? Lets look at this list:

We have bought, without a hitch:

Shoes, for Dave
North Face Vest, for Dave
Winter Boots, for Dave
Laptop, for Dave
Motorcycle, for Dave
Car, for the family

We just got a bad seller who we paid for an item he did not ship (and incidentally also "sold" to two other people):

A Sewing Machine, for Jill.

Guess who was super excited about her Christmas present when she accidentally read the shipping notice in her email about it?

Guess who is pretty bummed out that her Christmas present never arrived, and that we will probably end up spending the money on a new laptop to replace the Lappy now?

Sigh. Some days I just feel like Charlie Brown.

Happy New Years!

2011-01-03T21:46:00.000-06:00

Hello, friends! Sorry to have been away from this space for so long. The Lappy has been slowly deteriorating over the last few weeks, making it difficult to post anything (photo card wouldn't stay in the slot, Lappy was crashing and melting down all the time), and then finally the inevitable happened -- Lappy just stopped booting up anymore. I'm not really surprised. That computer had a hard, busy life of being stepped on and dropped off of things and having every piece banged around and prodded and bent . . . its not easy to be the computer that shares a house with my boys and their absent minded mom. So, new year, new computer. The one I"m typing on now is actually Dave's school computer. We'll get one for me in a little while. In the meantime, forgive my spelling as my fingers adjust to the size of this keyboard.

We had a good, but silly Christmas. The week before Christmas we were visited by three disasters - the Lappy meltdown, the theft of our credit card number and the stomach flu. The latter was definitely the worst -- there is nothing like tending two sick and one well child while you AND your husband are also both sick, and you are supposed to be driving 7 hrs for a week long visit that evening. We posponed our trip a day until everyone was at least done throwing up (for the first two hours of our trip, Andrew and I had the same conversation every 10 min or so. "Mom!" "Yes, Andrew?" "I didn't throw up yet." "Glad to hear it, son.")

After this we spent a week staying at Dave's brother's house in Cambridge. It was nice to have Dave around for Christmas, and not completely exhausted. The cousins got to have a good long play (they were all done with each other by the end of the week), the boys got out in the forest and snow plenty, and the adults reminiced and visited friends fromt he past until we were feeling old and infirm (at 35, no less). By the end of this time I had caught one of my famous Jill colds, complete with hacking cough and hoarse voice (which rarely stops me from talking, strangely enough)

Then we jetted off to Toronto to spend a lovely couple of days with Kris, my partner in crime over at Clever Mamas. She and her husband treated us to a wonderful spread of apetizers on New Years' Eve. On New Years day we took all the kids (all 6 of them) on a subway ride and a wander around the mall, and that evening I had my first taste of Settlers of Catan. I think I"m hooked. And how great is it that Kris bought the game for Christmas JUST because she knew I would love it, and left it out within view, knowing I would see it and say, "hey, I've always wanted to try that game". I felt thoroughly known and spoiled. Thanks, Kris.

Our last stop was to visit my lovely friend Sharon and her family. Ironically, the Hetkes followed us East and are now living 3ish hrs drive away. We were planning to stop overnight, but by the time we got there, we all really needed our own beds. The boys were getting worn out and my cold was not better, so we spent a marvelous day catching up and then high tailed it back home. It was so good to see my friends beginning to settle into their new space and to celebrate our mutual new adventures.

So, we got home last night, and today I spent the day cleaning (since I didn't get the pre-trip clean done in the midst of all the emergency clean up and packing I was doing before we left). Dave spent the day grocery shopping and getting bills and mail and the like sorted out.

It is good to visit, but it is also good to come home. I missed my herbal tea collection and my blue kitchen and my sewing machine. I missed the red brick and the rumble of the trains and the sun peeking over the rusty back fire escapes of the appartment buildings behind our house. I didn't really miss the Asian pop music flooding from the basement, but all things considered that is a minor inconvenience.

I have more to say about the new year, but that shall wait for another day. Happy New Years, all.

A very, very simple Christmas this year.

2010-12-13T19:45:00.000-06:00

It appears by the amount of crafting I've been getting done these days that I'm not giving many handmade gifts. At present I have one half of a car mat for my nephew made, an idea for a quick gift for my niece and that's about it. I don't even have the calender photos picked out for the grandparents, and my "ships by Christmas" date is fast approaching.

I am having a bit of an inferiority complex these days, reading along with all my favorite crafty mama bloggers. They are showing off their hand-made wreaths and their five sweaters and their delicious baking. I have baked one batch of cookies. I have plans for one or two more, but that's about it. Andrew's teachers and bus driver are getting . . . cookies. The boys are getting legos purchased with money mostly from their grandparents. Dave wants the new U2 cd and will probably get a fun magazine as well. The grandparents will get photos of the grandkids. And I think that's about it. I don't have any decorations up. We will get a tree, but we have a one year old in the house, so its not going to be a beautifully decorated blog-worthy tree because its going to be one of those all-the-breakable-things-at-the-top Christmas tree years. And that's all the Christmas we're doing, folks.

This brings me to a funny thought about Christmas. I am forever reading about how to have a simple Christmas in 49 easy steps outlined in 25 blog posts that you must read over the next two months. But a really simple, essential Christmas around here contains: cookies, tree, presents, turkey, the end.

Snow in the City

2010-12-08T06:19:00.000-06:00

We had quite a dump of snow in the last few days. There was 30 cm or more, I'm sure, and it was blowing everywhere. The funny thing about snow in Montreal, as opposed to snow in Melfort, is that there's no place to put it. I had the unenviable task of shovelling us out while Dave was sick in bed, and I found myself wondering where to put the snow. We have our tenant's car in the driveway, our car on a cement pad that would otherwise be our front yard, our basement tenant's door and windows along the sides of the house, and our neighbour needs the path clear to his back fence because they run a home daycare and the kids go in and out the back door.

So, I and all the other neighbours put the snow on the road in front of our houses. This causes problems of its own, since usually the street has cars parked in every available space. This means that people who don't have a driveway are having to park farther away. I would hate to have to park on the road right now because the snow plows are just pushing the snow off the road right now and blocking in the parked cars and everyone's driveways.

The sidewalks are not all cleared yet, either, so when I walked to my tutoring job, I simply walked down the side of the road. I was thinking it would have been a lot faster if I had cross country skis. I could have simply skied along the bike path on the edge of the street.

One of my tutoring students is from Iran, and his brother was grumpy because there was snow and the schools weren't closed. His mother, apparently, said, "Its Canada, why do you think they would close the schools?".

One of the funny things about Canada, is that in every part of the country people are proud of their winters. If you happen to mention that the winter is worse somewhere else, all the locals will argue with you and explain why their winter is worse. "Sure, its not technically as cold, but its a DAMP cold" is the favorite here and in Southern Ontario. In B.C., where there are only about 4 or 5 days of snow except for one big dump every 5 years or so, people say, "Yes, but when it does snow its terrible because no one has snow tires" (which is true. People drive right off the perfectly straight highway when its windy and there's snow). In Saskatchewan they don't need to tell you how bad the winters are. Prairie winters are infamous, and they simply tell you to "Wait until you've been through one."

I must say that I was excited to see the snow. I love the sound dampening effect of snow, especially in the city. No matter where I am in Canada, snow is still snow. The cast of the light reflected off the snowflakes, the quality of sharp, cold damp in the air and the strange mixture of damp and dryness of the snow on my clothes never changes. Wherever I am in Canada, snow still feels like home to me.

Emma's B irthday Present

2010-11-29T06:39:00.001-06:00

I decided to make a hand made gift for Emma for her birthday. Here it is all together:

She is in that stage where she loves to carry around containers and put things in and out of them, so I thought one of these tidy totes (free tutorial courtesy of JCasa) would be perfect. I modified the original design because i didn't feel like going out to get interfacing, so I used two of my quilt-as-you-go blocks instead. I felt like I was at a dead end with that quilt and didn't really want to make any more blocks, so this was a perfect solution for me. I used a ribbon for the handle, but next time I think I would make a fabric one or find some heavier twill tape.

This is the little doll I was talking about earlier. This is my third one of these, and the dress is still very much a going concern - I don't mind how this one came out, although it took a lot of messing around to get to it.

This is the doll quilt I made, matching the one I made for the church fund raiser (which sadly didn't raise much money). I used some 3" strips from a jelly roll. It made two doll quilts with a front like this:

and a back like this. I think the grey is really too dark for a little girl doll quilt, but I am short on time and brain power these days, so I just went with it.

Its strange when you move to a new place and your surroundings are so radically different. Your whole colour and design asesthetic undergoes this shift. I feel like I'm in the middle of a colour / pattern shift right now, or maybe just overwhelmed with images and colours and experience, so everything I've tried to make lately seems muddled and unclear to me.

In any case, we also had our first real snow on Saturday. This:

led to this:

The snow man is on scale with the size of our yard.

Happy Birthday, Emma!

2010-11-28T19:21:00.001-06:00

I think the pictures say it all for this one. We had a simple celebration -- cake and presents for Emma after supper. The boys picked the bought presents, and helped decorate the cake. I made the doll and blanket. Emma, as you can see, was delighted. What more can you ask for at a one year old birthday?

2010-11-23T06:48:00.001-06:00

So, my camera and my computer apparently need a cord to mediate between them now -- but they did agree to download some photos. These are my four quilt-as-you-go blocks so far. My original plan was to do one more black and red one and then four with red in the middle and then white on the outside.

But as I started making these I ended up using these prints with a lot of white for the outside of the square.

So now I'm toying with either doing a series of smaller log cabins in between these four blocks in alternating white and black,

or making the other blocks with white on the inside and darker blues on the outside. Hmmmm . . any thoughts?

I had a birthday about a month ago, and my presents finally showed up in the mail. Apparently I'm really into gray these days. These ones came from Pink Chalk Fabrics (an awesome online store for funky fabrics with fast shipping to Canada), along with two nice organic solids - one brown, one gray.

Aren't they pretty? Can I ever have too much orange? I don't think so.
These ones are from Sewing Geek, who was having a destash sale (go check out her fabric stream, she's got some awesome quilts in there). I wasn't a big fan of Hope Valley when it first came out, but the subtlety of shade and the small prints in these fabrics is quite a refreshing change from the big, bold, bright fabrics I'm usually drawn to. I think it might become part of the bed quilt I'm eventually planning for my bed.

I also picked up a few prints from Anna Maria's latest line, Innocent Crush (isn't it funny being a fan of a micro celebrity and feeling like you can call her by her first name because you read her blog?), which is lovely in person, and a few prints from Gypsy, which I think is a highly under-rated fabric line. I sort of wish I'd got fat quarters of the whole collection (because, you know, I need more brown fabric. I don't think I have enough . . . ), but I'm really happy with the blues and greens I chose .

I sent away the little doll and quilt for the fund raiser without snapping a photo. It was cloudy when I finished her and the doll was cute, but the quilt left a lot to be desired. I hope they can auction it off for something anyway.

Sewing Therapy

2010-11-17T17:28:00.000-06:00

Well, I've been engaging in some sewing therapy. My log cabin quilt now has four blocks, and my four little dolls are shaping up nicely as well. No photos today because my computer and my camera are apparently not talking to each other today.

I had a fun experience when I was substitute teaching today. I brought Emma's doll so I could stitch the face on when I had a spare moment, and I ended up sitting at a desk doing hall duty (basically keeping the junior kids on their lunch out of the hallways where the seniors where in classes). I decided to pull out my little doll, and started stitching. I amazed me how many teenagers came up to me to chat about my sewing. They all wanted to know what I was doing, and some stayed to chat about sewing and crafts with me. One boy made oragami boats to go on the hands of the doll (he didn't have a big enough piece of paper to make a hat) and another girl showed me her bracelet. It opened up a whole new venue for chatting with the students about their grandmothers and relatives who had sewed things for them.

It is amazing how much hand stitched items become part of the family heritage. And how much interest these grade 7 and 8 kids had in making things with their hands. It makes me kind of sad that most schools have cut their home ec programs, and so these kids don't even get that basic introduction to sewing anymore. When I was in B.C., a crafty teacher friend and I talked about starting a lunch time textile club where we taught the kids to sew, knit, crochet, embroider, etc. I still think that would be a fun idea. How great would it be for these urban kids to have the tactile experience of working with their hands? Not to mention how great it would be for me to mesh my passion for sewing with my passion for encouraging and mentoring teenagers.

I think that's going to be something to add to my life list . . . start a sewing / textile club in a highschool somewhere.

Whew!

2010-11-13T18:14:00.000-06:00

Sorry for my absence from this space, friends. We have had two wonderful visits in the last two weeks from out of town friends, and a large stack of unfinished seat work arrived home in the homework folder this Thursday, and we're trying to sort out child care for our younger two for January. This means I'm confronting the reality that yes, I actually am going to put my children in day care and no, this is not something I ever thought I would do. There is nothing like hitting that wall where you are about to do something that clashes with your high ideals of parenthood and draws out some of your greatest fears about your children being damaged by other people all at once. Conversely, I am asking myself if my children wouldn't be better off being parented by someone else. Maybe that way they won't have huge stacks of unfinished work sent home from school with them, as they will actually be able to follow instructions and work within an organized system like school.

There is nothing like a huge dose of mommy guilt to keep you blue.

In other news, it has somehow got around my church already that I sew, and they are looking for some hand made goods to auction off for a good cause. I have very carefully agreed to make a little something without over committing myself. Unfortunately I should have known what would happen when I started making two little dolls, one for Emma and one for auction. Word would get around that dolls were being made and then I would have three . . . and then four dolls to make. Ah well. They give me something to do besides be paralyzed with worry and guilt.

We did have two lovely visits, though. I am so happy to be in a place where we feel like we have a great space to invite people to (even if they may have to sleep on the kitchen floor). I do love entertaining, so I am happy to be able to have people over more.

Well, I must go off and play "in" to the container, "out" of the container for the 100th time while I still have the time.