Giant Battle Buddies

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.

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!

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!

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

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 . . .

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!

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

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

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

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?

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.

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

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

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

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

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?

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.