Quilt Show on the Penninsula

This weekend I had the pleasure of spending a good part of my Saturday with friends at a (sort of) local quilt show. It was about an hours drive away and this is a small guild of about 35 members with this being their first show. I know some of the members and they just recently purchased our guild's old display frames. It was a win/win situation. Being a small and relatively new guild they had a limited budget to work with, so they got a good deal and I recovered some storage space in our home. The  show was held at the Inkerman Community Centre. Unfortunately I did not get names of all of the quilters and my photography was a little "off" but I will share a few images from their show.

They had my interest immediately after walking into the foyer! What a lovely welcome...

They even had a Banner! Way to go ladies!

What a charming quilt and a clever use of the dresden plate.

One of the many quilts that were hand quilted; in fact the majority of the quilts were hand quilted.

This little log cabin finishes up at 15" square... so you can imagine how tiny the centres are! The quilter really captured the look of an antique doll quilt with this one. All hand quilted of course.

This is done by the same quilter as above so you get an idea of her range of interests. They are 4 individual quilts depicting the 4 seasons. My favourite was the winter one...I could almost hear the wind blowing. She also did the leaf one pictured below.

Can't you just imagine a young girl cuddled up in this one?

Here is a close up of one block that is part of the quilt pictured below. I am not usually a lover of sampler quilts, but this one was very well done. 

Almost every block on this quilt would challenge the average quilter.

Just take a look at the quilting on this one. I dare say it to a bobbin or two of thread; and this was just the centre part of the quilt!

A lovely scrappy disappearing 9 Patch.

After viewing, shopping and chatting with the quilters we sat for a cup of tea and a cookie and then headed further south along our route. Mr. O had asked me to check on Winterpast on the way home so off we went.

Somewhere along the way we must have taken a wrong turn because before you could blink your eye we were on a country road with no one in site. We decided to stop and check a local sign to see if it might guide us home but no luck...

We decided to sit for awhile and discuss our strategy. Luckily we found a lovely cottage with no one around and we "borrowed" their porch bench for a photo op.

Do we look worried? I think not, however we I do look a bit more double chinned than normal because of the angle of the camera. It was a bit of a laugh trying to set up the auto shoot setting and getting just the right distance/height without having the camera (and photographer) toppling off the verandah.

From there we continued on to a local restaurant to have our supper. All in all a good way to spend a Saturday

***bloggers note: (long story) we were not really lost, we just pretended we were.

Back in the Saddle again...

So pleased to know that I still remember how to thread my machine. It had been so long I was beginning to wonder, but I guess it's like riding a bike...(or a horse) you never forget how. It was a wonderful though tiring week. Monday morning bright and early several cars (five I think)

crammed full of sewing machines and fabric and other necessities of life headed "up river" over winding gravel roads to arrive at a friends "camp" for a quilting retreat. Our hostess has been so gracious in opening her camp twice a year for our little Tuesday group quilting retreat. We arrived to the smell of fresh muffins in the oven and sparkling windows to allow us to enjoy the view while sewing away for two glorious days.

(I neglected to take a picture this time, but this is "my spot" and this is usually my view)

Before long we had completely taken over every available space to sew, iron, audition fabric for borders, display finished projects and of course eat.

Even though I had a few little hiccups during those two days (like arriving deep in the woods over an hour from home to discover I had left my foot pedal and power cord at home; and then when packing to return home discovering I had a very flat tire (thanks to Anne and Glenda for the extra muscle power to remove the wheel lugs, and Florence for helping man the jack and Holly for all your expert advice we did manage to change the tire ourselves)! I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Home Tuesday evening and then packed up again Friday morning to go to our Guild Fall retreat. 

I continued to work on my recycled shirts project. I am making a lap quilt for a very dear friend who lost her husband earlier this year. It was a bit of a challenge to come up with something using several plaids, but I am more than pleased with my progress so far. 

I didn't have specific pattern but I did have a handy little tool to make the job go very easy. Hope to get the blocks together later this week.

The ladies had a very productive weekend and I have a few pics of some of the projects finished or in progress.

Move along people...

Move along people, nothing to see here.  Keep moving folks, keep moving,...no quilting to show at this place.

I do hope to remedy that in a hurry though! 

I will be "retreating" Monday and Tuesday of the coming week. If that sounds good wait till you hear the rest of the story...I will be "retreating" Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of the same week. Surely with all that time to quilt I will have something to show for my labours.

I have been away so much and have just finally returned home close to Midnight on Friday past. I was in Saskatchewan for a memorial service for Mom and to lay her ashes to rest beside Dad. Saying good-bye is never easy, and I found this especially hard. 

I stayed on for a week extra to spend time with our daughter and her family. I also got to spend time with my sister. (She is the one who quilted along with me while working on our Winter Wonderland Redwork quilt). I was lucky enough to get to spend a work day with her and her guild. I was able to finish a quilt that was long overdue to be finished and it felt great to get that monkey off my back and my grand daughter was pleased to finally have her promised quilt.

Christmas is approaching fast and there are a few things I would like to get done so hopefully next week will help things along. Wish me luck!