Daisy Print Customer's Quilt

 I have been getting some quilting done this summer. I love what I did on this quilt. She gave me free rein to do as I please. She was saying she liked swirls of some kind and I can up with the rest. She used the Hobbs wool batting so the quilt looks more quilted and puff then the cotton batting most customers pick.

 Here is the center area of the quilt. I placed a large daisy in the center. All of the quilting is done by free motion with out any marking or patterns.

This gives you a idea of what the over all quilt looks like. It is still on the frame here. I have two quilts on my design walls and there is no other place to get a photo quickly except the frame. I best get back to quilting I have to get another one done quick quick.

Dog Agility Classes

 Here I am at another hobby. I have been taking the dog to Agility classes since last Oct. Look at him go. He just loves the work. He needed a job. This is at the instructor's yard.

 We are not going to competitions yet but I am planning on going to a smaller meet that costs less and is meant for training. I have been asked to come to a demo and show a dog that is not fully trained. I am the one not fully trained.

Weave poles - these are tough to do. This was a good night and he got it correct most times.

Bad to the Bone Part 2

Here is my Bad to the Bone quilt. Bad because I have so many more I needed to finish before I started another one. I got all the Dark strip set together and all the cutting done since I last posted about it. I have to use my smaller design wall and I just barely get the whole quilt up on the wall.The other design wall has my spider web quilt on it. Now to start sewing the large triangles together. I am marking the seam allowance at the points with a pencil so that I get my points as I sew this together. It is going to take some time. Maybe we could get some of this really hot weather and I would retreat to the basement sewing studio. We just get rain and bugs.

I am going to add my post to Judy s Design Wall Monday. Check out Judy blog  Here. This Gives you July 25 post of the other Design walls.

Flower Garden

 This is my other hobby. Yes I have many hobbies. I garden. I have a water pond and a few kio fish. I have to show off my blue Delphinia flowers. They are taller than me this year. Maybe over 6 feet high. I get many hummingbird coming to feed.

 Do not look at the weeds. It has been very wet and rainy. When the rain does stop the mosquitoes are so bad. I have not done a good job weeding for a few week now. I plan to quilt most of this weekend.

Batik Weekend Results

 I used a potato masher to make these top three fabrics. I used the soy wax that I was telling you about early this week. It made washing out the soy wax easy. After batch dying I washed fabric in the sink first a cold rinse, then hot water, then hot water and soap. I could see the wax was started to lift and dissolve. So I put all the soy wax batik fabric in the washing machine and washed with soap. I like to machine wash all dyed fabric twice by machine.These three pieces are half meter and started out as White.

This blue fabric is a sampler of marks. I used a cheep paint brush for the thick lines but the wax would cool and not melt on well at first. We turned up the temperature. The circles are a large thread spool and then then great potato masher basket weave.This fabric was dyed light turquoise before I started with the soy wax.

The two more new old potato masher I got midweek. I want to do more batik but I am not sure when I will get to it. Having the other girlfriends to work with was so much fun and inspiring

Surf Design - Batik Weekend

Me ironing the bees/ paraffin wax out of my yardage

 What a great weekend I had. The Surface Design group that got started this spring is in full swing. We got together this past weekend. All five of us on Friday and then some on Saturday and Sunday. I hosted at my dad's wood shop while Diane did the research and lead us in wax Batik. Judy also helped with the research and had a demo for us.

Diane holding up some bags with waxed fabric in the dye.

We started on Friday with a talk and then on to wax. We had Bees wax and paraffin mix in one pot. We had two smaller pots one with hard soy wax and one with soft soy wax.

Judy holding a stamp we tried. Soy wax was not to hot for foam stamps.

 I spent most of the weekend working on fabric I had started many years ago. Back then I only knew of bees wax and paraffin. They are so much trouble to getting the wax out. It left me thinking I would not like to do more batik. The best thing I learned this weekend was more information about soy wax.  The soy wax can be washed out with hot soapy water. This is like a miracle to find out about Soy wax.

Here is some fabrics I had started a few years back. Still with the wax in it.

 I am not looking forward to removing the wax. All of this fabric in front of me has Bees or Paraffin wax on it. My iris fabric was started years ago and had paraffin used.

I am sold on Soy wax. Diane did a wax sampler. She showed us how easy it was to remove the soy wax. We just washed it in hot soapy water. I did three half meters all with hard soy wax on Sunday. I have just washed it and I have all the wax out. I will post photos in a few days. I need to dry and iron it. 

 Dawna with some wax on her silk fabric. 

My Iris fabric. 

 The iris fabric had to get the green leaves and iris part covered with wax and over dyed to get a background colour down. I got all the waxing done Friday. Then I over dyed the dark blue over night. Saturday I washed it, dried and then spent the day removing wax.I still have to get more wax out. There is a wax outline around all the wax parts. I may try boiling. Or I may have to try a solvent to remove the final wax. The fabric is still stiff with wax. I have ironed and ironed and I was not getting it all out that way. Does anyone out there know the answer? let me know.

New potato masher for next waxing adventurer.

I found the new/old potato masher Monday at the second hand store. I love the shape. I will have to try some fabric with my new stamp and the soy wax. I am really sold on the soy wax.

Sorry, Yvonne I did not get a photo of you, next time. Kim was planning to join us but had to work.

Keep your eye out for our results.

Black and White Chunky Yarn

 Last month I showed you the kid mohair fleece I had washed (some on the right). Well I started to use some of it in a yarn. I used my drop spindle to make singles.  One with black coredale and the other single in white merino with locks of kid mohair added in.

I washed my new yarn to "finish it". It now hangs nice without any extra twist.  I have made two balls of yarn each about 60 grams. Not sure what I will make. I was thinking a pair mittens but I may need more yarn. I will need more black fleece - oh dear a trip to the store.

Later note I got more fibre now to spin again.

Here is the two singles just starting to come together. I used clay pots to hold the balls of singles in place while I twisted them together.

New Thread

I have to show you all my new thread. The mail strike is over in Canada and my new thread order has come home. I have 30 new cones of Wonderfil  cotton thread and a new thread stand.

Bad to the Bone

 I am Bad to the Bone. I kind of promised myself I would not start a new quilt till I quilted some of my quilt tops. Guess What? I started a new project this weekend. Bad Bad to the Bone. Last week before camping, I bought new fabric and thought I will just set it aside. Nope. I made my piles of light and dark. I went shopping again on Saturday and got some more. Well I just could not stop.

Please let me know if you have done this. Started more new quilts when you planned to finish all those others first. Are You just as Bad to the Bone?

 Well I got all the light strip pieced together and ironed. I still need to trim the others.

 Then I got the dark fabric all cut too. Here are the strip for the dark strip sets.

I have the boarders all planned. I got 2 meters of this great blue fabric. I had the Red and the stripe in my stash. I plan to use the stripe for my binding. Wow

How many quilt tops do you have? I have three I want to quilt ASAP (backing together too) then I can think of two large quilts that should have been quilted years ago. And two more that just need a boarder added and backing. 7 quilt tops is my count. What is yours?

Horse Creek Ranch

Brad and Socks

 Horse camp this year was at Horse Creek Ranch. We loaded up four of our seven horses and went camping at the ranch. The ranch is next to the Fort Assiniboine Sand Hill Wild Land Park and has great trails. There are five riders in the family. Me, Brad, two kids and my Dad. We took turns riding and one rider stayed at camp with my mom.

Wyatt on Scotty then Adam on Honey and me on Tonto (dad's horse)

 This was a look out point not to far into the park. We could see the Athabasca River from here. I hear tonight many parts of the river are now at rick of flooding because of all the rain this weekend and it was high to start. We did come home one day early from our trip because it was raining so hard on Friday.

Honey the horse. She is so sweet.

 Adam was getting along real well with Honey. He has not ridden her much until this trip.

Wyatt and Scotty were paired up for part of the week. Honey is Wyatt's horse but we moved him up to Scotty when his younger brother came on the trail.

Horse Camp

 We have just returned from another great horse holiday. We have taken the horses out camping. Our family Horse Camp. Here is a photo of Wyatt and his Quarter horse mare Honey. She does a great job of taking care of young riders.

This is Adam on Honey and my husband Brad on his Scotty.

Now I can not lie. This photos are from last years trip. I have not unpacked enough to find the camera. I have miss placed my camera for a full month now and I have used Wyatt's for a few weeks. Now his camera is in my saddle bag still in the horse trailer. We can home one day early as it is pouring rain. Maybe it will be dry enough to unload the tack on Saturday.

This year trip was to Horse Creek Ranch and the sand hills. What great trails. Last year we were in the mountains at the Hummingbird creek.

I hope to find Wyatt's camera and down load my photos soon. then I will have the correct photos.
I wish I could find my camera. 

Flower Box Quilt

I missed showing off this quilt. I made this quilt this past summer and fall and I was not keeping up with blogging at the time. I forgot to show you this quilt. I called it Flower Box.

I bought many of the fabrics at Quilt Canada in Calgary in May of 2010. There was a bundle of fat quarters. I was not sure what I was going to do with the fabric - while make a quilt, but what?  I decided to frame the floral with some strips I had already, in the attic windows block.

                                       

Quilting close up.

Here I am around Christmas all rapped up in my quilt. The dog at my feet.