Trip to the Bell Homestead

My husband and I had some major Aunt and Uncle time this past weekend when our twin nieces came for the weekend. On Saturday, we went on a field trip to Brantford, Ontario where we went on a tour of the Bell Homestead, home of the family of Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone and many other items.

We had a very interesting tour of the house where I spotted and photographed several quilts and household items.

The laundry was done out on the back porch, right beside the resting place festooned with a quilt...

Can you see the double wedding ring quilt under the dress on the bed???

I had not seen this block before--does anyone know what it is called?

Here is a close up--take a look at that paisley border!

My grandmother used to make doilies--I have a few of them that she made for me. This pretty one was hanging from a shelf in one of the rooms.

The stove in the kitchen was called the "Happy Thought" range!

Any one want to hazzard a guess about what this is?

(Clue: I work with the modern versions of this at my job)

We also saw a few Barn Quilts on our field trip day--this one was at the Bell Homestead and depicts the first telephone invented by Alexander Graham Bell.

This Jacob's Ladder block was on the garage at the Red Red Bobbin Quilt Shop where there was an outdoor quilt show on that day with several quilts hung out on the clotheslines between the trees around the store.

Here are a few more of the Barn Quilts we saw on our way home after our fun day!

Musket Balls

Our Mount Pleasant Home

Patriot's Star

McAlister Thistle

Crossroads

I am looking forward to another road trip to see some more barn quilts soon!

Chasing Butterflies in the Backyard

I put the hamburgers on the BBQ tonight and ran inside to get this quilt so I could take a picture of it in the sunshine...this is the one I was working on earlier in the week--hand sewing the binding. This quilt will be donated to Quilts of Valour-Canada for a wounded soldier. I did not make the quilt, I just did the binding.

Here is another view, with my shadow in the corner of the picture. :)

I also worked on putting my flying geese in to small flocks...

While I was out taking pictures of the quilt, I saw a butterfly in the garden.

And another one...

And this blue one with orange spots...

I am not sure what type of butterflies these are, so if anyone knows, let me know.

Handsewing Sunday

It was my intention to spend part of my Sunday afternoon, sitting in our gazebo in the backyard, doing some hand sewing so that I could link up with Kathy's blogpost for quilters who do some hand-sewing on Sundays. All was going well--I trimmed the quilt (a charity quilt for Quilts of Valour put together by a member of the London Friendship Quilters' Guild), made the binding, machine sewed it down, gathered my thread, needle, Clover needle threader, and my reading glasses...and it started to thunder and the rain started!  Goodness knows we needed the rain!  My gardens are alive only because I have spent hours watering them!  The grass is crunchy is brown.  Anyway, I ended up sitting inside to do my hand sewing.

Later in the afternoon, it quit raining. I went outside to check the chairs in the gazebo, but they were still quite wet.



After supper, the chairs were dry enough to sit in. My husband read a book and I did some more hand stitching on the binding of the QOV quilt.

Kathy wants everyone to share the view from their stitching spot...

Some echinacea flowers in front of our shed...

Our shade garden, now well watered by the rain...

My husband's squirrel that appears randomly around our property. This was today's hiding spot.  He watched me quilt...

And here is my straight ahead view...

I will post a picture of the quilt when I have finished the binding later this week.

I trimmed the rest of the flying geese today and started to sew them together. There should be a picture or two of them "in formation" later this week.

Saturday Sewing!

Debbie and Chris came over for the afternoon to sew. All three of us worked on projects in progress...

Chris worked on a Christmas table runner that did not get done in time for last Christmas. I predict that it will be done by Christmas 2012!

By the end of the afternoon, her block was done!

The rest of the runner is ready to put together so keep going, Chris!

Debbie worked on the borders of a quilt top that she has had finished for a while. Here she is sewing strips together for the piano key border:

I made seemingly endless numbers of flying geese units for my Stars for My Friends mystery quilt.  I have actally finished the mystery quilt as far as the instructions are concerned but it is not big enough for my bed yet so I decided to add an extra border with flying geese units.

I spent some time this past week cutting out squares for making the units.

I had thought I would be able to get the borders put together this afternoon, but the whole process of making the flying geese took longer than I had anticipated.

I have most of them trimmed and ready to sew together, but still have some more to trim. Stay tuned for more progress on this border this week.

The tumbler quilt was delivered to my friend this week. She loves it and appreciates the hugs included in every stitch as she faces the challenges ahead.

Progress towards some finishes...

My tumbler quilt is nearly done...

I added the orange (Kona Tangerine) outer border to this quilt top earlier this week and took it to my long arm quilters. He quilted it with hearts and stars and today, I picked it up. Tonight, I made the binding and got most of it hand sewn down...

My husband and quilt holder extraordinaire held it up for a picture before I did any hand sewing on the binding...

I wanted to take this picture outside and it might rain tomorrow, so it had to be done tonight. While watching a bit of TV (a show about quilts on PBS that my husband had recorded earlier in the week) tonight, I hand sewed the binding 3/4 of the way around the quilt before I got too tired to sew.

The binding is striped and the same material also shows up in some of the tumblers. I had hoped to deliver this quilt to my friend this weekend but she won't be home. I will try to deliver it one evening next week. My friend is having a rough patch health-wise and could use a warm hug and a reminder that I am thinking of her.

Christine and I got together earlier this week for an evening of sewing and visiting...  We both worked on our Mexican Stars wall-hangings...

I worked on finishing off the curved bits...

I love how the curves add movement to the design...

I have one more border to add and then I will be ready to take this one off to the quilter's house for some curvy quilting to accent the stars.

Christine made great progress on her wall-hanging too.

I saw Karen's finished flimsy earlier today as well and it looks great. Our guild, the London Friendship Quilters' Guild has a quilt show this fall and these wall hangings will all be there!

I also finished off the last border on my mystery quilt. I think I would like the finished quilt to be a bit bigger so I am trying to figure out an extra border to add using the material that I have leftover from the fat quarter bundle I have been using. I can't wait to show off this flannel quilt but that will have to wait until the Sept meeting of the guild when everyone who participated in the mystery quilt will be revealing their projects. I will be having this quilt quilted before the end of the summer as well.

I am trying hard to finish off some UFO's before I dig into another scrappy quilt with thousands of pieces...I am finding it hard to resist the scrappy quilt magnet!  Soon!  Soon!

Handsewing...

I have decided to link up to Kathy's Quilts handstitching post yesterday since I did some hand-sewing on the weekend!  I picked up this Fall themed Swoon table topper on Saturday and today I put the binding on it. This table topper is a wedding gift for my cousin--she does not read my blog!  I am very proud to have it done 5 days ahead of time--I have been known to finish the hand-sewing on a gift on the way to the occasion...

My daughter was home for the weekend and brought home some hand sewing for me to do for her. I fixed the hem of her red dress that she wore to work for the annual Canada celebration--at the end of the day, one thread got caught and the entire hem fell down! I also shortened a pair of dress pants for her--all this was hand-sewing.  I must say that I really don't like to do mending, but I am always glad to get it done and off my plate!

Here is my token machine sewing on the weekend. I added the first border to this tumbler quilt--one more border to go and it will be added tomorrow night!  I will post a picture when the last border is on.  This quilt is lap-sized and is a gift for a friend.

Have a good week!