Red & Denim #4

Red & Denim #4
by Ilene Atkins

Do you remember when I was working on this quilt? I wrote about it here and here.  It has been finished for a while now, but I haven't been able to get a good photo of it. Until it was hanging in our quilt guild's quilt show last weekend, that is. It really is an amazing feeling to see my quilts hanging at a show. It still blows me away. Anyway, you can finally see it in its entirety here and now.

And it was a great show. Well done as always, with great work from our members. I was working at the show for almost the whole time, speaking to other quilters, and people who had travelled to see our show. People were visiting from Pennsylvania and Scotland, and stopped in to take a look. And many people from around the area, too.

I've had another quilt sandwich made up to be quilted, but I haven't been doing much sewing lately. Various body parts have been hurting, from repetitive strain injuries.  I've been to see an osteopath, so I'm working on being on the mend. And things are a little crazy at work, and there is a lot of doom and gloom, so I'm working on focusing on the many things that make each day worthwhile. Like sunshine, funny cats, hummingbirds in the yard, very warm fall weather, beautiful fall colours. It's not hard to look around and see a lot of splendour. But I haven't had much energy to get going at my sewing machine. I can hear it calling to me this very minute!

And the great news is that my quilts drew a bit of attention at the show. Apparently people are wondering how I manage to get them quilted on my domestic machine. So I've been asked to do a presentation in January to our quilt guild about it. Isn't that amazing? A bit scary, yes, but also VERY exciting.

Linking up to TNTN, here, and Off the Wall Friday, here, and Anything Goes Monday, here.

Waterloo County Quilters Guild Quilt Show

This post is just a reminder that, while there are not as many quilt shows in the fall as there are in the spring, there are enough to keep things interesting.  My own quilters guild, the WCQG holds its quilt show every second year, held this year on September 27 & 28, 2013, at Rim Park in Waterloo, Ontario. Link here. I have five, yes five, quilts in this show.  There are a record number of large quilts being shown this year. It is pretty much guaranteed to be an excellent show.  I hope you can all make it there.

If you are there, you may see the bag I made some time ago, where I turned a denim skirt into a bag, and jazzed it up with applique, embroidery and beads, and which I like to use now and again, since it holds so much stuff. You know.  All the stuff I need at a quilt show, for example, like several cameras, notebooks, fabric purchases, etc.  I first wrote about this tote bag when I wrote my first post for this blog, here, although it is not the first quilted thing I made.

There are other upcoming quilt shows in Ontario that may interest you as well. One is in Lucknow October 25 & 26, luckily along the Ice Cream Trail, link here.  There are also shows in Sutton, Georgetown, Orangeville, Oshawa, and Mono.  So you have some choices.  See my Quilt Show page, with a link in the top bar.




I wanted to leave you with this photo.  In my travels recently on the backroads of Ontario, I came across a field of stooks just outside the city of Kitchener.  If you've been reading my blog for a while, you will know that the Mennonites are a favourite part of living in this area for me, and these stooks are a classic symbol of their way of life.  It is not unusual to see a team of horses working the fields, and I am humbled and grateful to see it. Reminds me of the stories my Mom told, of the way things used to be on the farms, before modern machinery took over.

Linking up again with The Needle And Thread Network. The kids have gone back to school, and the quilters are getting busy again, so there will be some interesting work to see!  Link here.