The Big Day!

My daughter has known her best friend, BFF, for about 15 years ever since they became friends in 4th grade.  This friend got engaged last year and asked my daughter to be her maid of honour.  She also asked me to make the bridesmaids dresses. (My daughter's dress was bought at David's Bridal.)  I said I would but since her bridesmaids live in the States I wouldn't be able to do fittings.  So BFF found a pattern online, printed it out, bought the fabric and I sewed them back in June and told her that a lot of alterations would probably have to be done.  BFF delivered them to the girls and the alterations were done in their city.  Fast forward to yesterday and the wedding day had finally arrived.  It was a warm fall day in a colourful fall setting.  The girls all looked so beautiful. 

 

The bride made the tutus for the flower girls.

Distracted

Not much sewing going on in my sewing room.  This summer has been just too hot, we don't have air conditioning just fans.  I have gotten distracted with family history.  I got the idea to make a memory book for my mom who has dementia.  After talking with family members and a social worker at the Alzheimer's Society I decided that maybe that wasn't the best idea.  The thought of discovering my Mom's family history was appealing.  I never knew my grandparents because they all passed away long before I was born.  Genealogy research can be very distracting and time consuming. Each time you find the answer to one question you discover questions to about a dozen more!

In the mist of all my research I thought about the parallels to quilting.  I have been using many Internet sites and family sources for information.  This I equate to going to fabric and thrift stores to find just the right fabric.  Then I have been organizing the information into a presentable form that future generations can understand and expand on.  This is finding the right pattern and preparing the fabric.  Next I have been putting the information; birth and death dates, family members etc. on cards and cutting these to fit into photo albums and finding photos of the family member to go with the information.  This is cutting the fabric and sewing the blocks together.  Next is writing a narrative to include some of the stories I have gathered from family.  This is putting the quilt sandwich together and quilting the "quilt".  The binding to all of this is the insight and love I have gained for the family members who are the foundation of my past.

Dress Number 2



The second dress is finished! These dresses were made for two young ladies that live quite a distance from me so fittings were impossible.  I made them in the sizes that were closest to their measurements and now they will have to have them altered, but my part is done.  The colour is washed out in this photo but the dresses are a lovely plum colour.

Father's Day

Yesterday was Father's Day.  Both my father and father-in-law passed away years ago so my husband and I try to visit their final resting place if we can.  We were able to do that yesterday. My father-in-law was laid to rest in a large cemetery in the middle of the city where we live.  My dad is laid to rest in a small country cemetery just outside the village where I grew up.  After paying our respects to my father-in-law we drove around the cemetery. When we were in the older section , the dates on the headstones were in the mid to late 1800's, we saw these peaceful creatures. 

 

 There are over 30 head of deer that live in this cemetery. 

On our drive through the cemetery we also saw some geese and a ground hog.  I didn't take any pictures of those.  I just find it fascinating that so many deer would reside in a place in the middle of a city. 

 

 

A different type of sewing...

When I was in grade school and high school many, many years ago I studied Home Economics.  Back in those days one semester would be cooking and the second one would be sewing.  I haven't done very much garment making in the last 30+ years.  My daughters best friend is getting married in October and she decided to try to save some money and have the bridesmaid's dress made. She asked me if I could help her out and try to make two dresses.  I finished the first of the two dresses this afternoon.

 This dress has an invisible zipper which I have never worked with before.  It turned out pretty well considering I am a bit rusty with this type of sewing.

I am still here!

Hello everyone! Wow, I didn't realize how long it has been since I posted anything to my blog! I have been busy working on two queen sized quilts.  When I moved my sewing space to the basement it allowed me to finally open my quilting frame to its full width.  The first quilt on it was the quilt top that a friend asked if I could finish for her.  I am embarrassed to say that was over a year ago, but after a few false starts and a sewing machine tune-up there it is on the frame. 

I put the final stitches in the binding yesterday and will be delivering it to her tomorrow. 

This is the other quilt that I finished last week.  Another friend asked if I could make her a queen sized quilt for her bed.  After some consultation she decided on a pattern in the Dec/Jan 2013 issue of Quilt magazine.  The original pattern was for a twin size. I love the way this turned out. I especially like the binding which I used a 2.5 inch strip of each of the colors in the quilt. 

 

What else I have been doing?

A couple of posts ago I said changes were coming. Changes to this blog, my job and my life.  Well if you have followed or view this blog you can see the changes I made to it.  The name, the background, colorings etc.  As for my job, well I resigned from that in November for various reasons that I won't go into here.  As for my life I was not feeling challenged. I was bored and needed to do something different. I am needed at home because of our youngest son who has autism. For me working outside the home would cost more in care giving than I would be able to earn.  So I had to come up with another solution. 

 

Over the last couple of months I have moved my sewing space to the basement in hopes of starting a small home based business selling quilted and knitted items.  I also hope to open an Etsy shop in the near future once I get a few more things ready for sale.  The pics in this post are some of the things I have been working on.