Ron kept looking at it and saying technically, it was an ice igloo. They didn’t built it right. (I agreed.)

But I digress! First, we met up at Tim Horton’s cuz duh, why not? Also, we did not know exactly where the igloo would be, because seriously – how hard can it be to find an igloo over 5 meters high, in a small town like Grand Falls??

So, we sat there in timmy’s and chatted up a storm for a bit, until the kids got restless. Glen said his dad had come to see it and said it was behind the high school or something, out by the car dealerships. Ron knew where that was and we’d follow them.

We drove over to the other side of town, down off the highway. Ooo, a new building, nice. What was it? I dunno, looked busy though. We drove down the road, and further down until Glen pulled over.

“You see anything?” Nope, didn’t see a thing. So Ron says maybe it’s the other way. We drive the other way for a while, get almost back into town. Nope, not there either.

Apparently it’s hard to find! Who knew??

So Glen calls his dad (the miracles of cellular technology).

That nice shiny building we passed? Was the new arena. Where the igloo is. In the back parking lot, blocked by the building itself.

We oohed and ahhed and when my low-battery camera was handed over to someone to take our picture, a crowd showed up and we all politely waited for each other. Cuz that’s what Canadians do. And my camera batteries ran completely out.

But we soldiered on and in. In some ways, it was smaller than expected. the inside was.. ethereal. neat. Friggin’ COLD. Colder than outside. And the floor was ice with a half-hearted attempt at sanding in place.

We stood int he exact center to hear the echoing acoustics. Freaky. Ron was at the wall and we could barely hear him. Yet our own voices sounded like we were in a bucket. (a very cold bucket) Handily enough, the blocks of ice used for the walls let enough light in.

The kids mostly ran around after each other, then played the shortest laziest game of tag ever while standing next to each other. Meaghan went and sat in the car.

Rebecca took our picture, because as she says, it’s kinda her job to follow us around the globe and take pictures of us kissing.

We were really glad to get back in the car.

(Short conversation while in the igloo:

Rebecca: “Just think, Brian is at DisneyWorld right now. Wearing shorts.”

Me: “I hate him”. (not really, but still))

I also had fun tweeting from inside the igloo (the reception was good) and reading the responses.

Lego animation? Check.

Lego bible stories re-enacted with Star Wars Lego.

Even her Star Wars interest is pretty much Lego based.

She’s off taking pictures again, because of this site. We had a conversation how it was okay to basically copy what the other guy was doing, because in doing so, you were not “copying”, but learning the techniques yourself.

I’m also subjected to the occasional rants:

How the brick show host mis-pronounced the name of a Clone Wars character.

How Nick Jr or YTV (one of them) had too many Lego ads plastered all over the site and did Lego know about this? It seemed overly commericalized.

How the Lego aisle at our big box grocery store is labeled “Boy’s toys”. (I had to speak to a clerk about that.)

I suppose this is par for the course, for us and our children. I’m just writing it down before I forget. And for when I forget.

Friday afternoon, I went to Sew With Jo, and I *only* took 3 small quilts to quilt. Nothing to piece. Thereby forcing myself to get over the fear of quilting part. My plan was to use my walking foot on all the straight quilting I had to do across all three quilts, then use the other foot to do free motion.

I got all the straight quilting done on the blue Christmas wall hanging that Mom made me, and I got almost every line done on the Yellow, White & Red Paddington baby quilt. I even bought a new blue marking pen while there.

Then I ran out of bobbin thread. Did I bring extra? No. I can’t wind bobbins on the machine I had (long story) and Jo’s machine would not wind my bobbin. the store had no pre-wound bobbins. So I had to tell Ron to come get me. I had two and a half lines left until the quilt was DONE. Pooh.

I did finish it after I got home, and wound up starting supper a half hour late, even tho I left early.

This quilt is one in which I celebrate the mistakes. While I was trimming the batting, I accidentally cut part of the backing level with the edge. My plan had been to fold the backing over to the front. So along that one side, I had to add a piece. there was also one block with a tiny chunk out of it that I had meant to put along the edge. It wound up almost in the middle of the quilt and of course I noticed it while quilting it.

I just sewed extra stitching around it.

I also had a couple places where the binding didn’t quite catch and had to re-sew sections. If you look close, no doubt you can see these spots. I celebrated by stitching around my label, all the way through, so you can see a rectangle of stitches on the front.

I used all cotton batting in it, which shrinks enough to make the quilt crinkle after your wash it, so I tossed it in a regular load and threw it in the dryer. Some loose bits showed up after that, and I just stitched them flat.

This quilt? This is one for a new baby boy. I expect it to get loved and used, so hopefully with the imperfections celebrated, the boy and his parents will happily drag it around the house, build couch forts, use as a cape, cuddle it, throw up on it, and generally love it.

Because it’s a quilt made with love. And I am heartily in love with the batting and how it affects the finished quilt.

I noticed the same thing in sewing clothing. I once made Ron a dress shirt in three days. Collar, yoke, placket front, flat felled seams and triangle sleeve plackets. Three! Days!

And it took me two weeks to sew the buttonholes & buttons on.

Hmm, why is that? Well, in the case of shirts, I really dislike sewing buttons on. Especially a long line of them. And making the buttonholes – I have just realized why I always hesitated on them and why I hesitate on the quilting part of quilting.

See, the actual quilt tops I have finished all the way to completion is 5. Four, if you consider I got someone else to do the quilting on our nap quilt. Three, if you discount the quilting I did on Meaghan green & purple quilt.

So. I have sat here looking at my pile of quilt tops and basted quilts ready to go and wondered why I hardly did any sewing this week. part of it is a space issue. One of the waiting quilts is a fair sized – nap or twin, easy. The thought of wrestling it under my machine and knocking off everything else on my table is not something I have looked forward to. Especially on those days where I am cooking supper and waiting for the timer. Ten minutes? While I can sew a fair number of seams in ten minutes, when I get to the actual quilting part, ten minutes means I have the foot changed and the fabric smushed under and figured out where to start. And doing a line of stitching halfway down the quilt and stopping – leaving it in the machine – just seems wrong.

What if someone walks by and it pulls? What if I want to sew something else instead of continue? What if I screw it up?

Ahhhhh… here we get to the crux of the matter.

Every so often, I think of the term ‘perfectionist’ and how it applies to me. It can in some ways, and in others it does not. There are plenty of areas where close is good enough. I can fudge a few seams and not worry too much about it. At least not enough to rip it out and do it over and over if needed.

But, like placing buttonholes on the front of a shirt for everyone to see, the process of quilting those lines and shapes across the front of the final piece is permanent. It is one of those things that is not only painfully visible, but painful to unpick. In a word, if you screw up, you really screw it up.

And dang it, I wish I had an image of that Far Side cartoon, the one that says “Ray screw up” He’s in an orchestra with only one cymbal. That’s what I think about.

Lest we end on that note (I got distracted searching for the cartoon) I decided a shift in my thinking was needed, and now I look at it this way: every quilt in the pile is *practice*. And if it’s not good enough to my liking, I can just finish it off, give it away, and make another one.

Right?

I held up the quilt I finished for Izzy, the new wave quilt and, when I unfurled the red and yellow one, the crowd of experienced (and new) quilters literally went, “OoooooOOooo.”

So yay!

And yes, I finished Izzy’s quilt and delivered it to her yesterday. She likes it! We patted it, and looked at it and played peek a boo with it and rolled around on it. And, even better, her parents like it too. I confess, I did the back for Kaytlyn as well. I call it:

DOUBLE RAINBOW ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE QUILT.

And the front:

also, this is what we do when we go visit:

because, why not? I mean, it was might hard to leave this.

Especially when she kept trying to crawl out the door with us. Silly kid.

In total, it has seventeen different rows, seventeen different prints, gradated from a deep red to yellow. Some of the challenges with this particular design were ones of my own making. I had an idea in my head to start, so I know what I wanted the finished quilt to look like. Usually, I work backwards to that – knowing the pattern and picking particular fabrics usually winds up a surprise in what the actual top will look like. (Well, somewhat, but you know what I mean.)

In this case, I wanted certain colors in defined places. With the disappearing nine patch pattern, one usually makes a large nine-patch block (3 blocks by 3 blocks) and makes a cut horizontally & vertically through the middle blocks. Since I wanted particular placement of colors, I cut each one to start and worked row by row according to my diagram.

Tho at times I didn’t look at it. First small issue: in my zeal to finish, I had sewn every print block to a white rectangle in pairs, except the 3″ block rows have a block at each end, and the large block rows have a white rectangle at each end. So the other night, I had to unpick a white rectangle off the end of the smaller block rows and sew it on to the bigger ones.

If you look closely at the picture, you’ll see a ripple on the larger row with the red & white gingham. I hate that fabric. It has a higher polyester count, I am sure, and it slippery and prone to ravel. Because of that, my seams are off in this row and it is about a half inch longer than it should be. I’m being extra careful to match seams when I sew rows together, so this will take some easing when I sew it to the next row. The spray starch helps, but it can’t fix everything.

In the pic above, most of the rows have been paired. There are six more rows on my work table waiting to be assembled this weekend.

Ron also pointed out one row where I used a directional print, and half of the blocks go one way with the rest of them going another way. Small tiny issue, yes. This one doesn’t bug me. (much.) Otherwise, that’s it. There’s no complicated sewing, just straight seams. The small blocks are 3″, the large ones 6″ and the rectangles 3×6″. Cutting was extremely easy as those are the widths of my rulers.

The takeaway lesson here I realized last night when seeing how it all came together and where some fabrics were placed. There were some fabrics I had limited amounts of, and because of this, placed them in smaller rows instead of a larger one – a row which would have made a better transition of color to the next row. So: when planning a quilt with prints in particular places, don’t constrain yourself with fabric amounts. Get more. Substitute if you have to.

Also see when I cut it out and
when I planned the quilt. I took a while with it because I really had to think about the fabrics and the placement. Just restating that more fabric in some prints would have helped. For the curious, a fat quarter was more than enough. I just has scraps of some and tried to squeeze out what I could.

This is a quilt I would actually make again, and I am strongly considering writing up a pattern for it. It would mostly deal with how to pick the colors and where to put them, because the sewing bit is the easy part. I’m thinking next time, go from a deep blue at one end, to a green at the other. Ooooooooo…

My children read my blog, and they are mostly grown. But I did start when they were younger, and long term readers have noticed that the stories change over time. less about them and the cute / funny / embarrassing things they have said and done and more about me. part of that may be due to me growing older and more introspective. part of it is the kids themselves are growing older, growing up (up, up, waaay up) and have their own stories to tell. I have been leaving those to them. (they say I can’t tell them right anyway. )

But part of it has been a conscious awareness of the permanent state of the internet. The once you put it out there you can’t take it back part. The selectiveness of what is said. Of course, I don’t mention the dust elephants in the corner (I wish I were exaggerating) or the fact I rarely get fully dressed before noon, and sometimes not even after that, or I have to sometimes upload pictures carefully so you can’t tell that emma did actually wear that shirt 3 days in a row. huh.

It’s a mental sifting. Twitter is my brain dump and customer service – my work at home water cooler. My blog is my brain’s archive of my life. It is curious, this last child of mine. Her life is entirely documented (well, mostly) online. And while I am reading new articles cropping up at this being the norm for today’s parent, I still remember the small crowd of us starting out.

I think of it being ten years this July since my grandmother died and I still haven’t uploaded those entries. They were when I hand-coded the pages. Maybe this year it’s time.

I think of Emma coming into our office this afternoon, announcing that she heard blogging was dead and being replaced by twitter and facebook. Then we had an actual intelligent conversation about what that meant and if blogs really *were* dead. (not really)

I think of seeing Isabella on the webcam, when it’s too snowy to drive down to see them yesterday, of Addison saying my last blog entry was cute, and it meant it sincerely not sarcastically.

I think of Christmastime, showing Kaytlyn copies of my grandmother’s daily diaries. “Andrea up for Christmas,” it says. I spent my first Christmas at my grandmother’s house. My granddaughter did too.

I think maybe my blog is quite a lot like my grandmother’s diaries. Except not in boxes.

I did quilt a little today. Finished off one the other day, stuck a label on it. Couldn’t find the label I have that were Nanny’s, but I will. And I will take a picture of them together.

This climbing a mountain and turning around is very circle of life, and I am mixing my metaphors now.

Actually, this is my only hobby right now. I haven’t even really taken very many (non-quilt) pictures. I don’t go on photo hunts, I cleaned out a lot of my scrap booking stuff and I barely watch tv. If I do, it’s usually online.

Yeah, I gave up housework, too. A looong time ago… ANYWAY!

My home office is at one end of my house and the ktichen is at the other end. Far enough away that I cannot hear the timer on the stove. even from the old office, I couldn’t hear it. Ron sometimes could, but I could not.

So, after a few burning dinners or running up & down staircases multiple times in five minute increments, I decided to just stay downstairs for however long it took me to reheat or cook whatever we had.

My sewing machine is set up in a room downstairs in the middle of the house. Just a few steps through a small hallway and I’m back in the kitchen, actually. The sewing machine is always plugged in and I can leave my work in a second. There’s always something to work on, and I just grab whatever is on top of the pile.

I sew and sew, with a lot of chain piecing. that’s just pushing in one seam after another without cutting threads between them. I sew whatever seams I need to as long as they do not cross. I use all white thread. If i do need to use another color, I will plan multiple projects of just those colors.

Sometimes I will spend my time cutting instead. That’s how I wind up with ten quilts cut out though.

Sometimes I will iron instead. I don’t have a dedicated ironing station, so I’ve been using the kitchen counter for smaller ironing. For larger pieces, I either do it down at the quilt shop where she has custom boards, or I use the dining room table. I’ll do a couple of items at once then.

Right now I am still sewing that red & yellow quilt. I’m piecing each row together in stages, usually chain piecing two rows at a time, cutting sewn section apart from each other as they come out the back, and lining them up for the next seam to go through the front. I think there’s a piece halfway through the machine if I go look now.

I usually start supper, get to a spot where I don’t have to stir anything, set the timer & go sew. Maybe it’s five mintues, maybe it’s ten. Sometimes it’s two. I do two meals a day, and sometimes if I am really tired of sitting in font of the computer, I will go downstairs and sew for a bit instead. Half a hour maybe. Or iron as I puzzle something out and figure out how to phrase a support questions without sounding condescending or frustrated.

One tough Monday, everyone had communication issues, so I went and sewed every time I wanted to scream at the computer. I got a lot of sewing done that day. Since I work on multiple projects at the same time, there’s often only a few steps needed for each one to reach completion, so it looks like I finished a whole bunch of things at once. A lot of the recent quilts I’ve finished, I actually cut the pieces out two or more years ago. I just told myself I needed to finish the tops before I cut out any more, and that’s been my motivation.

Of course, now I have a large pile of quilt tops to quilt, instead of a large pile of cut blocks to sew, but that’s a different problem. Right?

(Hrm, it would probably help the readers at home if I linked to the different entries in the archives for each quilt. Ooops.)

At any rate, my point is just something like ten mintues twice a day at the machine adds up by the end of the week. It’s all straight sewing, nothing fancy.

Except for one thing.

This time last year, I woudl have been odd one out. Now I am part of the secret club.

“Oh, they called me up the other night to babysit. I was halfway out the door before I got off the phone”

“I have to finish knitting these sweaters before I send them off. And then this quilt for the other ones.”

“Terrible we both don’t have pictures in our purses, isn’t it?”

“I bet yours are adorable.” “Yours too!”

“Aren’t they just precious?”

The knowing smile, the crinkles at the corners of our eyes, and the slight nodding of the head.

Yep. Room full of grandmas.