I fink u freeky

Modern Quilt Guild

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 29/07/2011

The last meeting I went to we were supposed to get a new project using Jay McCarroll’s fabric, which I LOVE, but couldn’t because of the fucking Canada Post strike so we opted to make placemats for Meals on Wheels. Fun, easy, quick. Well. I started making a dresden plate block but man, that’s not easy. The first one is a little Montessori meets picnic:

Love that gingham. The back is all red gingham too. The second is a bookshelf block that I knocked off from here:

I didn’t use her actual pattern but I did copy it more or less. I loved the idea of using selveges as book titles and I’ve been saving strips of them for a long time with no real plan. Nice to use some of them up. One in particular made me laugh:

I’d read a book about what not to use as children’s sleepwear, wouldn’t you?

The next meeting is this coming Sunday at the workroom. You should go even if you have the smallest amount of interest in quilting. It’s so great to share ideas and to learn new skills and to work outside my normal box!

2 Comments

A riddle

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 28/07/2011

How many skull rings does it take to sink a hand?

Three. The answer is three. And are you crazy? I don’t wear all three on the same hand OR at the same time. That would be ridiculous.

The gold one is a Disney Couture ring, from the Pirates of the Caribbean collection. The giant black one is carved from tiger’s eye and has a diamond for an eyeball. We’re all familiar with the first one.

Category: hmmmm, love
5 Comments

I’m tellin’ ya…

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 27/07/2011

I seriously love this ring.

Category: love
3 Comments

Quilteration

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 26/07/2011

I have actually had it back in my hot little hands for a while now but haven’t had the inclination to drag it outside in the blazing heat to take pictures. Today was a beautiful day, ideal weather if you ask me, and here we are.

As you can imagine, I am thrilled beyond belief with this quilt. It’s so awesome, every square of fabric, every strip, the back, the binding and the actual quilting? It’s SO good. Really, I was worried, I’ve seen long-armed quilts that I wasn’t ga ga over before but this is absolutely perfect.

The quilting pattern I picked was called clouds, I think, and works really well with the overall design. It’s open and flows nicely. It’s more obvious on the back:

Cool, huh? I might be forced to send my yellow quilt to Jennifer too.

I’m cranking up the AC tonight so I have an excuse to sleep under it. Thanks a million times over to Jen who did the quilting, she’s wonderful!

Category: crochet, love, making stuff is good
4 Comments

Jason Seagull

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 05/07/2011

Ok, so it really is summer in the city. It is hot and sunny and hot and I don’t like it one bit. None of it! Ok, I like the fruits and vegetables that are at the markets, but that is it. And I like the baby animals. I also like outdoor swimming, that’s nice. The smell of sunscreen, drinking lemonade, wearing flip flops and drinking Slurpees. But that is IT.

Oh, and while I don’t like seagulls ever, I did appreciate this one preening itself at the top of a lamp post.

Category: kitty
3 Comments

Gym bag

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 03/07/2011

My old gym bag was starting to look rough and I was finding it cumbersome on the subway so I made myself a new one. All I knew was that I wanted it to be like a duffle bag, long and narrow, but flat. So with minimal designing, I came up with this:

I used a heavy fabric from ikea for the exterior and a large scale black and white gingham (yeah, yeah, you know I love gingham) and a solid black fabric for an interior zipper pocket. I basically just figured out the width with my runners and then stacked my water bottle, gym clothes and wallet on top to figure out length. The opening does have a zipper, similar to my zipper pouches, but I folded it over and sewed it down to hide it. The strap I cannibalized from an old bag I haven’t used in years. Sometimes being a pack rat is handy!

Test run on Tuesday, we will see how it goes!

In sad crafting news, the Fabricland at Yonge and Bloor under The Bay is closing it’s doors forever at the end of July. All fabric is on sale, all notions, patterns, hardware, everything is 50% off at the very least. I’ve been twice already and will probably go again to stock up on more gingham and batting.

Category: making stuff is good
1 Comment

Dog days of summer

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 02/07/2011

Not that summer has really arrived in Toronto, not yet it seems. Not that I’m complaining, ha ha, no indeed, the milder weather suits me and my non-air conditioned home just fine, thanks. This is my neighbor’s dog, FiFi. She is tiny and silly and likes nothing better than a cuddle in the hammock. Although I think he is lacking the required male anatomy, her ideal mate would certainly be Puppers.

Not a great pic of me, but it was the only one where her eyes were open. Out of 8. She was wide awake.

I’m hoping to get some decent sleep tonight. On top of my usual stresses in life, I lost my skull ring on Monday afternoon. I noticed it missing when we got home from High Park, ugh, and we drove back to do some searching and turned up nada. Tears, many tears were shed. Teeth gnashed. More tears. I turned our rather messy home upside down looking in all the obvious spots, then the less obvious spots and then the ridiculous spots. Nada. Looked everywhere another dozen times. I made posters for the park (honestly, I had no idea where I lost it) and a craigslist ad and told my neighbors and posted on Facebook and twitter.

Agony. My heart was in serious amounts of pain. And then my dad had his hip replacement surgery that did not go as well as planned and when I talked to my mom to find out how he was doing, I burst into tears in the grocery store.

No sleep+stupid amount of stress=crying in public. Vodka helped. Vodka is very helpful in small amounts. Ditto mind numbing video games.

Fast forward to today, 5 days from the day I lost it and guess what? Ari found it on the floor of the truck, in the back seat! I don’t often hug and kiss her, but today was certainly exceptional and I did plant a few on her rosy cheek. As a reward I gave her the pink knitted squid that she has been begging for since I made it. And Shannon got her a new game for her ds.

And my dad is recovering nicely, he is out of bed and enjoying the women’s world cup soccer.

Sleep? Come back please. You are missed!

Category: a good day, babies, kitty, love
5 Comments

Yellow, yellow, hello

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 24/06/2011

All 25 blocks are done. Thankfully, I got all my ordered fabric before the ever delightful Canada Post went on strike. Here they are laid out on a queen size bed:

Picture quality not so great, I’m aware. I do what I can with the tools I have.

Super happy with the way this is shaping up, especially about the size. This won’t look weird on a king bed, I think. And because my green quilt has come out of the long arm quilters so beautifully, I will do the same for this baby. Hopefully I can find one in this city, much easier that way.

Category: crochet, love, making stuff is good
3 Comments

Finally!

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 18/06/2011

Funny, when you keep a secret for SO long and then the pressure comes down and everything seems to happen so quickly after grinding along for so long.

I made my sister a quilt. I told a lot of people, friends and co-quilters (and I think I posted progress on twitter, which it turns out she subscribes to, eeek!) but couldn’t blog about it until now. And because she visited last week I had a lot of work to do. The grunt work. Making the back, putting the sandwich together, doing all the quilting and finally the binding. And I got some printer fabric so I made a nice label that had to be sewn on too.

Needless to say, she loved it, thank goodness. I was pretty sure, when Jana gave me a collection of fat quarters, that I’d be using them for a sister project. And I’d wanted to do a full quilt of half-square-triangles (not daunting at all!) so I got coordinating solids (Kona) from the workroom and a couple extra fat quarters as matchy as possible and got to work. The back is thrifted gingham and a pieces from the front. I quilted the front with glow in the dark thread!