There is a fibre art show on in Oshawa until April 2. The work is magnificient. The group is organized by Martha Brown. I bid on mEGGan at the silent auction for Easterseals. I'll find out soon if she is coming to live with us. Janet Rhind made mEGGan and it was a delight to meet her at the show.
Martha's zebraz quilt was on the cover of The Canadian Quilter Magazine. It won viewer's choice and best of show at CQA National Juried Show in 2005.

ATC's

Two of my favourite magazines are cloth,paper and scissors and Quilting Arts Magazine both from the same publisher. In the spring issue of cps there was a challenge for ATC's to be exchanged at the Chicago Quilt Show. I sent in my 5 cards. I took one of the first embroideries I did when I got my machine. I cut it up & coloured with water-soluble fabric crayson. I don't have a picture of the finished cards. These are them in progress.
Now Patricia 'Pokey' Bolton, the editor of these great magazines has raised the stakes in the card game!! She has offered to trade 200 more ATC's & offered great instructions on making cards with felt. I'll see your offer & raise you 5 more cards!! See you at the table in Chicago!!


This is on of 10 ATC's I made. Butterflies on collage, covered with inked transparency then black mesh sewn on the top. I made them to give to people in my class at Joyce's Studio when I teach this mesh tote bag.

Happy Birthday Spot

It's Spot's 19th Birthday. These are 2 of my favourite pictures of her. The first was take at Captiva Island in Florida before her first birthday. I love the light, her chubby little fingers & toes. The second was taken last summer at Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge in Northern Ireland.
She looks so good in her Aran sweater we got a Blarney Woollen Mills. And she still looks good in a hat!!
She is a born artist. She can make art out of anything. As a child she would sketch on the walkway with charcoal bits from the firepit. Lately she has taken to making figures out of wired garbage twist ties. She inspires me to remember I am an artist too.
Happy Birthday Spot!!

paint chip quilt

Sometimes the best things happen without a plan. I bought a variety of stuff at various thrift stores all a few days apart and they came together to make beautiful art!! Samples of colourful cotton chintz, a roll of black ribbon, someone's collection of white buttons and a vest.



I like how the solid colours look like paint chips. I made the wall hanging for Spot who will be 19 towmorrow. She loved to collect paint chips from the store as a kid. Maybe that is why she is so good at picking paint colours!!

Quilt Along

There are some wonderful groups of people sharing their progress of quilting based on specific books. One is the Modern Quilt-along I mentioned earlier. Another is based on Denise Schmidt's book at Sarah's site. They are fresh contemporary projects.
One of my favourite quilting books is Quilter's Playtime by Dianne S. Hire. There are no patterns. Instead it is a wonderful collection of games to play with fabric. They are named after simple childhood make-up-the-rules-as-you-go games. No x-box here! Hopscotch creates beautiful runs of blocks- playful courthouse log cabins. I started with the third to last game- Tiddly winks- off centre stacks of oval shapes with the fabrics sliced & shuffled. I started 2 versions of this game. In true gleaner fashion I took the leftover bits from one version and finished pick-up-sticks first!
I would love to see what other quilters are inspired by this book to create. Join me in the Quilter's Playtime Quilt Along.
As Dianne says in her Intro "these games ...were designed for sharing, for playing with a friend. Sometimes the fun comes in sharing results. Sometimes the fun is the sharing itself."

Marquee Quilt
I bought 3 rolls of strips of fabric at tag sale for $1.50!! at quilt guild meeting a few weeks ago. They were almost all full length -from selvage to selvage. They were perfect for Marquee Quilt from Modern Quilt Workshop. Used 1 & 1/2 m of black tone-on-tone from Northcott. I wanted a project to join Kim's Modern Quilt Along. perfect.
I finished the block in 2 days, pieced them together in another day. It is a super easy top to make. I'm waiting for thumbs up from guild executive to organize a workshop day where we can pump some of these out for charity quilts.

What a great mail day yesterday. No bills, no flyers, just one unexpected parcel. Inside were 3 circle journals including my own coming home now bulging with colour. I love paper almost much as fabric and thought I would deal with boxes of photos by getting into scrapbooking. I had no problem accumulating the paper, tools, embellishments even learning the lingo. What I haven't done yet is make a LO!! I now know I am more of the collage, altered book and occasional card type. The best part though was meeting a great group of people through Scraptivity! I signed up for a CJ almost a year ago. What great fun the receive a project to work on each month. I selected an address book called A Day in the Country.
How lovely to see everyone's take on my theme. From cottage memories, tulip festival in Skagit, to a childhood spent in a self-sustaining community in Colorado, to one of my favourite places too- BC west coast, a wedding picture in an endless field of yellow, to an incredible sunset in Manitoba and back to Lake Huron in Ontario I will enjoy visiting many days in the country.
Thanks to all the participants I will cherish my CJ forever.

Scarf

How do you pick a blog name? should it be catchy, funny, straight-forward, reflective of the content?
Webster's defines glean -to gather grain or other produce left by reapers.
I learned to glean at a young ago. Growing up on a farm we would go with my mother after the corn was harvested for cattle. we would collect the missed cobs in bushels to use as chicken feed.
Gleaning in the truest sense of the word.
Now I find the leftover bits from projects -yours & mine- almost more interesting than the original. I will ask for your leftover bits in class, I collect the fluffy strands after washing new fabric, I covet the metallic thread left in bobbins after workshops. I will often finish a project with the gleaned bits before the first one.
So hopefully my blog name is an accurate title for what I will share here. My gleanings & ideas for them.
Here goes!!
This is scarf I finished on Sunday. its made from a mixture of yarns, ribbons, threads sewn in grid fashion on iron-away stabalizer.
I love how it turned out. The gleanings will be for sandwiching between green tulle for leaves for a tree for a little quilt for guild challenge. Quilt to be based on favourite song. stay tuned.(pun intended teehee) It is due soon.

I'm taking the plunge into blogging. Mostly as a place to record & share ideas & thoughts on creating. Creating with material including fabric, paper, yarn, basically anything that crosses my path.
Does everyone feel this weird at this starting line? I love getting lost in blogs & think I can do this. I CAN do this.