Thousand Islands Quilter's Guild

Tonight, Nellie and I were the guest speakers at our local quilt guild's monthly meeting. We did a presentation about how we made our quilting hobbies into our businesses. Although we often speak for guilds, it's more stressful (I think) when it is for a roomful of people you know! When you speak in front of other guilds, you worry about making a good impression, but most of the time, you'll never meet those people again. When it's your own guild you worry about boring them to death, because you think they have seen all of your quilts AND already heard all of your stories BUT tonight our guild was great!! Everyone seemed interested and afterwards lots of people came up to tell us how we did a great job. We spoke about starting our individual businesses, writing and self publishing our books, starting our joint business, designing for magazines, Northcott Fabrics, and Camelot Fabrics, our trips to International Quilt Market and Nellie's job at AQS. Afterwards we played a game of "Let's Make a Deal" where we picked people out of the audience to get prizes of books & patterns and a few "booby" prizes such as a can of sardines, a can of beans and a set of chopsticks. It was a lot of fun! Thanks TIQG!!!

The heat is back on - YEAH!!

So, when we bought our 110 year old farmhouse 10 years ago, we got a very old furnace as part of the deal. Ever since then, we have thought about replacing the furnace, but as the saying goes "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". We had lots of other more pressing home improvements that we could spend our money on, so we left well enough alone, and we did just fine until last Thursday. All of a sudden, we could smell a faint oil smell every time the furnace turned on - an inspection revealed the nasty truth - a crack in the combustion chamber and for safety's sake the furnace had to be turned off. And it's FEBRUARY - in ONTARIO!!!! Anyway, we made due, with lots of firewood, fairly mild temperatures (just around freezing) and LOTS of quilts. Needless to say, we were very happy to see the TRS Heating and Cooling van turn into out driveway this morning. Now, life is back to normal, but I think my family has a new appreciation for my obsession with quilting!

Happy "Family Day"

Well, today was our very first "Family Day" here in Ontario, and to celebrate here at the Baker household, we slept in, had pancakes for breakfast, had a snowball fight outside, watched a movie, and generally bummed around the house - it was GREAT! I also did a little bit of work (Aidan helped me) and finished off four new patterns! There are three new punchneedle patterns and a pieced lap Quilt called "Aidan's Garden".



























The one punchneedle pattern is called "Allie's Basket" and we thought it was quite funny that I took pictures of all of the other pillows with no problems, but as soon as I put up this one, Allie our cat, decided to get in on the act! These new patterns are going out to distributors this week, and will be available on the website soon!

Yet another snow day!

Ok - I've had it with the snow!!! Last Wednesday the school buses were cancelled due to ice rain, then Friday the boys had a PA day on which it snowed ALL day, accumulating over 12 inches. Today, the buses were cancelled AGAIN and we got another foot of snow. In between all these snowstorms we get warm weather, so we go out and shovel and pay $25 for the driveway to be plowed, then the next day it all melts and floods the basement. I just can't wait to go on our family vacation to Florida!

My quilt is home

Yesterday, I crossed the border into Ogdensburg, NY, to send a parcel to one of our distributors, hoping that my "Heart to Heart" quilt would be at the post office waiting for me - and it was! It has been gone since last April when I sent it to Quilter's World magazine. It's picture, and the pattern for it appeared in the February issue of Quilter's World. They also have a free desktop background download on their website that features my quilt.

It's always so fun to see one of my patterns in a magazine, but waiting for the magazine to arrive is excruciating!!!! My sons always get a kick out of seeing my name in print - they were very excited last fall to see their pictures in one of Jean's memory quilts that was featured in Quilt it for Keepsakes magazine.