Getting ready for the Studio Tour

Once again, this November, I will be participating in the "A Country Home Christmas Artist's Studio Tour". Nellie and I are both going to be involved and we are going to be located on the Thousadn Islands Parkway in our friend, Linda Scallion's, "Piggery" - which is, despite it's name, a quaint little building that looks just wonderful decorated for Christmas. Once again I will have my wall hangings and punchneedle pieces for sale, but I wanted to offer some smaller items too. One the weekend I had a brain wave - I have a thousand pictures of my quilts that I used to use on the cover of my patterns, but now that I use digital image I have no use for these pictures! Instead of throwing them out I decided to make gift tags. have a look at some of the ones I made on the weekend.

Where did September go????

Every August I look forward to September, to getting back into a "normal" routine, but then September comes and I remember that it is one of the busiest, craziest months of the year!! With the kids going back to school, joining the swimming club and heading back to cubs, Mike going back to both of his jobs (supply teaching and working at the Heart and Stroke Foundation), me working extra because other pharmacists were on holidays, Aidan having dental surgery, us closing the pool and doing other outside work to get ready for the fall, the month has just flown by. Lat Thursday I FINALLY had a day off where I didn't have to go anywhere or do ANYTHING!!! So I sewed - all day!! It was great and I got lots accomplished. I quilted four wall hangings that I had appliqued over the summer and then over the weekend I sewed on the bindings. When I have finished hand sewing the bindings I will post pictures - they are really cute if I do say so myself!
Well, maybe October will be more "normal".

Brockville Public Library Display

For the month of August, Nellie and I were the featured artists in the Brockville Public Library here in Brockville. They have a large display area which is such a great space for showcasing local artists. We felt very honoured to be able to show some of our quilts and we were really pleased with the positive comments that we received!

Meeting Diana Gabaldon

My friend Beth introduced me to the "Outlander" series of books in January and ever since then I have been loving them. I'm not a very fast reader, so I am now just on book #5, but I am really enjoying Claire and Jamie's adventures! My husband, Mike, announced a few weeks ago that he would like to go to the Highland Games in Fergus, Ontario. I looked on their website to see what would be there and I couldn't believe it when I saw that Diana Gabaldon, the author of "Outlander", was the guest of honour! I was sold - and off he headed to Fergus. She gave a couple talks about her writing process (so interesting) and signed copies of her books - what a fascinating person!!!

Carson - Water Baby

My son Carson must be part fish!! usually he spends every day of the summer in the pool. This summer, because of the poor weather, we didn't get to use our pool as much as we would have liked - but when it was warm enough, he was swimming!! I complained to my Mom one day about how hard it was to get him out of the pool. she just smiled at me and said "Hmm, it reminds me of a little girl I used to know who would never get out of the pool." - hmmm, I wonder who she means ;).

Willow and Pugsley

One day we were all out on the back deck and Pugsley was up on one of the chairs, sleeping. Willow decided that she wanted to be up there too, so she wiggled her way up, somehow without waking Pugsley, and snuggled in. It was too cute to not photograph!

Scary Night II

The second line of Halloween fabric that we get to design with is the "Scary Night II" line by Laurie Godin. I think we are going to design a table topper with it! The panel is really nice and would make a great wall hanging. Here are a few of the fabrics in the line:

Costume Club

Now that we are almost done our three big quilts for Northcott, a package arrived in the mail with two more fabric lines from Northcott. These are both Halloween fabrics and they are REALLY cute!! Here are some samples from the first line - "Costume Club".

Going for Gold

The Northcott Fabric arrived last week while I was away at our friends' cottage. Nellie started to work on the quilt right away. We actually have to make THREE copies of the quilt - Northcott is going to send them out to different quilt shops in trunk shows. So, when I got home from the cottage, Nellie had 1/3 of the fabric ready for me to start quilt #2. By Saturday I had the quilt top done, by Sunday afternoon it was quilted. Now I am about to start quilting #3, which was pieced by my mom, Judy. Here is the quilt - it is called "Going for Gold". The pattern is done and will soon be available on our website: http://www.uppercanadaquiltsworks.com/ or at a quilt shop near you!