Quilting and other Things

On Saturday we spent the afternoon at the ROM before heading down to Roy Thomson for a TSO concert.  We started off upstairs in the Fashion Gallery to see the BIG display. There were some really interesting pieces there.  This Dior Coat dress took 500 hours and 166.5 meters of fabric.  There were some shoes from the era of foot binding in China, a mens dress trousers from Nigeria.  The photo shoes one half of the trousers.  After exploring the 4th floor, we went down to the second floor and had a good look at the rocks and minerals. Neither of us knows anything about rocks so we had enjoyed looking at the textures, colours and finding samples of Mom's (Beryl) rocks. Rocks come smooth, fuzzy, looking like pipettes, fragmented and lumpy. One looked like a map of England, Scotland and Wales. Another reminded us of a baked potato with Lobster Sauce on top.   I know that many paint colours originate by grinding minerals into t...

I've spent parts of the last two days doing the prep work for blocks F - J for this quilt. I had an appointment yesterday morning so took F with me to work one while I waited. The extra bits on the side will go into place once other pieces are done.   I like freezer paper on top and generally just do needle turn for appliqué but will occasionally do a little more prep work when setting up the pieces. All of the pieces need embroidery added to them. I'll go back and add that later on.

When I was a very little girl, my parents got me skates and took me out skating. Apparently I told Dad that we needed to take those skates back because they didn't know how to stand up. Eventually the skates did learn to stand up -- more or less and so did I. Tonight I went over to the community centre behind the house for the fun skate. It's the first time I've skated in 15ish years I think, The last time I remember skating is when we would go over to city hall at lunch time on Fridays. Tonight I only skated for 20 minutes. My legs were getting very tired and I decided to make it short and not take any chances. The little ones around me were bouncing back up almost as fast as they fell but I'm not short enough to do that any more. Next Friday's fun skate is cancelled at that arena so I'll have to look for an alternative.  I also need to find somewhere to get the skates sharpened. 

Judy Laquidara at Patchworktimes has a project for 2013 that is GETTING IT DONE .  Each month you list 3 or 4 things you want to accomplish for the month that are quilt related.  It isn't necessarily to finish the quilt but could be to move the project along.  I like the idea so here is what I'd like to get done for January. 1.  Figure out what to do for the guild challenge quilt Exotic Adventure and complete the top.  The quilt is due at the March 7th guild meeting. Challenge Fabric 2.  Also related to the guild is to figure out which quilts I want to put in the guild show in April.  Applications are due at the February meeting so I want to finish quilting the Welcome to my Cabin quilt we did as a $10 quilt in 2005.  I made mine Welcome to my Home and changed some of the panels but kept to her outline and sizes. 3.  I'm slowly working my way though Christmas "A-Z".  I've traced the patterns for F through J so I'd like to ge...