Thanksgiving

Posted on October 8, 2012 by Norma Hanson

Today is Thanksgiving Day in Canada. We had our turkey dinner last night. I like to have our turkey on the Sunday of Thanksgiving Weekend so that the kids do not have to worry about fighting traffic when they go to head home at the end of the evening. Also, it is nice to have the holiday Monday to relax after the preparation of that big meal the day before.

We have had exceptionally good weather for quite some time. Chilliwack has recorded the driest August in 82 years and the driest September in more than 133 years since the start of weather records in 1879. In September we had just 6.6 mm of rain which all fell overnight on September 10 and 11. The 30 year average for rainfall for August is 64.8 mm and for September is 112.7 mm. The last day of significant rainfall for us was July 23. Further temperature records that were broken were 31.8 degrees on September 8 and 30.5 degrees on September 17.

Because of the fantastic weather, we were able to enjoy our Thanksgiving dinner outside. This will likely be our last picnic in the backyard for the season.

The weather forecast is supposed to continue through the week with a change in the wind for next weekend. We have enjoyed this unusual run of dry weather.

Yesterday, while waiting for the turkey to cook, I put the last of the stitches in the binding of my fall rail fence quilt. This quilt finished at 68″ x 86″.

Happy Thanksgiving fellow Canadians!

Fall Rail Fence – Finished Flimsy

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Norma Hanson

This quilt was inspired by a quilt in the January 1999 issue of Traditional Quilter called, Christmas Village. I started making my quilt just after the magazine was issued so I can easily date this UFO!

The quilt in the magazine had the same 3″ rail fence blocks as the center of my quilt. The differences in the two quilts are in the border treatments. Christmas Village had a border comprised of paper-pieced house and tree blocks that were supposed to look like streets in a village. By the time I had the center of this quilt put together I was starting to second guess whether or not I wanted to paper piece the village blocks for my quilt. I decided that a quilt top that has aged on the shelf for 13 years needs to be finished–paper pieced border or not! I added a simple gold inner border and a wide sunflower outer border to finish off my version.

This quilt is now 69.5″ x 87″ and was loaded on the long arm Sunday night. I made a pass Sunday night and will take a pass now and then as I have time. Before I know it, this one will be quilted and ready for binding.

Machine Quilting

Posted on March 10, 2007 by Norma Hanson

Last Saturday at our guild workshop, I offered to help Kathy with her machine quilting. I brought along some of my smaller quilts to demonstrate that there is a lot you can do to machine quilt your quilts with your domestic sewing machine (DSM) and your walking foot.

Kathy commented that she should be writing down the ideas. No need to make notes, these pictures are posted for you, Kathy.

This first quilt is a rail fence miniature. As long as the curves or arcs are gentle, they can be accomplished quite nicely with a walking foot and there is no need to drop the feed dogs and wrestle with controlling the stitch length and moving the quilt at a steady speed while stitching in free motion.

This quilt was marked with a blue marking pen using the edge of a glass to make the arcs across two strips.

This picture shows the closeup of the stitching on the blocks.

This is the back of the same quilt. The scallop design on the border was accomplished with a stencil. Again the curve is gentle and easily accomplished with the walking foot.

The secondary design was not intentional and has the appearance of the apple core block.

The alternate squares in this miniature nine patch were stitched to look like the nine patch blocks–simple straight lines.

I love it when a secondary design that wasn’t part of the original quilt plan emerges in my quilts. When I finished this log cabin quilt and showed it to my husband he declared that he could find the surprise in my quilt–the birds. This quilt was a simple two colour log cabin and there was no intention on my part to arrange the blocks to form four birds in the four corners of the quilt. Further to that, without realizing it, my quilting accentuated the bird image.