So long 2016 and Hello Holidays!

I'm not one for seeing the negative in a year that's nearly done.  A year is a year and like the weather even in rainy Ireland there are more sunny days than rainy ones.  I must admit though that 2016 has been a challenging year in lots of ways.  I for one am glad to see it come to a close and am thoroughly enjoying the holiday spirit in this run up to Christmas!

New decorations this year and I love the Labrador card!

Apart from all the craziness in the world, I found this year to be challenging and frustrating as I struggled to get all the things I wanted to do completed and the creative sense of achievement in getting things done seemed to elude me for a good part of the year!

the last of the Bee Blocks for Stash Bee Hive #4

We had a very late holiday in October and at the end of it I picked up a head cold that lead to a chest infection that lead to bad reaction to antibiotics and meant I was out of action for the last month from anything but work and staying indoors.  I haven't quite gone into hibernation but I have been nesting!

Making a family tree in the hall, new knobs for the dresser and finally a tidy wardrobe (need one more hanger!)

I re-read the Marie Kondo book on tidying and though I haven't quite gone all Zen and thanked my possessions for their service or quizzed them as to the level of joy they bring me, (ok there may have been the green cargo pants I've had for 10 years that finally ripped beyond repair and I might have thanked that one!), I did take 2 things to heart from the book.  1. try to keep like items in one place only and not all over the house and 2. the frustration I am feeling is not down to others to pick up after themselves but for me to get my bit in order and others will follow.

What's going on here then, changing my garden?                     Tea-break?                Ta-dah! A path to my outside house!

I'm not sure that is exactly the case, as my side of the bedroom is looking ok, but Gordon's is like a tornado passed through but at least there has been some progress!  The dogs had run a path through the grass so I thought stepping stones would be a good idea so we wouldn't get all muddy when we have to clean up outside.  They magically got put into position with me only asking once!

Maggie is way bigger than Charly now, so Charly gains height by using the sofa!  Their play always looks so rough!

Spending a lot of time inside has had me casting my eye over the entire house and making small changes and planning bigger ones to nearly every room!  I moved in the dresser from my sewing area and it fits better in the living room and means I get more places to put Christmas stuff including the wreath I made for our branch demos in November!

Those two are mad little monsters!                                                     Who us?

Wilbs has had more seizures, 4 in 24hrs.  We were supposed to celebrate my friends birthday by all going out to dinner but Gordon kindly stayed home after seizure #2 in case there would be a third.  There was.  20mins after I came home from a very nice meal!  Poor Gordon missed out but we weren't leaving the old dog behind alone.  He has gotten massively clingy and talks to us all day long now in whines and chirps.  We have a seizure diary for him up on the fridge and as long as we are consistent with his meds, we seem to be able to get it to 1 cluster a month.

I have to agree with Wilbur, Maggie - 1 Christmas cushion -0  Still I rescued the tree from it so not all bad! 

Like the weather, more sunshine than you think, I did get quite a bit done in the end.  Got my Christmas one hour basket finished (another branch demo) and made progress on the Modern Irish Bee Round Robins.  2 done, 1 more to go!  I'm hoping to get there by the end of the year on the last one!

The last swap of the year was a covered notebook swap with the Modern Irish Quilters.

In September I had signed up for a paper piecing miniatures class with Gwen Cottis though our branch of the Irish Patchwork Society.  I had some cute 2 1/2" squares completed and decided they needed to be a Spring (February's valentine heart), Summer (Irish one with lots of rain in July), Autumn and Winter notebook cover. I used ribbon from a bundle of fabric bought from the Fat Quarter Shop, a Daler Rowney sketchbook and some letter fabric I bought on Instagram from Betsy Grey Crafts last year.  The tutorial we all used for the swap was Cindy's really easy to follow step by step on her blog Fluffy Sheep Quilting here.

Just yesterday I received a really lovely spring themed flower notebook and shabby chic calendar from Kristina - thank you so much!

Modern Quilters Ireland Christmas swap!

So frustrations aside, it's been a lovely finish to 2016.  Sunny side out.  Always!  So for 2017, I guess to get that feeling of a job well done I need to bust those UFO's and get back to what I enjoy most.  For me, that's exploring colour and shape in my own design ideas, testing them out in a quilt and hopefully writing more patterns - I'd like to get back to more of that next year.  It would be nice to get another magazine publication under my belt and finally make that quilt for our own bed!  Small goals but very achievable.  I have 2 teaching opportunities in March and April and am very excited about them.   And save for a proper summer holiday next year - that would be nice!

Crib set mum bought for me in the Vatican shop on a trip to Rome, Nativity scene from Dresden Christmas market (my favourite decoration in the whole house!

So that's it from me for 2016.  Happy Christmas everybody and here's to a productive, happy and fun filled 2017.

IPS Gallery at the Knitting and Stitching Show 2016

So the Christmas demos in the local fabric shop went well (post here) and since all that crazy busy-ness right up to last Saturday, I took my foot off the brake this week and got on with celebrating my birthday and getting the boring housework done! As such, the WIP's are still at the same stage, so I thought I'd share with you, photos from the Knitting and Stitching show in Dublin last month. I had the honour of curating the Modern Gallery of the Irish Patchwork Society's display. My booth was 3 walls of 3 to 3.5m wide so I had to seek 5-6 quilts to fill the space.

Not all the quilts submitted to me for consideration, were what I would call modern in the sense of the MQG definition, but they had modern elements.  In the end, it was choosing quilts big enough for the space and what would hang well together.  It was hard saying no but really lovely saying yes and I have to give a big thanks to Paula Rafferty for the hanging which made the booth look so well!

The modern gallery was 1 of 6 in the display with other categories being Young Quilters (18 and less), Traditional, Art, Bags, and a Christmas display by the South Eastern branch.  I was delighted to see a Rainbow Rose in the submissions and this lovely version is by Imelda O'Grady from Limerick!

Aine Lecky made this lovely modern quilt and had it long arm quilted by the Quilt Shop Tuam. 

The centre piece of the booth was The Aviatrix Medallion made by Erin Case.  The pattern is by Elizabeth Hartman and it is just a beautiful celebration of colour! 

A passerby to the booth commented that you would need sunglasses for our section and his companion said "yes, isn't it wonderful".  Not sure that was what he meant, but it put a big smile on my face!  This gorgeous scrappy colour quilt was made by Sharon Hughes.

Next to Sharon's was Tomomi McElwee's colour play, with Red and White the colours of the Japanese flag, and my quilt idol (see earlier blog post here!)  Ethelda Ellis' gorgeous sunset. 

As always I am in awe of Tomomi's quilting! 

This was the young quilters gallery...

and the bags...

and an early Christmas!

I don't have too many photos of the traditional quilts but I was delighted to see Paula Rafferty's Share Jane.  Over 100 quilters made blocks for this and 2 other colour versions for the Dear Jane anniversary exhibitions this year.  I made 2 of the white blocks in this version based on the colours of the Irish Flag.

One of my favourite pieces was Valerie Mulally's quilt from a block of the month.

I think my favourite block in this quilt is the rabbit - can you spot him?

Of all the quilts in the show though, this was the one that made me smile!  A Zebra made by Elizabeth Brennan for the Art Quilts section.  I would have had this in modern in a heartbeat!

That's the lovely thing about quilting - lots of genres, crossover of styles and opportunities to play!  It was brilliant to be a part of the exhibition and thank you to all the quilt makers who contributed and made our jobs curating such a success.

Wandering Camera

We are just back from our holidays on the west coast of Clare with the dogs so I though I'd pull together some photos of the pups for this months wandering camera link up with Soma @ Whims and Fancies!  I'll have a sewing update on Friday as it wasn't all play and I did get some quilt tops finished and made massive headway on the round robin quilt to share with you then!  For now over to the furballs:

There was lots of this:

Maggie is now bigger than Charly and at 6 months old is all paws!  Wilbur on the other hand at 10 1/2 is on 5 tablets a day and slowing down massively these days.  I've been calling him Snuffalufagus as slow and steady seems to be the way of it these days!  Poor mite had an arthritis flare up so short walks on the beach is all he could manage while the other two bounced around him!

You can tell when he is not happy as his normally relaxed droopy face gets all scrunchy and wrinkled with the effort of walking.   Feels like this could be the last year we walk him on Doonbeg beach.  So while Wilbur snoozed in the back of the car, the puppy mania continued:

Then Maggie got tired!

But not Charly!  Who's eleven?  Not me!  I'm still a puppy!

In the middle of the break we came home for a few days as Maggie had her neutering operation and had to wear the cone of shame!  She managed amazingly well with it, better than any of our other dogs.  Patch used to get stuck in a corner and just stay there forgetting he could walk backwards!  Maggie had fun running after Charly scooping her up in it and clever dog managed to figure out the cone covered the food bowl so Wilbur couldn't get at it!

Then the humans had a holiday!  My cousin and her husband came to visit from Chicago and we wandered around the loop head peninsula admiring the scenery of the Wild Atlantic Way and finding some really good pubs open for food despite it being October and the end of the tourist season!

Some of my favourite photos - Queen Charly who clearly owns the whole beach!

The two pals!

And the senior citizen having a wander!

Linking up to

Mod Bear Paw

I seem to have a love/hate relationship with the Bear Paw block. I've never been really drawn to it as a traditional block on its own, preferring the round surround blocks like the Dutch Rose (aka Swoon) and the star blocks like the Ohio Star (probably my favourite traditional block ever!)

When preparing for the class I gave in Cork this summer on Traditional Blocks Made Modern I deliberately chose it as a challenge to play with and see what happened and the result was Big Bear, Little Bear!

So colour me surprised when I saw Lorna's version of a quilt with the Bear Paw Block and I instantly loved it!  Lorna has a real talent for making fun and cute animal blocks and very generously gives the instructions away for free on Quilt-A-Longs.  I have to admit Dog Gone Cute is still my favourite but there is something about the bear climbing in and out of the grid below that appeals to me!

What doesn't appeal to me though is the 20+ Bear Paw blocks I'd have to make.  It took me 2 years to finish up Swoon and it has only 9 blocks! Knowing me and my temperament, I decided to have a good look at Lorna's design and see what bits about it really resonated with me.

The bear for starters!  So I took out all the blocks not touching the bear and tried to fill in the space with a woodland print by Westfalenstoffe, I previously bought from LoveFabric.ie.  In the larger bed quilt, Lorna's use of  the paw print border is really clever and fun! So I added it in the middle to break the fabric join up a bit.  Looking back on Lorna's bigger quilt, I really like how she frames the bear with the borders and thought to be truer to her design to add some of that back in so came up with these in the end!

Feeling happy with this I bounced the idea off of Gordon:
"Yeah it's nice but it clashes a bit!"
"What do you mean clashes?"
"The colours, the blue and the brown."
"But that's a classic colour combination."
"No it's not."
"Yes it is!"
"On what planet?"
"This one!  Blue sea, brown sand."
"I prefer the pink, it goes better."
"Pink? "

So this is as far as I've gotten, I'm not sure I want to make a pink bear quilt! Still I really like that fabric which is Enchanted Forest by Natrual Wonder also at LoveFabric.ie

I'm planning on this going on the single bed in the boxroom and am still gravitating towards the blue and brown!  The key to making this work for me will be the fabric above the bear.  I think the Westfallenstoffe might be too small a scale so I'm hunting for a medium to large scale woodland scene in blue (or pink!) that might work with a brown bear! If you guys comes across anything that might work I'd be very grateful!

Lorna kindly gives lots of colour options on her blog post so I put in blue and black just to see.  I love the impact of the black but I find him kind of scary!  So I'm holding out for a brown bear still. A grizzly bear, I think!  What do you think?  Clasic or clashing colour combo?

So this will be QAL number 3 on the go at the same time.  I just can't resist.  What about you guys - are you tempted?

Pets on Quilts

It's Pets on Quilts time again! 

Last year we struggled to get Wilbur onto a quilt and managed to get just his tail on - this year we couldn't get him off it!

Even with our new puppy Maggie and Charly playing like mad all around him, he had a good roll around in my layers of charm quilt from last years blog hop.  Barking his head off, he was happy to tell the other two this ones not for sharing!  I think I'm going to have to let him keep this one and put it on his spot on the sofa!

Maggie snuck up on him a few times - puppies are like that, they ignore you and keep trying until they get tired!

Or meet a face like this!

This was as far as she got!  It's funny how she plays with Charly but snuggles up to Wilbur.  He's getting used to her and they now sleep in the big bucket together while Charly sleeps in her basket.

Even with a new puppy in the house Wilbur always manages to find a way to be the centre of attention!  In our previous entries he has stolen the show with action shots and photo bombing Charly.  This time around though after all the initial mayhem, we tried to get a proper portrait.  So this is our entry to Pets on Quilts, a Wilbur year... again!

After the year he's had with all the tests and seizures it feels right to give him his day in the sun.  He has been brilliant and thankfully the latest dose of meds seems to be working.  Hopefully with a little bit of puppy training (we started puppy classes with Maggie last Saturday!) I am aiming for a family portrait of sorts.  If I can manage to have all three sit still on a quilt with mum and G that would be fantastic - aim high I say!

Please pop on over to Pets on Quilts and say hi to all the furballs.  Wilbur would very much appreciate a vote if you were so inclined!  There are lots of prizes to be won so don't miss it!