Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas To All!

Thank you for joining us on our journey this year. Wishing you a very merry Christmas. Best wishes for 2018. Hope you continue to hang around in 2018.

Tires 2017

By the time you read this Tuesday morning I'll be admiring this too cool, decorated Fountain Tire Christmas tree again. No, I'm not in Winnipeg (get it the goin' to Winnipeg angel guy), I'm in Okotoks, Alberta and yes there is snow on the ground. Yesterday during the oil change I had them check an oil leak that I've been watching for a few months. Every time I traveled on rough terrain, no I'm not a t ving in my car even though it felt like it, there was an oil leak under my car in the garage. Well, it ended up being a rear seal. So here we are waiting while my baby gets a new rear seal. (had to enlarge the picture so you could see the angel, ornaments and lights)

The week was fabulous. I got to sew and watch all the W network Christmas movies. Woohoo! There was this piece of Christmas fabric that just didn't want to spend time with anyone else plus I had been admiring it for awhile but didn't know what to do with it. This time I laid it all out on the cutting table. Whoa, there are 8 repeats. Yes, enough to make a One Block Wonder.

And the best of all last week, this calendar was full of all the meetings, appointments, get togethers, holidays and life that went on in 2017. It was such an exhilarating relief, a weight reducing, an actual Thank Goodness this year is done feeling of wiping the board clean. A beginning of a new year feeling. Then oops better add Christmas, oh, and oops, add back the oil change and the massage and the group dinner. Oh, and better add the new rear seal appointment. But doesn't it still look great with the rest all erased? Oh yes it does.

Wishing all of you a very Merry Christmas!

Brown Christmas & Tula Pink

While eastern Canada looks like winter is settling in, here in Calgary it looks like we may have a brown Christmas. Now before you groan or become jealous or go on about climate change, in my 60+ years I have seen a few brown Christmases only to have a major blizzard on New Year's Eve and then turn very cold and snow like the dickens until June 1.

This year as my deck sits in limbo until the spring, we've put the bird feeder up on the makeshift railings. This picture shows how much of the bird seed the birds pick out and spit on the ground. Now I've figured out that this is so that their fellow bird friends can also eat at the same time and then they can all fly away home in a group. Unfortunately the rabbits are not getting as much seed as they usually would.

We have a different surprise for you this week. I'm slowly becoming a Tula Pink fan, i.e. I'm not in love completely with all her fabrics in her lines of fabric, but I love her new rotary cutter and black mat. And, we have some in stock for you. Well ok, we purchased for me but I'm willing to provide some of her new hardware to you. Check out our notions page.

As for the fabric specials we added a couple more pieces that had been hiding in the back room to the $5.00/m section. I must have had great plans for them but now I don't remember.

Enjoy!

More Geese - Specials

Oh Oh! Something is going on. Is it the Super Moon? 
This week flying geese are on the paper piecing winds. My guild is challenging us to create a 4"x6" piece of our choice out of complementary colours. Mine is purple and orange. 
The first one: easy to make the geese in a curve and oh, I'll just piece the top and bottom curves. As an old seamstress, nothing to it. Right? Well, the top piece went well but the bottom piece was not so much. The curve was so tight it had to be hand stitched then sewn together on the machine. Let's put it this way a lot of steam and pressing the heck out of it does wonders.

Ok, so let's try to paper piece the whole thing. Oops, didn't plan the lines very well and ended up splitting it into half so it would work. Also, way to many smaller pieces so I added a big chunk in the lower right and a big chunk in the upper part of the smaller left piece.

Let's try this again, and add larger pieces instead of all these small ones. Feeling a little cocky now. I've made so many of these now they can be made with my eyes closed. NOT!

Mmmm they don't seem to go together when one side is pieced on the wrong side of the paper and the other side is pieced on the right side of the paper.

Ah this is better. Because both the project and the pieces are so little I used the Add an Eighth ruler instead of Add a Quarter ruler. 

Voila, it looks awesome.

If you want to try these flying geese here is the 4"x6" flying geese pattern. Note the first goose is not a whole one as the part of it goes into the 1/4" seam allowance.

Enjoy!
p.s. In 3 weeks it'll be Boxing Day.

p.p.s. We are clearing fabric see specials for $5/m