A New Blog ... Just About Quilting

A new year. A new me. A new blog ... peace.love.quilt.

It only seems fitting. I have days when I don't even think about cancer. It's wonderful! So I want to stop talking about it and spend more time making things.

I'll still update this blog from time to time but only about my health and recovery or ... please, NOOOOOO ... if cancer recurs. Since I can't know if that will happen and since I finally have days when I don't think about it, I think I can successfully LIVE like someone who is cancer free. I don't have cancer today!

My new blog ... peace.love.quilt  ... will be just about quilting and it will be a "slow blog". I don't feel compelled to blog all the time or even regularly. I'll just blog when I have something to show or talk about as it relates to quilting. I've designed it so that photos will display larger. I have wanted to redesign this blog for a long time but was always afraid that I'd mess something up and lose all or part of it and make a huge amount of work for myself in fixing things. So this is my chance to redesign.

So, if you're interested in what I'm up to in my dining room with my sewing machine and fabric stash, please follow along at peace.love.quilt .

I made a new table runner this weekend and there are photos of it over there. Check it out!

Seven Wonders Table Runner for Matt

This is a belated Christmas gift for Matt, Hannah's boyfriend. Prepare for a lot of photos. If you want to see close-ups, just click on a photo.

I made this yesterday … my first ever table runner. All in one day! I'm sure someone else would have whipped this up in a few hours but it took me a lot longer than that. Pretty much all day. I hand sewed the binding at night. The binding was a one-movie-job.

Matt has been making some beautiful tables out of worn barn board and metal and I wanted to make something that would look good against old wood.

I think these fabrics … Seven Wonders by David Butler (aka Parson Gray) … will look nice with worn wood. Remember the quilt I made for Uncle Reg? Well, the fabrics are by the same designer. David Butler is married to Amy Butler, famous for her fabric designs, patterns, etc. and he's also the lead vocalist with the rock band, the Black Owls … just so you know. Check them out. Follow him and/or his band on Facebook. I really like his fabric designs. Earthy. Manly.

I didn't use a pattern. I just chose three fabrics for the front and cut them in sizes that best worked with the repeat in the fabric design, resulting in a 12 inch wide runner. You can see that there are basically 4 blocks sewn together.  I was careful to cut the wavy and rainy fabrics in the same direction. The other fabric I wanted to show in different orientations because it gives a different effect depending on which way it lays.

For the back I was going to use a single fabric but because the runner is a bit longer than the width of fabric that I have, I chose a fabric to add to each end. The blue fabric is "wind" and the pieces on either end are "rain". The binding is the wavy fabric from the front.

Today Kevin and I were out for a bit so we looked for some places to take photos - a park, back alley fences, snow.

Seven Wonders in the Snow.

The sun finally emerged only for a little while when we got back home so I quickly pinned the runner to a neighbour's fence in our back alley and took a few sunny photos.

And some close-ups. 

I'll mail this to Matt this week.  He doesn't read my blog so no worries about him seeing it.  If you know Matt, don't tell him.

I just LOVE these fabrics.