Holiday Sewing

Hello everyone!

Just five more days before the Durham Region Craft Show. It is being held at the Durham College gym, 2000 Simcoe St. N. in Oshawa, on Friday October 28th-Sunday October 30th. All of my items are packed and ready to go! I hope it will be an exciting weekend.

It is incredible how quickly the fall is passing! With Halloween coming next week, I'm so excited for the winter season to arrive. There are so many beautiful Christmas prints and patterns that I am hoping to create this winter! I'm not sure if I will have time until my winter break from school, but it is nice to dream about! There's two really cute Christmas wall hangings featured in the latest issue of Quiltmaker, they are small and quick to do and would make terrific gifts!

My students are working on holiday napkins, Christmas stockings, place mats and pillowcases, as they are all easy and also make perfect gifts for family and friends.

Today my Mom told me I needed to organize my fabric better and get rid of some of my sewing machines. I happen to have an extensive collection of older sewing machines, some of which actually work and some that do not, some of them I use and some of them are just so pretty to look at. I feel like a little boy who collects model cars LOL. The most recent one was given to me by a friend of my Father, it's an old Singer (and the body is actually green metal). She told me it needed to go, as we simply do not have the space for it. I told her, I can't sell it, it probably doesn't even work properly! So she said, well if it doesn't work properly, what is the point in keeping it? Needless to say I spent about an hour cleaning it and adjusting the tension until I got it to stitch flawlessly...I am now allowed to keep it LOL.

I love collecting old machines, they look so much more durable and unique than modern sewing machines today that only have plastic bodies. I have a treadle sewing machine that has hand painted flowers along the neck and base, old things are just so beautiful! I can't part with them, they all tell a story.

I'm hoping a few of you can relate to this!

Remember, people will see your quilts long after you are gone...not your housework!

Thanksgiving...

What a beautiful weekend we had! I spent Thanksgiving weekend at my cottage with my family, on Little Lake, in Cramahe Ontario. It was wonderful to sit down, relax, forget about school and enjoy the lovely weather with family and friends.

Now...what am I thankful for? Well, I'm thankful for being blessed with the gift of opportunity.
I'm thankful for the opportunity to be raised in this beautiful country, I'm thankful for the opportunity to make friends, I'm thankful for the opportunity to have an education and so many other things that we take for granted on a daily basis.

And of course I am thankful for thread, fabric and needles! Can you imagine a world without quilts?

I keep my queen-sized quilting frame and machine at my cottage. I purchased it at the end of the summer and when school started I did not have the opportunity to try it. So, I took down a baby panel and practiced on that. I am now thankful for the opportunity to do so.

Now that I am back home I must return to reality and do some school work...Which is painful, as I just received the latest edition of Quiltmaker magazine in the mail and there are some fabulous quilts that I am dying to create. I'll pray for the opportunity of time, there seems to be so little of it these days!

--"Life is a gift, and it offers us the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility to give something back, by becoming something more."

Happy Thanksgiving to all, God bless.