The Start of Mountain Meadows

Hmmm.... I'm not sure about these.

I had a chance to play with my green scraps recently and this is where I started. I did sort the scraps by value/colour to begin with. This is the first go around, with predominantly light greens. My overall concept is to have light and dark areas, to mimic the race of light across the mountain meadow. I don't want each area to be a solid block though, that's why there are some dark bits mixed in. The dark blocks will be the opposite.

This is also the beginning of adding in the idea of flowers in the meadow. In a real meadow the flowers are small and scattered across the hill, that's why there aren't many here. I've got some pink, yellow, orange, and white scraps set aside to make more flowers.

However, I'm not sure about these. Maybe the green chunks are too big? Maybe it is too random? Should I stop being so literal with my interpretation and make these blocks instead of one giant slab quilt? What I do know is that I need to play a little bit more before I make any more judgements.

Maple Leaves

There have been many bursts of patriotism in my life over the years:
- Silken Laumenn winning a silver medal at the 1992 Olympics after a brutal accident
- When our former Prime Minister Jean Chretien attacked a would be burgler with a soapstone sculpture
- Watching any Olympic hockey, but especially Crosby's goal in 2010
- The moment I see the mountains as I round the corner on the road to Banff, the splash of seals from the bow of my boat on the Halifax Arm, or the endless gold and blue of a Prairie sky
- Every time the gay marriage and abortion debates are raised in other countries I am thankful for our protection of freedoms
 - And when I saw Amy's Union Jack quilt

Yes, I'm serious about that last one. I have no special affinity to the UK, unless you count Earl Grey tea and Masterpiece Classic series. But Amy's quilt made me think about whether a Maple Leaf quilt could be made just as cool. She had confidence in me to do it and this weekend I finally tried.

I wanted to adapt our national flag into quilt form. The red portions are all pieced slabs - a technique we describe in Sunday Morning Quilts. The proportions are that of the real flag. And I eyeballed the actual leaf based on the original. Using fusible I cut the leaf out from a slab then fused it to a white background.

There are more blocks to be made, possibly in other colours. Let's see where this goes! Cool? Not sure about that, but I do think it is pretty neat.

Green Scraps

Much to my dismay, I'm still not getting much time to quilt. I would love to sit at the dining room table and make a giant mess with this gorgeous fabric. Alas, the mess being made in my house is from the painters and tilers working away in the basement. This, of course, is a very good thing. But between that and this, all I can manage on my mountain meadow quilt is a little organization by value.

Dream Big

I made a quilt. It's taken me almost a year. It was very intense to make. Both in terms of the effort in the quilting and the emotions it brought up. It's finally been delivered to the recipients.

Last August Jennie's husband died quite suddenly. He was helping his daughter on her bike on the streets of Brooklyn when he collapsed. Jennie was only someone I knew through her blog, tweets, and the occasional email. But I, like many others, needed to rally around her in a mass of support for this unexpected loss of the love of her life. We made pie, we sent notes, we read her posts about the grief. And I, well I did what I do, I sewed.

I think it was the fact that Jennie could have been me. Two young girls, a vibrant writing career, and a relationship with a great husband. Her story was tragic and life-altering and it could just as easily have happened to me. I've never met Jennie and so embarking on a queen sized quilt seemed overly generous to people I know. But it felt like the right thing to do - for me, yes, but for Jennie and her girls.

Grief can be all consuming and very lonely. It matters to know that people are thinking about you. And even though it wasn't my intention to take so long to finish, it is nice to have these gestures after the fact, when the initial support has gone away. I hope to meet Jennie one day, give her a hug, and watch our girls feel each other out then walk in front of us, hand in hand in their coordinating Saltwater Sandals. For now, I can only encourage her on her journey to Dream Big.

Dream Big

Approximately 80'' by 90"

Scrappy letters in low-volume fabrics, pieced then fused

Machine quilted at home with Aurifil 50wt

Fabric contributed by Jen Yu