Now Broadcasting From A New Location

Hello quilting friends! My cross-Atlantic move is done (my part, anyway, all my fabrics, sewing machine etc. just left Canada... what a long wait that'll be!).

After a bit of a stay at my mom's place, I've now moved into my own apartment in the country side. In 3 days, I start my new job at a publishing house 4 km from here, it's a beautiful bicycle commute through green fields and forests in the distance.

Since I have nothing new to show in recent quilting, I present you instead with what might well be my actual first quilt, if you can call it a quilt (it's missing a crucial quilt feature, namely, the quilting!).

I must have made this blanket at a time when I had heard about the art of patchwork.


My mom had bought a sample patch from an upholstery store (you know all the different swatches). I basically laid those out and sewed them together, put an old towel underneath as 'batting' and used some other denim-like, black material as backing and fold-over border/binding. The thread guaranteed was polyester, and I have no clue what fibres are in the swatches... some cotton, but the rest?

Points are not too bad, though, eh??? I have no idea what type of seam allowance I used. Certainly not 1/4"!

Now, if you've ever sat there and scratched your head about how to do binding and borders, do not despair. Just do something, it'll work, as this blanket proves:


The corners are certainly mitered, but I have absolutely NO clue how I did that... let's call it 'unique', shall we?
Here's the back, and you can see: it's not quilted. I guess I didn't know that part about quilting.

If I'm bored one afternoon at my mom's place, I might tie it. I've never tried that before. You just take wool and poke the needle through and right back up again, then tie the ends, right? Might make it a bit more usable. I'd use grey wool, I think, to make it blend in...

Well, unless I find another old project (I have some photos of recently (i.e. March) finished tops floating around somewhere...) to report on, that's it until my stuff arives (3 weeks or more?). I've heard horror stories of container goods being delayed for months because of customs, but worse, someone mentioned yesterday that "containers often have problems with vermin and bugs... perfect conditions in there!" - except, what do they eat??? My fabrics are all well packed, so I'd say nothing can get in there, but I won't say that because of Murphy's law - my one superstition :)

You guys quilt some quilts in my stead, okay?

Quilt Raffle Winner!!

Today was the big day of the quilt raffle draw! I was set up at the Farmer's Market by 9am, sold another 60 or so tickets before 1pm which brought me to a grand total of $1565 raised, awesome!

My display at the Farmer's Market - I managed to get the same wonderful spot again, right by the entrance!

Good thing I started folding the 900+ tickets early, it took about 2 hrs and a young woman from the cheese booth next to me helped out :) (she also took all the photos that have me in it)

A lot of tickets...

The manager of the market, Roger, agreed to draw the winner at 1pm. Here he is shaking the tickets up.

No peeking while he drew the winner

Here it comes... Roger drawing the winner of the raffle quilt

And the winner is... someone named Angela, who according to my records bought her tickets at the market 3 weeks ago. I can't believe someone I don't know won the quilt, after so many of my tickets were bought by people I know! I can't believe that our former summer student, bought 100$ worth of tickets, didn't win the the quilt!

A shot for the memory book!

Calling the winner with the good news... I got an answering machine!

So hopefully, I can track Angela down soon and get the quilt to her! I feel bad for all the nice people (known and unknown to me) who bought tickets but I'm very happy to send 3x more money than I had hoped to Doctors Without Borders on Monday!

I've updated the Raffle Quilt blog if you want to see the final progress of my fundraising!

I'm not sure what to do with my life now... I have no more tickets to sell, I feel lost. Oh well, as soon as I get home the cardboard boxes will remind me of what to do with my life :)