Louisa Remembers Pender

Our magic week on the island is already "a long time ago", but didn't we have fun!

Just a note:  after we got home I took advantage of the late summer garden and did a bit of flower pounding.  (Found it was quite a bit easier when I had some actual flowers!)

I haven't decided what to do with this piece yet.

The tin works just fine, but it ain't very pretty!

I had a hard time deciding on a project for our challenge.  Just couldn't come up with a specific purpose bag no matter how hard I tried.  Then one day I realized that I was using a naked tomato tin as a tool caddy in the sewing room.  Surely a cover for that would fit the criteria!





I found a piece of unbleached cotton in the right size and used it as a base.  Then I took pieces of the fabrics that we shared with each other and put a fusible web on the back (I used Steam A Seam).   I cut the fabrics into strips -- one vertically, the other horizontally -- and wove them together.  The finished weaving was fused onto the piece of muslin.

The colours of this are a bit muted, but they did remind me of a certain Pender Island dessert.....

The weaving worked quite well, so I repeated the process with the fabric Kathy sent and a creamy batik I found in my cupboard.  I liked that weaving even better than the first one, so I continued the project using that one.

I added trim using Ruth's fabric and bound the top and bottom edge.  Then I sewed on Lesley's buttons.  I wanted to add more buttons, so I dug into my button collection -- would you believe I could find only one clear button that would match?   The sleeve has a loose facing on the inside at the top -- that's to hide the inevitable sharp edge that my can opener always leaves.

I'm not sure why I sewed the buttons on right where the seam falls!

Isn't that a great improvement!  I was so pleased with my pretty tin that I used the rest of that woven piece to make a coordinating thread catcher.  This one has a closed bottom, so I guess it counts as a real bag!

The brown cuff on this one used the other piece of fabric, so between the two containers I've used all the shared bits.  

Now my sewing room is better organized and more attractive.  And every time I use my tools I remember our holiday.

Louisa's quilt block

Here is a sneak peek at my quilt block that will appear in Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks magazine.    (I didn't post the picture on Facebook because I don't think I'm supposed to "publish" it before the magazine comes out next week.)

Here is "Wildflower".

There are 100 different quilt blocks in the magazine.  And this is issue #13 -- so that's a lot of quilt blocks that have been published this way.

If you happen to come across this on the newsstand -- I'd like you to pick up a copy, open it to page 55, then make some appropriate exclamations.  (You don't need to buy it, unless you really NEED 100 quilt blocks in your library!)

I'm also making a quilt using this block.  The quilt will be in a different magazine, coming out in August.  (Quilts from Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks).  The fabric for the quilt is being supplied by a fabric company -- this is rather fun, except that they still have not sent the fabric I need for the border of the quilt, and I have a deadline to have the quilt completed, quilted, bound, and delivered to Colorado before the end of May.   I have been checking my mailbox daily looking for that last piece of fabric.  When it wasn't here today I sent off a note to the magazine editor who has promised to "look into it".