Ionne MacCauley

My quilt guild had the wonderful opportunity to have fiber artist Ionne MacCauley from Qualicum, B.C. as our guest speaker on Tuesday.  As a member of the program committee I and 3 other members had a lovely time taking Ionne out to dinner before the meeting.   We went to an Italian restaurant, Palliotti's,  and had a great dinner and chat with Ionne.   She is a very nice woman and a super artist.  Her lecture was about colour in quilts and all that goes with it.  Her trunk show was marvolus and we were treated to a look at about 65 of her quilts.  She has a new book out called Color for the Terrified Quilter, so I just had to buy it.  She autographed it for me. I can't wait to make a quilt from her book.
http://www.ionnequilts.com/index.htm
Take a look at her web site and be inspired.

Two Double Nine Patches

The double nine patch is one of the easiest patterns to make but it looks complex depending on the way you arrange the colours.  You start off with your regular nine patch and split it in half diagonally and vertically.  The patch in the middle is going to be the smallest, the ones in the corner will remain intact and ones in the center sides will end up rectangles.  Clear as mud?  There are lots of good  instructions for doing this on the internet.  My purple and red was the very first one I did and I only used 3 large blocks .  I was just trying out the pattern.  The green and red one is a charity quilt and the fabrics were given to me to make the quilt.  I wasn't crazy about the colours but I think it turned out well.  I have made several baby quilts with this pattern, it makes up fast and looks great.

Mike come's home

Michael came all the way from snowy St. Catherans for a 10 day visit.  I didn't realize how much I actually missed him until he got here.  He and his friend Chris stayed until Monday and then stayed in Richmond for 3 days so that Michael could visit friends and his Granney in Vancouver.  Then they went on a speedy road trip to Prince George and back in two days and back to Maple Ridge for a day before going back to Ontario.  It was too short a visit but Chris got to see a lot of scenery so it was nice for him as it was his first trip here since he was a child.                               

New Camera

My old Canon gave up the ghost.  I received it for a Birthday gift from my mom almost 5 years ago and when I took it in to have it fixed the fellow said that it wasn't worth fixing because it was old.  Technology moves too fast these days.  It cost me less to buy a new camera, that is way better than the old one.  My Mom has had her camera for years.  It is a film camera and it is getting harder for her to find places to develope the film.  She refuses to get a new digital camera because it is just too difficult for her to get use to the new technology.  She likes the old way of doing things.  When I show her pictures that I have taken on the computor, she says they are very nice, but she would rather have a copy in her hand.  I think that any of us over the age of 40 have had to get use to a new way of picture storage.  I have boxes of albums and pictures, they could take up a room of their own, but over the last five years I have just 5 cd's of pictures, and they take up little space.  My mother-in-law decided that she just didn't have room anymore for all her photo albums so she gave them Arnie to take care of.  What happens to all these old pictures when you're gone.  Your kids don't want all those old pictures of the family cat and dog.  If they can take a handfull of cd's or what ever the future holds and in a matter of minutes pick and chose what they want it's a lot more efficient and propably a treat for them rather than a big job.  My new camera is a Nikon Cool Pix and it is Pink!