Things I Love Thursdays

on the color purple...

I love this retro camera phone app I learned about from Krista @ Poppyprint!

Wouldn't that make a terrific piece of fibre art!?  I love this one too...

chives in bloom

I am really loving all this purple popping up all over my back yard! 

SO pretty and free!  : )

I love the way this Blue Flag is stretching up to the sun! 

reach!

Isn't that sweet!?  Happy Thursday!

~Monika

Works in Progress Wednesday

I'm still workin'!  Here's what's up right now.  I have completed this custom order via my Etsy shop!  I'm so thrilled to have completed it.

It's a bit bigger than 2x3 feet.  I added the tabs yesterday.  This is for Kate's new home, far away from the prairie.  I hope she just loves it!!

border, binding, tabs.

It was a big project!  So there you go - I finished Mandy's AND Kate's.  I haven't done much at all on Jesica's quilt except for plan things in my head.  That counts.  I just don't have photos to prove it.  : )

I put together a kit for Emma to make the Snips n Snails quilt from the Summer issue of A Needle Pulling Thread magazine.

Okay... I have to show this again for the WIP wednesday gang.  ; )

I'm on the cover!  It's starting to sink in now... WOW!

Emma is the woman I met in the fabric store, magazine in hand, trying to gather the fabrics for this quilt I designed.  We met by "accident" or serendipity, more like it!  She's making this quilt to send off to Australia later in the year!  Isn't that cool?  Even stranger... she had no idea this was me, or that I was even in the same city as her.  When I met her in the store, I thought she bought it because she reads my blog.  Totally not.  She just liked the quilt.  I told her, "so you are a real fan!?".  She was as thrilled to meet me.  It was quite funny.  If i see her again, I'll ask her for her autograph.  hehe

Our mail is up and running after 2 weeks!! WOOHOO!  I hopped online and ordered the fabrics that I used for this quilt.  They are all 70's solids and I just love the way they look together!  I'll have some kits ready as soon as that box arrives.  The kit includes assorted buttons and embroidery floss as well.

'coppertone summer' colors picked by the editor of ANPT

Then I headed straight out and mailed these postcards to various places around the planet.  I love postcard swapping so much!  I can't wait to see what shows up in my mailbox.  i love snail mail.

off to New York, Ontario, California, Dublin, and Saskatchewan : )

I am about to rework this piece as a commission from the last show.  It sold before the exhibit but I thought I would display it anyhow.  I figured it was a good one.  The person who bought it knows I'm reworking it and that's okay.  I was sure to ask first, because, well... you know.  It's art, and everyone wants an original.  But each time I make something, it's never identical, and I learn more about what works and what doesn't.  I look forward to this, it was a lot of stitching that was quite loose and free.  I really enjoyed it.

barbed wire & dandelions

Other than that, things will go slow for the summer.  All the kids are home and one has some homeschooling to do to catch up before September.  Thank you everyone for your input to Tips on Tuesdays.  I will be taking the summer off from that particular posting.   There were a couple requests for thread painting to be covered.  Hang tight!  I will be doing that and it will be quite thorough hopefully, as it's part of a group blog effort.  More on that later...it's a surprise.

See you all tomorrow!  To see what other bloggers are up to, go to Lee's at Freshly Pieced, and Esther's Blog too!

~Monika

Tips on Tuesdays! - > Tips Topics Please : )

Every Tuesday I post a sewing-related topic and everyone is welcome to add tips they have under that theme.  It's a sharing post.  The red button on the sidebar links to all Tuesday posts.  There's quite a lot of them.

This week, the topic is Topics.  (hehe).  I'm drawing a blank today.  I hope you don't mind.  So I would love your help.  What topics can you suggest for me to cover here?  I'll shortlist some of what has been done:
- Thread
- Fabric
- Machine Maintenance
- Needles
- Gadgets
- Color
- Printing
- Painting
- Marking
- Cutting
- Lighting
- Photographing your work
- Organizing
- Labels
- Hanging your work

What else?  I was thinking about doing "Hand Embroidery", "Creative Inspiration", "Sketchbooks", and perhaps more on "Thread Painting".  Please let me know your ideas.  List as many as you like.

cute stock photo I found of a quilting bee : )

Thank you!
~Monika

Grinning from Ear to Ear! (& Winners announced)

I swear, the weirdest things happen to me.  What does it all mean?  There's serendipity everywhere I go.  Yesterday, I scooted over a fabric store to find more of the striped binding for kits of the Snips n Snails quilt.  (Don't hold your breath - the other 12 fabric solids are on hold for a while until the postal strike it over.)  I do have a couple kits put together.

So here's the story!!  While I was in the fabric store, a woman was beside me with a stack of solids on the bolt, and the current ANPT magazine in hand, open to MY quilt pattern and reading it out to figure which colors to get!!  OMG!  Seriously!  I was flabbergasted.   I stood beside her at the cutting table and whispered, 'that's me'.  She turned to me smiling and said, "Oh are you making this too!?  I love it!  I'm making it for my sister who is having a baby."  I repeated, "No. I mean, that's ME.  I'm Monika".  Then she understood.  "OH!  Hi!" she said as I stood there with the binding fabric in my arms.  TOO FUNNY!  Really, what are the odds?  So I told her, "why don't you let me buy the binding and I'll get a kit off to you tomorrow?"  Hilarious.  We agreed.  We chatted a while and said good bye.  And I'm still smiling.  My cheeks hurt.  ; )  What luck to happen by each other like that!  Pure serendipity.

Emma's kit  (minus the buttons & embroidery thread...)  : )

p.s.  if you are reading this, HELLO Emma!  It was very fun to meet you like that!

Before I forget, the Lapel Stick winners are DIANE and BERNIE!!  : )  Hey Congrats you two!  I may even have your mailing addresses already, but just in case, drop me a line.  Apparently the mail is on and the strike is over.

To everyone who wrote limericks, THANK YOU !  Oh those were so great, even to the women who claim they can't rhyme.  I'm going back to Friday's post to read them all again.  HAHA!! You all keep me smiling!

~Monika

Sunday Snapshots

Blue Flag, a photo by My Sweet Prairie on Flickr.

early one morning in my garden...

Via Flickr:
blogged at www.mysweetprairie.blogspot.com
Photos of my prairie perennials early one morning in June.
by Monika Kinner-Whalen

WOW. Wow!!

I'm still waiting for the postal strike to end so I can get my box of goodies from A Needle Pulling Thread in Ontario.  In the mean time, a little birdie told me that it's out on the stands.  I couldn't wait!!  So I headed out to McNally Robinson's Booksellers with my youngest boy, and sure enough, there it was, front and centre on the magazine shelves!!  WOW!

Woohoo!  I can't get over it.  I had to buy it.  My mother in law is coming on Sunday from Edmonton and I'll be passing this copy on to her I think.  (More are coming in that box I mentioned.)  I sat outside on this lovely sunny day to check out the article in this Summer edition.  All I can say is, 'WOW'. 

The pattern continues on the next three pages.  It's quite the spread!  ANPT - Thank you so much!  It really looks fabulous.  I'm in awe.  It's a simple quilt with straight forward instructions.  It's my third pattern I've ever written up.  Patterns are not my forte, so this was my way of challenging myself.  Boy did it ever pay off.  Now to get the mail moving so I can put more kits together. 

I won't show you all the details, because it is copywrited.  You can purchase the magazine online here.  However, I think they'll let me show you this little snippet.  It's pretty funny.  They made me do it.  You'll have to squint to catch it all.

Another World.  That will date me!  hehe

The give-away for this will happen once that box arrives. 

Have a GREAT weekend!! 
~Monika

I Got Mail! (Let's have a give-away)

...but not from Canada Post.  I suppose it's technically just a package delivery then.  It's a good one though!  It's from the wonderful people at Lapel Stick!  (Oh thank you thank you thank you!)  I told them how fabulous their product is and they sent me a complimentary box of their product!  (Oh thank you thank you thank you!)

I told them how much I dislike toxic spray adhesives, and also how using fusible webbing & hot irons is very difficult to use when working with small fibre art pieces.  Postcards are case in point.  Glue sticks are gunky and liquid glue needs to dry or often soaks through and leaves a stain.  I also told them how only had a half stick left and didn't share with my postcard class.  So they sent me some Lapel Sticks free of charge.  I'll use these to have available in my future workshops.

This arrival was perfect timing!  On my table is the batting and backdrop for a landscape piece I "intend to enter" in the big quilt show this fall.  It involves many little chopped up fabrics.  I need that lapel stick but didn't plan on ever seeing it any time soon because of our national postal service strike.   But here it is!

2010 Saskatoon Fireworks Festival

As promised, here's a little giveaway.  Want to try some?  I'll give a Lapel Stick to 2 lucky winners picked at random.  You don't really need to do anything in particular but leave a little hello note.  Maybe a limerick?  Tell me in rhyme why you would like to win the glue.  I'll announce a winner on Monday.  (contest closes Sunday Midnight).  Make sure you leave me your email address so I can find you.

Have a good weekend!
~Monika

Things I Love Thursdays

I love to smell flowers.

I love to photograph flowers.

I love to draw flowers.

I love to stitch flowers.

canola in bloom... always my favorite piece : )

: )
~Monika

Works in Progress Wednesday

Yay for me!  I finished Mandy's Tree!!  That feels like such a major accomplishment, though my sewing room looks quite bland with it gone.  You can read about it HERE.  The very moment I finished putting on the hanging sleeve, I was brought another bag of fabric for a very special memory quilt.  You can read about it HERE.  Right now, I'm dedicating my time to completing Jesica's quilt. Jesica had a bag of her late & much loved grandmother's fabric stash sent my way a long time ago.  She wanted lots of triangles with white.  Here's what has been done so far.

After hours of sorting and pressing, I spent hours of cutting and stitching and cutting some more until I had a variety of half-square triangles to make a quilt top.  They were all pressed open and then sewn in a graduated color pattern across the quilt.

aren't those vintage fabrics sweet!??

After this point, Jesica began missing her other grandmother too.  The top has a wide white border, and Jesica suggested hand embroidered flowers.  !!!  I am SO in the mood to do embroidery!  Even better, Jesica wants flowers native to this area, because those are the ones that she picked with her grandmother when she was a little girl.  As for me, I have had it in the back of my mind for some time to study native prairie plants, and so this is a very welcomed project!  I started my research immediately.  I want to study the flowers, then sketch them out, and then simplify them for embroidery.  I could find existing embroidery patterns for each on the internet I'm sure, but this would be much for interesting for me to come up with them myself.  I've never been much of a pattern person anyhow.  Here is a peek at my sketchbook so far.  The photos were pretty faded, so I upped the contrast to help you see it better.

My plan is to draw them each with an air soluble pen just prior to stitching them.  I'll pick thread colors that are appropriate to the actual flowers, but also a good shade so it looks right with all the fabrics in the quilt.  I have hoops and embroidery needles.  All is good!  The plan for the outer binding is to use the remaining scraps form the vintage fabrics.  Won't that be pretty!?  Great plan Jesica! Here's some practice pieces I did.

Aster and Purple Vetch

In the mean time, I am putting the backing & hanging sleeve onto Kate's wall hanging.  It's a commission I got through my etsy store to remake my Poles Along the Highway.  Here's the border.  It's for Kate's new home, far far away from the prairies.  Isn't that sweet?

I can't wait to mail this off to her.  I hope our national postal system gets back on its feet soon!  It's been a long, looong time since anything was dropped into my mailbox!

See you all tomorrow,
~Monika

head on over to Lee's at Freshly Pieced for more WIPs, or Esther's eclectic WIP wednesday for more projects from other quilting bloggers.  : )

Tips on Tuesdays! - > Printing on Fabric

Welcome to Tips on Tuesdays!  This is a sharing post, so please leave your ideas in the comments section for others to read.  If you blog, you can grab the red button on the sidebar, which links to all Tips on Tuesday posts.  Each week is a different theme.  This week, the topic is "Printing on Fabric".

I have only printed on fabric a few times.  The first thing I had to learn was that you need an ink jet printer, not laser.  You don't need anything fancy.  Most people want to get rid of theirs because the ink is so expensive.  I got one for free through FreeCycle.  You could check things like Kijiji also.

Printing on fabric is not waterproof unless you find specially treated fabric that will hold the ink even through a wash.  I have never printed for a quilt, but I have printed for art or postcards (things that won't get washed).  One way you can do this is to cut a piece of freezer paper the size of a printer sheet.  You then lie the fabric onto the waxy side of the paper and press.  The heat will temporarily met the plastic, causing the fabric to stick to the freezer paper.  People use this method for applique.  One you are done, trim the fabric perfectly to the size of the paper.  Now you have a sheet that you can feed through your printer (hopefully) without the fabric getting caught or jammed.  PLEASE be careful if you are trying this, and make sure your fabric is completely stick to that paper!  Then press print.

printing a photo I took of my black-eyed Susans from the garden in the fall.

Then what?  Well, I did some free motion stitching to outline this one.  It made a striking effect.

detail

You can also free motion stitch in coordinating colors.  This is a photo I took of a columbine.

I then printed it onto fabric, and stitched it to create a postcard.

I'm happy how this one turned out!  Beads in the center for embellishment.

If you are worried about things smudging, I've sprayed the printed fabric with this.  It helps to keep the ink from smudging onto your hands while you sew.

spray it outside or in the garage.  POISON POISON

How about you?  Have you ever printed images onto fabric?  What is the most permanent way you have found?  Do tell!  We would love to learn from you.  Share your tips or links to useful webpages below.  It's like take a penny, leave a penny.

Thanks so much!
~Monika

Heartbreaker

This weekend I was visited by a relative I had only met once before, at a recent family funeral.  Her name is Steffi.  The odd thing is that she lives in Calgary - where I was for ten years.  I had no idea I had relatives in Calgary.  I moved back to Saskatoon 4 years ago, only to find I have relatives five houses up the street from us.  That relative is her sister.  So Steffi and I met up at the funeral of their father (my great uncle Fritz, an artist from Germany) for the first time.  It was strange going to the funeral that day, knowing that I would meet many 'strangers' that I could call family.  When I saw Steffi, it was weird!  I don't know if it was her eyes, or the shape of her face... but something about her was so familiar to what I see in the mirror every day.  She said the same thing.  How amazing for family members to immigrate to a new country, spread out, and generations later find that we live on the same street!? 

a mother's memorial in the sand (from their website)

Steffi came to my city again this weekend with a bag of clothing that she wants made into a memory quilt.  It is the clothing of her son who was beaten to death eight years ago.  His name is Aaron, and he is my cousin.  I never met him - I didn't even know I had all these cousins!  I never knew the story until recently.  He intervened in a fight outside of a night club, was kicked nearly to death, and died days later from hi injuries.  The people who murdered him were never brought to justice.  No witnesses will talk.  Isn't that horribly tragic!?  Steffi now organizes "Walk for Justice" with many other mother's who have lost their children to violent murders that remain 'unsolved'.  (link below)

Aaron, Superman.  Photo from his memorial site.

Here am I now, with a bag of his clothing.  His mother grieves so deeply still.  This will be a very special keepsake for her - something to hold, something to hug.  She's knows I won't get to this project for a while... but it's one I am honored to do.  It's a heartbreaker.  I'll be putting his baby pictures on it, poems from his mother, and it will be made entirely from his clothing. She said I could share all this in my blog, so this post is the beginning.

You can read about his story here:  Walk For Justice

And for such a heavy topic, I don't even know how to end this post.  So for now I'll just say, 'to be continued'...  I know this quilt is something she really wants and needs, so I truly look forward to the day I can hand the completed project back to her.  You can bet it will bring out lots of tears.

~Monika

Sunday Snapshots #42

It was a dark and stormy night...

creepiest sky ever

see the mass of cloud piling in the lower left?

zoomed in, catching the sunset glow

Look out!  Here it comes!

run!

Everything turned orange, the wind came up suddenly and we all ran in to take cover.  It hailed and down-poured very intensely.  The sky was full of thunder and lightning.  Ten minutes later, it was OVER.  The sky cleared and the big full moon came out.  All is well.

happy Sunday!
~Monika

My Lonely Mailbox

Canada post has been on strike this week - the whole country!  Can you imagine?  As a result, my big announcement pretty much flopped.  I decided to tell you anyhow, and then I'll do a more detailed post when the mail comes.  Here goes!  Remember this quilt?

It's the one I made in January for A Needle Pulling Thread magazine.  I wrote up the pattern and mailed it all off to Toronto.  That seems like a LONG LONG time ago.

Good News: The summer issue if finally out!

Bad news:  Due to the mail strike, it's still in Toronto with the quilt.

Shocking News:  as I poked around on their website, I noticed that they put MY quilt on the COVER!  I kid you not.  Take a look!  (Sorry - it's as big as it gets.)

all HOT 'Coppertone Summer' colors picked by the editor

I can barely wait to get my hands on this issue!!  My quilt is called "Snips n Snail".  It's a simple 16-patch kid's quilt in 70's solid colors.  It features embroidered/stitched mushrooms, snails, and dragon flies on the large white alternating patches.  The pattern is in the magazine, along with a large selections of some very beautiful needle arts projects.

detail of embroidered snails o the quilt patches

The cover!  Unreal.  Aren't the colors great?  Carla, the editor, hand picked them based on the original Coppertone suntan bottles.  I chose to swap the pink for the color "tomato" instead.  I also added those 1970's greens as well to keep it authentic.  You know, the green my daughter refers to as 'ugly green'.  I really love this color combo.

simple 16  patch, hot solid 70's summer colors

So... when it finally arrives on my doorstep, you will be the first second to know.  I'm definitely and absolutely celebrating with a magazine give-away!!  Carla was kind enough to send extra copies for a blog draw.  (Thank you Carla!!)

See you all tomorrow!
~Monika