Quilts in Bloom Show 2012 - pictures

No point in talking about these much, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.  Let's just say we have some incredibly talented quilters in and around Ottawa.

Beautiful maple leaves

Doesn't this just look like fall?

This one is beautful in neutrals

I loved the quilting on it

I love the celtic dragonfly here

Awesome memory quilt, the ingenuity to make it look like a bookcase is amazing, almost 3D

This little beauty is less than 22" square... such tiny pieces! (see card below)

 

I love the celtic knots

Another celtic beauty

These were just some of the quilts on display (some even listed they were for sale!).
 I'll be going back again today - I was really disciplined yesterday and didn't buy a thing! except my 3 day pass  :)

Superior Threads has a table there an had some beautiful trilobal threads on huge cones for $14.  I'm going to pick up a read one in anticipation of quilting my Jamestown Landing. 

Also, I met Mari, the owner of Bytowne Threads - she's our very own local Aurifil distributor!

Another vendor table, Kallisti Quilts, had a wonderful selection of sashiko supplies, threads in all colours, not just white, and little kits and lots of patterns and printed fabrics.  I'll have to stop by her stand again.

More later.....

Quilts in Bloom Quilt Show 2012

Quilt Show 2012

The Common Thread Quilt Guild will be presenting this biennial quilt show. 

The Quilts in Bloom Quilt Show will take place Mother's Day weekend, May 11 to 13, 2012 at the RA Centre, 2451 Riverside Drive in Ottawa, Ontario.

Quilt Show Times are:

Friday, May 11th, 20012: 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Saturday, May 12th, 2012: 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Sunday, May 13th, 2012: 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

The admission to the 2012 Show:
General $8;
Weekend Pass $12.

Fabricland Members Sale - 50% off!

Fabricland is having a huge member's sale today through Saturday (May 10th - 12th).

If you make clothing or home dec items, even all the patterns are 50% off!!

I stopped in this morning because I wanted a couple summer skirt patterns, in the books they're listed as $14.95 and $16.95 each (US). 

When I went to the counter for the lady to pull them, she rang them in at 5 patterns x $7.95 each, and then took another 50% off that!  Holy!  With tax I paid a whopping $21. 

I purchased 5 Simplicity patterns, some of which are wardrobe collections (skirt, pants, dress, jacket, blouse), I like getting more than one pattern in a package :)

Now I can sit and figure out which skirts I'm going to make (as I already have some summer fabrics for those) and see which coordinated pieces I want to make to go with them - and go hit the store before the end of saturday for those fabrics - yeah - a lot of them are 50% off too!

You can't beat that deal!!

Bathing Suit Blues (and giggles)

With summer (and swimsuit season) fast approaching... I thought this would be more than appropriate for a good laugh!  I did not write this.. but I've definitely "been there"!

Ok, I wasn't a child in the 1950's but I still like this. :-)

When I was a child in the 1950s, the bathing suit for the mature figure was-boned, trussed and reinforced, not so much sewn as engineered. They were built to hold back and uplift, and they did a good job. Today's stretch fabrics are designed for the prepubescent girl with a figure carved from a potato chip.

The mature woman has a choice, she can either go up front to the maternity department and try on a floral suit with a skirt, coming away looking like a hippopotamus that escaped from Disney's Fantasia, or she can wander around every run-of-the-mill department store trying to make a sensible choice from what amounts to a designer range of fluorescent rubber bands.

What choice did I have? I wandered around, made my sensible choice and entered the chamber of horrors known as the fitting room. The first thing I noticed was the extraordinary tensile strength of the stretch material. The Lycra used in bathing costumes was developed, I believe, by NASA to launch small rockets from a slingshot, which gives the added bonus that if you manage to actually lever yourself into one, you would be protected from shark attacks. Any shark taking a swipe at your passing midriff would immediately suffer whiplash.

I fought my way into the bathing suit, but as I twanged the shoulder strap in place I gasped in horror, my boobs had disappeared! Eventually, I found one boob cowering under my left armpit. It took a while to find the other. At last I located it flattened beside my seventh rib.

The problem is that modern bathing suits have no bra cups. The mature woman is now meant to wear her boobs spread across her chest like a speed bump. I realigned my speed bump and lurched toward the mirror to take a full view assessment.

The bathing suit fit all right, but unfortunately it only fitted those bits of me willing to stay inside it. The rest of me oozed out rebelliously from top, bottom and sides. I looked like a lump of Playdoh wearing undersized cling wrap.

As I tried to work out where all those extra bits had come from, the prepubescent sales girl popped her head through the curtain, "Oh, there you are," she said, admiring the bathing suit.

I replied that I wasn't so sure and asked what else she had to show me. I tried on a cream crinkled one that made me look like a lump of masking tape, and a floral two-piece that gave the appearance of an oversized napkin in a serving ring.

I struggled into a pair of leopard-skin bathers with ragged frills and came out looking like Tarzan's Jane, pregnant with triplets and having a rough day.

I tried on a black number with a midriff fringe and looked like a jellyfish in mourning.

I tried on a bright pink pair with such a high cut leg I thought I would have to wax my eyebrows to wear them.

Finally, I found a suit that fit, it was a two-piece affair with a shorts-style bottom and a loose blouse-type top. It was cheap, comfortable, and bulge-friendly, so I bought it. My ridiculous search had a successful outcome, I figured.

When I got it home, I found a label that read, "Material might become transparent in water."

So, if you happen to be on the beach or near any other body of water this year and I'm there too, I'll be the one in cut-off jeans and a T-shirt!

You'd better be laughing or rolling on the floor by this time. Life isn't about how to survive the storm, but how to dance in the rain, with or without a stylish bathing suit!