All posts by Sherry

Saint Maybe

Books

Author: Anne Tyler

It’s nice to be back to a favourite author for my first book of the New Year. I just signed up for my 50 book challenge through Goodreads.

An Anne Tyler story is often a story about real people doing everyday things – not too much drama and not much suspense – but by the end of the book her characters are your friends.

The book opens when Ian is a high school student; he lives with his family, mother, father, sister and brother. When his brother introduces the woman he is going to marry Ian is a little star struck. But as the days go by the glitter is wearing off. When his brother kills himself Ian is filled with guilt that only worsens when his sister-in-law also dies and three children are left homeless.

Ian, by chance, stumbles into a service being held by the Church of Second Chances and is convinced that he must raise the children as penance.

Goodreads Rating: * * *

Zoom stitching

Journal

Tuesday, January 5, 2021

In a perfect world today would have been a sewing day with the Guild. We tried a get-together over Zoom today and it worked out well. We usually averaged half a dozen participants at any one time but people came on and went off during our time.

We’ll try this again every Tuesday and, hopefully, we can do our business meetings over Zoom. Maybe someone will get brave and do a demo for us at some point in the future.

We’ve got a really stormy day here and our power has gone off once already but only for a few seconds. To be safe though I’m going to shut everything down until the storm passes.

Happy Birthday Kathryn

Cards

January 4, 2020

Gran’s Legacy (from the Splendid Sampler 2 series)

I have tried my hand at embroidery once or twice and some of the projects have turned out. I do better if I’m working on a larger canvas and right from the start I knew this was going to be difficult. But after doing a bit of embroidery on another card and not doing so well I knew this one would be impossible.

So, in the spirit that a pattern is just a guideline, I used my gel pens to do the embroidery!

New Tricks

Journal

Monday, January 4, 2021

New Tricks … the title of a new favourite on Netflix but not the point of this post.

Last year I thought I might sell my quilting rulers as I wasn’t using them and they weren’t cheap. But then I decided I really hadn’t given them a good try. I took a class at the Guild but I don’t do well learning in a crowd – especially sewing techniques. I tried a bit at home but didn’t feel very comfortable with them. Hence the thought that I should sell them.

But later in the year I decided I was going to go through my instruction manual one ruler at a time to see if I couldn’t get myself sorted out. The instruction manual has you making a large quilt and then quilting smaller sections but I decided to start with smaller blocks and not worry about having a quilt at the end of the day.

Today’s ruler instructions used a six-inch block and my cards are a perfect size. I spent the morning playing with the ruler and a six-inch square without planning to use the block for anything. By this afternoon though I felt confident enough to try a “real” card. Although not perfect it is better than I ever anticipated for a first day. Doing the quilting this way means I need to bind the card by hand rather than use an envelope finish but I’m okay with that.

I’m a long way from moving on to Step 2 in the book and the idea of using rulers while manipulating a full quilt makes me cringe but I’m okay if all I ever accomplish are my cards.