Two New Pattern Just Released

We have just released two brand new patterns!

They are so new we don’t even have the covers back from the printers yet! But don’t worry they will be here in a day or two.

They are both paper pieced patterns, with detailed instructions on doing paper pieceing in case you haven’t tried it yet.

One of the patterns we call Cowboy Beauty.

A quarter horse portrait with western themed silhouettes in the border.

The other pattern is the first in a series of lighthouses. This one is based on the lighthouse in Goderich, Ontario.

Both patterns are available in our product catalog (http://www.buttonholequiltdesign.com/catalog)

What A Find

A trip yesterday to an auction house and a ride home with about 7 quilts in my trunk.

It was an estate sale and there was a number of quilts up for auction. The original bid was for $5 each, can you believe that?! They were hand quilted. The lady that bid only wanted two of them so up the rest went. No more bids came in for a sale of each quilt so the auctioneer lumped them together and started again. Horrified that nobody was bidding on these old hand made quilts, my hand accidentally shot up. Well apparently nobody else felt as I did because I ended up walking away with the whole lot.

Some are pretty neat and still in reasonable shape too. One of them is basically a whole cloth quilt. It has a white background and white stitching. The creator has stitched people portraits, animals, birds and all sorts of other neat things into blocks.

Some others are pieced into squares, there is another smaller quilt which has an octagon pattern to it and has similar stitching designs on it, only they are stitched in colour.

There is one with multi-coloured stars on it. Most likely made from scraps or old clothing.

I must say they were a wonderful find.  I am not really sure what I will do with them yet, maybe I will do some research on the creator.

Do you have any great quilt finds from auctions or somewhere else?

Two New Releases Scheduled

I have been working hard to bring you two more new patterns.

A western horse, which could be done in any colour, and has appliquéd western accents in the border.  This is a paper pieced project.

The other pattern is the first in a series of lighthouses from around Southwestern Ontario.  This first one is based on the lighthouse in Goderich Ontario.  It is also paper pieced.  I am working on lighthouses in Kincardine, Lions Head and Cabot head at the moment.  More of the lighthouse series will be available as I finish them.  They will be nice as individual wall hangings, or put them all together for one larger lighthouse quilt.

These patterns will be in the catalog within the next day or two.  If you would like to put your name on the waiting list I will e-mail you when you are up.  Just send me an e-mail saying which one you are interested in.

Summer Solstice Sale On Now

To celebrate the official arrival of summer (calender wise, not necessarily weather wise) we are having a

Summer Solstice 77cent Sale!

Check out the pattern catalog at http://www.buttonholequiltdesign.com/catalog/

There are some great deals on wonderful patterns.

Help us make room for our next release of designs.

This sale runs from June 20 2008 to July 20 2008.

Its The Berries Quilt Show in Goderich

I recently made the trek to Goderich Ontario to take in their guild quilt show. What a nice display they had! Some of the quilts were absolutely amazing and of course who could avoid the merchant mall!

This one here was one of my favourites. It is called Autumn Star and made by Ann Marie Patrick of Goderich. It is pieced and Paper Pieced.

Speaking of Quilt Shows the Mount Forest Four Corners Quilt Guild will be hosting their quilt show July 18-20.  This is the same weekend as the Mount Forest Fireworks Festival so there is sure to be a lot going on.  There will be around 300 quilts on display at the Mount Forest curling club.

A Trip To The City

What an enjoyable way to spend a warm June day. On Friday I took a day trip to Kitchener/Waterloo
with two destinations in mind. One was The Grand National Quilt Show, being held at the Kitchener
Waterloo Art Gallery and the other was to my favourite fabric shop to load up on the fabric I needed for
my next three projects.

The theme for The Grand National this year was Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. There was some really
interesting takes on the theme and some of the stories to go with the quilts were amazing. There was
about 30 quilts on display, a large number of them relating to family and the passage of time. One of my favourite quilts on display was one with daisies and rain drops.  The picture isn’t the best, the quilt looked much nicer in person.

Water By Catherina Breedyk Law of Perth Ontario

After wandering through the gallery it was off to the fabric store, one of my favourite places on earth!

Who wouldn’t be happy surrounded by bolts and bolts of fabric. I must have spent about 2 hours
wondering up and down the aisle looking for the perfect fabrics. It was difficult searching for 3 different
projects at one time, but the trip to the city are few and far between so you must make the best of them.
Here is a look at the small amount I picked up:

The Magnum. Portrait of a Boxer

The International Plowing match is coming up soon in Teeswater, ON. They are having a quilt competition this year and I have redone The Boxer pattern to enter it. The forms were sent in this past Friday and the wall hanging will go the beginning of July. The silhouettes around the border were a lot of fun to create because they are made from actual pictures of my boxer, Magnum, playing Frisbee. I will give you a sneak peak of what the wall hanging looks like, but you will hopefully be able to see it hanging in the winners circle at the IPM.

The Canadian Quilter

An article recently appeared in The Canadian Quilter magazine about my business and how my boxer dog inspired some of my first designs. He is also the start of the quilted pet portraits that I design.  To learn more about the quilted pet portraits visit the website.  http://www.buttonholequiltdesign.com

RCMP Musical Ride

Well this week has just been full of horse activities, and its only Wednesday!  One of my dear friends and I spent the afternoon yesterday enjoying the RCMP Musical Ride in Fergus Ontario.

Neither of us had seen it before and we weren’t disappointed.  It is pretty spectacular watching them move the horses around each other, and not one collision happened.  They were moving to music and in some cases it was like they were dancing.

After the show they allowed you to talk to the riders and meet the horses plus you could go back to the stabling area to ask more questions of the riders and watch as the cleaned their tack (and wondered if you could ever have that sort of discipline with your own tack!)

There are a couple of really nice photos that I think have the potential to become a really nice quilt.

I will keep you updated on the progress of this!

My Morning Walk, What a Surprise

I thought I would share with you what happened, just now, on my morning walk as it is reasonably unusual.

We live on a reasonably quiet dirt road. I say reasonably because when cars travel it they travel pretty quickly. Anyhow to my surprise when I came to the top of the hill by our house two horses met me. No riders or anything, just two horses. They were headed towards the busy main road, but luckily I was between them and it. I was able to get them turned around away from the highway, but wasn’t able to grab a halter, which I would have preferred. About 4 houses down from us is a large stable, so I was trying to get them there in the hope that’s where they came from. About half way to the stable I was able to get close enough to get a hold of one of their halters and lead them the rest of the way. Turns out they were new to this barn and had escaped from the pasture.

I am glad I had delayed my walk this morning so I could redirect these two wonderful horses away from the busy road.