I know many of you are eagerly awaiting the next Safari block, but unfortunately, I must ask for a bit more patience. If I could, I would be happily posting here, making quilts, sketching designs, and writing new patterns. But life has a way of interfering, and this time it has done so in a big way.
For the past eight weeks, I have been unable to do much, creatively or otherwise. I still cannot sit or stand for extended periods, nor walk comfortably. On top of that, a new medication is causing significant nausea. Finding the right treatment is a frustrating process of trial and error — everyone responds differently, and it is hard to predict what will work best. So I have no choice but to be patient, and I can only ask the same of you.
These past weeks have given me a lot of time to think, and I have made the difficult decision to close my longarm quilting business. It is time to use the energy I have more wisely. I have not yet made a final decision about my patterns. We will finish the Safari Block of the Month, but on a revised timeline. At this point, even I do not know exactly what that will look like, so I hope you will bear with me as I figure it out.
At the beginning of the year, I was open about my ongoing health challenges, and I did note that there might be times when I would need to step away without much warning.
With that in mind, I kindly ask that you do not contact me to ask about the BOM. The contact form has been disabled, comments on this post are closed, and emails will not receive a reply. Please know that I am doing my best to recover, and I truly appreciate your patience and understanding.
Unfortunately my sciatic nerve is still very angry and demanded another trip to the emergency room over the weekend. I have no mental bandwidth left for quilting, sewing and this blog at the moment, so I am taking a short break. Hopefully I will see you all soon. Keep your fingers cross that the stupid nerve will calm down!
The year is almost over, and Christmas is just around the corner. I have decided to take the rest of the month off, but I will see you all again on January 1 for the first block of the new BOM, Safari.
This year, I did not even manage to send out my Christmas cards. I started making them, but before I could finish, Canada Post went on strike in mid-November. They only resumed working this week, and there is a huge backlog to clear. So, I have decided to save my handmade cards for next year.
Instead, I thought I would share a picture of something I made before discovering quilting: a hand-embroidered Christmas table topper. I also have several embroidered tablecloths that I take out each year as part of my Christmas decorations. I don’t think I have the patience for hand embroidery anymore, but I still enjoy looking at these pieces every Christmas.
Wishing you a joyful Holiday season and a bright and healthy New Year!
I hope everyone who celebrated Thanksgiving in the United States yesterday had a wonderful time filled with gratitude, family, and delicious food. Black Friday is here, and I am offering a special discount code for 20% off during checkout. Use BLACK2024 before December 2, 2024, at 11:59 p.m. PST to take advantage of the savings.
Please note that this code works only on my own website store and not on any other platform that may be selling my patterns. Now is the perfect time to check if you missed any blocks or finally grab that pattern you have been eyeing forever.
Even though I have not released anything new this past year, I hope you will find something you love.
Happy shopping!
Wird eine Anleitung auf Deutsch und mit metrischen Maßen gewünscht, geben Sie dies bitte beim Checkout an. Ich sende die Anleitung dann per E-Mail in der gewünschten Sprache zu. Bitte beachten Sie, dass nicht alle Anleitungen auf Deutsch verfügbar sind; dies ist in der Produktbeschreibung angegeben.
We spent most of February in New Zealand, a trip we had been looking forward to for ages. But just five days before we were set to leave, Air New Zealand cancelled our flight! You can imagine we didn’t get much sleep that night after seeing the email. Thankfully, the next day, we managed to sort everything out – they rebooked us on the same flight a day early. After a frantic scramble to find a rental car and hotel for the extra night, we were all set and even got an extra day to enjoy our trip!
We took thousands of pictures, and I could talk for hours about the trip – but I’ll try to rein myself in and keep it as short as possible. (If want to see a larger version of a picture, just click on it.)
Our journey started with a non-stop flight from Vancouver to Auckland. Thanks to the time difference, we landed at 5 a.m. Stepping out of cool, rainy Canada into a beautiful summer day in Auckland was such a treat! We also loved New Zealand’s coffee culture; really good coffee prepared with love was available everywhere.
From Auckland, we drove south toward the east coast and the Coromandel Peninsula.
Firth of Thames
Waiau Falls, Coromandel Peninsula
Lonely Bay from Shakespeare Cliff Lookout
Naturally, Hobbiton near Matamata was a must-see. I’m not the biggest Lord of the Rings fan – fantasy just isn’t my genre – but my husband is, and I enjoyed the books and movies enough to appreciate the chance to see all the LOTR locations in New Zealand.
Hobbiton
Toby, our fantastic tour guide
Gate to Bag End
Bag End
Hobbits make quilts too!
Another Hobbit quilt
From there, we headed to the thermal areas of the North Island around Rotorua. We are big fans of Yellowstone and fascinated by geysers, so we were thrilled to see what New Zealand has to offer in terms of thermal features.
Pohutu Geyser, Te Puia
Champagne Pool, Wai-O-Tapu
Mud Pots, Wai-O-Tapu
Sapphire Geyser, Orakai Korako
We also spent some time hiking in Tongariro National Park, another spot Peter Jackson used for LOTR filming. We even managed to find the location of Gollum’s Pool!
Taranaki Falls, Tongariro NP
Tawhai Falls with Gollum’s Pool, Tonariro NP
Just north of Wellington, we stopped at Kaitoke Regional Park—the filming location for Rivendell.
Kaitoke Regional Park, filming location of Rivendell
Sightseeing in big cities isn’t really our thing, but we did spend some time exploring Wellington, especially in and around the parliament buildings.
NZ Parliament
NZ Parliament
Weta Workshop, Wellington
From Wellington, we took the Interislander Ferry across the Cook Strait to the South Island.
Coastal Highway, South Island
The next day, we spent our time on a day hike in Abel Tasman National Park.
From there, we headed down the west coast of the South Island, stopping at several locations like Cape Foulwind and the Tauranga Bay Seal Colony.
Cape Foulwind
A feisty Weka (Maori Hen)
Tauranga Bay Seal Colony
Truman Track Beach, Paparoa NP
Following the coast, we visited Hokitika and the glaciers of the Southern Alps.
Hokitika Clock Tower
Okarito Beach
Franz Joseph Glacier
Then we crossed the mountains to Wanaka and continued onward to Queenstown. Beyond Queenstown and Glenorchy lies another area rich with LOTR filming locations, including the Dart River Valley, which served as the backdrop for Isengard.
Munro Beach
That Wanaka Tree
Dart River Valley, Isengard location
Paradise
Next, we stopped in Te Anau, our gateway to Fiordland National Park. From here, we explored the stunning landscapes with cruises on both Milford and Doubtful Sound.
Mirror Lakes on the road to Milford Sound
Kea at Monkey Creek
Milford Sound
Doubtful Sound
We drove through Southland, stopping at lighthouses, hiking to waterfalls, and spotting plenty of seals, one sea lion on the beach, and a stunning sunrise at Nugget Point framed by a full double rainbow.
Waipapa Point Lighthouse
Sea Lion at Short Bay
Sunrise at Nugget Point
Double Rainbow at Nugget Point
Tunnel Beach, Dunedin
From Dunedin on the east coast, we turned inland again to visit Mount Cook National Park. We did a lot of hiking there – really the only way to explore it – and I set a personal record with nearly 26,000 steps that day.
Lake Pukaki, Mount Cook
Hooker Lake, Mount Cook
Hooker Lake, Mount Cook
Mirror Lake, Mount Cook NP
We returned to the east coast to visit Christchurch and then headed to Akaroa. February isn’t the best time to see penguins in the wild, as the young ones fledge in January, and by the time we reached the penguin colonies on the South Island, the birds were already going through their “catastrophic moult.” During this phase, they lose and replace all their feathers at once and can’t swim, so they stay hidden away. We were able to take a tour with Pohatu Penguins to their colony in Flea Bay outside Akaroa, where we saw a few penguins in mid-moult. (The penguins are not bothered by people watching, as long as everyone stays very quiet.)
Peel Forest
Peel Forest
Akaroa
Pohatu Penguins at Flea Bay
We spent our last morning in Christchurch at the International Antarctic Centre, which was another highlight of the trip.
Victoria (Diamond Jubilee) Clock Tower, Christchurch
International Antarctic Centre, Christchurch
Then we flew back to Auckland and from there to Vancouver. My husband was thrilled to see that the plane taking us back to Canada was adorned with All Blacks livery.
And of course, I visited as many quilt shops as I could and bought a ton of Kiwiana fabrics. I haven’t done anything with them yet – just brainstorming ideas for future projects. We will see what I can come up with!
Overall, it was a fantastic trip. If you think you can visit New Zealand once to “get it out of your system”, think again! We are definitely hooked and will try to go back when we can.
It wasn’t my intention to take such a long break, but I guess I needed it. I can’t even say I got much done in the past nine months, especially quilting-wise, but sometimes that’s just how life goes.
It has never been a secret, but I haven’t openly discussed all my health issues here on the blog. My first battle with breast cancer was in 2015, which played a big part in my decision to become a professional quilter and pattern designer before it might be too late. Then, in 2021, at the height of the pandemic, I was diagnosed with NLPHL, a rare type of Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I had to go through chemo again—yes, all the fun stuff, including losing my hair for the second time. During the scans to figure out what was happening, a lesion was found on one of my ribs. It was biopsied and turned out to be metastatic breast cancer. I was actually very lucky to have had NLPHL because it meant the metastatic cancer was caught extremely early
I have been pushing through with determination—writing patterns, drawing BOM blocks, and quilting for customers. I even went to counseling and thought I was doing enough for my mental health, working through all these issues. But apparently, I was wrong. It took me half a year of not touching my patterns and barely sewing anything other than customer quilts before I finally started to feel better. I even decided to quit the guilds because it all just became too much. Sometimes, all you can do is lie on the couch and drink tea, and that’s okay. For someone as driven and organized as me, that was a hard pill to swallow.
In July, I finally felt the urge to sew again and finished almost all of the UFOs I had lying around. I will share those in a separate post later on. I even had an idea for a new BOM project and spent some time working on it. Then, I received a notification from my website hosting company saying that my website code was outdated and couldn’t be updated to the latest PHP version. When I first set it up, my son created a WordPress theme for me based on my wishes, and of course, it hadn’t been updated since 2016. So, once again, I had to take a detour and set my patterns aside. Instead, I gave the website a facelift, chose a new popular theme that gets regular updates, and customized it to my liking.
I also moved the pattern store over to Square. The automatic system with the download links had been causing more and more issues, and I ended up emailing many patterns anyway, so I don’t think this will make much of a difference. Square does offer a category for digital items, but there is no way to give customers automatic access to the digital files. For now, I will just keep sending them via email. I haven’t been able to update all the links in the blog posts yet – that’s a huge task and will take some time. The easiest way to find a specific pattern right now is to go to the pattern store and search there.
Anyway, I am going to get back to working on the new BOM idea, and I will try to get back into the habit of posting regularly. I do have one request, though: Please don’t leave any comments about how sorry you are or that you are praying for me. I have been living with this diagnosis for almost four years now, and I am doing okay. These days, it feels like I end up having to comfort people, and I just don’t have the energy for that. I know you are all sorry to hear this, but I am not looking for sympathy. I just wanted to let you know what is going on without beating around the bush. So, if I have to drop off the face of the earth again with little or no notice, I will – even if it means postponing the publishing date of BOM blocks.
I am glad to be back, and next week I will start sharing more about the past few months, including our fantastic trip to New Zealand in February, my annual visit to see my mom in June, and all the quilts I finished this summer.
So where do we go from here? You might have noticed that I didn’t announce anything for 2024 after finishing the HedgeHUGS BOM. And that’s because I need a break. Even though I pretty much stopped posting and abandoned some social media platforms, it feels like I didn’t get anything done this year. I have pattern samples finished that have been lying around for almost a year and a half with no time to actually write and publish the pattern. And let’s not even talk about the long list of half-finished designs and design ideas. Longarm quilting is still my main business and eats up most of my time but I also have quite a few medical appointments and am involved in the two local guilds. And I did quite a lot of traveling which of course I don’t want to give up either.
I have also not come up with “the” idea for a new BOM. I have played around with several ideas but I found nothing really satisfactory. So here is where you come in. I would like to start another project later in 2024 but I haven’t been hit by inspiration so far with anything that might work as a block of the month. What would you like to see? Leave a comment, and maybe inspiration will hit me.
So instead I will show you a few of the things that kept me busy this fall. I did the registration for the quilt show again and organized the quilt intake and return which is a huge, very time-consuming task. But I love a good spreadsheet and well organized events, and I had a lot of fun doing it. The guild had not enough people for setting up the frames, so this year the quilts were displayed in the sanctuary of the church where we hold the shows.
Picture courtesy of Lyn R.
I usually don’t participate in the show challenge (if the day just had more hours!!). But this year inspiration suddenly hit me in late September, and I whipped up an entry in a few days. The theme was a “song with a colour”, and I suddenly had this vision of “Red Roses for a Blue Lady”, and it turned out pretty much the way I saw it in my head.
Two guilds means two Christmas parties with lots of activities. At the Chilliwack Quilters Guild we played Bingo with fabric cards, and the blocks were collected afterwards and will be turned into donation quilts.
We also made a bobbin blossom brooch which is a very quick project, especially when you use a magnet instead of a pin. It looks really nice and is easy to do although the instructions looked quite intimidating at first.
And then we played the “Left, Right, Centre” game. Everyone starts out with three Jelly Roll strips, and the one who ends up with the last strip(s) when all the others have been placed in the centre wins the whole pile. Only that this year the winners of each table played a final round against each other with the winner taking all the strips. Well, guess who the (reluctant) lucky winner was… yes, I went home with about 120 strips of fabric. There is a huge variety of patterns and themes, and nothing is coordinated. I folded them, and they found a home in my big Fisherman’s Friend tin, and I have decided I will make (probably three, depending on how many strips there actually are) Jelly Roll Race quilts and donate them back to the guild’s We Care program.
The Chilliwack Piecemakers Christmas Party was even more hilarious (you would have loved it, Joanne). We played some games, had lots of door prizes, and the President made all executive members sing a quilty version of “Twelve Days of Christmas”. I was lucky (and maybe everyone else too because I can’t sing very well publicly) and managed to get the twelfth verse that I only had to sing once.
We also made Healing Heart blocks for a member going through some rough times, and a nice collection was gifted to her as a “fabric hug”.
And then my husband needed a new Dinkelmaus (the German version of a bean bag, if you want to know more or download the free pattern, check here). His was wearing thin after about 15 years, and he would leave kernels of spelt all over the house. Since they make such great gifts and don’t take long to sew, I made a whole collection and gave them away to my quilty friends.
Last but not least I spent almost all of November on my Christmas Cards, they were all finished in time and mailed out in early December.
I hope you all have a happy and safe holiday season, take some time to slow down and relax and enjoy your friends and family. See you all in 2024!
I hope everyone south of the border had a great Thanksgiving. It’s Black Friday again, and I am offering a discount code for 20% off during checkout. BLACK2023 will be valid until Nov 27, 2023 11.59 pm PST. Please note that it works only on this website and not on any other platform that might be selling my patterns. Now is the time to check and see if you missed any blocks or get that special pattern you have always wanted. I know I haven’t been very creative this past year, if you could all send me some extra time, that would be helpful. I hope you’ll find something anyway. Happy shopping!
Previous BOM blocks can be found here:
Die deutschen Versionen mit metrischen Maßen befinden sich hier:
Another year, another Black Friday… and another sale. Once again I am offering a discount code for 20% off during checkout. BLACK2022 will be valid until Nov 28, 2022 11.59 pm PST. Please note that it works only on this website and not on any other platform that might be selling my patterns. Now is the time to check and see if you missed any blocks or get that special pattern you have always wanted. Happy shopping!
Once again, it’s that time of the year… Black Friday has arrived, and I am having a sale again this year, offering a discount code for 20% off during checkout. BLACK2021 will be valid until Nov 29, 2021 11.59 pm PST. Please note that it works only on this website and not on any other platform that might be selling my patterns. Now is the time to check and see if you missed any blocks. Happy shopping!
