Carli The Quilter

We decided to take a little trip to Owen Lake, near Houston, B.C. When you leave Houston, a mill town, the Main Line Logging Road follows the Morice River for many kilometers. The Morice River, swelled with spring run off is one of the rivers that will be affected by the proposed Gateway Pipeline by Enbridge, Inc.  I truly love camping. We tented for a long time, but as you get older, simply sleeping on a comfy and secure camper bed becomes more appealing.  I had just opened up my camera case, when we saw a  bear up ahead. I quickly zoomed in on it as it will be running soon. Bears if left alone don't care to interact with us and I'd had to act fast. I was ready with rapid shooting mode, I was so lucky to get two good photos of this young black bear. But then he was gone!  Gone, gone in one leap!  That's got to be 10 ft or more he jumped. When we arrived to the Owen Lake B.C. Recreation Site, which is a free site that is onl...

Let's celebrate International Women's Day! With a conversation about what each of us can do to reuse more from clothing, instead of giving it to a thrift shop. This past weekend,  it was a sunny day, but bitterly cold with a cross wind that took your breath away. I drove the crunching driveway to the home of Eve Rippel. I first met Eve back in 2004 when I taught a quilting class with re-purposed fabrics from clothing like denim, corduroy or other re-purposed fabric.  Eve was a breath of fresh air and still is some 10 years later. While others in the class were confused with how to actually harvest usable fabric from clothing, she was helping with this idea by just getting onto the whole subject. I think that this year I'd like to impress upon each you to do more to recycle clothing into something or anything interesting or useful. Eve with her latest great grand baby quilt. Eve's Mom taught Eve to sew during the 1930's in Saskatchewan, when ...

Summer is fabulous for keeping up with visits and your own vacations. Recently, we had a lovely visit from our son Paul and his girlfriend Melissa. Both live in Edmonton, Alberta. Its quite a drive to our home in the Bulkley Valley. We celebrated their arrival and had such a good visit. And then we went fishing. Little did we know how hard it was going to rain the first night we were there. Paul and Melissa were in the tent on the shore, lovely spot, but proved to be a bear walk and spent that night listened to our dog growl and patrol around the tent. Paul and Melissa kept warm  by the fire and being silly! Even Rusty got in the silly act with her bored tongue look! lol:) I carried on, bug dope on and into the threads, I relaxed and visited on the shore. No fish this trip but a great little get away! Paul and Melissa endured it with such grace and preparation~hoodies!! Thank goodness we had those or we would have been doing some other dance, the mos...

 My quilt is done for the Pipeline Art Exhibit around the protest of Enbridge's Proposed Pipeline through pristine wilderness, farms and communities, rivers are our life blood!  My home  is located on the beautiful Bulkley Valley. The rich, alive and responsive Bulkley River runs alongside our river campsite, at our home. I'm so lucky to have such a peaceful, tranquil place to live. We are surrounded by wilderness, ranchers, miners and families. We have plenty of open space, wild areas minutes from downtown Smithers, BC. We have lots of industry, mining and forestry and tourism. We have a few unemployed folks, but most are employed and moving ahead with their lives in the beautiful Bulkley Valley. Unfortunately, The Bulkley River is one of those rivers that you might have heard about that is threatened  by potential spills from crude oil being transported from Alberta tar sands to the BC coastline by Enbridge for freighter trips across the Pacific Ocean. ...

This simple designed flag is my one symbol I have that I can say belongs to me and every other Canadian. This flag hanging outside a typical northern Canadian lake campground reminds me of the pride I felt when Trudeau opened Expo 67! I have lived a quiet rural life with intermittent rebellious youthful times spent in cities, just like thousands of other Canadians. Many of us returned to the country to find our roots and revive rural farming communities. Its not just me that thinks that we're seeing and living a return to the basic country lifestyle. For us to get down and have some good clean rodeo fairing good times is often held at a small local rodeo or fall fair . We eat up all sorts of dripping corn on the cob and wrestle back a few bugs while taking in our communities agricultural offerings. I love checking out chickens, rabbits, horses and goats and sheep. Sometimes its the flavor of our version of "hippie concert in the bush" festival and that for me wo...

Wow, spring is in the air, its been really sunny and its feeling like springtime! My hubby and I had a great day ice fishing recently and caught some awesome rainbow trout!  My friend Wanda is ooooing the giveaway I'm selecting for this Blog Hop Party that starts on March 17th.  I'll be posting more as the time gets closer, but to give a tiny hint, my give away is a selection of hand picked fabrics from my stash of enough fabric to make a quilt top! This crazy quilt above is called Beach House and its for sale.  More on this later, spread the word. Thank you so much for following me and I'm really pleased to tell you that soon, I'll be posting some awesome new patterns for you to check out.

I am digging into my stash and finding sultry vintage fabrics, solid colors and soft pretty petal styles of fabric to go with this collection. I have an awesome new pattern on the drawing sheet! This is what got me excited; imagine these fabrics together in one quilt?  These lovely fat quarters are what I've been waiting for to arrive. Its a great little bundle from Miscellany. I've got some ideas, like maybe pinwheels or applique something? I work with the pattern in my head & on paper until I'm ready to proceed! What do these selections make you think? But then I think piecing might be just the cat's meow for these and the vintage fabrics I'm picking out. Its the start of a brand new idea and you never know for sure until you are well into it as to whether you've got something special. I use snippets of the prints and copy them into my pattern. See if I like it, see if it does it for me, then I send it out to my girl friends for ...