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...

You know I live in the boonies and I love the simple life of raising our chickens, tending to and mucking out the layers three times a year, its about being close to my food! I'm a modern quilter and really excited about our upcoming September start back at quilting with other members of the BV Modern Quilt Guild in Smithers/Telkwa and my friend and one of our members is Kirsten, who's  fish biologist by day and damn great cook by night! This is her second quilt and one of her modern ideas, can hardly wait to see how this turns out.  I like basic food, without preservatives, raw is preferred except mea t and potatoes. A view of our garden.   My  hubby Rick, with a 27 lb spring salmon, caught moments before this photo in the Skeena River. But what about cooking in the boonies. Which when you live northern life, often the boonies where you live and cooking has to be superb and gourmet, even in the boonies. I recommend you che...

Our local community of Smithers , B.C. is a busy, energetic place in the summer. Our local BV Farmer's Market opens on the Saturday before Mother's Day each year. Families, locals and tourists enjoy the Highway 16 location rain or shine! Once every two years, our local Smithers Art Gallery hosts a local quilt show. Locals this year will gather to drop off, help out and celebrate in the wonder of local talented quilters on June 30th with meeting and handing over families heirlooms and recent completes.  No one really cares what your level of quilting competency, just so long as you've made a quilt, we're good. We're a lively and laid back group of people who inhabit this region. Multicultural and first nations live side by side. We're miners, loggers, business people, artists and sport enthusiast alike.  We don't hold too many airs of our thriving community in the midst of changing environments, threats to  habitat, sluggish economy or glo...

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...

 Ok, this is not a quilt, yet! But its one of my projects that are slowly turning into patterns. OMG, for a distracted quilt nut, I raise my glass to those thousands of other pattern makers! Its a tough job for one who flits around the studio with my magic wand ruler picking and poking textures every ten minutes! Those of you who live in the Bulkley Valley, must know by now, the summer is hung up in the last postal strike because quilts is what we need to cover up around the fire. It helps with the mosquitoes too!  This next pattern is going to be an awesome dresden plate fan with a twist. As you know, I'm motivated to blend fabrics and someone emailed me the other day to ask what I meant by Blended Fabric Quilts. I thought, heh, that's a great segway into this latest quilt pattern. Yes, I actually hand applique the plates to my blocks, but I'll have both versions on how to do this in the pattern. I love to mix and mash fabric that are not in the collection on sale to...