A Strange Request

Flying the flag for the Toronto FC

We got a call two years ago this month from a young student who wanted to stick some letters on a T-shirt. He said he couldn’t bring the shirt, but he could bring a drawing. A large U of T engineering student arrived a short time later to explain his problem.

He was in the University’s TFC fan club. The T-shirt turned out to be 45 FEET LONG! It was a banner to raise at a strategic moment during the weekend TFC game and they needed to add the letters and flashings to replicate a club t-shirt. The red material was a satin suit lining – very slippery and easy to fray. It had cost most of their budget. So they had little funds left and a fast approaching deadline.

Carol showed him how to iron the letters on with small bits of  Steam a Seam II and off he went with four packages (a quick calculation showed it would be just enough to temporarily adhere all the letters until they had time to sew them in place.

A few days later he called to say her suggestion was a success and sent us three photos of the project in use at the game.

Sharpness counts

the effect of thousands of stitches

Carol was quilting up a storm the other day when she noticed her needle seemed to be punching the fabric. I took a look at the point and compared it to that of a new needle. The act of passing through the cloth thousands of times had literally worn the point off the needle. A word to the wise: needles are cheap – don’t be afraid of the idea of actually changing a needle before you break it.

Cats and Quilts

Ivan gets that sinking feeling

Ivan the Terrible has adopted Carol as his most important human – and he loves to pester her when she is quilting. In this photo, Carol was hand quilting a star quilt on a small oval floor frame when Ivan decided to hop up on the quilt – a favourite trick. However, this time he sunk through frame in very slow motion as his twenty plus pounds proved no match for the hoops. Cats and quilts… like oil and water.

Quilt Patis

3D Hexagon Flower

You may have seen Carol working away at a quilt show or guild meeting with a small chocolate box filled with her quilt patis, Clover Dome needle holder, $1 folding scissors, favourite thimble, thread and fabrics. The patis are small hexagons stamped out from template plastic. They make it super easy to do hexagon or diamond based patchwork quilts. The photo shows a 3D flower design dreamed up by Pati Shambrough, the Ohio lady behind the Quilt Patis phenomonon

The Beast Speaks

Steering the Amiga

At our store years ago, I had my office in the basement where I handled invoices, orders, shipping, accounting and the umpteen different things that crop up in a small business. One of our customers nick-named me “the beast in the basement” after seeing me lope up the stairs to give my wife a hand. We had a promotion once which offered a discount if you brought in cookies for “the beast in the basement”…

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