The Big Step

My husband and I are retired couple living in the Cowichan Valley on a small acreage we refer to as "The Farm".  We moved here approximately eight years ago when my husband retired.   However, life has not what we expected in retirement and we had to adjust, adjust and readjust.  Which brings me to my adventures with Sapphire and this blog.

Christmas Gifts

I needed something that would allow my personality to learn to relax and not take life so seriously.   Photography has always been a hobby of mine but somehow it wasn't cutting it.   Then one Christmas I started to make little handmade purses for my young grandnieces and nephew.   This went on to making hotdog pillowcases for everyone that I knew.

Hotdog pillowcase

In addition, my neighbour owns a lovely little fabric shop called Fabrics @ the Falls.   Donna, the owner of the shop, makes beautiful things and she encouraged me in my little projects.  Donna is a great believer of thinking outside the "pattern" and that fits my personality.  

My mother was an excellent seamstress.   Mom (Ada Bernice Mason Pratt Satre)  would  become known throughout the area where we lived as the person to go to if you needed anything special or something upholstered.  I always knew if I wanted anything special or upholstered I need only to call her.   One of her projects was to make beautiful quilts for each one of her kids.    But alas, she died in 1997 at the young age of 67 years old.

Which brings me back to the reason I needed to learn to relax and take life less seriously.   This year I will be 67 and from this point on I will always be older than my Mom.   
   
But my sewing is not anything to write home about but I do love the texture of material and have collected it for years.  I had been taught by my mother to make french seams on an old treadle sewing machine when I was about nine years old so I could make my own cotton sheets out of hundred pound flour sacks.   My next project was to hem flannelette for baby diapers for my younger siblings when
they came along.   But I never had a urge to get fancy.  Hemming pants/jeans was about my speed.

I had various sewing machines and my last one was  Husqvarna Optima 620 that I bought in 1986 and has served me well. Then in January, 2013 I made a small lap robe for my husband for our wedding anniversary out of some material from my stash.   I had bought the material about ten years ago as it had a picture of a 1955 Ford Fairlane Crown Victoria Sunliner /Skyliner, pink and white in color, which my husband owned when we were first married.    We would go on to sell the car to make the down payment on our first house.   However, that is another story.  

The result of the robe was ok and my husband was pleased.   The big payoff came with how much I had enjoyed the experience and started to realize what a beautiful sewing room I had to work in.   The window looks out into the back of the property.   There is a birdfeeder on the window that the birds visit. I can watch my husband, Dale, as he goes about his daily duties.   I can see our chickens when they make a run to try and be truly free range.  I watch Mercedes, one of our three feral cats, patrolling the property or just taking a break on the porch table of the playhouse.   And I realized that I was letting my mind rest, wander and create.  







It was this epiphany that I started checking out quilting machines and with my husband’s encouragement I bought a new Husqvarna Viking Sapphire 875 Quilt sewing machine.   I named her Sapphire, which happens to be my birthstone.  

This blog is a big step for me.  It is an account of  my adventures with Sapphire. 

I hope you check back from time to time to see what we are up too.