The Singing Quilter Newsletter

November 2014

In this issue:

.    Fall Tour report
.    CD Baby December Sale!
.    A New Quilt in One Day!
.    New Hexagon Book
.    Upcoming gigs
 . What I'm working on




Look who showed up at the house concert in Ottawa!
Jan Irwin hired me waay back in 1991
to write songs for a play about quilting that she was directing.
It is thanks to her that I am the Singing Quilter today!

Cathy Miller and her husband John Bunge, of Victoria BC Canada travel the world singing songs about quilts, quilters and quilting.  For further information, explore the website at www.singingquilter.com. Or email them at cmiller@nucleus.com.

Follow Cathy's blog at www.singingquilter.wordpress.com

Become a fan on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cathy-Miller/59712236960?ref=nf for really up to date stuff.

If you would like to be added to the newsletter notification list, send an email to cmiller@nucleus.com with "Subscribe" in the subject line and your full name. To be removed, send an email with "Unsubscribe" in the subject.

Cathy Miller and John Bunge
1464 Cranbrook Place, Victoria BC V8P 1Z7
Canada

Greetings!

Christmas Countdown!

Welcome to all new subscribers who signed up since the last newsletter, especially on our fall tour.

We have just returned from our last shows of the year, and there's so much to tell you about!  I'm not focussing well yet, getting used to being home again and all the little things that come with that (cooking, cleaning, etc).  I don't even want to look at the garden yet.....

We had a marvellous tour back to Ontario and across the Prairies on the way home. The fall colours were peaking for an entire month while we were there! We haven't done the Trans Canada Highway drive for a long time, and it was great to see how things had changed in the interim.

 

Cathy
 

If this is the first newsletter from me you've seen, welcome!  I post them here on the website once a month or so, when there's something I think you'll be interested in. You can sign up for email notifications of new newsletters by sending me an email with "Subscribe" in the header.  If you'd like to follow our doings more often, join my Facebook "fan" page (link at the left) or the blog (where I often write about our travels).

To be removed from the email list, send an email to cmiller@nucleus.com with "Unsubscribe" in the subject line.


The fall colours were exceptional in Peterborough when we stopped at the Lift Locks to take a stroll.



 

Fall Tour Report

Oh my, there's so much to tell you about our wonderful fall tour!  We did 18 gigs (singing and teaching) across to Ontario and back, including 6 house concerts. Since there's so much other information in this newsletter, I've written it all on my blog, and if you'd like, you can read about it there.

As a preview, here's a picture of my Mock Mola class in Dryden Ontario:

And here's Dean and Ruth, to whom I gave my queen-sized "Philately #1" (pictured on the cover of the Singing Quilter Songbook) while we were in Ottawa. (I don't often give quilts away, but Dean has been a good friend for many years, and it seemed the right idea at the time. Still does.)

 

There's much, much more on the blog!

 
 

CD Baby December Sale!

I've just received word that CD Baby will be offering customers ALMOST FREE SHIPPING during the month of December!

For the entire month, you'll be able to buy as many CDs as you want from CD Baby and get them shipped (domestic AND international) for only ONE CENT!

That means now is the time to load up on Christmas presents for the quilters on your list.
The CDs are only $20 apiece, and if you buy two or more, you'll get 20% off!

       

Also, did you know I recorded a Christmas CD before I became the Singing Quilter?
I worked with two friends to create a scripted concert that  toured for 7 seasons across Canada.

The show was called "Two Thousand Years of Christmas"
It features some rare and wonderful songs from the Christmas  songbook, including some originals from our own pens.
The CD is full of spine-tingling harmonies (and yes, they were very fun to sing!) and a folkie flavour.

Notable this year is the song "Christmas in the Trenches" by John McCutcheon, which I sang in the show.
It is about the Christmas truce the first year of WWI - 100 years ago, when the opposing sides met in No Man's Land and played a soccer game.
It's a very powerful song, and I was honoured to be able to sing it.

This CD is only available as a download, but it is still a favourite festive season CD for those who own it.
You can listen to the songs and order your download at CD Baby.

 

A Quilt in One Day!

We stopped in Deloraine Manitoba on our way home and stayed with famous Canadian quilter: Judy Morningstar.
Judy has won many awards for her quilting, and has been honoured with Canada's highest quilting award:
the Dorothy McMurdie Award in 2009 for her contribution to quilting in Canada. 
In 2006 she was awarded Teacher of the Year.

Judy has the most beautiful stash I've ever seen.  Many quilters buy fabric that looks old within a few years (I have lots of that in my stash!). 
Judy has wonderful colour and design sense, and as I got to paw through some of the bins, it all looked perfectly up to date and high quality. And lots of it!
Now that she has retired from teaching, she's making quilts for other people - charitable quilts, friends' quilts, etc, to try to use it up.
She has a lot of work ahead of her!

 
There were TWO WHOLE WALLS of tightly-packed laundry bins full of gorgeous fabric!
Her friends call her stash "Fabricland South"!

Judy's idea was for me to learn how to use her longarm and make a quilt that day. We pulled fabric before breakfast, and there began the sweatshop!!!

The fastest thing to do was a raw-edge appliqué art piece done entirely on the longarm.
We glued the squares on lightly, then I stitched them down. The quilting took no time at all, after all that was done!

 

We sang a house concert that night for a delightful bunch of Judy's quilting friends.
Thank you, Judy (and Bill) for an absolutely wonderful visit.  I'll keep this memory of your generosity with me.

Now - where can I fit a longarm machine in my house????

 

New Hexagon Book

We stopped in at Katja's Quilt Shoppe in Kamloops on the way home.  Katja is one of my Go-To places for all things Hexagon. 
She carries a huge line of Paper Pieces products, and I want to try some elongated hexagons next.

Turns out, Katja was celebrating the release of her new book: The New Hexagon (put out by Martingale).
Inside are FIFTY-TWO patterns for pieced hexagons!  That's one for each week of the year.
 

I'm preparing a new class called "Hexaholics Unite!" which will feature an overview of the old and new techniques we can use for making hexagons.
It's so exciting to have this new book on piecing them - truly, the coolest thing this year!

 

What I'm Working On

 Now that we're home, I'm working on the design wall on the back of my new Wall Bed in the studio, so that I'm all ready to start quilting again.

I bought some high-density "Durofoam" insulation sheets which I cut to size and covered with thick white flannel. John has screwed the sheets into the underside of the bed, so that whenever it is stored (up), I have a wonderful design wall. You don't see it at all when the bed is deployed.  Very exciting.

Here's the first project I'm doing, using the Marci Baker technique in her book "ABC 3-D" - the wall certainly helps with this layout!

Upcoming Tours:

We have completed our touring for 2014. Here are the confirmed gigs for the first part of 2015.  John is still booking for the spring in Ontario and the midwest of the US, and the fall down to Texas.  Let us know if you want us to come to you!

I'm VERY excited that we will be singing in Paducah for the very first time during the quilt festival in 2015. See you there?

In 2016 we'll be doing another one of our big circuits of North America, all the way down to Florida and up the Eastern Seaboard.  Maybe then we'll be able to set up something in our last two states: Mississippi and Arkansas.  Do you know any quilt guilds there?  We need to sing for them!

January 24-25 LITTLETON CO (near Denver) Colorado Quilting Council, Inc.
February 7-14 KONA HAWAII Quilting on the Beach retreat
March 20-21   OSHKOSH WI Fox Valley Technical College Sewing and Quilting Expo
April 9              LINDSAY ON Mock Mola Class
April 17           FLINT MI Genesee Star Quilters guild concert 12:30pm
April 23           PADUCAH KY!!!!  Outdoor concert in front of Museum at 1pm
April 27           NILES MI Niles Piecemakers Quilt Guild (mock mola workshop and concert)

In May we'll be doing gigs in Missouri and Iowa.

For details on any of these performances, please get in touch, or visit the Tour Itinerary page of the website where there are contact addresses for each performance.

Thank you for reading this newsletter.  Feel free to share it in its entirety.  If you have any suggestions of things you would like to hear about, or to unsubscribe, please send an email to cmiller@nucleus.com .
© Cathy Miller, November 2014

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