I’m not interested in quilts

WHAT??????  Apparently I said that!  When M was just a baby, my brother and and SIL came to visit. For those back home, do you remember that quilt show (and agricultural show) in Milton???? I can’t remember the name of the place. My SIL’s mother was a quilter, my brother worked for the Museum, it was a perfect fit for an outing.

So while my SIL went to visit the quilts to get a few pictures for her mother, I said I wasn’t interested and stayed outside!!!  HOLY!!!  What was I thinking? Then a year and a half later - the flood gates opened and the rest is history! Perhaps that was the event that that triggered my interest because when M was 2, I made her a quilt for her bed - OK - I started it (it is done now, but it never went on her bed).

Yikes - maybe these trips down memory lane aren’t good! I got a good chuckle out of that.

I popped down to visit my friend Susan on their farm which is about 1 1/2 hours from where my parents live. I met Susan because of a barn quilt that she had made and displayed on one of their buildings years ago. Through a twist of fate, I ended up meeting Susan after mentioning the quilt to the ladies at The Quilt Patch (now closed) in Moose Jaw. We met up at an event hosted by the store and the rest is history!!!

Have you ever bought a foot for your sewing machine and then not been able to master it?? Susan has  a Bernina. She had purchased a binding foot a while back and had not mastered it. She dug it out in April and thought she better make use of it since it wasn’t cheap. I would say she’s mastered that foot quite nicely and had used it to bind several quilts and placemats and who knows what else. I was very impressed. Now just so you don’t go all crazy - the binding is narrow and single fold, but that’s OK and it honestly looked very neat on her projects. I took a picture to share with you later. I wouldn’t bind all my quilts with this, but it looked great and the binding was very neat and consistent. It really added a whole different look to the quilts.

I did a wee bit of sewing on the Bernina. A nice sewing machine, but I LOVE my machines better. I had to use the knee lift to raise the presser foot and well, I’m just not used to that kind of coordination since the Husqvarna Vikings and the PFAFF lift the foot automatically. I’m just spoiled I guess since there are loads of machines that aren’t able to lift the presser foot period!

We managed to get a bit of sewing in, took some pictures and then I got to play on the farm equipment. They have a fair amount of acres to farm -  they are classified as a medium sized farm. But they have this massive combine (and other massive equipment as well) . For those of you who don’t know what that is - it’s a huge piece of machinery that cuts the crops and separates the grain from the stalks/pods or whatever it is based on what they are harvesting. This combine is 50 feet wide! Well, the front part that harvests the grain. FIFTY FEET - that’s huge considering when my Dad farmed, those headers were maybe 10?? I’m not sure the width, but they were NOT wide.

Imagine the number of rounds that are saved by those 50 feet. The combine runs on a GPS so basically once you get it to the field, you don’t need to steer it. You do have to turn the corner, but on some you can program it so you don’t even have to do that. There are so many bells and whistles on that combine, it would put many of our cars to shame. Not only do they have GPS in the combine, but the sprayer, the tractors and many other pieces of equipment.

Think of the cost???  Yep - these machines are NOT cheap - the average house price in Toronto is about $750,000 (I think) and yes - that’s how much ONE of these combines costs. Let’s not forget the monitoring system you can now install in your grain bins to monitor the temperature and grain levels and well - we just touched the surface on how technology has changed farming.

If you have a SmartHome system in your house, that’s peanuts compared to the technology that helps run a farm these days. It was a fascinating tour and I thank Susan and Cam for their time in a very busy season. They’ll start combining in a few days - shoot - I’ll be gone by then, but at least I got to actually see inside the combine.