Forever Canadian

I'm a patriotic Canadian, always have been and likely will be until this earthly life ends. And so the current threats to our sovereignty from both the United States president and the Alberta separatist movement have upset me and exacerbated my anxiety. But when the going gets tough, the quilters get quilting. And so I set aside my other projects and proceeded with a plan that I've had percolating for over a year now.
It started as an idea on graph paper and then I moved it into Quilt Pro 6, so that I could play with colours/fabrics. Originally, I had submitted the idea to a magazine as a possible Quilt of Valour. Of course, the magazine was from the United States, so they weren't necessarily interested in a maple leaf design. Nor do I have sufficient followers on social media to make publishing my designs profitable. Or whatever their reasons were, my design was rejected. I then modified the design to make it "landscape" instead of "portrait" (it had a single strip of HSTs both above and below the maple leaf, instead of on the sides) and eventually decided I could add a couple more strips of HSTs on each end to make it a twin bed sized quilt. But without them, it would still make a great QOV, and I have actually considered offering the design to Quilts of Valour Canada. But I'm not a famous quilt designer and don't know if they would be interested, and maybe I'll see if I can profit from it personally instead. 
My design plan was to use a red-themed layer cake, utilizing what I call the "quick quad" method, where you stitch two 10" squares, right sides together, ¼" seams on all 4 sides, and then cut it diagonally in both directions. Yes, you end up with all bias edges, but it's a quick and easy way to make 4 HSTs at once. You just have to be careful not to stretch the edges when working with them. Nevertheless, it can be very difficult to find an all-red-themed layer cake. No problem - I had sufficient red fabric in my stash, mostly left over from Log Canada, but I had some from some other projects as well. 
With our national Flag Day (February 15) coming up and our current political situation, I was suddenly motivated to get this quilt made. And I started cutting red fabrics. And solid white, of course. 

Meanwhile, I've been studying our denomination's Sabbath School lesson (can be found at Sabbath School Net), which is currently on the Bible books of Philippians and Colossians. The lesson for February 7-13 is titled, "A Heavenly Citizenship" and the memory verse is:

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.
Philippians 4:6 NKJV

And the verses following have this to say:

And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.

Philippians 4:7.8 NKJV

These verses gave me some definite admonitions to follow and promises to claim. And the introduction seemed to be written specifically with me in mind: 

"Even when things don't go the way we would like, which happens more often than we would like, we don't need to be worried or anxious or discouraged. Instead, there are principles that will help us find inner strength to face the challenges that life brings, and thus we can experience a settled and lasting peace that only God can give. The present and the future are in His hands, and He will supply everything we need.

"Most important, we need not place our hopes in earthly systems of government, which regularly disappoint us. As Christians, we are citizens of God's heavenly kingdom."
(Extracted February 7/2026 from A Heavenly Citizenship - Sabbath School Lesson 07, 1st Qtr 2026, emphasis mine)
So, yes, I recognize that, even though I remain a patriotic Canadian, I need to focus more on where my true citizenship lies, and that my KIng is still sovereign of the universe, no matter what happens to the nations of this world. And claim for myself that "peace that surpasses all understanding" that He promises. 

Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
John 14:27 NKJV

And yes, I did get the quilt finished in time for Flag Day. And I did have some challenges with the bias edges, but managed to make it work. I chose Maple Grove for the pantograph. 

In hindsight, maybe I should have used Maple Syrup. 

Maple Syrup pantograph on Log Canada quilt

The designs are quite similar, but I don't think Maple Syrup is as "crowded". Or maybe it just looks that way because the white spaces are so much larger in the Forever Canadian quilt. 
Anyway, I did write up the pattern for the Forever Canadian quilt, so if you're interested, message me via the contact form in the right column. I'll be charging $12 for a PDF pattern, and I include instructions for both the throw size (76"x64" - appropriate for QOV) and the twin bed size (100"x64"). As I do not have an online shop, and likely won't unless my quilt designing suddenly "takes off", payment will be via e-transfer or PayPal (if I can figure that out) and I will send the pattern via email. 

2 Days of Baking and Very Sore Feet

Baking - especially bread baking - can be very demanding and time-consuming. And very hard on the feet, because it involves a lot of standing. I've had bad feet pretty much my entire life. Plantar fasciitis, according to the podiatrist, although I'm inclined to believe that that has become a catchall phrase for any foot pain not explained by other causes. I've tried orthotics and various shoes, but nothing really helps. As a matter of fact, the orthotics and some expensive shoes have actually made the pain worse. Various insoles, various footwear, and I'm still stuck with foot pain. And it's only gotten worse as I've aged and put on weight. I really don't remember having foot pain as a child, but I do remember having to roll a pop bottle with my feet. Supposedly, the exercise was beneficial, although at that time it wasn't being called plantar fasciitis. So, it can limit how much I can do that requires standing. And after 2 days in the kitchen, I'm ready to return to my craft studio, where it might require some standing - at the ironing board, at the cutting table and at the longarm, but mostly I get to alternate between sitting and standing. Except when I'm on the longarm. 
Unfortunately, I still don't have anything to eat, other than pancakes and other bread products. I decided to make something with my sourdough starter, Sourdough Cinnamon Rolls, but that required reactivating my starter, which produced more discard. And I didn't want to get into the situation where I had an overabundance of discard in my fridge again. So, on Monday I made Sourdough Cinnamon Raisin Bread and Sourdough English Muffins. 

I remembered when I made the bread previously that I found that it tended to separate around the filling because it was made as a roll. This time I decided to just add the filling to the bread dough. Unfortunately, I probably could have left out the flax egg and extra water, as it wasn't incorporating well into the dough and the dough was too soft. So I added more flour. Then it was too stiff, then I added a little more water. I haven't tasted it yet, but it looks and smells good. 

I've also made the English muffins before, and tried to just approximate when I divided the dough. This time I chose to use the scale and ended up with more uniform sized muffins. And the taste and texture is fine. But next time I will make sure to have the pan prepared (not for cooking but for setting the muffins out to rise) because the dough started drying out while I was weighing the individual pieces. And I think I will flatten them more before allowing them to rise. 
That evening, I stirred up the sponge for another batch of pancakes. I normally use whole wheat pastry flour for these, and occasionally hard white wheat flour, both of which have lower gluten content than hard red wheat. But hard red wheat flour was all I had ground and by that time I was too tired to grind any more. Plus I've also been using mostly hard red wheat flour in feeding the starter, with some occasional rye. So my starter has been thicker than when using all purpose white flour. With thicker starter and higher gluten flour, my resulting pancake batter was quite viscous. But it worked. It just made thicker pancakes than normal. 

That was yesterday for breakfast. And the starter was ready for the cinnamon rolls. But I also decided to make pizza again, using up some of the discard. And I hoped to make some biscuits as well. But I never got to the biscuits. In between messing with the dough for both cinnamon rolls and pizza crust, I also made my own vegan pepperoni crumbles (from the Vegan Pizza cookbook) and Melty Cheese (from Give Them Something Better), plus the filling and the icing for the cinnamon rolls. I had to rehydrate some brown sugar for the filling. I over-watered it and that could be why mine didn't spread out as nicely as in the website picture. Either that or they "cheated" and made more filling than the recipe said. And that pretty much took up my whole day. I grabbed a few handfuls of peanuts and that tied me over until the pizza was ready to eat. 

In addition to the pepperoni and "cheese", I topped the pizzas with a store-bought sauce, spinach, onion and kalamata olives. Yummy! I made three 10" pizzas this time and it worked fine with the sourdough pizza crust recipe that I've used before. I ate one and put the other two in the freezer. Each of these pizzas fit perfectly into a large freezer bag. I covered the tops with waxed paper to keep the cheese from sticking to the inside of the bag. 

I had a cinnamon roll with my breakfast this morning. I think the bread part could have been a little moister, but otherwise, it was fine. Most of these will go into the freezer. I just have to figure out how to do that without loosing most of the frosting. 
I wish my daughter and grandson lived closer. Then I could drop off some of my baking for them to enjoy. 
Maybe I'll make biscuits today, but I definitely should make the curry. And hopefully get into the craft studio. The only crafting I've done in the past couple of days was sealing the edges (stitching ⅛" from all edges) of the quilted pieces for my daughter's backpack. 
 

The Ulitmate Travel Bag

My grandson's bag is finished and I'm glad. Bags are a lot of work, and the worst part is sewing the front and back to the side strip. So Many Layers! On the one side where the binding on the inside front mesh pocket lined up with the binding on the seam joining the zipper strip with the side strip, I had to stitch by turning the hand wheel by hand. Otherwise the needle just stuck and the machine vibrated because it couldn't force its way through all of that bulk. Fortunately, I was able to keep stitching by rotating the hand wheel. And I had to go over that seam three times: once to stitch the pieces together, then to attach the binding, then to fold the binding over the seam and attach it to the other side. Also fortunately, these two bindings didn't end up lining up perfectly on the other side, so I was able to stitch through them, slowly. But the most challenging part was attaching the back because I already had all of the bulk of the front attached. It was quite unwieldy and didn't "scrunch" very readily to force it under the presser foot. I'm still puzzled how on earth people can sew bags made using home dec fabric when I find it so challenging sewing bags with quilting cotton. Maybe they have industrial machines. I don't think my heavy duty Singer could do it, but maybe if I had a heavy duty Janome. 
I actually considered getting dragon zipper pull charms for the zippers on this bag. When I first looked for them, I found some on Amazon, but the shipping was as much or more than the cost of the item. Then when I just looked for dragon zipper charms, I was able to find some that would ship free with the minimum purchase ($35), and I could get 24 of them for $11.99, far better than the $5 or $6 or more each plus shipping that the other ones cost. But, as they were just charms, I would also have to buy some hardware to attach them to the zipper pulls. And I only need 4 of them. I'm not sure what I'd do with the other 20, especially since I don't intend to get into jewelry making. I don't even wear jewelry. I was also concerned that the charms could get caught on something too easily, so I just opted to use the fabric pulls. 

This is the bag after attaching the front and back. I don't remember if I mentioned that my grandson picked the fabric. I actually really like all of the fabrics he chose, but it might have been better if there weren't so much contrast between them so I didn't have to keep changing threads. Nevertheless, it's done and, as I suspected, it was nearly impossible to turn it right side out with the stabilizer already in the sleeve. And I did end up bending one corner of the foam core. I think making a separate sleeve, like I did for the laptop carrier bag, and inserting it after turning the bag right side out would have worked much better. As I mentioned before, if Damian wants me to replace the foam core board with plastic canvas, I will do so. And since it's not as rigid, the bag will be turned more easily. 
I ate the last of my Roasted Veggie Fajitas for lunch today. I also used some of the Not Refried Beans in a Breakfast Burrito with Tofu Scramble. I'll discuss them more when I review the cookbook that they're in. The recipe made 4 burritos and I froze three as per the instructions in the cookbook. Except that the instructions said to wrap them in paper towel and then foil. Then, when you want to reheat them, remove the foil and put them in the microwave in the paper towel. I couldn't understand why I shouldn't just use plastic wrap rather than foil. It would have been different if they were going to go into the oven. So, I just used plastic wrap. I also took the rest of the beans and some of the Spanish rice and, together with some cooked veggies, made up a couple of dinner trays to put in the freezer. They're in divided plastic containers, and I checked the bottom of the containers and there is no microwave symbol, so I'll have to dump the food onto a plate if I want to heat it up in the microwave. I still have a little of the rice left, but I'm planning on making a curry, so will use it up with that. I don't really like my leftovers to be around for longer than a week so they don't go bad, unless I freeze them. 
I fed my sourdough a couple of times on Friday, so I now have a total of 3½ cups of discard in my fridge, so I need to do something with it soon. I'm thinking of making pizza again, only this time trying 3 small pizzas, and I can probably freeze 2. I also need to make a regular batch of bread. I've used up all of the loaves I bought at Costco. The multigrain sourdough boule is finished and I'm working on the Whole Wheat and Rye sourdough bread and I still have the Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread in the freezer. So, I will need more bread soon. And I have one Sourdough Tortilla left. I was using them for the fajitas, but I've used up all the filling now. I used storebought tortillas for the breakfast burritos as they needed to be larger. 
And now I need to get my daughter's backpack made. But I may take a break from bag-making. It's pretty labour intensive. And I do have 2 or three 3-yard quilts to make.  
Just about forgot, here is the link for The Ultimate Travel Bag Class and here is the link for just the pattern.