sue's journeys

January Sunrise

2012-01-29T21:59:00.000-05:00

I was driving to work along M13 between Saginaw and Bay City when I stopped and took this photo looking out over the Crow Island Wildlife Refuge. It was stunning. The whole eastern sky glowed orange for a few minutes and then the sun was up...

Coffee Bags

2012-01-28T20:19:00.000-05:00

I know this is old news, especially for my girls that made them over the holidays, but these were fun. They are made of recycled coffee bags from Zingermans in Ann Arbor. Each of the girls chose their own fabrics from the stash (and I wish that I had photos, but of course, we forgot to get them), and each constructed their bags differently because I didn't have any pattern, but they are all engineers so they all did a fabulous job. This must have been a good idea; 2 of the women at work got recycled coffee bags from the shop in Bay City and after seeing mine, are making bags too. The update on the red, white and blue lone star is that it is 56" across, not 70'. I'm not sure where I got that idea, but it is all together and I'm adding borders tomorrow. The red, white, and blue is growing on me. I have Winter Moonlight up in the foyer for the winter months, but I'm thinking that the lone star might be a lovely summer quilt to hang there. Pictures will follow.

Red, White, and Blue!

2012-01-26T22:52:00.000-05:00

Red, White and Blue! I was shoving fabric and books around last week trying to decide what to do on the annual guild retreat. My class had been canceled and the coordinator said we were to work on our own projects. Hmm... I didn't have any started that I wanted to take on in public... But, there were many exceptional quilters going to this retreat, which meant that I could get help and I needed to practice piecing (for those not acquainted with the terminology this word means matching all those points for which traditional quilts are well known). Then I picked up Eleanor Burns book on Radiant Star quilts. These quilts are a bit like piecing on steroids. LOTS of points! Her books have great instructions and I had been thinking of trying to do one for a while. I needed a focus fabric for the "radiating" portion of the star. My friend had given me a big piece of this American flag fabric and I put some other reds and blues from the stash with it. The points and center are navy, the white in the star is the "white" background. I took a flat white with me, but wasn't really happy with it and found this fabulous white fabric with overdyed grays and tans on it that was perfect. The star is put together here (more or less flat and pretty well pieced), but all the background and border fabrics are just hung on the design board so I can see how it will look. The star is 70" across so this will probably be a pretty big quilt. I am thinking that this will be a long arm project too with the background quilted differently so that the star will really stand out. Thanks to Carole and Pat for the help at the retreat.

I know I have been particularly slow about blogging, it seemed like I just didn't have much left to say and wasn't doing enough to justify talking about it, but now that the holidays are over (and we had a particularly good time this year and made bags from recycled coffee bags, very fun!), and Don and Emily got fabric in Africa, I've made a couple cool baskets, made a couple really funky pillows, started a new guild exchange, am planning the African quilts, making a couple fun things for birthdays, taking a class for a new basket next month, doing some embroidery, working on the long-arm, planning to go to a wholesale quilt show in April, going to visit Kate in Florida in March...well, I guess I still have something left to say!

Quilting for Alzheimer's Research

2011-08-19T21:54:00.001-04:00

I'm pleased to be able to able to assist Ami and her crew in their endeavor to fund Alzheimer's research. Check out how you can help too... even the non-sewers... http://www.alzquilts.org/

These little quilts are about 8x11", made from scraps left over from the piano key border on my Liberated Quilt Challenge. I then layered them with batting and backing and hand quilted them using perle cotton. The top one is done in triangles and the bottom one is done with clamshell shapes. The photos are a bit funky since the light is yellow in the library at night, but they are bright and cheerful and hopefully someone at the Houston Quilt Show will find them fun and purchase them. The top one is dedicated to the memory of Grandma S and those that loved her and the bottom one is for Terri's Grandma and those that love her. I'm happy to be doing anything that might help us find a cure for this dreadful disease.

No baby, but I have the blanket!

2011-08-04T18:25:00.000-04:00

I took this off the loom last week. It took forever, mostly since I have been too busy quilting to go to weaving class much, but it is done and I do like it. I tend to do rag rugs and projects using chunky yarn on the loom, so this is one of my first real attempts in 30 years of weaving to really do a consistent pattern and the lacy boxes turned out beautiful and pretty much square! The blanket is 36x42" and finished with bias binding.

Blues is finished and on the bed

2011-08-04T18:15:00.000-04:00

It is quilted with a medium sized meander that I just freehanded, it came off the long arm on the Tues, I bound it on Wednesday in the really dark blue, and washed and dried it this evening. It did shrink up a bit, from 102x102 to 97x97, but is still plenty large enough for the king sized bed and H even said it looked nice. I could get so much more done if I just didn't have the day job...

Inspired by the Red and White Quilts

2011-08-04T18:08:00.000-04:00

After seeing photos on-line of the fabulous red and white quilt exhibit in New York, I had to make my own. I used lots of scrappy reds, everything from almost orange to almost purple, with a scrappy white to gold background, framed it in black and bordered it with more dark red. The stars are 8" blocks, there are 11 across and 11 down, with a 1" black frame and a 8" red border. I plan to bind it in red too. It ended up being 98x98" but will shrink up some with quilting and washing. I think I will quilt it with a simple grid pattern across the stars. Next week...

Blues

2011-08-01T23:30:00.000-04:00

I have finally gotten the Blues quilt on the long arm. I'm doing an all over swirly pattern and although it's a practice piece and for our bed, which means the dogs will be on it, I think it's going to look good. I haven't done anything on the long arm since K's quilt in May, so I had to look up all the directions again. But...in a couple weeks, H and I are attending the classes that came with the quilter and I needed to get in some practice. The funnest (I know, I'm making up words) part of this was that I couldn't find the perfect backing fabric so I bought something and then dyed it the color that I wanted it. I'll take a photo of the backing when I get it off the long arm...

A Wacky Bird

2011-08-01T23:19:00.001-04:00

I took a class with Suzanne Marshall in Ann Arbor last Friday on hand appliqueing. I made a wacky bird using one of her patterns and then embroidered a swirly tail, head dress, and eye lashes to dress him up a bit. I took it with a friend and it was alot of fun. The background for this is one of my hand dyed pieces of fabric that I made a few weeks ago. I'm pleased with him. I think he will make a cool bag or pillow.

Blues

2011-07-14T19:26:00.000-04:00

I had such a good time with the blue piano key border on the Liberated Round Robin that I bought a couple more 1/2 yard cuts of blue batik and made a window pane style quilt top. I saw the inspiration for this in one of this month's quilt magazines. This one is bigger, 102 x 102", since it is for my king sized bed. I needed something that the dog hair wouldn't show on too badly. The sashing, which looks black in the photo, is really 4 shades of dark navy blue batiks and the panes are different shades of blue and blue-green batiks. It is more modern looking than I intended, but since my room is painted a fairly deep yellow and I have woven denim rag rugs on the floor with cherry shaker style furniture, it looks good. I started it Sunday afternoon and finished it last night. It will sit on the quilt rack until next week when I have time to put it on the longarm and get it quilted. I'm thinking that I will do a freehand all-over leaf pattern for quilting. I intend to tightly quilt since the dogs will be sleeping on it at night. I'm pleased with it right now. We'll see how the quilting goes, I haven't had time since May to do anything with the long-arm and I am really looking forward to the long-arm classes in August.

Lib Quilters Round Robin

2011-07-04T18:33:00.002-04:00

My liberated quilters round robin is starting to take shape. I deleted some of the triangles and added log cabins. I needed a border and added some more color. So far, everything is from scraps and the stash. I cut way too many strips to start with and then made too many log cabins too. I originally thought I would put cabins all the way around, but I really like this design better. So in order to get this much quilt top...I have extra pink triangles (and the triangles that I made and didn't use), extra log cabins, extra pink strips, and extra blue piano keys. Hmmm... enough for another quilt. I always seem to do everything twice.

Row x Row and Round Robin

2011-06-01T21:40:00.035-04:00

I am doing two completely different versions of small quilts. Talk about differences in style. The first one is for my guild. We are doing a row by row challenge and passing it to someone different each month for 4 months. We had the option of choosing our fabrics or letting the others choose for us. This is my challenge for this month. She wants me to use these background fabrics and her theme is stars. It will be a challenge for me as these are not my colors and I will have to be different. Hmmm. More to come.

The second photo is the Liberated Round Robin for my on-line group. We started with a center block of our own design, some were simple and some very complicated. You can see check out others on this blog http://liberatedroundrobin.blogspot.com/. This round robin is different than others because we each do our own rows following directions given to us. This month was triangles. I liked these colors and the simple word, but since it is supposed to be design as you go, I didn't really think about colors for the next row. This is the second set of triangular blocks that I have made. The first were very cool, very liberated, but much too dark for the off-white background of the center block. I have saved them and may use them later in the quilt. I'm still not terribly pleased with my start, but have to trust that it will come together in the end. On June 10th we find out what the next round should look like. I need more colors next time... and more liberated...

And the Quilting Journey Continues...My New LongArm

2011-05-19T17:11:00.000-04:00

I know, it's huge. A new Gammill Long Arm Quilter with a 12' stand.  I can do free motion, meaning self-guided, and follow pantographs (stencils) with a laser. We bought a few pantographs to try it out on, but so far, I have finshed and bound the 2 baby quilts (and given them to the twins, who are ADORABLE!) and finished the spiderweb that is on the quilter and have only done free-motion. I did daisy type flowers on the baby quilts and big spirals on the spiderweb. It is very easy and quick to do fairly big, all over designs, but to have any real style is going to take some time and lots of practice.  I have a few more practice quilts already made and am starting a couple more soon, in between doing the big applique and hand quilted projects.

Lots of things are going on, but if it doesn't stop raining soon, I'm not going to get to do a garden this year. I can only imagine how wet the field is where I put the garden last year and even my flower beds are saturated.  Flint has gotten 8.19" of rain this month and that is 5.5" above normal. Stunningly, we are at the historic high for the month of May and it is only May 18. The little woods behind our house is completely flooded out.

Tonight we are heading out for Vermont to help my niece celebrate her graduation from UVM. I'm pretty excited to see my sister and her family since we weren't able to get together after Christmas this year. AND Monday, I'm going to the Shelburne Museum to see the antique quilts. You can't get a much better weekend than that. I hope your weekend is lovely too.

Bird Haven

2011-04-22T01:16:00.000-04:00

Bird Haven is a new applique project. I am taking a class at the local quilt store with a couple friends. The class starts next week, but I picked up the pattern last week and as you can see in the second photo, have a few of the blocks already done and a couple more started. They aren't trimmed or blocked yet, but at least a couple of them are done except the embroidery. The basket block will have ruched roses in it and there are a couple more blocks with ruched flowers too. I am going to let Nancy show me how to make those next week. For some reason, this quilt seemed to call out for pastels, or maybe it's just spring... The rose fabric in the top left corner will be the border and I pulled the other colors from it. A couple colors came from the stash and are left-overs from Kate's quilt but I did purchase some fabric when I bought the border fabric. It's different from anything I've made in a while, but it will be fun to work on it with the women in this class.

I have also been hand quilting on the oak reel quilt. I have it all marked with wreaths of oak leaves in the empty blocks and a border of oak leaves and acorns on all 4 corners. After I get those quilted, I'm going to do a fairly close set diamond design over the whole quilt, so this is a long term project. I have one wreath done and 3 to go...

My guild's quilt show is next week and I will be busy Thurs, Fri and Sat. I'll help set up on Thursday and do white glove, help with food, take tickets and whatever else is needed during the show on Fri and Sat. On Thursday, I'll drop off my Star Light, Star Bright quilt and the hand quilted baby sized quilt to be in the show. One very wonky and one very traditional... I'm really looking forward to seeing them hang in the show. The show is every two years. My goal is to get the hand quilted oak reels quilt into the next one.

This is the center for a medallion quilt. We have Quilters Night Out once a month and we are working on different border and sashing designs. You could do a row by row quilt with each design or you could do a medallion quilt and put the borders around the medallion. I had seen a feathered star quilt in the NY Red and White Quilt Show a couple weeks ago and thought it looked pretty cool. I hadn't pieced a feathered star before, but I was really careful and it turned out pretty well, meaning the points more or less match. I really like the scrappy reds, which is a good thing because I got carried away cutting fabric and must have 500 triangles of various red fabrics, so several of my borders will be done with triangles. Fortunately we are doing a pinwheel design in May so that will take a few more... I only have 300 or so of the white/cream/gold triangles... this star is only 16 x 16 so it will take many borders to make this a bed sized quilt.

Progress

2011-04-11T22:33:00.001-04:00

I know, it has been forever since I have written. There just isn't much to take pictures of... or write about. Everything is in progress. I'm in the middle of a really cool basket-making project at basket guild, have marked and just started hand quilting the oak reel quilt (which is going to take me about a hundred years, I have over-estimated my hand quilting abilities to the point where I seriously hope I live long enough to finish this), have finished 3! knitted dishclothes, am about 3/4 done with the baby blanket on the loom, have signed up for another applique quilt class at the LQS (because some really good appliquers are taking the class and I will get better just being around them), and best of all, tomorrow Harold and I are off to order my new Gammill long arm quilter. It will be really cool to be able to quilt my own tops. Harold also thinks that I should learn a skill that has the potential to make money (to support my "therapies"), and since I told him that I needed a lot of practice and I don't retire for 4 years, well, you get the picture. I think I have 4 years to practice, Harold, of course thinks I really only need 4 months of practice... we will see. He even went down to Detroit with me to see the quilt show last weekend so he could check out the "competition". I'm not going to be "competition" for a long time. I think we are going to one of the big national quilt shows this summer, so he can see real machine quilting... Anyway, I have 4 full size and 4 baby quilts waiting for the LAQ so I will have plenty to practice on for a while. The baby quilts will be first, since the babies are all here... It will be a couple weeks and I'll post photos when I get it.

Ideas and Snow

2011-03-25T23:36:00.000-04:00

This is some of my new reading material; Amish quilts, Susan McCord's fabulous appliques from the Henry Ford, Gwen's wonderful quilting, Ami's stitches, and Tonya's words. Enough ideas for dozens of quilt designs, now I just have to find enough time to get some of them onto fabric. I love having lots of options and opportunities to try new things.

This is March 24 in my back yard in mid-Michigan. Last week was in the 40 and 50s, all the snow melted, and I went to buy seeds. Hmmm...this week we got 5" of snow and 1/2" of ice on Tuesday night and it is still hanging around in the trees. I'm going to be optimistic and pretend that spring really is here. Tomorrow I start my tomato, basil, and flower seeds in flats in the florida room. It will be good to see little green stuff. It's time.

Still Knitting and the World Wide Swap

2011-03-22T22:56:00.001-04:00

Okay, TWO dishcloths have been completely knitted. They aren't perfect, but as Nita keeps telling me, "they are dishcloths".

On the other front, the on line quilting group that I belong to is having a world wide swap. I just spent two hours foraging in the boxes in the florida room to find my extra pieces, strings, buttons, and bows. Tomorrow these will be going to Connecticut and I will be getting a package from California. It is worldwide because we also have members participating from Australia, France, Panama, and Germany. Harold is less than impressed that we are shipping fabric scraps across 4 continents. I think it is totally cool!

Knitting, not Purling...The Dish Cloth

2011-03-17T21:39:00.000-04:00

Okay, once again, Nita is teaching me to knit, notice that I did not say purl...yet, only knit. My next lesson is purl. I decided to figure them out one at a time. It doesn't seem like it should be difficult, however, my motor memory seems to be faulty when it comes to knitting. Of course, practice would help...and practicing oftener than every 2 months would be even better. I will figure this out, even though I have to admit, I'm not sure that dish cloths are really worth the time or money for cotton yarn....but I need to make something to start. Don't look really close though, every time I said that I had made a mistake, she said "keep going, it's a dishcloth".

Oak Leaf Applique and Kids

2011-03-13T20:53:00.001-04:00

I have not been blogging, but I have been busy. This was spring break week for the kids' colleges and they both went out of town to visit their sisters and then spent a couple days at home and Chrissy brought her housemate too. It was a lot of fun. We went to Detroit and the Eastern Market yesterday, drove around Belle Isle and down Jefferson so she could see where they made the Chrysler commercial. We had lunch at PF Changs and walked around Somerset eating Godivas. Chrissy drank Starbucks again and again, since she can't get it up north. But back to school today...
The Oak Leaf Applique
I started this applique about a month ago. I was thinking about maybe hand quilting a whole cloth quilt when I saw this style in an old magazine. I loved the oak reels and with big spaces between them, I'll have lots of room for fancy hand quilting. The blocks are 25" with a 2" green border and a 5" white border. (It's amazing how big and white 25x25" blocks can be when you are going to fill them up with stitches.) I used white Kona muslin for the background and 1948 Roses by Maywood Studios for the varigated green applique and border. It does have a fairly distinctive rose pattern in the green, but it was exactly the shades of green that I was looking for and I don't think it bother me when it's done. I'm going to wash and dry it so I understand how it shrinks and then hand quilt it. When it's done, I'm thinking about maybe tea dying it to give it a more vintage look and take some of the whiteness out of the background. The next step is to decide on quilting patterns. This one will take some real time. Postscript...thanks to Harold for holding it for the photo (it was starting to snow).

Free Day at Basket Guild

2011-03-05T21:13:00.000-05:00

I think we all had a good time. It was our guild's, Mid Michigan Basket Weavers, free class day. We had 10 new weavers looking for entertainment on a snowy Saturday. We offered supplies, tools, instructions, lunch, and chit chat and they made small market baskets. Everyone finished their basket and seemed pleased. A couple people signed up to join guild (always a good thing) and I think a couple more may be back too. It's a nice weekend; Chrissy is home from school with her roommate for the weekend and we had a good day making baskets. I'm always grateful for family and fellowship with like minded women.

Putts, Spider Webs, and Koi

2011-02-28T21:32:00.000-05:00

I laid the spider web quilt top out on the floor to see the finished product (in case you can't tell, I put a few flying geese down each side) and Putts had to investigate. She often "helps" me quilt, consequently pet hair is one of my distinguishing marks. I apologize if I give you a quilt with hair, but with Putts "helping" at every step of the way and the 2 dogs vying for attention, every stitch seems to have a bit of padding. It is especially noticeable (at least to me) in the hand quilting and applique because I have to take off my glasses and get very close in order to sew and I see every hair...

This wallhanging is for Dick, my brother in law. I know he likes oriental gardens so when I saw these Kaufmann panels, I thought that he might like them as a wallhanging in his home office. I used Maywood Shadowplay fabric as the sashing and appliqued the circles. I didn't want to have it machine quilted as I wanted the piece to be more open, so I used big stitches and hand quilted it using some gold colored silk thread. I hand quilted the inside and outside of each seam and around the inside and outside of the circles and along the koi stream. These pictures aren't terribly good as they were taken on the floor of the library as I was trying to get the best light after dark to take the pictures. I did learn that the Maywood shrunk more than the panels after I laundered it (to get rid of the majority of cat hair) so I put rod pockets at the top and bottom of the back hoping that it will hang flatter with 2 rods. I enjoyed making it and I think he will like it. It's a good thing to bring your gardens inside in February in Vermont. To that end, I have in progress a much wilder garden hanging for my wall too. Next time.

Galloping Moss and Big Stitches

2011-02-05T22:42:00.000-05:00

At this site, you can see photos of moss "galloping" down the slope of stromatalitic limestones (remember Don, like the stuff we looked at last summer off the road behind the hardware in Marquette). I believe I have also seen this phenonmen on rocks in the UP, although not on the stromatolites... I will be looking this summer and post photos if I can find them. (and you guys thought we were just going to the wedding...) http://www.ubcbotanicalgarden.org/potd/ Cool website, check it out. Botany pics every day.

I returned last weekend from another quilting retreat with P, R, and K at R's cabin. It was a blast. 3 trips to the local quilt stores, lots of great food and drink, laughter, and funny stories. I took 6 quilts to work on, didn't actually do much on any of those, but found a perfect fabric for another one and am finishing that up this week. It's a gift, so you'll have to wait for a photo, but I tried out "big stitch" hand quilting for the first time and am really enjoying it. You can cover alot of area quickly and I really like the way it looks on this piece. It will actually contribute to the quilt top and not just hold it together. I've also been looking through all the quilt magazines that I have been collecting for our guild quilt show in April, and have found at least 100 more patterns, styles, and color combinations that I just HAVE to try out. I have to live a LONG time.

Moonlight and Strings

2011-01-18T17:14:00.001-05:00

This is Winter Moonlight hanging on the wall in the library and though I still need practice quilting, piecing, and making letters, I like it. And since my goal was to get it completed by this Friday, I made the goal, but it took many, many, many hours over the holidays to get it quilted.

This is a spiderweb styled string quilt. I started it on Sat evening and have 6 blocks together and another 6 blocks made, but not yet together. I will use the dark blue batik for a sashing, border it with more strings, and then use the dark blue again for the binding. The top should be done by the weekend. I think this one may go to the longarm quilter for an all-over pattern. It will definitely not be hand quilted, see lessons learned for Winter Moonlight. All that fabric bunched together makes for really hard going with a needle and thread.

This photo was taken by Pam, my sister in law. She thought it would be a good inspiration for a quilt. It is, but she paints beautifully and I can hardly wait to see these paperwhites painted. I think she takes lovely photos too. I love the sunlight coming through the fading, translucent flower petals. The golds and greens are gorgeous.

Winter Moonlight is finished!

2011-01-12T20:04:00.002-05:00

I have finished hand quilting Winter Moonlight and have it bound, laundered, and hung on the wall in the library. And though I can't show you a picture because Don still has my camera, it looks great. I made a few mistakes with this quilt. Knowing that I wanted to handquilt, there were several things that I should have thought of before I put this together...pressing seams so I didn't have bunching at every intersection, doing a much better job of piecing since the quilting accentuated all the little triangles, and planning the quilting process in the beginning so I didn't get stymied at the end and had to freehand some stars to fill in the blanks. But in spite of all this...it still looks great (especially from more than 8" away) and I really like it hanging there.

Blogging Hiatus

2011-01-06T23:01:00.000-05:00

I am, by necessity, taking a break from blogging. The computer monitor died a couple days after Christmas and the computer is old enough that nothing is worth repairing or replacing. I do have a new droid phone with all the bells and whistles, and although I can access my blog, I can't seem to be able to actually insert text, so I'm using Don's Apple to write this and hopefully within a couple weeks, we will have a new computer. And since I am furiously handquilting the Winter Moonlight piece and am almost done, I will have photos of that as well as news of a new project or two in a couple weeks. I did sign up today for a new hand applique class at the local quilt store, but it doesn't start until the end of April so there is lots of time between now and then to get a couple new projects off the ground. I actually made a list of things that were completed in 2010 and was pleasantly surprised, so I hope that 2011 is productive for me and happy and healthy for you.

Hand quilted baby blankets

2010-12-19T23:45:00.001-05:00

I started thinking tonight about my projects that I finished (or started) in 2010. I realized that I finished these during the time that I thought that I had lost the camera so did not have photos of them. This one was the second of the two that I did during a 3 week class at the local quilt shop. It is a rose pattern in the center with a feather pattern around it. It is about 32" x 32". The lesson here was that I needed more practice making a scalloped border. The front is a batik with an off white cotton fabric backing. I used the polyester batting that was recommended in the class for both of these projects. I found that, much to my surprise, I really like hand quilting. I don't use a hoop, although that was part of the class, and I don't use between needles. They are just too small for my hands. I use the #11 milliners needles that I also use to applique with and I like them a lot. I copied these 2 patterns from the instructor so I can reproduce them if I want to, but I am thinking that I would like to make up some of my own patterns for the Winter Moonlight and Dresden Plate quilts.

This quilt is a slightly bigger one with a square border. It is about 36" x 38" long with a tulip pattern. The best part of this pattern was the diamond border around the tulip center. I really like the traditional diamond pattern. It shows up well and sets off the center very nicely. The front of this is an off-white cotton fabric and the back is white muslin. I used light fabric for both of these since the method being taught was to trace the pattern directly onto the fabric with a blue washable pen, then sandwich and quilt before washing the piece to remove the blue marks. I did find that both pieces shrunk pretty significantly and that gave the hand quilting a different look and drape than the instructor's pieces where she washed and shrank the fabric before quilting. When I do another piece, I'm going to pre-wash the fabric. I will do more wholecloth quilts since I love the way they look. But hand quilting is time consuming. I worked on these two quilts every day for 4 weeks to finish them. And the first one had to be washed in cold water with detergent to remove all the blood from the fabric. Getting my hands sufficiently calloused to do all these little stitches without a thimble was a 2 week job. And of course, after a few weeks of not quilting, now I have to start over.

Brayden's Quilt

2010-12-19T23:18:00.000-05:00

A baby quilt for Brayden Remillard. It is a panel with farm animals and a block border. The name of each animal is below the picture. It's about 42" x 52" and machine quilted. There wasn't much to making it, but it's the perfect quilt for a little boy to haul around. I am really looking forward to meeting Brayden on Christmas Eve.

Winter Moonlight

2010-12-19T22:10:00.000-05:00

Winter Moonlight is basted and ready to hand quilt. I did decide to use the letters even though they don't really fit the traditional pattern, but it certainly makes the quilt uniquely mine. This is just tacked on the wall so it's not as straight as it could be. I bought quilting thread today, but got home and don't like the color much, so I'm off to the store again tomorow. I also changed the wren shape into more of a cardinal shaped bird. It ended up about 50"x70", kind of small, but since I want it for a wall hanging in the library, I think it will be the perfect size. My goal for quilting is to get it done by next month's quilt guild, the third Friday of January. In a perfect world I would get the Dresden Plates done too, but since I am still appliqueing borders, I don't think so.

HST Trees

2010-12-16T23:10:00.002-05:00

This is Winter Moonlight, the complete opposite of Amanda's quilt. I love this traditional tree pattern and since it is my first time using significant numbers of half square triangles, I made every one of these trees at least 3 times. And the green fabric stretches like crazy on the bias. Judy at my local quilt shop gave good advice though. The pattern that I used didn't mention squaring with a traingular ruler or pressing and she said that if I wanted my points to match, I should press and square every time I put in a seam. And she was correct. It did make it almost possible, but of course, like anything else, practice is needed. Don't look closely, the triangles don't perfectly match, but with some hand quilting, I'm thinking they will be close enough. The circle on the top is the moon (which will be significantly smaller when appliqued in place) and the red bird on the bottom is supposed to be a cardinal, though right now it looks more like a perky little wren. It may need a new shape. We will see. I'm using a narrow 3/4" dark red for a border and then thinking about piecing the words Winter Moonlight on the left hand side of the quilt. I'm going to piece the letters and see if they fit with the rather traditional pattern before deciding about the words. There will also be a 4" dark green border. I want to hand quilt using a traditional crosshatch pattern following the triangles. The quilt is not huge, about 55"x75" or so, but it will make a fabulous wallhanging in my home. Just for fun, I want to also make another one with scrappy red/gold/green triangles on an off white batik background as the summer/fall variety. Presumably, the second one will be easier... This quilt is already one of my favorites. I looked at it this morning and had to remind myself that I actually made it. It is going to look pretty cool.

Congratulations Amanda

2010-12-14T22:44:00.001-05:00

Amanda, We love you and congratulations on graduating from West Virginia this weekend. This is the quilt that I made as her gift for graduation. The photo isn't great since I took it after dark in a room with lots of windows and had to use the flash. It's really much greener than the photo shows. The quilt is made up of scraps and several fat quarters of green, mostly batik, cotton fabric that I purchased (and then didn't use) for another quilt. I literally patched until I got to the width that I wanted, about 55", and the length was dictated by the size of the words, about 85". I knew I wanted it to be a bit wonky looking, and since I don't have patterns for the letters, I pieced until they looked right. I hand quilted it using #8 off white perle cotton (thank you Clare for the idea) with bigger stitches. I quilted rows lengthwise along the quilt about 3-4" apart and then stitched down the center of each letter for emphasis and to get some quilting into the letter areas. I used Warm and Natural cotton batting, and a bright turquoise/lime patterned cotton for the backing. I labeled and it was done. It took about 5 days from start to finish with a couple late evenings. My niece will never get another quilt quite like this one and I know that she will enjoy having it. All your family and friends are proud of you.

Computer Crap

2010-12-03T22:46:00.000-05:00

I think my computer joined the list of spammers this afternoon. I have now run Norton virus protection and it cleaned up a bunch of medium risks (whatever the hell that means) and hopefully it is gone, but I did just talk to the lady whose computer has been spamming me for the last couple weeks and she says the "experts" told her that she couldn't get rid of it as long as she had that computer and her e-mail address. They said that the computer would continue to send out junk to everyone on her address list no matter what she did. I did ask her to delete my e-mail address and anything that she had received from me or sent to me. I hope mine has been cleaned up, or I'm getting that Apple sooner than I had planned. Sorry to anybody getting unsolicited hotties.com or other crap from my e-mail address. Let me know.

Gratefulness

2010-11-28T23:45:00.000-05:00

Everyday is Thanksgiving in my mind. I am so grateful: for family, for friends, for neighbors, and a home, jobs, and enough resources. Thanks to everyone who could spend a little time here over the holiday weekend, and for those of you who couldn't get here, we missed you. I have also found my camera again after 3 weeks of looking for it, so I can start blogging in earnest once again...tomorrow. My kids and guests have all gotten safely back to their own beds now, so I can go to bed too.

Autumn in Michigan

2010-11-13T23:24:00.000-05:00

It is late fall in Michigan. That means the trees have dropped their leaves, Don's tomatoes have finally frozen, and the cattails are shedding. These are photos of Tobico Marsh in northern Bay County. I have a landfill site in the area and was out there last week. The weather was perfect, about 65 degrees and bright sunshine. There is something about fall that makes the sky bluer than it is at any other time of the year. I watched the birds for a while, pulled some cattails apart, and admired every variation of brown, tan, rust, taupe, gray, and black that are possible. I also picked up another case of poison ivy. And then I went back to work.

a Quilt for Alzheimers

2010-10-28T22:22:00.000-04:00

This is the little quilt that I'm donating to the Alzheimers Art Quilt Initiative. Fortunately it is a little squarer than it looks here, the quilting almost creates an optical illusion-odd. It is called Hope in a Whirlwind, the hope is the little wonky house (whose home isn't a little wonky) and the sun and of course, the quilting gives it the whirlwind effect. I dedicated it to the caregivers of those with alzheimer's. My quilt is made up of scraps, I think I showed the little houses the other day, and I appliqued the sun into the corner. It is registered, #5862 ( in case you want to bid on it at http://www.alzquilts.org/) and will be for sale after they sell their 1000 quilts that they are taking to the Houston Quilt Show this week. Houston is one of the biggest quilt shows in the world and I understand that these little quilts just fly off the hangers, so many people attend the show, intending to purchase a donated quilt. I hope to be able to see this phenomena some day.

A Seriously Overloaded To Do List

2010-10-26T23:10:00.000-04:00

Okay, okay, even I admit it. (H's been saying it for a while.) I'm a bit over my head now. I have a crazy quilt in progress, with another class scheduled in mid Nov. I have a hand quilting project in progress with another class scheduled in early Nov. I have another crazy quilting class scheduled at a different shop in late Nov. I am hand appliqueing the border for the dresden plate quilt. I have to clean out the flower beds. I finished a 100x100" quilt top last week. I went to weaving tonight and put more yarn on the loom for the baby blanket. I am hand appliqueing the CWBQ blocks. I am making wonky house blocks in my "spare" time. I am the new newsletter editor for the quilt guild. I go to the gardening meeting, art guild, basket guild, and quilt guild every month and weaving every week. I have the basket quilt started. It's much better than twiddling my thumbs, but I really NEED to wash windows. I have to go to work every day and I am making time to feed the cat (yes Chrissy, Putts is getting fed AND I cleaned the litter box tonight) and the fish, but otherwise I'm cooking and ...well, you know, doing stuff. I hate being bored. Pics next time.

This and That

2010-10-20T23:39:00.001-04:00

These are the last of the zinnias for the year. They have been beautiful, in fact so beautiful that I really almost didn't care that they completely outgrew the snaps and I haven't seen a snapdragon since June. The lesson is to put the zinnias behind the snaps, not in with the snaps... I tried to dry them and they rotted so I'm not putting zinnias on a wreath for the front door, but they have been very prolific all summer. I have probably picked 30 or more bouquets in the last 4 months. I have given them to friends, neighbors, co-workers, the kids, and had them in the kitchen all summer.

I am quilting, I am weaving, and we are going north this weekend to take Chrissy to dinner for her birthday. This little house project is something that I did tonight because the big project is going hmmm...okay, but it's not exactly what I wanted, though it looks great, because I am finally getting better at piecing...pinning is the not so secret, secret and because it takes longer, I was reluctant, but it works, so now I'm a convert...however the big project is a secret so I'm not sharing yet. The little houses are just for fun. I think I'm going to make a village, maybe with trees and a dog or two. The weaving is going pretty well, but I'm not going to be happy that I am putting all this work into acrylic yarn. I decided to weave a baby blanket. Now you would be asking yourself, why would she do that? No idea, but the acrylic has been purchased, because it doesn't shrink and it washes well.... and the loom is almost warped so in a couple weeks, I'll have a baby blanket with huck lace blocks interwoven with plain weave. It should look very cool, but I really have no idea what I'm going to do with it. This weekend, H, the dogs, and I are leaving Friday morning to go up north for a couple days. I am using Chrissy as a way to get away from the house and not think about having to wash the windows. I hate dirty windows, I also hate washing windows, but I really hate laying in bed on a Sat morning thinking about washing windows, so it's on the list soon.

Yeah MSU!!!

2010-10-10T01:04:00.000-04:00

For the third year in a row...MSU beat UM at football today! Yes, I know H, and C, and P aren't happy with the outcome, but I think it's pretty stunning. And D said that things were exciting in EL this afternoon. Yeah State!!! On to BB, we will almost assuredly celebrate twice this year.

Alzheimer's and Dust if You Must

2010-10-07T21:18:00.000-04:00

I volunteered today for the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative, a group started by Ami Sims, to raise money for Alzheimer's research. She has her big fund-raiser at the Houston Quilt Show, this year in early November, and she wants to take 1000 art quilts with her. She also has the exhibit that is at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont. It turns out that Ami only lives a couple miles away and needed help cataloging the quilts bound for Houston. A couple members of my quilt guild and I spent part of the day there. I also got to see, up close and really in person, the art quilts that were done by famous quilters to support the cause, the World Series Quilt Challenge. There is a reason that these people are famous and published and prize-winning. Their quilts were stunning. No photos could do them justice. Check them out at http://www.alzquilts.org/. On the other hand, most of the quilts that I handled today were from just people, quilters like me, but people with stories to tell, about folks thay have loved and lost to Alzheimer's disease. Each of the little quilts has a dedication and many, many were to their moms who didn't know them, or how to cook, or sew, or garden, or drive anymore. My family has been so fortunate, but today I thought of grandma's friends, and Aunt Irene, Sophie, and Grandma Jerry, and all those who cared for them.

And since life seems so short...I love this poem...sorry I don't know the author, I think it's from England.

Dust if you must, but wouldn't it be better,
to paint a picture or write a letter,
bake a cake or plant a seed,
ponder the difference between want and need?

Dust if you must, but there's not much time,
with rivers to swim and mountains to climb,
music to hear and books to read, friends to
cherish and life to lead.

Dust if you must, but the world's out there
With the sun in your eyes, the wind in your hair,
A flutter of snow, a shower of rain.
This day will not come around again.

Dust if you must, but bear in mind,
old age will come and it's not kind.
And when you go - and go you must -
You, yourself, will make more dust!

Grandma always said that if she had her druther's, and of course, none of us do, she wanted to go with a stroke of lightning. Me too.

October 2010, UP and the Durand Quilt Show

2010-10-02T22:04:00.000-04:00

How can it be October already? What happened to September? I missed it somehow. I went up north with Rh and P last weekend, went back up north to spend a couple days with Chris during the week and here it is October. Last weekend....I worked on the crazy quilt square, photos will come soon, but my camera takes terrible pics with incandescent light so I'll figure those out tomorrow. But all day Sat, I learned how to knit. It was easier with them there since they both knew how and could help. I made this fine dishcloth, really pathetic...no really pathetic. It seems that I unknowingly went from 40 stitches to 51 stitches and then P got me back to 40, but in the meantime, I have this ruffle in my dishcloth. Oh well, but I think I can knit and purl now. I also worked on applique a bit, but mainly I learned how to knit...or so I thought, until I got up north to see Chris and walked into her house with her room mate's knitting sitting on the floor. SHE IS MAKING A SWEATER! Not just any sweater, but a gorgeous Norwegian sweater. Now she is Norwegian, and she has clearly been knitting for a while, however she assured me that this was her first sweater. I didn't take a picture, but I sure wanted to. She has been doing socks for a few years... There were perfectly consistent yarn floats to get the little white dots into the black background and a black and white triangular pattern around the bottom of the sweater... Absolutely gorgeous. So, I ran out the next day and bought knitting needles and dishcloth yarn for Chris. She must learn how to knit, and then, as M said, they can knit and watch tv together. Good grief. I don't think I will ever get good enough at knitting to do anything but watch where the yarn is...and my fingers are...and where the needles are....

The trees have turned to reds, yellows, and oranges in the Keweenaw. These pics are for K, and your pretty colored leaves are on their way south. The pic on the right is from Nara Nature Park across from the Pilgrim River Steakhouse. I stopped there and walked for a bit along the trail, picking up leaves and admiring the trees. The one on the left is from the MTU parking lot overlooking Portage Lake. Chris and I drove up to Copper Harbor too, but it was cloudy and raining, so the leaves weren't great. Some of the trees had already dropped in the wind. But we stopped for a bit along the Lake Superior beach and watched the waves crash in over the rocks, it was so beautiful. We also stopped at a restaurant in Calumet on the way back and had thimbleberry margaritas. Only in the UP...

I went to the Durand Quilt Show today and these were some of my favorites.

This one is applique of course. Very pretty and lots of work.

This one was phenomenal. Someone has made 2,288 2" log cabins and turned them into this 83x96" quilt. She did it all by hand. This lady had lots of scraps of fabric and loads of time. If you look closely, you can see the little 2" block on the paper. Incredible. This was definitely my choice for the viewer's choice award. The reason that quilters never throw away a scrap of fabric...

I liked this log cabin too. It's hard to see in the photo, but she called this one Cabin Songs and it has an appliqued border of trees and coyotes howling in the corners. Her colors were wonderful, bright, and perfect for a cabin in the woods.

This is a pattern from a book called French Braid. I took this photo because Rh just bought this book and loves this style of quilt. You can't tell from the photo, but the maker quilted this with a silver metallic thread and it just shines.

Another applique, one of Mary Warner Stone's patterns. This one was appliqued with a button hole stitch done by machine, rather than hand, but the colors were great.

Another applique, done by hand, I think. She used batiks and it was bright and cheerful. I loved her border and she had appliqued the veins on the leaves, which I had never seen done before.

I took this photo because this is the same basic pattern as Don's apple quilt, and I was really surprised at how different the quilts were, even using the same pattern. She used batiks and Don's quilt has the red and gold apple fabrics with the freehand lettering in the border. This one was nice, but I do like Don's quilt better. Personal bias...

A Quilting Weekend

2010-09-22T22:46:00.000-04:00

Rh and I will leave on Friday morning for her cabin up north. We will take the long route, through the fall color (hopefully) and local quilt shops. In the afternoon, we will meet P and the 3 of us, along with the artichoke dip and chocolate that H bought tonight and the weekend supply of chili, will sew all weekend long. I am taking the CWBQ applique, the dresden plate appliqued border, the crazy quilt and the wedding quilt to work on. Any of these projects would keep me busy for the next 2 months so I shouldn't have any problem filling up 2 days. H has plans too, he and the dogs are watching football and eating pizza all weekend. I actually think he may be as excited about the weekend as I am. I won't be here reminding him that the grass really needs mowing... hopefully I will have photos early next week.

Knitting is HARD

2010-09-19T22:51:00.000-04:00

Ok, I'll save you the photos. I spent 4 hours yesterday learning how to knit, well not really, but I did spend 4 hours putting yarn on a knitting needle. Nita, if you are reading this, stop laughing. Nita gave me a lesson on Thursday night and sent me a youtube video. She said "make a dishcloth"...and made it look absolutely idiot-proof... I spent most of the time stopping and re-starting the video. They should make a slow-motion button for youtube. Why hasn't anyone invented that yet? Do they really think that you can get your hands in the right position and wrap the yarn around your thumb that fast? And don't even talk about making the stitches. First off, the video had several lines of knitting already done. How does the first row get on the needle? That's a different video...it was amazing how many videos there were on youtube showing one how to knit. However, if you didn't already know how to knit, most of them are useless. Actually the truth is, I can now caste on and knit (hopefully after 4 hours). But purl...you have to be kidding, my thumb doesn't seem to want to go there. I need another lesson before I start the socks.

A Perfect Day

2010-09-15T22:06:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, hub called from his work at 7am and asked if I wanted to go fishing with him. Of course I wanted to go fishing. It was a beautiful, cool, sunny September day. Who knows how many more of these we are going to get... I called into work and after having breakfast at a local diner, we were off to the lake with the dogs in tow. Most of the day, the dogs laid in the sun in the bottom of the boat. Any time we were near the dock, Maggie, of course, thought she needed a drink and consequently spent most of the day pretty wet. Einie was wet too, but just because he was following Maggie around in the water. The fish were sparse. I caught (and threw back) one middle sized catfish about 1:30 in the afternoon, but it was a lovely day to be on the water. The wind was pretty stiff so we were glad that we had long sleeved shirts and jackets, but the sun was glorious. We left the dock and stopped at the quilting shop on the way home to get a piece of fabric that I thought was calling my name (I can't say with a straight face that I need fabric), got a little ice cream for the road and the dogs of course... and brought the boat home. We then went out and had a salad and pizza. On the way home we stopped and I picked a bunch of bittersweet. There's nothing that says it is autumn more to me than bittersweet. I couldn't find any last year and felt out of sorts until Christmas. I guess hub has never been with me before when I picked bittersweet. First he stopped along the road and said, "I can't park here, there isn't any room", well, you can, because I do every year. But I got out and he went a little further down the road and sat there for a while. Pretty soon he wants to know how long I will be. A while... He yells out that he'll be back. So he went for his lottery ticket and left me there. When he got back, I had a pile 5' high along the road, and was stilll dragging it out of the underbrush. He was a bit incredulous that I was filling his truck up, but we got home with it...and I have bittersweet. I picked off leaves until 8:30 last night and when I was done, stood there in the dark, smelling the cool September air and watching the moon and thinking that it was the perfect day.

Victory Garden

2010-09-13T21:01:00.000-04:00

My friends that own the land where I garden told me tonight that I had a beautiful Victory Garden and invited me back next year. Grandpa would have been pleased. I finished the harvest tonight, dug the carrots, potatoes, and onions and picked the rest of the tomatoes, peppers, and zinnias. Harold will take the Garden Salsa peppers to work tomorrow to try and give them away. They are so hot that I can't get anyone at my work to take them. One of my friends used one in salsa and then had to use 3 times as many tomatoes to dilute it so she could eat it. I'm going to mix the onions and the bell peppers in with the tomatoes and can the whole mess together tomorrow night. I don't think that I will bother with potatoes again, the seed potatoes probably cost $3 or $4 and I ended up with a little less than a bushel. I can buy potatoes here for about $3 a 20 lb bag so I don't think it really paid off to grow them, and they taste the same.... I have at least a bushel of beautiful carrots tonight and have been eating them all summer. It turns out that two 20' rows of carrots is a lot. And tomatoes! I have another 2 bushel tonight, that makes about 5 bushel from my 34 plants of big tomatoes (I inadvertantly planted 5 cherry tomatoes too and could have fed a small army off those 5 plants). I learned my lesson about heirlooms though, next year, back to the hybrids. I can't taste any difference, any of my tomatoes from the garden tasted much, much better than from any store (and I know that I have eaten more tomatoes this summer than maybe in my whole life) but the heirlooms rotted like crazy and they are pink (not a good thing according to H). I didn't mind that most of the varieties ripened over a long time period, and a lot of them are still green on the vines, but based on the rot, I'm going to Big Boy and Early Girl next year. We'll see if it makes a difference. I also picked the rest of the zinnias tonight. I will miss them, they are the best variety and the one that I started from seed, so we will definitely have those next year. I stopped and told him tonight that I was done, so I expect my garden will be plowed over by the weekend. Though the garden has been a really good time, I bought Michigan apples today (Galas-wonderful) so it is officially fall now. I'm going bittersweet hunting tomorrow.

Crazy Quilting Again

2010-09-12T21:56:00.000-04:00

I started a crazy quilting class this afternoon at my local quilt shop. Diane is an excellent instructor, full of ideas and knowledge. Interestingly enough, she also lives across the street from where I grew up in Swartz Creek and her kids went to school with me. Funny how small the world is... I spent this afternoon auditioning fabrics for the 16" square, and then basting them in place. I spent this evening practicing my embroidery stitches, most people learn this as a kid, I am a late starter to say the least, and am nowhere near as good as I would like to be. I was in a hurry when I left this afternoon for class, I had just finished freezing the bushel of peaches, so I didn't take as many fabrics as I wanted. I anticipate that I am going to do much more auditioning and basting before I start the embroidery. The process of crazy quilting is to baste fabrics in a somewhat pleasing pattern on a base, we are using pellon fleece, and then use fancy embroidery stitches to actually hold the fabrics in place. No machine involved... Then you get to use ribbons, beads, lace, and pretty much anything else to embellish the square. My class is a sunday afternoon once a month for 4 months. We'll see how much I get done. As Harold says, there are lots of irons in the fire right now.

Harvest!

2010-09-05T23:55:00.000-04:00

Boxes and buckets of tomatoes are here! And after yesterday and today, 27 quarts of canned tomato sauce and 8 bags of frozen tomato sauce. I oven roasted every one of them, skin and all, pureed them in the blender, and dumped them in the bag or jar. It took awhile because I could only roast 3 pans at a time, they took 45 minutes to roast, and then, they had to boil in the canner for another 45 minutes. It seemed like it was going to take forever and that is after I bought jars and went to 3 stores yesterday before I found a canner. I'm pretty sure I could have purchased a lot of tomatoes for the time and money, (and H is positive of it), but I have them now and they are beautiful. I'm done, at least until next week when I go back to pick the rest.

Rock River

2010-08-30T22:25:00.001-04:00

This is one of the best pictures of my husband and I that has ever been taken. Chrissy took it while we were sitting on the stone breakwall at Rock River. We had a really good time, Pat and Terry were with us on Sat and Sunday, which was a lot of fun, and Don's friend came over for a couple days too. We had intended to move Chris into her apartment in Houghton on Monday, but Don got a call saying that he had a telephone interview for an intern job on Tuesday and then we couldn't get to Houghton until Wednesday. That meant we couldn't use the boat until Thursday, but fortunately the weather was spectacular and we fished all day on Thursday and Friday. Chrissy and I also found time to bind our quilts on the way up, and I appliqued 2 more blocks of the CWBQ, so it was a lovely vacation. I am so glad that Star Light, Star Bright is done. I have enough wonky log cabin blocks done in the batiks to make another quilt and now that this one is done, I want to put it the other one together too. This one, of course, is personalized, but the other one I'll probably do as a charity quilt or give away or something. Or maybe I'll do wonky log cabin houses, that might be fun. I'll see. The last photo is of my annual garden in the front of the house. The shorter marigolds don't seem to like the heat, they have almost stopped blooming, even though I have been deadheading like crazy. The zinnias and petunias however, are doing great. I put more zinnias in the house today. I so much enjoy having the color in the kitchen. I haven't been over to the veggie garden yet. I gave every ripe tomato to R last week and I'm a bit afraid that every other tomato in the garden is now ripe and must be immediately dealt with. Between those, and the peaches on the counter, and the pears in the fridge, I need to be putting stuff in the freezer, and instead, of course, I'm going to Maryland this weekend. Good grief.

Rx River

2010-08-20T21:13:00.002-04:00

We are off to Rock River for a week. We are totally full this year since Chrissy is moving into an unfurnished apt at Tech. We have the desk, bed, lazyboy, lamps, dresser, fish tank, and everything else imaginable packed into the truck and on the boat trailer. Hopefully it will be much cooler up north, it's hotter than crap here. We have heard that the lake's temp is unbelievably warm this year. We will see. Have a fabulous week.

Dyeing Fabric

2010-08-15T20:26:00.003-04:00

Another day of dyeing fabric today with Joetta. The fabrics on the table are from today and the ones on the line are fabrics that I folded, dyed, and/or screen printed last weekend. Those have been washed and dried. Last weekend, I did several techniques. Some of them are screen printed, very fun, I used leaves and grass for the resist and you can even see them in one out of three of the pieces. The other two are just green and blue pieces of cloth, and they would look really great if I didn't know they were supposed to be leaves and grass. One of them I just splattered dye on and that one looks remarkably like someone had splattered dye on it. I also used the sewing machine and tried to use thread as a resist to create a pattern on the fabric. It worked, somewhat, but getting the thread out of the fabric after it had been washed and dried was very hard on the cloth. I punched several holes in the fabric trying to get the thread out and would not be able to re-use this fabric in anything that needed structural integrity. I think the ones that have been folded are the coolest ever. It is called folded shibori, a japanese word meaning (surprisingly, right) folded dyed cloth. That is why all the ones that I did today are folded or wrapped around things, like the vacuum cleaner hose. I hope to be able to get the corrugated effect on the fabric. I used a new roll of contact paper (in the center of the photo) and scrunched and tied fabric on it too. I'll let it dry like that and hope to get the scrunched pattern. The other pieces I folded in triangles, at right angles, squares, or pleats and put different dyes on different areas of the fold and am letting them stew in dye for a couple days before putting them to dry on the line. I love the idea that I don't really have any image of how they will turn out when I am doing them. It's a surprise every time. A wonderful by-product of drying the wet fabric on the line is my new collection of fabulously colored clothespins. You can't even buy these. Aren't they great?

CWBQ

2010-08-14T20:18:00.000-04:00

I am working on the bride and have 7 more leaves to applique and some embroidered stems to finish. I may get a photo tomorrow. I washed and dried more of my dyed fabric today, so that needs a photo too, and tomorrow I am going to go to the weaving studio and maybe felt a little wool. I also sent a new fabric postcard to my swap buddy on the Liberated Quilts group. I mailed one to her on July 29, but it hasn't gotten to Wales yet, so she gets a new one. Of course, I had to have the one postcard that didn't get to it's destination. I hope she enjoys her new one (and the old one too if it ever shows up).

CWBQ Block #1

2010-08-09T21:09:00.000-04:00

Block #1 is done. I am working on the bride tonight, but it's slow going. I had to re-do the bloomers 4 times trying to get them even, the sleeves once, because 1 shoulder was higher than the other, the lace twice, to get it even, and her neck twice to get it to look right. I knew it was going too well.... We did more fabric dyeing over the weekend and it is still all wrapped up in saran wrap and sitting on the deck. Joetta said that I got fading because I didn't leave the dye on long enough, of course she was right, I dried, washed and pressed within hours, too impatient... so I will show it in a few days. I did a couple screen prints too and brought home dye to overdye the prints. I'll have to do that this week too. Also a garden meeting, more tomatoes from the garden, a Red Cross meeting, and I really must go to work again this week. damn. I want to applique....

CWBQ

2010-08-06T22:09:00.001-04:00

Well, after a year of lurking on the CWBQ blog, I have finally joined and added my first blog contribution tonight. It is so much fun to be able to see and read about everyone's progress on this quilt. I also now understand that I am not the only person "obsessed" with applique, or with this quilt. Who would have believed that I could so much enjoy something that seems so unlike me. A few years ago, I, and those who know me best, would have laughed uproariously if someone had suggested that I would enjoy hand sewing. It just goes to show that you are never to old to learn new things about yourself. The CWBQ blog is listed in the Inspiration box on the right hand side of my blog for those of you who might not be familiar with it. Check it out, you will recognize my post by the photos.

CWBQ

2010-08-05T22:20:00.000-04:00

This is part of the color palette for the CWBQ. I say "part of" because I purchased the background and 3 more colors today and added another 10 or 12 from the stash. I'm at about 60 fabrics that might find their way into the quilt. I also prepped the first block, 17 colors and 43 pieces on a 12x15 piece of background. This one is going to be busy!

Civil War Brides Quilt

2010-08-03T21:55:00.000-04:00

I am choosing colors for the CWBQ (I will be using this acronym often in the next few months). The CWBQ is an applique project, relatively daunting in size and complexity. The pattern, by an Australian woman, is modeled after the Bird of Paradise Quilt made during the time of the Civil War presumably for a marriage, but the groom square is missing, so it is supposed that the marriage didn't occur. No one knows why or who put all the work into the original quilt. The original quilt is in the American Folklore Museum in New York City, a definite stop if I ever get back to New York. I will be using the pattern as a guideline. I'm making my squares slightly larger and want to include a house, groom, vegetables, trees, and a cornucopia, in addition to the flowers, birds and nests, animals, fruit, and bride included in the pattern. I have had this pattern for months, but the time never seemed right to start it, but now is the time. It will take longer than anything I have done before and I'm nervous about being able to maintain momentum, but if I don't start, I won't ever finish, right?

Dye workshop

2010-08-02T17:12:00.000-04:00

The results of the dye workshop on Sunday. As usual, as much permanent dye on my hands as on the cloth. The cuticles are even worse, and when I asked how long to get it off, after I had it on, of course, Joetta said that it took her long enough to cut her fingernails 3 times, that's at least a few weeks. Oh well, here's some of the fabric...it turned out pretty cool.

postcards

2010-07-29T20:23:00.000-04:00

My online group has decided to swap fabric postcards. This is actually the third postcard that I have made in a week; I pieced the word Joy on the first one (it was a really cool postcard, much better than this one) and promptly misplaced it in the fabric stash and can't find it. What does that tell you about the fabric stash? And the second one, I fused a basket and 3 flowers on it and sent to Wales this afternoon...unfortunately I forgot to take a photo before it went to the post office. And in case you are interested, it costs $1.28 to send a postcard to Wales. This one is going to Massachusetts, and I put 2 stamps on it just in case there was extra postage. Supposedly you can send these through the mail without an envelope. I guess we will see when I receive mine. That is actually the most fun part, although they were kinda cool to make too, I am going to receive two in return. One from Texas and one from England. How cool is that? I can hardly wait.

This is the start of the dresden plate quilt. The plates and sashing has been added to the background. I am going to add a narrow green border and then I have been trying to decide about the wider border. The pattern is actually set on point so the square quilt is made up of diamond shapes. It's funny how they talk to you if you listen, this one is telling it needs an appliqued border with vines and flowers and maybe hand quilting too. So far I am resisting the hand quilting idea, but I'm thinking it might be right about the border.

Upper Peninsula rocks and friends

2010-07-27T22:30:00.001-04:00

It was a fabulous weekend, full of friends, beer, and really old rocks. Not necessarily in that order. Don and I saw amazing nickel sulfide cores at the Kennecott mine on Friday and heard a rather self-serving lecture on why operating this particular mine would be the best thing since sliced bread. It is true, there is lots of nickel in the rock, but it is only a 10 year operation to extract the nickel and then the company would be gone after making a projected 12 billion dollar profit. They insist that the locals will get their share, but... Yeah EPA, at least make them move the entrance away from Eagle Rock... This is a photo taken at Jasper Knob in Ishpeming, west of Marquette, made up of Negaunee banded iron formation (BIF). The red layers are Jaspilite and the gray is Specularite, a cherty hematite iron ore. These rocks are 1.5 billion or so years old. The photo doesn't do it justice, the black Specularite is shiny and this formation just glows in the sun. This type of formation is found world-wide, and is a sedimentary rock formed formed in shallow seas. It was then heavily metamorphosed to give it the complex folding. There is a lot of speculation that since this rock contained lots of oxygen and the atmosphere at the time was oxygen poor, that a substantial amount of atmospheric oxygen was formed when these formations were "squished". This is one incredibly tough rock. For the most part, you can't touch it with a rock hammer, you have to pick up pieces that have frost heaved at the base of the hill. I already have quite a bit at home so I saved my strength (and D's of course). The next photo is of pillow basalts in the Mona Schists. These circular structures were formed when basalt flowed from a volcano under water and the rock was quickly quenched. This rock is about 2.6 to 2.7Ga or billion years old. Absolutely massive bedrock, no hammers at this stop either.

This is a photo of the Marquette harbor taken from a hill of quartzite a couple miles from Lake Superior. That is Presque Isle in the background. It was a beautiful day.

This is one of my favorite stops and has been since field camp, over 30 years ago. This rock is Kona dolomite, only found in the Marquette area and the swirly things in the rock are stromatolites. Stromatolites are mats of bacteria formed in shallow seas about 2 billion years ago. The layers were covered up with silt and sand, reformed, covered up again, until you have columns of rock at least 30' tall with these circular structures with differential weathering. Though you can't see it here, the fresh face of the Kona is a pink dolomite with lines of darker pink and red stromatolite layers in it. It is a beautiful polished rock and everybody takes home a piece. But nobody pounds on the columns, this is one of the very few stromatolite structures in the world that has this weathering. Geologists have been admiring this structure since Douglas Houghton described it in the early 1800s, and it was probably enjoyed much earlier than that. We also saw Mesnard quartzite and Jacobsville Sandstone in Marquette and then went to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore to look at where the Jacobsville and the Munising sandstone come together at Sable Falls. We drank beer both evenings, told stories, caught up with each others lives, families and work, and planned the next trip before we are all too old to do this. We had fabulous cajun food on Friday night in a new restaurant in Marquette and ate pasties until they came out our ears. All in all, a good weekend. Don, thanks for sharing it with me.

UP Field Trip

2010-07-21T22:12:00.007-04:00

Yes, I'm going on a geology field trip to the Upper Peninsula. Yes, I know I have been there before, but is there something that you do, that no matter how many times you have done it before, if you do it again, it's still a thrill? Looking at rocks in the UP is that way for me. It's an adventure that I started with Dr. Chet Wilson 33 years ago at Mott Community College when I signed up for his physical geology course because I needed a natural science credit. How hard could it be to identify rocks? I love looking at rocks, I love touching them, I love tasting them, and I love just thinking about them. As habits go, it's not too bad, but it does have it's drawbacks... my son says erratic driving, that I'm not the most consistent driver through roadcuts because it is hard to see folding, faulting and lithology at 60 mph. My kids would tell you that talking about them is a also a drawback, but them knowing something about the natural world is not such a bad thing. This trip is basically a 2 day refresher of college field camp and I'm going with a couple college friends (and some of our kids) that I don't see regularly, in fact, our last meeting was 5 years ago at another field trip in the UP. I'll be back on Sunday with pictures. I bet you can't wait!

Also this week, the handmade paper is done, the 25 dresden blocks are appliqued and waiting to be pieced together, a harvest basket was made for a retiring co-worker, and the starlight quilt has my name and date in the border.

Beans!

2010-07-13T22:56:00.002-04:00

Oh, and I almost forgot...the first beans, snap peas, and cucumbers came out of the garden tonight. I immediately brought the beans home and just barely steamed them. They were perfect, especially with the first little cherry tomatoes from the deck. The cucumbers and peas were eaten on the way home. They were perfect too. I love having a veggie garden.

paper-making

2010-07-13T21:29:00.008-04:00

As promised, here is the paper-making post.

Deckle, abaca, hosta and goldenrod mash, kiss off, cooching...these are words with definitions that I didn't understand before last weekend.

Papermaking by hand is interesting. You suspend pulp, in our case paper mash and/or abaca (which is really dried paper mash that you reconstitute using water), in a large tub of water, swing in a mold and deckle, (really a frame with screening to capture the pulp and allow the water to drain through and another frame to create the deckled edge) and then cooch the paper pulp from the screen onto a wet cloth to to make a sheet of paper. To kiss off is to turn the screen upside down in the water and gently and quickly rinse the pulp back into the vat. On Saturday, Chris and I made about 50 9x11" sheets, and on Sunday, we made more than 250 notecards (I know, I know, even I was thinking that I wasn't going to live long enough to use this many cards) by putting tape across the deckle and only allowing the pulp to catch in the rectangles between the tape. This photo is of some the notecards drying on a line at the house. The pink with red flecks was created when I swirled some red oxide paint in the water. The green is the goldenrod/hosta mash made with torn strips of green leaves, soaked overnight and then boiled for a few hours. My cup of hosta mash was made from about 3 gallons of hosta leaves. Note to self...use outside grill to boil the mash on next time, it smells... Our friend Joetta, teaching the class, had about 3 cups of goldenrod mash. She said that she and the neighbor girl picked goldenrod for a couple hours. I believe it. The blue was Chrissy's idea, she added blue and green dye to the hosta mash water after most of the hosta was gone. So she got blue paper with just a lovely bit of green stuff. We made thick sheets, thin sheets, 2 sheets put together with inclusions between them (the piece of fern) and we embossed paper with leaves. For some papers, we added dyes and/or colored bits of paper or cotton or dryer lint or yarns to the paper. I put woven birchbark between paper and onto paper. We used raffia, onion skin, marigold and zinnia petals, and fresh and dried flowers and leaves. I was very happy with the results. We used sizing in the water to make the paper stiffer and seal it a bit so we could write on it. I also pressed it with a hot iron when it was almost dry so as to flatten the sheets and give them a bit of a sheen. I used a sharpie on a notecard piece today and it worked wonderfully. I'm thinking that maybe I'll go back on Sat again and make some envelopes to go with our cards. Also Joetta has a paperwasp nest from last year that has some gorgeous organic looking grays and taupes running through it. I'm thinking that a bit of it would look lovely in my paper. Look for a handmade card in a mailbox near you soon.

paper

2010-07-10T21:42:00.002-04:00

48 pieces of handmade paper created today with Chrissy and Joetta. It is cool what you can make with abaca, water, paper pulp, dried and fresh leaves, and mulched goldenrod. And 3 dresden plates appliqued. Good day. Photos tomorrow.

Edyta Sitar's Dresden Plates

2010-07-08T21:22:00.006-04:00

I took a 6 hour workshop from Edyta Sitar through my guild, Genesee Star Quilters, a couple weeks ago and left that next morning to go on vacation with my family. It was a wonderful workshop and I would encourage anyone who has the chance to take one her classes to do so. She was a good speaker who made time for everyone and her directions were very thorough and clear. I made 4 of these plates during the workshop with the pattern and fabric provided by her. During the vacation, I decided to make a bigger quilt putting the plates on point and had to augment the fabric selection with a trip to a Norfolk Virginia quilt shop. (A fun vacation experience for me, but not so much for H.) Needless to say, though her fabric choices were both batiks and traditional prints, I have decided to go with batiks for my background and centers. They are actually quite different greens, but in this photo the colors are very close. Now I have 29 plates completed and basted to the background. Here they are lying on my bed as I decide how to do the sashing and border. Because the fabric in the plates is already folded and I did yo-yo centers, assembling the blocks will be easy. It's a nice evening to applique.

And P.S. I ate my first 2010 red cherry tomato from the deck this evening. YEAH!

North Carolina

2010-06-30T15:05:00.003-04:00

North Carolina photos...a spectacularly gorgeous beach and fabulous pelicans... they flew over several times a day and were always cool to watch. Most of the family made it to the house for at least a few days and it was a blast to see everyone. We really missed Amanda, Pat, Terri, and Tim. Next time, right?

This is the reason to grow annual flowers. I picked this bouquet on Monday evening after I weeded the garden. Before we left for the beach last week there weren't any zinnias, snaps, or cleome in bloom. When we got home, all of them were out. These are the kind of flowers that bloom more if they are picked. It's a good thing, cause I'm keeping bouquets in the house all summer. However, the deer and I are going to have words (like they care). We came home and found the top of every sunflower plant snapped off about a foot off the ground. Now it is possible that they were just pruning for me, but highly doubtful. We'll see what happens when the sunflowers start to branch out (if they do, of course).

To the Sea, To the Sea, To the Beautiful Sea

2010-06-16T21:24:00.004-04:00

Off on vacation on Friday. Thanks to L who again rented the huge fabulous beachfront house in the Outer Banks of North Carolina for a week of fun, family, and beach. Most of us are getting there, only my son, P and his fiancee, and K's husband are not going to be able to make some part of the week. We will miss them. J will be there too, and C and her children. It will be a blast. We have games and crafts planned, baking, eating and drinking, walking on the beach, sitting in the sun, jumping in the waves, fishing and crabbing, boating, doing the local art fair, sleeping, catching up with each other and in general, just enjoying each other's company. It's a wonderful week. It is definitely one of the high points of my year. Thanks to all for making time for all of us.

eagle chicks and Star Light

2010-06-14T19:00:00.003-04:00

These photos are of me holding a 45 day old American Bald eagle chick, #92. It weighs about 3.3 kilos and is probably a male. The USFWS (Matt and Dave) came out and banded the two eagle chicks in the nest near my office today. Matt climbed the tree and lowered the chicks one at a time in a bag to the ground. Dave put his hat over the chick's head to calm it and took 10 ccs of blood from a wing for lab work for heavy metals and organochlorines (PCBs and dioxins). He measured the talons, the beak, and a specific feather midway down the wing to age and sex the bird and took 3 small feathers from the back to analyze for mercury contamination. He looked for parasites and infections and then banded their leg with a metal band. These guys seemed healthy. We have been watching the adults since early March and the chicks since about the end of April. The chicks will double in weight before fledging at 10-11 weeks old. Dave said that though the charts are designed for 60 day old chicks, they don't like to wait that long to band them, since the older they are, the more likely they are to jump out of the nest and glide to the ground before Matt can get them in the bag. I thought it was very cool to be able to hold this one. I am keeping my face away because just as Dave handed me the bird, he was telling the story of someone holding one like this and the beak coming around and snapping off part of the person's nose. Hmmm. They have serious beaks and talons, even at 6 weeks old. But it also had baby feathers, soft and downy.

The tree is located in an area of an old manufacturing facility that I worked on for many years providing state oversight for the extensive PCB clean-up at the site. To me, the eagle chicks seem like validation that contaminated sites can be re-born. I was very happy to spend a few minutes with this one. I am looking forward to seeing where he has chicks himself in a few years. It's being able to have days like today that keep me in my office doing this work.

The Star Light quilt top is complete. C helped me take the photo. It is big, about 99x99", whiter and brighter than I usually do, and of course, liberated in the style of the stars and letters. It took 2 full weeks to complete, working on it most days. I think that I'm happy with the quilt top, I do like the navy batik and white Kona muslin together. The bottom and left border are just plain white fabric, so I'll have to wait until after it is quilted to to see if I'm really happy with it or not. I haven't decided on the quilting style, or if I am going to hand quilt or machine quilt. I was thinking that I would wait until I practiced with the long arm and rent it to quilt this one, but I may do it by hand. I have a vacation coming up and I'm thinking that sitting on the deck of the ocean front house with my cold drink will be a very fun place to quilt.

socks, C's quilt, and scrap pages

2010-06-11T22:24:00.002-04:00

My new socks, aren't they the coolest thing ever? I finally have a pair of handmade socks. I was at weaving last fall and my friend P had on handmade socks and we got to talking about knitting. She has been making socks for a long time, in fact, long enough so that her, her husband, children, and granddaughter only wear handmade socks. I said that I couldn't buy handmade socks because my feet were too big and she said that she would make me a pair. I bought the yarn in Jan and picked them up tonight. They are warm and very comfortable and fit perfectly. Thank you P.

This is C and her quilt top. She picked out the colors and pattern, and sewed it together herself. When we get a chance to rent the long arm quilter, she is going to quilt it too. It will be uniquely hers. (Very uniquely hers cause those aren't my colors...) We are still discussing whether this is her quilt #2 and whether she has to go to the back of the line for the next one after I finish the wedding quilt. After the wedding quilt, all the kids will have one apiece that I have made and since C's was the first one, she thinks she should be next in line....for a second one. I'm thinking I'm going to do a few extras first...you never know who will need a quilt.

Now that K has graduated, go Dr. K!, I can show the pictures that I took of our scrapbook pages. Her mom and E decided that she needed a scrapbook page from everyone who wished her well on her new adventure of being a doctor. I thought it was a great idea. Her dad's and my page is with the 3 postcard style pictures. Balance is her dad's wish, and Serenity and Family are my wishes (and they don't always go together as she will probably find out...). The picture of her and dad was taken at her coat ceremony a couple years ago. The little skeleton was part of a set of halloween earrings that I bought because I wanted this charm, and the pictures were copied onto fabric using the printer. I also made the ribbon using the printer. I learned alot making these pages. C also made a very cool page and D helped by selecting their photo. I had a small bag that I had saved from somewhere with this hawaiian scene on it and C used the images from the bag and alot of fabric to create the waves. She started out using paper, but it turned out that I had a many more colors of fabric than paper, imagine that?

the appendix quilt (aka star light)

2010-06-10T21:45:00.003-04:00

I'm starting to get it together. This is the liberated stars/spiky border/funky letters quilt top. The star bright goes on the right side. The quilt top isn't blotchy, I strung a rope between the trees in the woods and took the picture, so you are seeing filtered sunlight. I need to make lots more spiky pieces for the border, but the rest of it is done, it just needs to be connected.

I will probably always think of this as the appendix quilt, but the label will say Star Bright.

plant varieties

2010-06-06T18:36:00.005-04:00

First off, C finished her 72x100" quilt top today. We even cut the batting for it. We'll get the backing fabric this week and try out the long arm quilter on Sunday. If all goes well, she should have it by the time we get to the beach.

Ok, my compost is sprouting weeds. Seriously. There are little tiny weed seedlings everywhere. I spent 2 hours on Friday pulling them from the annual garden and another hour this morning finishing the annual bed and there were more from where I had pulled 2 days ago. This is going to be a real job for a bit until the flowers get big enough to shade the weeds out. I also walked around and pulled from the other front gardens where we had spread compost. The feverfew and valerian are out so the garden has gone from pink and purple crane's bill, iris, columbine, and peonies to a carpet of white. However the pinks are starting to come, and the carpet rose, shastas, and purple coneflowers are starting to bud out. I cut down the yellow coneflower this year. It blossoms later and is shorter than the 6-7' if I trim it off before July. It was lovely outdoors today, sunny, but cooler than it has been. It is so quiet on Sunday morning and I waved to at least 6 or 7 neighbors going by. This morning I was almost happy that I had weeds to pull on a Sunday morning. I suspect the notion may wear off quickly.

Feel free to skip the rest of the post. I need a place to memorialize (somewhere that I will be able to find my list next spring) what varieties of plants that I used in the vegetable and annual gardens.

My list is for the vegetable garden is:

Roma tomato - modern sauce, plants from Van Attas

Supersteak tomato- modern hybrid, plants from Van Attas

Big Boy tomato- modern hybrid, plants from MT

Oxheart tomato - heirloom from PW

Mortgage Lifter tomato - heirloom, plants from Van Attas

German Pink tomato - heirloom from seed, Seed saver

Sudduth's Brandywine tomato- heirloom from seed, Seed Saver

Dwarf Gray Sugar and another unremembered variety, edible pod, Harts seeds

Bloomsdale Longstanding spinach, Harts seeds

radishes and carrots from seed, Harts seeds

Contender and Derby bush beans, Harts seeds

Red bell peppers, plants from Keits

Green bell pepper, plants from Eastern Mkt

Garden Salsa pepper, plants from Van Attas

Potatoes from Keits

Texas red sweet onion sets from Keits

Straight Eight cucumbers, from Burpees seed

Sweet Genovese Basil, from seed, Seed Savers, planted in herb garden

Annual Bed

2 flats Ultra Pink petunias, 10-12", Keits

1 flat mixed Rocket snapdragons, 30-36", Keits

few Bella snapdragons, 20-24", Keits

.5 flat Ruffles zinnias, 30-36", East Mkt

.5 flat Vintage mix stocks, 16-18", Keits

2 flats mixed stocks, 12-36", East Mkt

.5 flat short dahlias, 10", East Mkt

2 flat short marigolds, East Mkt

1 flat tall Benary's Giant zinnias, 40-50". east Mkt

1 flat state Fair zinnias, 30-36",

cosmos from seed

bachelor's buttons from seed

Grandpa Ott's morning glories from seed, Seed Savers

sweet peas from seed

sunflowers from seed

3 cannas from tubers

7 dahlias from tubers

.5 flat Burpeeana zinnia from seed, 24", planted most in veggie bed

1 flat Cempoalxochitl marigolds, 4-5', from seed, Seed Savers, planted most in veggie bed

1 flat mixed cleome, 42-48"

1 flat Madame Butterfly snapdragons, 24-30", East Mkt

planted many double, gave some away, probably needed about 8 flats to fill 10x50' bed

Pots on back deck

asparagus fern

Pink wave petunias

Pink coleus

Pots on front porch

Boston fern, bought 1, chopped into 4 pieces.

liberated stars

2010-06-05T20:19:00.004-04:00

New project! 16 of 25 almost done. I started last week while home with D. However I have changed my mind 5 times on what I'm doing so I have needlessly cut each piece of fabric at least 5 times before I got what I wanted. These are 4.5" sections, I also made 2 squares using 2.5" sections and 2 squares using 6.5" sections. I have made them with and without borders and have decided to use the sashing so I still have alot of work to do. I'm going to use the odd sized squares on the back I think. I started out cutting 4.5" strips of each batik to make a strip quilt. I didn't really like that so I then cut the strips about in 1/2 and started to make log cabins. I made about 45 irregularly shaped log cabins and then decided to make stars, so I cut some of the log cabins into 4.5" squares and used those for stars. I cut the points of the stars out of the left over log cabin pieces, but I still have about 30 or so multicolored batik irregularly shaped log cabins, so I have enough to do another quilt, I think. I have been wanting to do one of these liberated star quilts ever since I saw one in Gwen Marston's book. I am going to go next Sunday and learn how to use a long arm quilting machine, so I am thinking this might be a good quilt to start on. It certainly won't need to be perfectly quilted. I'm hoping to get it done in time to take to the beach in 2 weeks.

veggie garden

2010-06-04T00:20:00.005-04:00

This is very cool. I have a veggie garden. These are the tomatoes; 4 Roma, 4 Big Boy, 4 Mortgage Lifter, 2 Oxheart, 1 Supersteak, 8 Brandywine and 8 German Pink tomato. The Brandywine, Mortgage Lifter, Oxheart and German Pink are heirlooms. We'll see if they taste better than the Big Boy or Supersteak hybrids. The heirlooms are supposed to get 12 feet tall. I'm going to let them run on the ground (in the 5' wide aisles) and D says that I will need a machete to get down the rows by the middle of July. We'll see. The garden is over on Morrish Road, not too far away, but I do have to drive in order to water and weed. The farm owner has a big tank on a wagon and lets me water from the tank. I went over last night and put Miracle Grow and water on all the plants. I have to go back this weekend with the little tiller and start the weeding process. I put in a row of big red sweet onions, a row of potatoes, a row of 2 different kinds of bush beans, a row of snap peas, and a row of radishes, carrots, and spinach. There are 2 rows of Straight 8 cucumbers, and green and red bell peppers, and some Garden Salsa pepper plants. I also planted 2 rows of tall marigolds and a row of zinnias that I started in the florida room from seed. I didn't want to, but I had to stop planting. H was giving me the evil eye. He says that we can't eat that many tomatoes, but I want to can or freeze them this year so I need a lot. I took photos tonight of the cucumbers, beans, and radishes, as well as C looking really excited about being in a garden. She told me that she would go with me, but she wasn't getting dirty and that we had to stop for Dairy Queen. I'm not sure that I am going to be able to afford the "help" but I'm going to get her to help me weed this weekend.

I pulled a few weeds tonight, but mostly I just took photos, admired my plants, and left before the skeeters arrived for the evening. I have missed having a garden, and to have an annual garden and a veggie garden too this year is an incredible luxury. I know, I should be careful what I wish for....

I am totally disgusted with myself for putting the 5 yards of compost on the beds at the house. The compost was full of weed seeds and I have at least 20-30 weed seedlings per square foot that I have to pull by hand in the annual bed, the perennial beds, the herb garden, the raspberry patch, and even in the pots of cherry tomatoes on the deck. Good grief, the compost was supposed to help mitigate weeds, not promote them. I have learned my lesson, next year it will be mulch again.

kids

2010-05-30T09:45:00.006-04:00

D has been in the hospital this week. Home now, but scary for me for a bit. It is amazing how every bad thing that you have ever heard, seen, or imagined comes into your head at 3:30 in the morning as you sit in the hospital looking at your child. Once again, we are so fortunate. Thank you to E for staying with D in the hospital.

On another front, D and I are missing K's graduation from med school today. Yes, she was the first phone call on Thursday morning. We are so proud of her and her achievements. She has managed alot while in med school and will continue to be challenged (especially for the next year) but we are positive that she is totally up to it. I am pleased that the rest of the family can be there with her and T to share today. I know C is taking photos, I'm just sorry that D and I aren't there to join the fun. I don't have enough words to express the gratefulness that I feel for all my children this weekend. Thanks so much to all of you. I love you.

Amy's Creative Side: Blogger's Quilt Festival - Spring 2010

2010-05-24T23:53:00.000-04:00

Amy's Creative Side: Blogger's Quilt Festival - Spring 2010

bloggers quilt festival - K's wedding quilt

2010-05-24T22:17:00.007-04:00

Thanks to Amy at this site, http://www.amyscreativeside.com/2010/05/bloggers-quilt-festival-spring-2010.html, for the chance to talk about K's wedding quilt. K was the first one of five to get married, and I really wanted to do something special to celebrate hers and T's marriage. I hadn't been making quilts very long, only about 6 months, and had never done applique before, but I started looking at books, and the quilt had to be applique. I really couldn't imagine a more perfect wedding quilt.

These are some of my favorite squares and border pieces in the quilt. The wedding was planned for April 2009 at a little church in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. I explored several ways to do applique. I did some zigzag stitch by machine, but wasn't crazy about how it looked, and I wanted this to be an heirloom. I also tried fusible, but again, it was too stiff and didn't have the old-fashioned feel that I was going for. I suspect that it still seems odd that I quilt to folks who knew me as a young woman. I never willingly picked up a needle and was totally lost in home ec classes as a kid (yes, I am old enought to not have had options in the 8th grade, it was home ec, period). I had resisted for a long time. I have friends that quilt and they had wanted me to try it, but I couldn't imagine myself really liking it (I was wrong). I was hooked when I saw a Laurel Burch panel of a mermaid and since C is a scuba diver and part fish, I knew she had to have a quilt that included that panel. My friends said that I had to do it myself, they weren't going to make it for me. But back to K's quilt... the wedding date was set and I still didn't really know how to applique, so I bought books, many of them, Elly Sienkiewicz mostly, of course the most complicated, and then took a 2 hour class to learn how to hand applique. Ok, I can do this, I just have to modify it for me. I didn't like the glue or the overlay, so I just eyeballed the placement and started in the middle of the square. I had no idea how long it would take, but I bought about 25 yards (yeah, I know, way to much) of fabric for the front and started. I (really) simplified patterns from the many books and I had made about 3 squares when I decided that I really didn't like the colors very much so I bought more fabric and redid them. I know I made every square at least twice, some of them 3 or 4 times. I started in March 2008 and after a couple false starts, appliqued like a demon all summer. Every night, I would work on it, many Sundays I worked all day. I was slow and not very good at the start, but by vacation time in August I was much better and faster. I appliqued all week of vacation and finished in September. It was a blast to think about K and put things into the quilt that I knew she would like. She had always wanted a bunny as a kid, so it had to include a rabbit, and then a squirrel and several birds, including the funky red one with the golden topknot. She also loves green acorns, so the acorns with the oak leaves had to be green. I knew that I didn't want a formal border so I just appliqued a vine with lots of leaves and different kinds of flowers and birds on the edge. I took it to a machine quilter (I know, all real quilters need air at this point in the conversation), but it really never occurred to me that I could hand quilt it too. Now I know better. The machine quilter said that she would be done the first of January. I called the middle of January to ask if she needed anything and then stopped over the end of January. It was still in the same pile it had been in October. Not a good sign. I called my friend, the real quilter, and she found a machine quilter who could get it in right away. It is beautiful and the machine quilting hid any piecing imperfections. Of course, I wish now that I had hand quilted it, but there are two more daughters and two sons, so I'm positive that I will get the chance.

Art Guild

2010-05-20T15:47:00.003-04:00

I am going to art guild tonight. I don't really feel like going, but I should go. It has to do with getting out of the funk of this week. It has been a really long week. The women are friends, the art will be fun, we are having a potluck to celebrate being together, and I have to pay my $10 dues that I have owed and forgotten since January. I have my show and tells, my roving and felting needle from the Maryland fiber fair, my cherry boxes, and a little mosaic piece that I have been working on. I have also decided that I am putting on the loom the beautiful white baby blanket with pink roses that I saw in the magazine. Life does go on. Between the baby blanket and 2 weddings this weekend, and my daughter's graduation from medical school next weekend, I hopefully will not have time for the funk. And I am deadheading the petunias and marigolds. Maybe sunshine will help too. I hope so.

Grief

2010-05-18T23:11:00.003-04:00

I know I can't say this eloquently enough, but my friend and her husband don't deserve this. No one deserves this. They are burying their youngest daughter tomorrow, 2 weeks after her 18th birthday. They did everything right, 2 beautiful, talented daughters, the older one in college, the other a senior in high school until last Friday afternoon. The girls excelled in academics and sports. The 18 year old was the captain of the soccer team and had played since she was a tyke. My friend worked with us many years ago, we took turns being pregnant in those days, one after another, bringing home new babies. You worry all the time, but you have to believe, as you sit through recitals, games, concerts, and matches, that everything will be alright. They start kindergarten and then they seem to be driving and going to prom, and all those years of lessons and laughing and age appropriate discussions...where did they go? This was a mom who took photos of everything, who always whipped out the newest picture from her purse when we happened to meet. Today, standing at the funeral home, in front of hundreds of photos tacked onto boards, her words were "let us share our daughter with you" as she pointed out the beautiful blonde with the grin in family photos, photos with her friends, her dogs, and her sister. We pray daily, hourly, sometimes minute by minute, that ours that we love will be safe and happy, and I am so grateful that tonight, for mine, that is true, but I am heartbroken for my friend because her heart will never be the same.

A Gardening Weekend

2010-05-16T18:52:00.012-04:00

A very fun couple days. D and E, C, H and I went to the Eastern Market on Sat and bought flowers and cheese and ate ribs and pastries, washed down with lots of coffee. We stopped in Birmingham to get dad's special bottle of bourbon in the afternoon and came home to find that the 5 yards of compost had been delivered. Yippee! Since then, we have planted flowerbeds, moved compost, installed fencing, planted herbs and cherry tomatoes, planted raspberries, moved compost, pruned the trees and shrubs, planted the front porch pots, moved hydrangeas, watered everything in sight, rearranged the rocks and mushrooms, moved more compost, planted the back deck pots, and moved lots of brush in the woods. The pink dogwood have been stunning this year.

Tulips and allium,

grape hyacinth, just before they are gone for the year,

ferns at the front door,

japanese grass that the dogs munch on at every opportunity,

the cherry tree garden with snaps, marigolds, mums, daylilies and crane's bill geranium,

perennial bachelor's buttons,

white iris,

helebores,

columbine,

purple iris,

peonies almost out,

raspberries waiting for July,

volunteer chives in the corner of the herb garden,

white lilacs with the absolutely amazing fragrance,

hydrangeas with the boy and goose statue,

ajuga everywhere,

a bed of raspberries, more than enough to make jam...

the 8x50' annual bed planted with several varieties of snaps, marigolds, dahlias, cannas, sweet peas, zinnias, stocks, roses, glads, petunias, morning glories, cosmos, and sunflowers. It is almost perfect now and will be absolutely perfect in about a month (or so I tell all the neighbors who are stopping to admire). Thanks to D, E, C and H for a weekend of really hard, and fun for me, work. PS the white chocolate mousse was great too AND E got to eat her first coney. How cool is that! A wonderful weekend.

Foundations

2010-05-13T22:52:00.004-04:00

"Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." ~~Henry David Thoreau

I came across this quote today and it made me think of you. Your dreams are perfect for you and there is lots of time to build foundations. Onward.

blogs

2010-05-11T23:33:00.003-04:00

I linked to a few blogs tonight. These are places that I go for inspiration, ideas, and just to see what fabulous things are being created by amazingly talented women. I'm still adding to the bloglist, so if you have a favorite, let me know. Check them out.

maryland sheep and wool

2010-05-05T22:46:00.006-04:00

I was in Maryland last weekend to see family and friends. We had a great party on Friday evening in L's beautiful garden. It was so good to see everyone and the beach is only 6 weeks away. I also went out this weekend so that I could attend the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival on Sat, May 1. Very cool. Lots of vendors, lots of fun stuff. The little lamb was in the vendor's area on a leash. The bag is done by felting wool roving into silk fabric to give the silk enough stability to create a bag. It was a very fun bag and I don't think too difficult to make. There were hundreds of vendors and people seemed to be purchasing stuff. I went with L and she bought a couple project kits. I bought a 10 point felting needle, some raw wool curls, more on those later, some dyed roving, a lizard shawl pin, some handmade buttons (a very good deal), a couple pairs of socks for gifts, and a mermaid button. The buttons were a great deal, all handmade, different colors, shapes, and sizes, and we each bought a grab bag of 24. I even have one with a sheep on it. I have been wanting a bigger felting needle since I only have the individual needles, and it takes a long time to get enough pokes into the roving over a larger area to actually get any felting done. They had lots of dyed silk for felting, but I wanted some plain that I could dye myself so I will have to get it mailorder. One of the women told me about exoticsilks.com and I checked it out last night and their prices are very good, so I will probably get some there. Most of the roving that I bought was dyed, but I did get some white to dye myself. I actually didn't purchase any wool yarn, partly because the choices were overwhelming, but primarily because I am thinking next year's weaving project is going to be basket weave with cotton warp and weft and I really don't need anymore yarn that doesn't have a purpose in my head. I already have too much.

Saturday was a very hot day, about 93 degrees, but the crowd was friendly and since we had gotten there pretty early, about 8:30am, we didn't have to park a long ways off. Lunch was a delicious lamb gyro and sweet lemonade. When we left at 2pm, there were cars parked a mile and a half from the entrance. And by that time, I was really glad that we didn't have to walk a mile away to get to the car.

P and D hosted a great spaghetti dinner on Sat night and after a nap at L's and dinner with a couple gin and tonics, I was ready to go back to the festival on Sunday, but C and D had finals on Monday and had to be back at school, so next year...

Okay, about the raw wool curls... what I know about raw wool is about nothing, so I bought a plastic bag of this very fun looking stuff, small matted curly locks of wool in white/cream and brown/gray/black colors. We had seen a Christmas stocking with a wool sheep felted on the front using these curly locks of wool and I thought it might be fun to make some ornaments or something. When I bought it, the woman said that it was raw wool and it had to be cleaned before I could use it. Not a problem, how hard can that be? Well, I finally took the bag out last night, and said to H, that this was my sheep smell, because on Sat, there had been a little odor to the wool, but that was on Sat and a serious understatement. By Tuesday and after a couple 90+degree days, the smell was enough to knock your socks off. It smelled like I had brought home the whole sheep barn in a bag. I spent last evening reading about how to clean raw wool, what impuities are actually in it, poop, burrs, grass, etc... (I found all of them, dirty work) and how to do all this without felting it during the washing process. It took many sinks of the hottest water I could get from the tap, not hot enough, by the way, only about 125 degrees (the articles said 140 - 160 degrees) and don't ever let it cool below 110 degrees or the lanolin will get sticky and not wash out. And it takes a whole bottle of dish detergent to do one pound of wool. It took a couple hours, but I think it is cleaner, or maybe it only smells a bit better. There is still a bit of an odor, not unpleasant, but a little sheepy... and the water wanted to bead up in even the last rinse, so I don't really think that I have all the lanolin out either, but it is better than it was and I am not going to try and card and spin it, so it should be ok?
This is going to be my grapevine wreath for the back deck. I want to make a big wreath and then decorate it with mosaic birds of different colors. I will use small pieces of broken stained glass and seal the birds to keep the weather out. I think they should look great when the sun catches the glass. My friend K pruned her grapevines and bundled it and brought it to work for me. H wants to know why we have all the sticks and I caught him tonight just as he was taking out the trash and scheming about how he was going to get my grapevine to the road too. By the weekend, I'll at least have a wreath. The birds will take a few more days. I have to get grout and a piece of 1/4" plywood for my bird shapes.

This is going to be the colors of my new quilt top. I want to make a quilt like the raffle quilt that I talked about last week, very bright, and appliqued with batiks. I cut these 1" strips so that I can make the 1" borders on each of the pieced blocks. I have a quilting workshop in June to make star blocks and I think I'll wait until then to do the pieced blocks, but I am starting work on the appliqued blocks tonight. I have several traditional patterns picked out and copied onto freezer paper so I can start cutting out applique blocks this week. I am working at Applewood on Friday for the Master Gardeners, so I probably won't get a lot done this weekend, since hopefully if the weather cooperates, I want to plant at least part of the vegetable and annual gardens too, but I am so excited to be able to start another applique quilt.

sewing box

2010-04-25T18:41:00.002-04:00

I went back to John Wilson's Home Shop this weekend and built the sewing box. It measures about 9" tall, about 10" across and is 15" long. The sides and bottom are made of cherry, the top is bird's eye maple, and the inside tray is birch and cherry. I put one coat of Watco Danish Oil on it this afternoon. It has been rainy all day and is very cloudy and almost getting dark outside so the lighting isn't perfect for photography, but the cherry and maple are beautiful. Again I made mistakes, most of them on the tray this time. The dividers are supposed to be entirely pegged into the tray, but I was getting tired by Sat afternoon and didn't do a great job. I ended up using some glue and in retrospect I should have just left the dividers out completely and it would have looked better. The picture below is of the veneer and wood stock that I purchased to make 6 very small boxes. I plan to construct a set of 2 for myself, two for Chris and an extra set in case I get into trouble. This would complete the smaller diameter of our nesting boxes. The smallest box is just 1"x3" and the other is just a little bigger. They both fit into the smallest box of the nesting

set that we made last week. I added the pencil for scale. Not only are the boxes small, but the veneer is thin because it has to be bent very tightly to construct such a small box. These boxes are glued instead of pegged and purely decorative, but I thought that it would be fun to complete the set. Of course, there are bigger boxes, the sewing box is a #8 and our nested sets only have up to a #5. There is also prepared stock for box #9-16, but judging by the difficulty of construction for the #8 box, these might be very tough to put together. My basket group still wants to go back next year, so they may be in my future yet.

We are off to Maryland on Thursday night this week to visit family and friends and go to the Maryland Fiber Festival at the Howard County Fairground on Saturday. I have been wanting to go to this fiber festival for a couple years now, so I am excited that I am going to be able to go this year. P has a friend who has a booth and so we will visit her and see beautiful wool, yarn, roving, and spinning wheels. Of course, there will be a sheep to shawl competition and sheep shearing going on, as well as rabbits, maybe llamas, and other animals that have fur that can be spun into yarn (pretty much anything if one was desperate). I am excited and want to see everything. I certainly don't really need anything of course, but just the tactile sensory overload is worth going to Maryland. And I get to see K and E, L, D and P. It will be a good time.

finished boxes

2010-04-21T20:17:00.003-04:00

These are the finished boxes, 3 coats of Watco Danish Oil and sanding with 440 grit between each coat and they are beautiful, not perfect mind you, but good for a first try. They look nice on the cherry dresser in my bedroom. Now to just get that batik quilt behind the bed... The little one in front is the music box. Below is the newly weeded annual garden that is ready to plant on Mother's Day weekend, weather permitting. I snapped the photo and then trimmed the roses so they are done too, it just doesn't look like it. The former rose bed at the end of the drive is being turned back into lawn as soon as everything in it is grubbed out and the soil is raked and seeded. It's the rough patch at the end of the drive. I also put the otter in the pond, trimmed back the curly willow, and swept some of the dead leaves from the deck tonight. I'm getting there, but it is a bit slow. The weather is perfect, beautiful sunshine and 70-75 degrees, and I don't want to complain, but where are the April showers? I was hoeing in the flower bed and the top couple inches are completely dry. It's way to early to water roses, but I know I wouldn't be able to seed grass without

watering too. The perennial bed is a mess of feverfew, coneflowers, perennial sunflower, black eyed susans, and oregano. The peonies are up and budded out. It seems early. We drove by a lilac that was in full bloom last night at the corner of Linden and Lennon Road. The leaves are starting to come out on mine, but the buds are still really tight. However, if this weather keeps up, the pink dogwood will be out by the weekend. And if it gets any warmer, the spring flowers will be gone soon. Maggie walked across in front of the camera just as I snapped the picture, another 2 seconds and it would have been Einstein since he was right behind Maggie. They played outdoors while I was gardening today. Of course, there are sticks all over the front yard.

shaker boxes

2010-04-20T22:20:00.006-04:00

I'm going to post a few more photos from this last weekend. The box on the left is a swing handled carrier. I hope to make one of these this next weekend. The photo below is of cherry veneer. I was impressed by how big in diameter the tree must have been to get that size piece of veneer. I used the extension cord for scale. It was a big extension cord.

This photo is of the veneer storage. The smell was wonderful. He had some of the most beautifully grained wood that I have ever seen. Walnut, gorgeous pieces of curly and bird's eye maple, ash, and tons of cherry. He said that he had to get small producers to take on the work because he had very specific specifications and the big producers didn't want to mess with it. He had used lots of sawmills over the years because they kept going out of business. By the way, he was also a boatbuilder and had several classic wooden boats hung from the ceiling over the veneer storage.

The next photo is of the tack machines. He bought the machines, manufactured in the late 1890s, from a company that was going out of business. He makes 9 sizes of copper tacks used to put the sides of the box together. The machines worked well and made tacks, though the machines looked a little like Civil War era gatling guns.

This photo is of my boxes when they were just sides on Friday night. They have pieces of wood called shapers in them. He had prepared the strips of veneer with the fingers already cut and the holes pre-drilled. I recut the fingers, shaping them and giving them the characteristic 10 degree bevel, and feathered the inside edge of the wood to form the overlap. We left the strips of wood in a hot water bath (over 180 degrees to melt the lignin in the wood) for about 20 minutes and then bent them around a wooden form to make each size box and top. Then we tacked them, put the shapers in them and left them to dry overnight with a fan on them. On Sat morning, we shaped the top and bottom with the belt sanders. This was a much more difficult job than making the sides, because they had to fit so exactly. There isn't any glue used in the construction of Shaker boxes. The tops and bottoms are pegged together with wooden toothpicks. I learned several lessons...the overlaps have to fit exactly, otherwise there is a space when you fit the bottom into the band (and you should use carpenter's glue to fill the gap), the pegs should be evenly spaced and match between the tops and bottoms, you have to support the fingers all the time while you are tacking, and most problematically, you have to get a snug, rounded fit (but not too tight) on the top and bottom boards.

This is Chris on Sat morning. She isn't tired now and looks much happier with her work product than she was on Friday night. She has just sanded the top and bottoms of these boxes and fit them together. Now she will drill the holes for the pegs, peg each together, break off the extra, and sand it even with the box. I have started to finish mine today. I sanded with 220 sand paper, then wiped on one thin coat of Watco Danish Oil and let it dry. I resanded with 400 grit tonight and will put on another thin coat tomorrow. They are looking pretty good. Chris will get hers done this weekend when she has time off from school.

April weekend

2010-04-18T20:21:00.009-04:00

I have been blessed with 4 days of extremely fun things to do. Thursday morning was a quilting workshop with R, Thursday evening was fabric art guild with J and friends, Friday morning was quilt guild, and Friday evening and all day on Sat, C and I made Shaker boxes. Sat evening was D's Glee Club concert and gardening today. I have to retire so I can do this every week! There was a little cooking, cleaning, and laundry thrown in, but mostly it was just fun stuff.

Isn't this a gorgeous quilt? It is applique and traditional blocks all done in bright clear batik fabrics. The picture doesn't do it justice, it really just glows with color. It was a raffle quilt done by an Oakland County quilt guild and one of the members of my guild won it and shared it at show and tell this week. I think it is just stunning and how absolutely cool it would look in my yellow bedroom, behind the bed of course, so the dogs didn't lay on it. I have a couple (or 3 or 4) other quilting projects going right now or I would have already started on one similar to it, but alas, there are only so many damn hours in a day and there is never enough time for everything. The next picture is a close-up of the quilting done on the corner applique block. It was machine quilted and it really adds to the overall effect. I forgot to find out who did the quilting, (note to self...always take a picture of the label on the back, duh), but I am going to have to ask next month. She said that I could come visit the quilt anytime that I liked (I might take her up on it).

On Thursday, R and I went to a guild quilting worshop with Elsie Vredenburg of Tustin, MI. She calls the class "Stone Soup" and you bring in your odd quilt blocks from different projects and she helps you to put them together in a satisfying, though eclectic, manner. I took extra blocks from K's wedding quilt, D's apple quilt, strips from E's and C's quilts, and and blocks from a couple other workshops. Fortunately for all of us, she provided 3" 9 patch squares in a multitude of colors and several other small blocks for us to combine with our blocks. R's quilt top was the best. She had several extra blocks and fabrics from a quilt that she just finished for a church raffle (that sold for $280, it was beautiful and worth much more), so she actually had a theme going, unlike me. While looking at mine, Elsie mentioned that this method didn't usually add up to a competition quality quilt top, but it was alot of fun anyway. The very best thing about workshops is that you get to spend 6 hours with your friends, everybody doing something fun, talking, comparing notes, trading fabric, eating, and since you took the day off to do it, and paid for the class, you don't have to feel guilty about not doing anything else. A perfect day even with a less than perfect quality quilt top. My contribution, also displayed at show and tell on Fri morning, was only half of a quilt top because I only finished part of it in class and haven't had time to even think about it since. Elsie also did a lecture at guild on Friday about the healing qualities of working on, and receiving, handmade quilts. Certainly in my case, quilting and fabric art for my peeps is a way of expressing love when you live far away and can't be there everyday. And since the kids have grown and have lives of their own, it's one way of keeping me sane and giving me a community.

Thurs night was fabric art guild and we poured plastic resin into bottle caps to make little charms. And yes, L, stunningly, it was the same 2 step process that we did with dad and mom in the 1960s. You poured hardener into the resin, stirred a bit and poured it into the cap and let it sit until it dried. It was even purchased at Rio Grande, which was one of the mail order craft companies that mom got stuff from later. Mom and dad were definitely way ahead of the curve on this craft. To prepare, I wrote words using a variety of small fonts and tore them out as needed to add to my bottle caps. I also had gorgeous blue and green colored papers from an old National Geographic and a little sand, so I did "to" "the" "beautiful" "sea" in 4 of them. The resin darkened the colors, but the word is clearly visible as the white paper became invisible in the resin, so my charms look pretty much as I intended. This would be a really fun craft to do at the beach if anyone is interested, with cheap charm bracelets or anklets. People put all kinds of things in the caps, watch parts, beads, even little shells. Dad would be approving of all of this. I was the only one with words.

These photos are from the Shaker Box workshop in Charlotte on Fri and Sat. John Wilson is a retired Lansing Comm College woodshop instructor and has done this for many years. He travels all over the world teaching various wood classes, but the Shaker boxes are his most popular. He has been written up in Fine Woodworking, Popular Woodworking and several other magazines. He has also built gorgeous wooden boats. He and C had quite the discussion about the boats. He isn't teaching the class anymore, but offered to sell her the boat plans. My basket guild went to a workshop last fall, but I didn't go because we were in Munising. They want to go back and do the next 4 sizes up and I had to go get caught up with them.

We got there at 6 Friday evening and stayed at the shop until 11pm. He spent a couple hours explaining the history and process of the boxes. He is all about sharing the knowledge. There were people there from all over the country and a woman was supposed to be there from England, but because of the Iceland volcano, couldn't get a flight out of Europe. There were several older men, mostly woodworkers, furniture and jewelry box makers, a woman sculptor, and two couples. We shaped and tacked the veneer sides on Friday night. C and I were pretty fast and made all of our box sides on Fri night, so he let make the next size up and I also made a small music box. So C and I both have a stack of 6 nesting cherry boxes and I also have a small cherry music box with a birdseye maple top. It plays, appropriately enough, the Shaker hymn, "Simple Gifts". It took until 3 on Sat to finish the tops and bottoms of the boxes. Some were still working when we left, but we needed to get to get back to Flint so we could get the sawdust off of us before D's concert on Sat night. So we drove home and then went back to Lansing with H to see D. It was a long day filled with lots of concentration, and the smell of sawdust and the veneer storage brought back memories of Michigan Lumber with Gramps when I was little. I have more photos and will bring them to Md to show. I sanded mine today and will try to get them finished this week. C was at school today, but hopefully she will have time to get hers done this week too. We were going to drive home on Fri night, but he has a little guesthouse that we stayed in instead of driving, since we started at 8am on Sat. He built his guesthouse himself and it has a gorgeous birdseye maple banister on the ladder steps going up to the sleeping loft. The guest house was fun with it's little wood stove and big sheets of slate anchored to the walls as fire protection. The picture of the big box with the maple top and inset is a sewing box. The class next Sat was full, but he told me that I could join them, so I'm thinking that I could use a new sewing box. We had a blast and I think everyone should make a few Shaker boxes in their lifetime. Gramps would be very proud of C. She did beautifully.

The last photo is of the last song of D's concert on Sat and of course, from 3/4 of the way back in the concert hall, so the photo is not great. They are singing the MSU song, "On the Banks of the Red Cedar" their traditional closing. We heard both the Women's and Men's Glee Clubs and they were both very good. I always prefer the men's voices and they did a processional as the first piece, an African song with drums, that was stunning. They are also usually more entertaining then the women. I suspect the director's styles are different. The men sing lots of sacred music too, but also spirituals and funny pieces. And of course, the men are better, that's where D is. I'm so glad he has taken advantage of the opportunity to sing with a group like this. He seems happy when talking about the Glee Club and we love to hear him sing.

Gardening today, H mowed lawn and I planted bulbs and watered my little bitty marigolds and tomatoes. H is talking about yards and yards of soil and mulch so I suspect we'll soon be really busy. This is where he stops at the neighbor's house and collects the kids to work for the afternoon. Fortunately for me...they do.

Flowers and the Sea

2010-04-14T18:55:00.006-04:00

These are my clivia. They have been blooming for about a month now. Each individual blossom is about 1 1/2" across and at peak, there were 23 blossoms on it. Unfortunately they are starting to go now, and falling off every day. I'll be really sorry to see it finish blooming. This is only one of the clivia around the house, there are 5 in this pot and at least 3 other pots of clivia, but this is the only one with blossoms. I have had some of these plants since 1998 and I've had about 4 sets of blossoms. They are spectacular when they bloom, and I'm hoping as the plants get older and more crowded in the pot, they will bloom oftener.

One of the real luxuries of this house is that there is enough room to start seeds indoors a few weeks before the soil is warm enough to plant them outdoors. These are the 2 2x4' tubs that are filled with flats and big pots sitting on the floor of the florida room. Last weekend, I started a flat with 2 types of heirloom tomatoes, Sudduths Brandywine and German Pink, a flat of Straight Eight cucumbers, a flat of Cempoalxochitl marigold, and a flat of Burpeeana Giant Mix zinnias and Spider Flower Mix for the annual garden. 3 of the pots have dahlias, and 3 have cannas started, also for the annual bed. On the other side of the room are the 4 pink dahlias from the MSU extension that I started 2 weeks ago and they have sprouted. I can't seem to find a tall snapdragon to start so I guess I will have to buy those, and I will buy the dark rose colored petunias for the border too. I love the spider flowers (cleome) because gram and gramps always had them in the back of their big border flower beds when I was young. I know they get spindly later in the summer but I'm hoping to fill in their feet with big marigolds, snaps, and zinnias. This bed should be very colorful and make a big statement, since the bed is also pretty big, about 8' wide and 50' feet long. Thanks to D and C. Right now, I have 7 roses planted in the back of it and a few daffodils, hyacinths, and grape hyacinths in the front. It will look better in a few weeks.

I took this picture because I love the wildness and color of the curly willow starting to leaf out. D cut the willow for me last spring from a small tree in a drainage ditch in the field behind the local big box stores. I brought it home and stuck it in the pond on the deck where it happily leafed out and grew huge roots last summer. I wasn't sure that it would overwinter, but it clearly has. There is some dead stuff in it that I will prune, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. The dark lime green foliage and bright lime green stems look great from the family room on the other side of the windows. There is a wet boggy part of the pond in the corner behind the willow. I'm going to put a couple 6' tall green leaved, red flowered cannas in there for the summer and leave the willow. I'll put the otter fountain in the area to the right side of the willow and call it good. Running water, lots of willow, and a bit of color. Not the most formal small space, but I think it is perfect. I went to a quilt gathering last Tuesday evening. I haven't been before, but evidently someone demonstrates a specific technique and they all do their rendition of it that evening. The group was doing a type of quilting called Accidental Landscapes, where you put fabric together and then decide what kind of landscape you want to make. In honor of the upcoming beach vacation, I decided to do a seascape, or maybe really just a beach. And of course, I found my box of natural stuff and embellished it because I don't seem able to not embellish. I used shells, stones, a little sand dollar and fabric rocks on the bottom and in the center of the piece. There are also beaded starfish and glass beads on the green fabric. The fence is raw edge applique with a small piece of driftwood that I had in my box. I used raw edge applique for the birds (hard to see in the photo, but there are 3 "gulls" in the sky on the left hand side) and fish, except for the bottom fish which is a shell that looked like a fish so there it went. I used the sewing machine to write "To the Sea, To the Sea, To the Beautiful Sea"and signed and dated it in the bottom right corner. I am going to hang it in my bathroom, where it will remind me of the salty water, sand and bits of shells, and the family that make it all worthwhile.

C's bag

2010-04-14T18:44:00.003-04:00

C with the bag that she made. She picked out the pattern, the fabric, did the quilting and finished the bag. Pretty cool, huh. I'm very proud of her, she has never used the sewing machine before and not only did she do the seams, she machine quilted the circles in the bottom too.

Easter 2010

2010-04-05T21:49:00.007-04:00

A lovely holiday weekend. On Saturday, breakfast with C and H in Davison and then the Ann Arbor market and Whole Foods with H and the dogs. I bought MORE seeds and dahlias and cannas to start for the annual bed and we had good coffee all day. And of course, bought organic peanut butter buddies for the spoiled dogs. On Easter, C was here and D and E came over in the morning. It was very cool to have E, it was her first visit and she was wonderful (she even ate a pickled egg). We ate brunch of grilled shrimp and asparagus and crepes with strawberry/blueberry/raspberry sauce and whipped cream on the deck. We played with the dogs, dyed Easter eggs, sat and talked, took pictures of D's quilt, and played scrabble and then more food; fried chicken, mashed potatoes, milk gravy, fresh green beans, a tomato, fresh mozzarella, and basil salad, and biscuits. H picked out the menu and it was very good. We had E's lovely strawberry angel food cake dish and lemon meringue pie for dessert. E and K called so we got to talk with them. I really missed having the big kids here, but K is starting her next to last 30 day rotation and is very happy to be almost done, and E said the weather in Maryland was gorgeous and they had had a good brunch. P and T were in the UP at T's parent's house. They are supposed to visit next weekend. Here, the kids found their baskets and seemed very happy with their stuff. I was very excited that H got a new pair of Felcos for me. I have misplaced mine that I have had for years and I had been really missing them this spring, you can't prune without the proper tools... The dogs were exhausted. It was a beautiful day. This is the table Easter morning. I used the new tablerunner that I just took off the loom a couple weeks ago. I dyed the cotton rug warp and muslin with Rit navy dye. I wadded the fabric and thread up and put rubber bands around them so I got color variation in them. I also overdyed the denim jean strips that I used as an accent in the runner. The muslin fabric is done up with a tabby weave and the jean strips have a monk's belt tie-up, giving them floats on top of the muslin and making the runner a bit knobby in places. I like the texture of using the jean strips on the smooth tabby weave. And though I used navy dye in the washing machine, I like this color better, it is almost periwinkle blue, very spring-like. The multi colored batting is dyed with easter egg dye from the kit. I'm not sure what I will use it for, but the colors of dye were so beautiful, it seemed a shame to not dye something that D wasn't going to eat. I still have strips of batting in the dye tonight, I am going to take them out tomorrow and let them dry. I am hoping the colors will be more intense. This photo was taken in the florida room tonight and that is definitely not the best lighting. It is too yellow and some things look really washed out. The last photo is D's quilt. I had him bring it home for the day so I could take a photo outdoors. The quilts look so much better in the sunlight and yesterday cooperated beautifully. These are the apple fabrics that just looked like D in the store. And then when I got the center finished, it looked pretty plain, and so as D is always telling me to "Eat Michigan Apples", this saying seemed appropriate for the border. I just free pieced the letters, but they turned out well so I guess I really don't need a pattern for everything...

The pattern for the center is just squares with alternating flying geese. It wasn't difficult to do, but it seemed to fit these fabrics well because I wanted to have large enough squares to see the patterns in the fabric. The brown has apples and apple blossoms, the tan has apples, and the dark gold has the names of apples printed on it, Jonathon, Delicious, Golden, Spy, and others. The plaid goes well and the red is plain, the better to see the long arm quilting. He quilted a really cool apple pattern over the whole quilt. The apples are about 2 1/2 " across, so the quilt is not too stiff with thread. The quilting really shows up well on the red fabric. I backed the quilt with the dark gold and labeled it for D. A wonderful weekend, thanks to all of you. We are so blessed and I am grateful.

spring

2010-03-29T16:12:00.010-04:00

I know I haven't updated in a while, I'm not sure why, it is not because I haven't had stuff to talk about, but I just haven't felt like writing. Spring is here now, so hopefully the mood will lift. I've already moved the hyacinths, daffs, and grape hyacinths from the end flower bed to the new one, cleaned up the perennial bed, started several pots of dahlias, and found a garden plot over on Morrish Rd to plant tomatoes and cukes in. I'm very excited about the veggies, I haven't been able to have a veggie garden in a long time. There really isn't enough sun or space here, and I tried in Byron, but there really wasn't enough sun there either. And we had a guy talk about heirloom tomatoes at the garden club meeting last month. He was great and it got me to start thinking about veggies again. So I am starting my own tomatoes, some heirlooms and Big Boy for H, cukes and beans for C, and snap peas, carrots, lettuce, and potatoes for me. I'll grow my 2 cherry tomatoes on the deck again because I like eating them while I'm working in the yard in the summer. I hope the tiller isn't a sign of things to come. I tried to start D's little tiller last weekend and H ended up taking it to the shop because it was so rough sounding, even with the new gas, oil and sparkplug. It's only been used a few times, so it doesn't seem like it could be serious, and I hope not.

Fresh marmalade and bread. I made them a couple weeks ago and the maramlade is wonderful. The bread didn't last long of course, there's something about warm bread and butter, especially with fresh jam. The marmalade is made with the zest and fruit of navel oranges, lemons, grapefruit and tangerines, boiled with some sugar for 30 minutes and mixed with a box of sure-jel to ensure that it actually sets. I store it in the freezer. I took some to work and most really liked it, but you could tell that it was too tart for some folks. I didn't use as much sugar as the box recipe calls for, and it is pretty tart, but I love it. It has a real grapefruit/lemon tang to it. I plan to bring some raspberry jam and marmalde to the beach this summer to have with fresh biscuits and coffee. Heavenly.

These pussywillows were cut on Feb 17 from the wetland behind the Walmart. I love pussywillows. They are the first harbingers of spring here, before the red-winged blackbirds or crocus, both of which are here now on March 29.

Enough for today, I have a couple more photos of stuff that I have finished this last month, but even more photos of things that I can't put up yet because they are surprises. However this weekend, I will take new photos of D's quilt, which turned out pretty cool with it's apple quilting, and my new Easter table runner, made with the dyed fabric and old jean strips, which looks great on the table. D is bringing a friend from school for dinner on Sunday so it will be a fun weekend. Happy Easter to everyone, enjoy the holiday, and it is supposed to be 70 this weekend. If so, we are eating our roast chicken on the deck. How cool is that?

baskets

2010-02-17T00:59:00.003-05:00

This is a basket that I made last Saturday during basket guild. The antler was from my friend, Martha, who died last year. Martha had a whole bag of them and her daughter gave them to me. I took them to guild and each of us made a martha basket last week. Mine is made of deer antler, smoked reed, brown leather, oak rims, a piece of fox fur, and some pheasant feathers. My basket is going to R's cabin to hold the tv remote. That seemed like an appropriate place. This photo is the makings of my new quilt project. The woodcut pattern I found on line. It is from a midddle ages manuscript. The woodcut also had a tree and a girl in a cloak standing next to the birds, but I just wanted the birds, so I blocked out the rest of the image. The fabrics will be used in the quilt. I hope to have it done in a few weeks, but the male's feathers have 5 colors on them and since I'm hand appliquing, it might take a little time. I did find a fabulous border fabric in gorgeous blues, so it should be pretty stunning when completed. In the meantime, I have lots of other stuff planned too. I have volunteered to help with the state quilt chapter meeting next weekend. I am going to quilt guild this Friday and we are doing the Gee's Bend exhibit at FIA. It will be interesting. I have also signed C and I up for a shaker basket workshop in April, and I will also be taking the guild quilting workshop in April. And another quilt class in June. I am working on my denim tablerunner and hope to get a photo of it next week at weaving. I am going to make a quilted tablerunner with the left-over apple fabrics and maybe a couple garden baskets for the silent auction for the Master Gardener's Association annual meeting in April, and really want to go out to the Maryland Fiber Festival the first week in May. I am attending the fiber arts guild meetings once a month and we are making paper this month. I also am going to order some heirloom tomato seeds and start those for my garden this spring. Lots of plans. We will see.

Apple Quilt and Bread

2010-01-31T20:04:00.006-05:00

It's been a busy weekend. In addition to the usual washing and cooking, I've had time to put some borders on the quilt top. Sorry for the horrible photo, my camera was in the car and I obviously didn't give it enough time to come to room temperature before I photographed the quilt on my bed. I would go do it again, but since the bed is now occupied, I'm not sure that he would think it needs to be re-photographed tonight. These are the letters that I did for the border. I think I'm going to really like them. I have run out of border fabric, that's what I get for making it up as I go along, and will have to get more tomorrow, so the top border isn't done yet, but the others are. I'm binding it in strips of all the colors. The colors in the quilt are actually the same as in the quilted coasters that I made out of the scraps. I made the coasters big, 6x6, because they are for my big mugs that I drink tea from, and as you can see the coasters are pretty colorful.

These are the coasters, undone, I'm binding them tonight. The binding is slower because I do it by hand, so it takes longer, but it looks much better than if I do it by machine. I machine lettered Eat Michigan Apples on one and One Every Day on the other.

This was my other project today. I have never made bread before by hand. The bread maker doesn't count. But this morning, as I was laying in bed, I decided I wasn't getting any younger and I wasn't sure what I was waiting for, so these are the unbaked loaves ready to go into the oven. Making bread is one of those things. You know, the ones that you don't do because you are positive they won't work. I have always regarded people who can make bread as magicians, more or less. I tried to make something about 37 or 38 years ago that had yeast in it and the yeast didn't rise. Since then, I have been sure that I couldn't make breads with yeast. It turns out that I can. One of the baked loaves was eaten with the potato soup that we had for dinner and the other is on the counter waiting for breakfast. It's hard to make bread that isn't good if it's got butter on and it is just out of the oven, but it turned out really well, so I'll try it again, maybe next weekend.

And, I'm going to re-evaluate that list of things that I can't do.

Gee's Bend

2010-01-28T20:58:00.005-05:00

Ok, so it's a good thing that I did not set a goal about blogging. It turns out that I don't really have that much to say on a daily basis.

Last Saturday, I visited the Flint institute of Arts to see the Gee's Bend quilts. Very interesting from a cultural perspective. These 4 generations of African American women quilted at night after working in fields and taking care of families in order to keep their families warm in houses without heat. They used what they had, recycling old work clothes, dresses, whatever, into quilts in what is now called a liberated quilting style. The community was geographically very isolated for a long time and some of these quilts were done in the days before they had TV, so there was little else to do in the evening, so they sang hymns and quilted. Some of the quilts are very striking patterns with strong color differences, like abstract paintings. The quilting is fairly large stitches and not terribly even. They looked like the quilts that I remember as a kid in Ohio when I went to visit my grandparents. There was always an old quilt on the bed that I slept in. I'm not an artist of course, and I'm still trying to decide exactly why they are art, hmmm, not sure, but they are memorable. And as I said, the quilts and accompanying video were very interesting from a cultural and social perspective, so I was glad that I went. The stories were intriguing and seemed indicative of the 30s and 40s in a small community. I'm not sure what makes these quilts different from other utilitarian quilts that were made from recycled clothes and fabric. Here's a link to some of the quilts if you are interested. http://www.auburn.edu/academic/other/geesbend/explore/catalog/slideshow/index.htm
My quilt guild is going as a group next month to see the exhibit. I'll be interested in their comments.

I've started another quilt, using red, golds, and cream fabrics, some with apples and apple blossoms on them, others with the names of apple varieties. I'm trying some free form pieced lettering to go with it in the borders, which I haven't done before, and I think it's going to look pretty cool. I love the idea of being able to personalize quilts with words. I'm also going to try a new way of machine quilting that I recently read about in a magazine. When I tried to machine quilt before, I couldn't keep the different layers of fabric together evenly and the sewing always puckered at the end of the seams and where I crossed other seams. The new way calls for using a spray basting product to layer the top, batting, and backing together, so the fabric layer acts as a single piece and won't slip. This will be a good quilt to try it out on.

I've also got the ideas together, and most of the fabric purchased, for 2 new quilts, both applique and large. I'm not going to show photos of these as they are intended to be surprises, but I am going to start on them very soon.

Also thanks to R, P, and K, for joining me a couple weeks ago for a long quilting weekend at R's cabin up north. It was wonderful to have K cook, and to be able to just quilt for 3 days. We bought fabric on the way up, compared notes, debated color and placement, ripped out seams, had 3 machines going, did some hand applique, read some quilt books, and in general, had a blast. We are thinking of making it at least an annual event. So in retrospect, I guess it was a fairly productive January.

2010-01-03T19:33:00.002-05:00

Happy New Year to all. It's a new year and I'm back to blogging. And though the holidays are over and the family and friends have gone back to their own lives, we have been so fortunate that all our kids were together, H's sister's family could join us, and my sisters were both here for a few days. Family is good. The best gift is that everyone is happy and healthy. However the video of my sister's family purchasing toys for Toys for Tots as gifts for our family was very cute and such a good idea.

My crafting goals for the new year are to complete a pieced Michigan map quilt for my son, the appliqued Civil War Bride's quilt for me, and a (as yet undecided pattern) wedding quilt for my stepson and his soon-to-be-bride. I also heard the other day that another wedding date is being planned, so that quilt will be on the agenda soon too. I have plans to take a few more classes at the local quilt shops and intend to participate in the 2 workshops that my quilt guild has scheduled. I've also got a couple basket classes planned and my friends and I are doing a quilting retreat at R's cabin in January. I also want to make time for the art guild and garden meetings. Of course, when spring arrives, I get to plant my new annual garden that my family put in for me last fall. It will be spectacular. Lots of color and texture and will provide inspiration for more colorful quilts and baskets of natural materials.

I made a couple things over the holidays, but since they aren't in the mail until next week, I'm reserving the photos til later.

Kumihimo

2009-12-18T00:27:00.005-05:00

Okay, I learned to do kumihimo tonight. The top one is the practice run with the directions, but without instructions. The one on the bottom is after tonight's instruction. The process wasn't fast, it took 3 hours to make 8.5" of beaded cord, though I'm sure it would be much faster after a couple times. (And of course, that includes the time it took to undo it twice after I found mistakes.) These really could make cool bracelets. It takes a bit of rayon cord, some #8 beads and the tool. The cord needs some end caps and a clasp, but it definitely has potential.

Kumihimo

2009-12-15T21:56:00.013-05:00

Cool, you never know what you have. I just found out that I have a URL. I was trying to post a comment to the CWBQ page and had to fumble around trying to figure out how and they needed a URL, so I used the URL from the blog. And it worked! How fun is that? I also sent the note asking to join the CWBQ blog since I am starting this quilt after the holidays. But, and it is a big but... I still have to find the background. Nothing has yet called my name in the fabric store, well not exactly true. There are lots of ideas in my head and things call my name all the time, but not THE background. I'll have to work on it after Jan 1. I'm kind of busy until then with fabulous holidays, starting with hubby's birthday on Dec 23, celebrated with all the extended kids (including son-in-law, fiancee, and significant friend... ) and his sister's family, and couple extra folks on Christmas Eve, and then Christmas with all the kids. My sisters are coming after the holidays for a few days and it will be so good to see them too. I can't wait....

I'm excited, the art/fabric guild is tomorrow night and I'm using this stuff to create a beaded cord thingy (think bracelet or something). It is usually done using floss. It actually comes loaded with embroidery floss, if you look close, you can see the red and yellow. If you follow the enclosed pattern, you get a very dense red cord about the thickness of a pencil with little tiny yellow diamonds as the pattern. One of the folks is teaching us how to make the cord with beads. It's a Japanese kumihimo beading technique. I gave it a practice run and I'm not posting a photo of the trial. I'll see how it turns out with instruction. It has to be better. C was watching the trial and it is a bit comical, chasing those little beads all over.

It's supposed to look something like this...credit for this bracelet goes to EML Designs on the web. This is actually very nice, so I'll see if I can pull this off. Maybe next years gifts... I suspect it would take me that long to make several of these. It was a pretty slow process.

Bread and Birch

2009-12-08T21:13:00.003-05:00

Perfect cranberry and orange bread. A co-worker brought in her mom's cranberry bread to the office last week. It was the best that I have ever tasted, moist, tart, and nutty. I got the recipe today, thanks A, and made it tonight. I had enough batter to also make 6 muffins, which of course, you don't see because they were really good with our tea tonight and the other 2 are put away for breakfast. Each of these loaves is made with 2 cups of cranberries and a cup of walnuts. The moisture comes from orange and cranberry juice and there is also some orange zest for more flavor. It is pretty tart and you can really taste the cranberries, which I love. These are going in the freezer for the holidays so I will have something to go with the evening tea and coffee.

This next photo was yesterday afternoon's project. One of the women from basket guild makes the most beautiful little birch bark baskets. This photo does not do them justice. I went over to her house and she graciously showed me how to prepare the birch for basket-making. This stuff, after you strip off the outside white paper and the inside dark brown lining material, is gorgeous. It is supple, like leather and has that feel too, because it has natural oils left in the bark. This is bark from fallen birch that I picked up in the woods last summer while we were in Munising. It looked awful, was dirty brown and stiff, and probably at least a year old. But after scraping is going to make lovely baskets. It is every color of tan and cream imaginable. And we scraped it at M's kitchen table and just swept the floor afterwards. I left the big plastic bag of fire-starter with her. I'm not going to get to the baskets until after the holidays, but it is now stored properly, in C's dresser, don't tell her, and will be ready when I have time.

Gift Basket

2009-12-05T23:33:00.003-05:00

This is the hand thrown glazed clay basket that I received today at Basket Guild during our annual gift exchange. Isn't it fabulous? The leaves, berries and curlicues on the side of the handles are made of clay too. N has been taking pottery classes for some time and it really shows in the details. N also weaves with me and does baskets at guild. All of her things are just as beautiful as this. Thank you N. The brown things in the basket are some kind of cone from a conifer tree. We weren't sure what kind it is, but they are pretty cool, very flat and rose shaped. If anybody knows what they are, let me know. These came from the collections of a friend that wove baskets with us and passed away a few months ago. I so much enjoy the gift exchange because I now have baskets from most of the guild members who are also dear friends. I love seeing my friends baskets on the shelf.

I see that some of the internet quilt groups do this kind of exchange too. They call them an advent exchange. I would do that too, but I need to get better at quilting first (unless I could just send cool fat quarters and buttons, that would work).

K will be here soon. She is interviewing locally and will be in town tomorrow. I can hardly wait to see her. I miss the kids so much. I made peanut brittle and fudge yesterday so she can take some back. And we went to Lansing today, had coffee with C, and bought some food for D. Next week is exam week and I wanted to make sure that he had easily made food so that he had time to eat this week. It's easier with C at home right now, I can make sure there is turkey and ham for sandwiches and fruit in the refrigerator, but it's harder when they are away. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that interviews for K and exams for P, C, and D (and neices and sister) all go well. And E will be here in a couple weeks too. How incredibly fortunate we are.

Bright Baskets

2009-12-03T23:20:00.000-05:00

This is the start of the bright baskets quilt. I know, it's totally outside where I usually am regarding color, but that was part of the purpose in starting this project. Since I have worked on this applique almost every day for 5 weeks, it is astounding to me that I don't have it completely done yet, but I'm not even close. In fact, some of these basket handles aren't even sewn down yet (which is why they look skewed to one side). These are only 5" finished blocks, so it will take 324 blocks to make a 90" x 90" quilt. I do have about 50 completely done, but it's going to take a while. Each basket is basted down, then hand appliqued, and the rick rack is sewn around the inside and outside. I also took a whole bunch of them apart tonight since the fabrics didn't really go with these. I'm still figuring out colors and they weren't bright enough. As it turns out, gold fabric doesn't really belong in this group. The yellows need to be yellow. I have another 170 baskets cut out of fabric and about 35 of them basted down, but since I don't want to do more than 2 of each fabric, that still leaves a bunch to do and more bright fabric to purchase, since I have already cut them out of every piece I own. I'm also considering adding some 9 patch pieces, but I'm still deciding. I did learn this last week that fabric stores will cut 1/8 yard pieces, 4.5" wide, which is plenty big enough for these baskets, so at least I don't have to buy tons of fabric. I am going to have to buy more rick rack however. I'm already out of orange and lime. Who would have guessed how much rick rack 324 handles would take to make. And of course, the huge question is what am I going to do with this once it is finished....

Thanksgiving

2009-11-27T09:42:00.000-05:00

Not much sewing this weekend. C and D are home from college and I think that we have had a very nice weekend. We went to Detroit on Thanksgiving to watch the parade. We drove around for a bit, through downtown and around Belle Isle. The conservatory was not open of course, but the building itself is very cool. A traditionally built conservatory, built at a time when there was lots of money in Detroit. In fact the whole park seems part of a different city now, with it's big old fancy boat club and pavillions. We went to a Kruse and Muers for dinner in Rochester and we had a great meal with a couple bottles of wine and good food. Rochester had some interesting stores, so after breakfast with H, the kids and I went back yesterday for a few hours and wandered around. It was a good time, but we only bought coffee and fancy pastries at the bakery. Today, we went to the farmer's market this morning and tonight we walked around Frankenmuth with the dogs admiring the Christmas lights. A weekend to be thankful for all the good things we have, for the health and well-being of our children and family, friends, and neighbors. Thank you C and D, it was wonderful to spend the weekend with you.

Baking

2009-11-22T21:17:00.001-05:00

I started the holiday baking today and made banana bread and chocolate chip cookies. This picture is after the first 3 cookies disappeared, and the rest weren't out of the oven yet. Hubby only ate 3 cookies, very disciplined for him, but this evening he asked if he could take the rest to work for the guys to have with their coffee tomorrow. Oh well, hopefully he only eats 3 tomorrow too. Yes, those are raw peanuts in the background for peanut brittle, but I'm waiting until closer to Christmas to make it. It's better if made fresher. The banana bread didn't turn out terribly well, too dry and heavy. But I definitely know someone who will eat it anyway and she will be home in a couple hours. I've made this recipe several times and I'm in the market for a new one, so if someone has a really good banana bread recipe, send it my way. I have a good cake recipe, but I want to eat it toasted with butter, not frost it. I also worked on the applique, went grocery shopping, cleaned out the refrigerator, did laundry, watered the plants, and made sure everything had dinner in their tummies, hubby, dogs, cat, and fish. Productive weekend, if uneventful.

Crazy Quilt

2009-11-21T20:45:00.000-05:00

This is the fabric and ribbon that I picked up today at a little needleworks shop in Metamora. The shop is completely dedicated to crazy quilting, R, I wish you were here. She had silks, (only the deep red is silk, they are tooooo expensive), cool fabrics, every silk, poly, and rayon ribbon imaginable, thousands of rayon, silk, cotton and wool fibers, many hand dyed, boxes of charms and beads, hundreds of books on crazy quilting, tatting, embroidery, brazillian embroidery (uses rayon threads), trapunto, and stumpwork, and buttons, lace, fringe, trims, notions, and other stuff. However she is always busy, so even though it was my first time in the shop, I measured and cut my own ribbon, and carried a little sales pad around and wrote down what I bought. She then rang it up on the register and I paid, evidently everyone has to wait on themselves, but she is talking and providing directions and sewing hints all the time that you are there. She had photos of a crazy quilt that just went on the local market for $6000. It will be very interesting to see if it sells. The photos were stunning.
I am still working on my second crazy quilt square. This is a poor photo, the light in the florida room is too yellow at night (and I cut off the bottom), but I am still using the cross stitch pieces. This one also has silk ribbon, cotton, poly and silk fabric, yarn, lace, an old wool embroidery piece, cotton and silk floss, perle cotton, buttons, beads, and charms. The little charm at the top of the sampler is a brass clock. I thought it would be appropriate given the sampler. The blue on the butterfly are beads, each put on by hand, and there are lots of them. The pink butterfly by itself was overwhelming, and I probably should have dyed it, but since I just thought about it and it now has a thousand beads on it, I guess not. I will post a better photo when I am done with the square. This square is much brighter than the first one. I think each reflects your mood as you are working on them (or in my case, a vibrant pink butterfly).

Bags

2009-11-20T22:24:00.000-05:00

I made this little bag (about 4" x 7") today in quilt guild. The outside (focus fabric is what the instructor called it) is a batik and the lining is a lime green fabric that I purchased as a liner for a different bag several months ago. The bag took two 20" squares of fabric and a bit more for the strap. It's a cute little bag, but it was pretty plain so I brought it home and put some beads along the flap and a glass charm to hold the flap closed. The completed version is pictured below. I think it looks much better now. There are pockets on the front and back and a bigger pouch type pocket in the center fastened with velcro.

I am really looking forward to several of next year's programs for quilt guild. The Gee's Bend quilts are going to be at Flint Institute of Arts in February and we are going as a guild and getting a lecture by one of the curators. And then in April and June, we have nationally known quilt teachers coming and they will each do a lecture and a workshop. I asked today and they still don't know what the workshops will be, but because the June teacher just published a book on applique, I'm hopeful that will be her topic. However, lots of people don't like the "A" word as they call it at guild, because it is rather tedious and time-consuming. But in any case, I will try and take both workshops. I also worked on the crazy quilt sqare tonight, but beading really is tedious, so I quit for the evening. I have my bag of applique now, so I guess that's what I'll do until bed time.

And in case anybody thinks I'm not doing anything but sewing, I came home and made fried chicken, mashed potatoes and milk gravy for dinner tonight. I made acorn squash too, but hubby passed on the stuff that was good for him. The squash was great and since I'm the only one eating it, there's enough for tomorrow.

Ribbon Embroidery

2009-11-15T21:32:00.000-05:00

This little (4" across) basket of ribbon flowers is what I did in 3 hours of crazy quilting class today. I have not really done ribbon embroidery before so I had to learn how to thread the needle (#24 chenille), do the knot, and make the stitches. Actually none of it was hard, at least not these stitches, but it was a bit time consuming. I'm not giving up the day job. The instructor gave us each a packet of silk ribbon, a needle, hoop, and this pattern that she had traced on a piece of muslin. She took the pattern from a Dover book for ribbon embroidery. She had some neat tricks, and it was a good way to spend a Sunday afternoon.