A GOOD Friday

Daughter called this morning to see if we wanted Stephen Superboy to come and play today while she ran errands. Well, of course, we did! He had to inspect the gardens....

This is in front of the south garden that is mostly in the shade, and it's the last place we weed. Anything we plant is just salad for the deer and the turkey, so we mostly let it go wild. The only "good" things I plant here are birdhouses and metal yard ornaments.

Here he is inspecting the daisy centers. He loves the way they feel, I think. This is the central bed edge. I'll post more of it another time.
This is the side of our house where the deck runs along side on the north. I am standing in the driveway, looking west to take this picture of the shrub roses and the magnolias, clematis, hosts and columbine.
This is the same flower bed, looking back east where I was standing when I took the previous picture. It's the other end of our deck near where I am standing.
Then I took my mother to the cemeteries today, to dress 14 graves. We always do them all the same flowers, and it's quite nice to look back and see our entire family together, by seeing the same colors splashing across the lawns. The two yellow bunches in the lower right are the tail end of our section. While we were there, this unusual sight greeted us. The horses and the original 1890's hearse came from Odessa Mo for the services. I'm sure there is some story there.
And this is what I just finished playing with tonight. I hope there's more tomorrow! You can click on any of the pictures to enlarge them, too.

What to say?

Each day, I think I am going to get into the stewdio and sew! There are sew many projects waiting for me, and I am now having withdrawal pangs! But.....

Each day that passes, the weather gets more and more like Kansas summer! We've had numerous days now in the 80's and 90's, so I MUST finish the yard work before it is intolerable to work outside. I only have 2 more flats of petunias to plant around the new little fountain I installed yesterday, one more hosta by the re-located fountain that may have a leak in it, and one more penstemmon and it's supports to do, and then it's good. Grass cutting will be all that is necessary then.

My son will be coming home the end of June with his two girls. He had been in the Army for 13 years, and after his tour in Iraq, and a nasty divorce, he decided that he wanted to be closer to his family roots. He won custody of his two girls, ages 7 and 12 ,and they have never had "family", so this will be a good thing! It will be somewhat crazy at our house, though, while they live here until school starts in August. We've gotten quite accustomed to the empy nest and the quiet and contemplation that brings. On the other hand, having them close to us will add yet another dimension to our lives.

Yesterday, Hubby had some surgery for skin cancer on top of his noggin. Let this be a warning about wearing hats and sun screen when you are outside. Of course, his was caused by his immuno-suppression drugs, so it's not 100% not wearing a hat, but still, a word to the wise! And then today, I took Mother to the doctor because I suspected she had broken some ribs when she fell in her apt the other day. And, yes, she did, and now she has her Loritab, heat pad and a volumetric exerciser to help keep her from pain and pneumonia. Sheesh! When can I sew?

Well, how about today? And how about I do something with these lotto blocks from last year? It wouId be nice to get them off my worktable and into a quilt top... wonder what I'll do?

Garden Time

Double pink peony, 2006

I haven't gotten much quilting done, even though at the end of each day, I wander into the stewdio and dream. Sigh.

We've had glorious weather, and we decided we should get out in the yard and get things done before it gets too hot. You see, here in the Heartland, we have what we call Real Estate weather (perfect) and Real Weather (hot, hot, hot) in the spring and summer. Right now, it's Real Estate Weather, and with two acres of yard, with almost 1/2 of it in either flower or vegetable gardens, it's a lot of work. We love it, but it does take a big chunk of time!

I estimate I have carried about 4000 pounds of dirt, mulch, sand and rocks over the last 4 days; sweated about 16 gallons of Gatorade (funny how it isn't the same color as what I drink!); put together one fountain; and planted 15 poppies, 3 Cranesbill geraniums, 16 moss roses, 18 hosta, 3 Penstemmons, and 3 Speedwells. I still have another fountain to put together, and 3 flats of petunias to get in - one in the wheelbarrow in the dry wash and one on the back patio edge. That doesn't count how many lilies I've divided and planted, or the 18 bags of yard waste that are sitting by the curb for the recyclers to pick up.

So, with no quilting done, and the yard isn't quite dressed yet for all it's pictures, I thought I would share some friends of mine from last week.
Here is "Buddy", my daily visitor. I think he wants to come quilt with me, because he always comes to the same tree right outside the window where I sew. He will stay about 30 minutes, chirping away, hopping closer and closer. I can even get right up to the window, moving around, and he stays. I've started talking to him recently, and the last time he came to visit, he brought Mrs. Buddy with him. I am hoping their children will come to visit sometime, too! These pictures were not zoomed, and they were taken through the window glass.



When I was working in one of the smaller beds, I kept hearing a tree frog croaking, but I assumed he was under a rock - not hanging onto the branch of a plant I was getting ready to clean up!

Another Birthday Quilt Day

As you might (or might not) remember, my stitch group, the Amazing Quilt Babes get together about every 6 weeks to make a birthday quilt top for one of the members. We draw names to see when our quilt birthday is at our Christmas dinner, and we usually start the last of January or the beginning of February. This stitch day was for Shirleee (center, standing). The birthday girl comes prepared with all the pieces cut out, and ready to sew. We usually start around 9AM and stitch until 3PM or 4PM, and by that time, it's pretty much done! My birthday quilt was the Happy Jack's Pumpkin Patch.

Last year, the group decided we all really like Everything But the Kitchen Sink, but we didn't really want to invest in anymore reproduction fabrics to get a large variety in the quilt. So we decided we would exchange 9 patch blocks. I can't tell you how many we made, but you can see by the picture - there's a boatload of them in a 85" X 98" quilt!

Shirlee decided that she would make the nine-patch 9 patch blocks, and today the group made the star blocks and put the top together. Isn't it pretty?


And of course, Clyde had to help Carolyn hold things down while she sewed.

Baby Baby Baby

This is the most loving little boy! I got to spend Monday with our little Stephen. He loves books, and he will spend hours and hours with them. He especially loves pictures of animals, and makes the their sounds when he sees them. He even does elephants! Take note of the Baby Looney Toons bibs panel hanging on the chair behind him.
I purchased this panel about 11 years ago when I found out I was going to be a Grandma (Oma) the first time. Did I ever make the bib? Nope. But it's been hanging around, and every time I have a new grandchild, I pull it out again. Five grandchildren now, and still no bibs. Stephen was born Oct 30, 2004, and once again, Baby Looney Toons saw the light of day. Instead of being made into bibs, I used it to cover my Pfaff Hobby Quilter since then. Every time Stephen comes to visit, however, he insists on dragging the panel around with him. He especially loves Baby Sylvester - it's the picture he is kissing!

He also has fallen in love with my stone cast cat. This cat is HEAVY, HEAVY, HEAVY!! It usually sits on the edge of the drapes in my dining room to keep me from breaking a toe (again!). He discovered it a couple of visits ago, and I pretty sure he thinks it's real! He talks to it, pets it, gives it kisses, and feeds it.

Occasionally he'll drape a long rope of beads he plays with around it's neck, and jabber at the cat. I couldn't figure out what he was doing, until his mommy told me she thought he was putting a leash on it like they do for their dog, Sasha when they go out for a walk. Sasha's leash is red, too. That is probably it, as Stephen tries to walk away with one end of it, and of course, the cat is stubborn and refuses to budge. Then he turns around and claps his hands at the cat and jabbers some more.

We love playing with him, and we can hardly wait until the weather stays nice now, so we can play outside.

Tomorrow is sewing day....YAY!

Kansas Art Quilters Workshop

Here is Rayna Gilman (left) and Jette Clover (right), our fabulous workshop guides!

On Saturday, Jette showed her beautiful work, and some slides, and then we got busy! We painted, and printed, used toothbrushes, combs, lemon peelers, juicers, steamers (anything with textures) - really anything we wanted. We started with one pass with black on white fabric, then another pass using gelatin for printing, then another pass with a third color and another tool of our choice. At the end of the day, we were starting to get a "feel" for a light hand, as Jette would say.

The second day was all Rayna. We took the pieces we had done the day before and made rubbings using carbon based photocopies and CitrusSolve, packing tape transfers, transfers with photocopies or transparencies and gel medium and the we did some thermofax screen printing.

I must say I started with pieces that I didn't like at all. Part of the problem was I didn't take the time to mix paint, but rather, I just used black, blue and red, which eventually turned into just baby colors. Most of Sunday, I had fun learning new techniques, but I just didn't care for anything that I had done...

UNTIL......

This is the piece where it finally came together. Once I used the screen I had made before the workshop with my writing on it, I loved it!

See if you can find my grandmother's picture (Citrus Solve rub) that I enhanced with pigma pen, flowers that my grandmother loved (packing tape transfers), the screened hand writing, and the rubbed handwriting (Citrus Solve). After I got it home, I tea dyed it to make it look old.

I'm not certain if I will actually use this particular piece for a quilt or not. I've got an idea of how to incorporate it into a genealogy I am doing - maybe making a page for each person. I can see how I might use all of these techniques in other projects now, and I had a wonderful Mother's Day weekend.

Kansas City MQS - part 2

The theme of the show was Putting on the Ritz.

This is a family tree that I thought was executed quite nicely.


Another great quilt that is truly enhanced with the machine quilting!


I just liked the composition of this one.

I wonder who might like these cats?


The quilting on this one is my favorite. The embroidery was done from Mary Englebriet's children in the magazine. I think I read that they were enlarged for the pattern. But the quilting is wonderful!!!!! Each area around the children is specific to what they are doing. Rain and wind for the kids with the overcoats; little flowers for the little girl holding the flowers, etc. And each one of them just flowed into the next. I just love it!



This one also falls into my favorite category, too. Look at how that quilting is "shadowing" what the clown is juggling!


Take a close look at this machine. I couldn't get a clear shot of it because it was on a motorized turntable, with all sort of other displays around it. But if you click for the larger version, you can see what has happened to it!


I've been a bit busy today, taking a weekend workshop with Rayna Gilman and Jette Clover. Pretty nice way to spend a Mother's Day weekend, eh? But I can tell you right now, this has been a really great class, and it's only 1/2 over! Workshop pictures another day.

Quilts from Kansas City MQS

Here are some of my favorite quilts from the show, and I've tried to take a close up of what impressed me the most of the quilting. For you longarmers, I hope this is good enough. As a non-long armer, I look at the quilts first, then the quilting. Many of the quilts I saw were somewhat disappointing. Just because you can (add rhinestones, deep threadwork, trapunto) should you? Does it enhance the quilt design? None of those here in *blogland*, just some of my favorites. I'll post the last of them tomorrow, including my MOST favorite!

This quilt began life as a whole cloth quilt. When it was finished being quilted, she thought it needed color. Can you believe that ALL of the color in this quilt is from colored pencils and textile markers? It is beautifully quilted, and all I could think was how afraid I would be of messing it up with my colors! The picture following it is the backside of it.




I thought the piecing on this one was incredible, and while the color choice was not my favorite, I could see how it enhanced the quilt design. And talk about enhancing the quilt design - take a look at the quilting in the second picture!


I would never have thought of taking a delicately embroidered quilt and machine quilting it. I love how traditional it looks, and how nicely the quilting "fits" with the quilt design.


I just couldn't resist taking this photo. I am celebrating 8 years in July!


More tomorrow!

MQS - Kansas City

One Quilt Maverick at a time, that's what I say!

Here's Keryn all the way from Australia with a few stops in between which you can read about on her blog. Isn't she sweet? I went to the Machine Quilter's Showcase which is held in Overland Park, KS each year. It is only about 20 minutes away, so this was an easy trip to get to see another Maverick. We are standing in front of her long arm quilting designs, so take a good look, too.

I will post some pictures of the quilts later on tonight. For now, I am going to go to dinner with another on-line friend from Ohio who is in town for the same MQS. Do you think if I wait long enough, everyone will come to me?

Oh! And here's a close up of the heart beads I got at the Bead Blast the other day.

Friendship Flowers Finished! (First Finish)

Well, at least the top is finished, anyway. Quite a few years ago, my Amazing Quilt Babes stitch group exchanged flower blocks as our first project together. I haven't posted those quilts yet, but they are pretty spectacular, if I do say so myself. After that exchange, we wanted to do something else, so we came up with a few ideas that just didn't go anywhere. I can't remember how we landed on these blocks, but each of us shared a piece of focus fabric with the others (mine is the outside border fabric) for the colors we wanted. Then we each made a block for all the others from the same pattern, but different fabrics.

At the time we began, there were seven of us in the group. The first to leave the group was Deb, and her background was black and she wanted red flowers. Of course, I had already completed her block before she left, but she had not started any of ours. The last person to leave the group was MaryKay. Her block for me is the pink peony block in the lower right hand corner, and it was not really completed by her, but rather a friend of hers (that we knew). That kind of took the pizazz out of the project, to tell you the truth, and the blocks just languished in my project box. I didn't even do my own daffodil block.

Then a few months ago, I pulled out my Sharyn Craig book on 7 Spectacular Setting Solutions (mentioned before in my blog postings), and I started putting this quilt top together. I got as far as the blocks set on point, and then I realized I had extra "paths" fabric leftover. What did I do? Seems I left off the outside paths of the blocks. Hmmmm, what to do, what to do? Put it aside, of course!

After I did the Windblown Wildflowers little quilt top (posted April 26), I thought of my Friendship Flowers once again. I originally thought I was finished and I was going to just put a border on it. Something told me that it wasn't really finished, and I sent a picture to my stitch buddies and Finn for their opinions. Sure enough - they ALL said it wasn't finished by just slapping a wide border on it. So then, I began my quest for a pieced border that I thought would look right.

I remembered the Border Workbook by Janet Kime, and I was off an running again. Why, oh why, didn't I listen to my high school math teacher when he told me that someday I would really need what he was trying to teach us? It took me three sheets of math equations to finally figure out what size the little squares on point should be. That doesn't mean the other equations I worked were wrong - oh no! They were correct, but just not the right size for THIS quilt top. HA!

I really like this quilt top, and I love the blocks in it. I like it so much that I am going to handquilt it! GASP!!!! I haven't handquilted a BIG quilt in a lot of years. It's 91" square, and I am going to scallop the edges. I have no idea what I will use for the quilting motifs, but that's another day, says Scarlett!

Here's a closeup of Vicky's violets block. You can click on the photo of the entire quilt to enlarge the picture to see all the blocks if you'd like. Even though, the quilt top looks a bit skewed, it really is nicely square in it's construction. I am shorter than the 91" it takes to hang it on my design wall, so my pics always look a little weird!

Personal Quilt Show

Remember the other day, when I decided to have my own personal quilt show on my design wall across from where I sew? Here it is!

The cat quilt on the left is one that my Asilomar friend Wendy made for an auction. I was able to win it by bidding through someone who organized the auction in CA, and did it ever surprise her to find out that *I* was the winning bidder! She designed the cats from the fabric she used on the back of the quilt. I'll take more pictures of that later and repost just this quilt and the backing fabric. It is a dear little quilt to me.

On the right side of the Green Rag (aka Asilomar Sunset) is my January Journal Quilt (no name), which was actually completed from a view out of my stewdio window January 2004. I still have February and March of that year's Journal quilts to bind. I'll tell their story later, too.

And last, there's a little New York Beauty to the lower right that is paper pieced, and handquilted. I won it in a silent auction from a local quilt guild. Just a little prettiness to brighten my days.

Bead Blast

It's been a wet and drizzly last few days, and today was more of the same. After having days of 70's and 80's, it is more like Spring now, the way it should be. The grass is beautifully green, and all the spring perennials are starting to shoot up and bloom. But, still, with it so wet, it was a good day to be somewhere else.

We have a local beadery group who sponsors Bead Blast every year. I've heard a lot about it, but I've never been able to go due to one thing or another - usually another. But I found out that it was this weekend a couple of days ago, and this morning, bright and early, a friend and I went about 30 miles north to see what kind of trouble we could get into!

About 30 minutes after we arrived and we were browsing beads, beads beads, and more beads, my name was called. Hmmmmm, wonder who wants me? What's happened at home? Why didn't they call me on my cell phone? Turns out that I had won a door prize. And a nice door prize, too - one that you could choose from all the different vendors who had contributed. Here's my prize! A fused glass pendant with a foiled dragonfly inside - it's about 1.25" square, and it's got a hole in it so it hangs on point! This is the best picture I can get of it, though.




And these are all the beads I came home with. Let me tell you that having a bead stash is a whole lot more expensive than a fabric stash, and it sure doesn't take up nearly the room as fabric.

These aren't nearly as pretty as Tonya's bead tour from the other day, but I like them a lot. I am working on a theme in my head - "my heart overfloweth" There's foiled hearts, shiny hearts, black hearts, polka dot hearts, pimply hearts, milleflore hearts, and lots of assortment of reds, pinks and purples to offset them. And of course, I just had to have a little bit of blue and gold too!

A Blast from the Past

I've been treating myself to a little quilt show this week in my "stewdio". I've been working way too hard on some math problems with a quilt top I am trying to finish, so I thought I would get out some quilts I haven't seen in a while. I have my big design wall directly across from where I sew, and I've added another quilt to the little purple wonder from yesterday's post. This quilt is called My Green Rag. LOL! The official name on the label, however, says it is Asilomar Sunset.

I took a class in 2001 at Asilomar with Lynn Kough called:
"Stretching Tradition: Take a step toward creating original quilt design grounded in traditional block patterns. Learn about splices, split outs, and sizings. Revitalize your quiltmaking! "

I wanted to try using a collection of fabrics from a LQS challenge (and their new store opening), so most of the fabrics were green. What was I thinking? Green, or rather a LOT of green is not my favorite colors to work with! LOL!

Anyway, this was the second class I had ever taken at Asilomar, and it is where I met my bestest Asilomar friend, Wendy. We were tablemates, and we each had a picture of our pooches on our little design walls. A nice conversation starter, but before long, we were both crying, and the other two tablemates were tearful too. My Otto dog of 17 years, had recently died, and when telling the story, we all just started crying our eyes out. And that's how Wendy and I became Asilomar friends! Well, that, and a less than successful class. Not that the teacher was so bad, but that rather our expectations were far different than what the class had in store.

I started with a favorite block of mine, Blackford's Beauty, and made it in several sizes, and split the colors out here and there. The overall size is 32" X 49", and it is big stitch quilted freely with no hoop in numerous colors of perle cotton (also called utility quilting by Tonya and Finn). A local quilting author adds another step to this type of quilting which she calls Quilt and Embellish in one step. I didn't know Linda then, just knew the big stitch quilting from a demo I had seen her do. When I took it back to Asilomar for show and tell, no one had ever heard of this type of quilting stitch with perle cotton.



The largest star is supposed to be the brilliant sunset, and the rest of the green and blue is the ocean.

There are crystal beads hanging here and there on the lower half to symbolize the shine of the ocean waves at sunset, but I don't think they show up, even if you click on the picture for a larger format. This was really difficult for me to do. It was really the first time that I ever started with a blank slate, and an idea. Maybe that's why we felt the class was less than what we wanted - I know I was very accustomed to working from a pattern and some type of process. Overall, it isn't a bad effort, but not exactly one of my favorite pieces of work.

It does make me smile, remembering how my friendship with Wendy began 6 years ago!! Watch out for the water, Wendy!!