Fabric Fun

I took a rag rug class recently and have been cutting up excess fabric for the crocheting. Today I cut up a bunch of one inch strips and thought I'd share them with the kids before using them. Hayden enjoyed having the strips thrown on top of her head!

She laughed every time a pile of strips landed on top of her.


Noah got into the act and was having fun just throwing the fabric up in the air. I love this action photo catching him in mid-throw. That's Craig there in the background at the dining table playing with one of the Lego sets Noah got for his birthday! (click on photos for larger view)

7 Years Old

Yesterday (8/22) was Noah's 7th birthday. It's hard to believe he's growing up so quickly. He had his birthday party today at the House of Bounce. The building is filled with various jump castles and the kids go wild jumping all over. They almost literally bounce off the walls!

Then 2001:

Now 2008:


HAPPY BIRTHDAY NOAH!

Big scare

Today was the first day of school for Noah. (what ever happened to starting school after Labor Day?) I went with Chrystal to pick him up this afternoon.

We were sitting in the pick-up line and Hayden was pretty fussy in her car seat, so I got her out of the car and walked around with her. As I was walking back to the car with her, I somehow missed a curb cut and fell. Thankfully we landed in an area with dirt (and mud) rather than on the concrete. Hayden screamed and screamed and I wasn't sure at first if she was hurt or just scared. Thankfully she was just scared and other than being a bit muddy and dirty she was fine. I was crying almost as hard as she was just thinking about how she could have been badly hurt. My crying probably didn't help her fear, but I just couldn't help it, I was so frightened. I kept apologizing to Chrystal about letting it happen, and I hope she'll forgive me.

I scraped up my leg a bit and did something to the top of my right foot. It's very swollen and bruised and it hurts to walk on it. I suspect I'll be sore tomorrow, but as long as Hayden is okay, I'll deal with it.

Pinehurst, NC

My brother Ed, who lives in the Detroit area, made a short golfing jaunt to Pinehurst, North Carolina this past weekend. Joining him were his son Eddie and one of Eddie's friends. We drove up there on Friday afternoon to see them. It had been several years since I've seen Ed, although Jerry has seen him more recently since they like to take a snowboarding trip together every year.

Ed has never met a stranger and is always looking for fun. This time was no exception. We had barely sat down to dinner when he started joking with the waitstaff. The joking somehow evolved into one of the waitresses actually cutting up Ed's salad and feeding him a forkful. I missed the actual feeding, but here they are while she was cutting up the salad.



Here's another shot of Ed.


Here's Eddie. He's 16 and going into his senior year in high school. He's trying to decide on his college choice and is thinking of University of Michigan.



It was nice seeing them even if only for overnight.

It was my first visit to Pinehurst and it sure is a nice town. Of course, it's geared to the golfer, but the downtown is very charming with lots of beautiful old homes.

Quilt University Class

I'm taking another Quilt University class called Painted Landscapes. I finally started working on Lesson One today.

The class uses setacolor paints. These paints are kind of cool because you can do sunprinting with them.

Lesson one has about 8 small exercises. I only got 4 of them done today because I was working out on my screened porch and it was WAY too hot today to spend much time out there. (it got up to 100 today and I'll bet the humidity was way up there too.)

Exercise one was to paint in a bucket. My piece ended up just looking like mud. I suppose I could use it for the ground or dirt in a landscape quilt - except it might have a bit too much red in it. (all photos are clickable for larger view)



Exercise 2 was to use Pollack techniques. I think I used a heavy hand too much on this piece and the right side of the piece just looks sloppy. I do like the sparkle the gold paint gives though.



Exercise 3 was to do a sunset. I used the colors the teacher suggested, but I don't think they work well. Also, my orange didn't turn out orange enough. I'm going to have to work on mixing the colors better.




By the time I got to exercise 4 I just wanted to get out of the heat so I didn't bother to mix any new paint for it and I don't really like the colors in it. However, I do like the technique. Once the fabric was painted I sprinkled coarse sea salt on the fabric and the salt made the interesting texture. I could see using this techique to get big flower blooms. That's what this looks like to me.




The actual sun printing is one of the exercises I haven't done yet. I'm looking forward to that. I did have a few pine needles on the first piece - the bucket painting - while it dried and if you look you can see where they were.

Hopefully the weather will break and it will be more comfortable working on the rest of the exercises!

Long time no blog

Apparently Blogger thought my blog was a spam blog and blocked me from posting while it investigated. Blogger has an automated robot program that searches all the blogs to weed out the spam blogs. I don't know what in my blog would have triggered the robot, but today they gave me voice again.

Several others on my quiltart list also got blocked this week, so maybe the robot suddenly doesn't like quilt content!

Tuesday 7 of us in the TTT gang took a trip up to Charlotte, NC for a visit to Mary Jo's Cloth store. Mary Jo's is renowned around the Southeast as 'the' destination for fabric addicts. It's probably a good thing that it's about 3 hours from here or I'd be spending $$ there on a regular basis. It was a fun day for all of us.