How to ruin a good day

Our mini quilt group (the Ducks) met this morning and we had a good day making cute purses out of Santa hats. After leaving Ducks I stopped at a store for some shopping. I purchased a couple of things and while at the register I noticed that the cashier automatically gave me the senior citizen discount. (they give a 10% discount on Tuesdays.) I noticed the sign above the registers said that the senior discount is for those 60 and over. At that point I mentioned to the cashier that I didn't actually qualify for the discount and she just let it go. I think I'm offended that she thought I was 60. sigh-- guess I'm looking worse than I thought!

Journal Quilt 2007

Today is the opening of the International Quilt Festival in Houston - THE quilt show. For the past 5 years or so one of the special exhibits is of Journal Quilts. Members of the QuiltArt email list were invited by Karey Bresenhan, the force behind the show, to create a monthly series of small 8 1/2" x 11" works which would be shown in Houston each year. The hope was that participants would use these small works to try out new techniques or ideas without having to commit large chunks of time or materials. It was a highly successful project that resulted in a book being published last year with photographs of many of the journal quilts.

This year Karey decided that the project had run its course and that for the finale participants would create one 17" x 22" quilt that used at least 3 different techniques found in the journals pictured in the book.

This is my quilt entitled Celebration. Last year I had a quilt juried into the Houston show that paid tribute to the old Cooper River Bridges in Charleston, SC. (the quilt pictured in my header - which can also be seen here) Those old bridges were town down and replaced by a modern new bridge. Included in the big opening celebration for the new bridge was a spectacular fireworks display, which was the inspiration for this work. This was my class project for a class taken on Quilt University from Helen Marshall.

Here are a couple of detail photos. I won't get to Houston this year to see the journal quilt display, but many people from QuiltArt have promised to take photos of the display to share.

Catching up

I haven't been posted much since going to Florida for the submarine reunion and then going to my mother's to help her get moved to Detroit. We had hoped to put my mother on a plane last Wednesday, but things didn't get set up in Detroit in time for us to do that. Instead, Jerry & I came home on Wednesday (and it POURED rain all the way from Florida to South Carolina). We are going to drive back down to my mother's on Tuesday to help her pack her suitcases and then we'll put her on the plane on Wednesday the 31st. My brother will have everything lined up for her at the retirement home in Detroit (hopefully!)

Besides taking care of the issues with my mother, we've been finishing up the remodel of my quilt studio. We have one final inspection to have done and then I can move all of my junk back into the room. I'm having trouble deciding where I want everything to go, but I'm anxious to get moved back into the room and to get all of my assorted sewing stuff out of the rest of the house.

Jerry and I went to the fair this afternoon and when we got home the kids were sitting in the living room waiting for us. What a nice treat to find them here. They'd come over for a belated birthday celebration for Jerry since we were in Florida for his birthday last Sunday. They'd taken Noah & Hayden for photographs earlier today and already had the photos to share. I think they're WONDERFUL, but then again I'm biased.

Rolling over

Here's Hayden with a big smile after rolling over for the first time. She's obviously proud of herself!


We've been in Florida since Wednesday. Until Saturday we were in Jacksonville where we attended a reunion of the USS Grant, one of the submarines Jerry served aboard. On Saturday we drove down to Venice where my mother lives. She hasn't been doing very well lately and has spent some time in the hospital due to bone breaks from falling. We need to get her moved closer to family so she's going up to an assisted living facility in the Detroit area. There she'll be close to my brothers and her grandchildren. Jerry and I spent the day weeding through the accumulated stuff and packing up some boxes.

Today is Jerry's birthday. I'm sure he would have preferred spending the day doing something else! Happy birthday honey!

Pretty little girl

We had Hayden try on the smocked dress that I made for her. The neck size is just right but the sleeves sure are puffy!

I think she's so cute in it.

Work in progress

I can't believe that I've actually been sewing, what with my sewing room being dismantled right now, but I have. I ran across a pattern in a French magazine (QuiltMania) for this top and just decided it was something I wanted to do. I've always liked quilts with some dimension and used some Australian fabric fat quarters for the blocks.

I started this on Thursday and finished today - which is really speedy for me! Here it is in progress with all the blocks pieced.



















Once I finished piecing the blocks and adding all the borders it was too big for my design wall so I had to put it on the floor for a photo. I don't usually work this big (it's about 64 x 75) so I don't know what I'll do about the quilting. I might try to find someone to baste it for me so I can quilt it myself. It was fun to do. I think I've named it Aussie Shadows.
(photos are clickable for larger view)

Two cuties

My two favorite grandkids! Aren't they cute? Can't wait until Hayden has more hair so she can wear bows!

Dyeing again

I've been doing some more dyeing. I'm going to be taking a class that calls for a six to eight step color gradation and tried it out in fuchsia. I think a couple of the colors are too close to see any difference. The blue in the photo is an over-dye of something I did in lesson one of my dye class.









These are also over-dyes. The one on the left started out orange and I dyed it in a combination of blue and hot pink. It's interesting how the color came out. The pink was a one color attempt at tie dye. I think I did it wrong. The blue was from lesson one and I over-dyed it with a purple. The last one was a yellow that I over-dyed with green.

I'm still trying to find an easier rinsing method!

Fractured Flower completed

(clickable for larger view)
I have finally completed my fractured flower quilt (here's where I first talked about it). Starting in the upper left and going clockwise my segments were made by Sandra Burket of Texas, Roberta Ranney of Missouri, Rhoda Forbes of British Columbia and Diane Becka of Washington.

The deadline to finish was today and I just put in the last stitch this morning. I wish I'd quilted with a different color thread. I had trouble finding the threads I wanted because of having my studio all packed up for the dormer addition.

After seeing how some of the others have completed their quilts, I'm feeling like mine is pretty ordinary. Once the photos are posted on the QuiltArt web site, I'll post a link so all of the quilts can be viewed.

Elton John!

Elton John is performing here in November and we have tickets! They started selling them on-line this morning and I got both our laptops going so I could double my chance of getting through. They sold out really fast, so I'm glad I got through. The seats aren't the greatest, but we're going!

Making progress

Here's what the new dormer looked like from the outside the first day










It's kind of hard to tell, but the small amount of additional floor space sure is making a big impact on how big the room looks. This photo was taken after the workers had quit for the day and covered everything with plastic.















Here's Jerry taking in the view from where one of the windows will be.











The framers actually finished yesterday. Jerry put in the insulation today and we have an inspection scheduled for tomorrow. Once that is done Jerry can start of the drywall. I'm anxious to get moved back into my room, but I expect it will be some time yet before I can.

Hey...I'm dyeing here!

I've been taking a basic cotton dyeing class on Quilt University. They post a lesson every week. I did lesson one on time, but didn't get to lessons 2 and 3 until yesterday. Since they posted lesson 4 late last night I just went ahead and did it too.

Lesson 2 was to create 3 half yard lengths of mottled fabrics in orange, green & purple.
















Lesson 3 was to create a 5 step gradation. I wish I'd pick a different color-way. I was doing lessons 2 and 3 at the same time and didn't realize that the orange in lesson 2 was going to be the same as the darkest orange in the gradation.












Lesson 4 was to go around the color wheel. For some reason my yellow orange and orange pieces came out the same color. The oranges are causing me some problems!















It has been fun doing this dyeing, but it's a lot more work than I anticipated. The worst part of all of it is rinsing the fabrics until all the excess dye is gone. I need to find some way to make that step easier!

Yard of the Month?

Every month the garden club in our subdivision selects a yard of the month. In the past I've often told Jerry that he deserves the honor because he works really hard making our yard lovely. (I refuse to do yard work.) We always have some pretty flowers blooming (even in the winter when he plants weather hardy pansies) On the last day of August, during a break in several days of rain, Jerry set out to mow the lawn. He joked he was going to get that yard of the month by mowing the lawn the day the committee goes through the subdivision to make its selection.

Well, he won't tell me exactly what happened that day he was out mowing the lawn, but before he was even done he walked into the house and proclaimed that he was going to steal the sign for the labor day holiday weekend. He hopped in the car, drove to the house that was August's yard of the month, took the sign out of their yard and planted it in our yard. He tried to convince me that he'd stolen the sign and the garden club would be coming to get it once the holiday was over. He knows that we've been married for too long for me to fall for that, but he's still trying to make me believe it. Here it is 20 days later and the sign is still in the yard!

The yard actually doesn't look as good this month as it has in past months, but I like to think he earned it for his body of work - kind of like how some people earn academy awards!

Of course now we have a dumpster in the drive in anticipation of the dormer addition which really brings down the beauty of the yard!

Dormer addition in my studio

The dormer addition is about to happen. The framers were supposed to arrive today, but postponed late last night. I think we'll see them on Friday.

The dormer will be over the garage door. Here's a before photo. (note the garbage can isn't usually sitting there!) If you look closely over near the garage roof peak, you'll see a corner of the existing window in the room. It's up so high that I can't see out of it.















This is a view of where the dormer will be from the inside. Jerry has already torn out the drywall and the carpet.
















See how high the existing window is? (that's a 9 foot ceiling in the middle)















My sewing junk has temporarily taken over other rooms in the house!

Retreat photos

Here is Donna at the retreat working on her mariner's compass class project. Donna is always very enthusiastic about new techniques and she seemed to really enjoy working on this project. Isn't it nice? (photo clickable for larger view)















Karen, Jolene and Maureen brought a pumpkin block of the month project to work on and did some work on it. However, Jolene and Karen found another pumpkin project at one of the vendors and ended up finishing that quick project over the weekend. Here is Karen with hers. I missed getting a photo of Jolene's (who you can see standing behind Karen at the cutting table) however, hers looks similar to Karen's. If you click on the photo you will see the clock that shows Karen finished this after midnight Saturday. I went to bed about 1:00 that night, and Karen & Jolene were still going strong when I left.

Back to the real world

I got back from my weekend retreat yesterday afternoon and had to hit the studio to start packing it up. My studio is the finished room over our garage (called a FROG in these parts). Right now the room has one window which is up so high I can't even see out of it. The walls are sloped on each side so there is limited head room in those areas. We've decided to bump out a dormer on one side which will raise the wall in that area and give me needed light with the addition of 2 windows.

In order to accomplish this, of course I've had to clear out the entire room. I can't believe how much crap I have.

Jerry has found someone to do the actual framing of the dormer and he will do all the finish work. We've gotten all the permits and had the lumber delivered and now await the framers - who should arrive either tomorrow and Wednesday. I have no idea how long this entire project will take - since Jerry is doing the finish work himself it could take a while!

The retreat was wonderful. I got most of a quilt top pieced and enjoyed spending time with my quilting buddies. I even got a wonderful massage! As soon as I find the camera, I'll try to post a photo or two.

Retreat weekend

Our state guild, Quilters of South Carolina, holds an annual retreat every fall. It's great to live in a state that is small enough that one can drive anywhere in the state in a reasonable amount of time. The retreat is held on the campus of a church conference center and offers classes taught by local quilt teachers. I've elected to not take any classes this year and will do "bring your own project" for the weekend.

I'm looking forward to a fun weekend of sewing and fellowship!

35 years!

Today Jerry and I celebrate our 35th anniversary. I don't know how it could possibly be that long because I'm only 30 years old (in my mind at least). It's been quite a ride over those years. Jerry had been in the Navy about 2 years when we got married and he promised me that he'd get out. I just didn't know that he meant after he'd served 20 years!

Here's hoping we celebrate 35 more! Happy Anniversary Honey.

I'm a bit slow

I just figured out how to add a photo to the header of my blog. Yeah, I know I'm a bit slow! Anyway, now if I could only figure out how to move the text with the title of the blog I'd be a happy person.

The photo up there is my quilt "Amazing Grace" which was juried into the Houston quilt show last year. It measures 72" x 13"

Dyeing fabric

It seems like most accomplished art quilters dye their own fabrics. Dyeing isn't something I've ever attempted before so I decided to take an on-line dyeing class through Quilt University and did lesson one yesterday. Boy, it's a lot of work for a few pieces of fabric. The muddy beige fabric was the result of pouring equal parts of each of the other three dyes together into one container and seeing what color turns up. I didn't do an accurate measure of the 3 colors so I probably wouldn't be able to duplicate this one if I wanted to.



The kids were here on Saturday so I had to get some photos of the grandbabies. They just get cuter and cuter.