A Cold Week

The past week was a cold one, surprising us several mornings with temperature readings of two to five degrees.  Brr......   And on Wednesday it snowed all day, leaving six inches or so of snow for us to enjoy.  Thursday was so cold and icy that the Boulder schools had a two hour delay, which is very rare.   The snow made a pretty wavy pattern on the tombstones in the nearby cemetery....

...and made a nice contrast to the flags that are still on the graves from Veterans' Day.

Have you ever seen ducks hunkered down in the snow?  Neither had I!

There was plenty to do despite the cold.  Paul's band had a gig which was a lot of fun to attend. 

Ben and Paul (with a little help from me) finished the jig saw puzzle.  

We went hiking and walking even in the cold and snow,  celebrated my SIL Dawn's birthday with a dinner out, and dined in a few times with friends, including a happy evening at Ray and Paula's with That Handsome Dog Gus.  That's southern cornbread, which was great with the red beans and rice we had that night. 

But I did spend a lot of time at home, and had a lot of time to sew.  I finished a quilt top that will be given to the "outreach" program that one of my quilt guilds sponsors.   Here it is all ready to machine quilt.  

And here's the back.....isn't it pretty?  This one will be hard to part with.  All of it was made of fabrics I've had forever, and it was fun to create.  The top is a "disappearing nine patch" made of 4" batik scraps and the back is strips of a lovely flower batik alternating with that wonderful pink circle fabric.  I think I've had that piece for at least 15 years; time to use it up! 

But the most exciting little project for the week was a little 9x11" journal quilt inspired by this photograph taken of the view out of one of our windows on that snowy Wednesday.

I wanted to capture the cold, icy feeling of the storm and the heavy puffs of snow affixed to the tree branches.  I started by tracing the main branches of the tree onto some white fabric that had faint but icy looking speckles.  I looked around for other fabrics that caught the icy mood I was aiming for and was delighted to find that a piece of very special fabric that I had "ice dyed" with a friend two years ago looked super.  Then I used Sharpie markers and Prisma Color pencils to outline and shade the branches and added dabs of paint for the snow.

It was good, but it needed more.  More shading and more snow.  I messed around with it for a while and ended up spattering opaque and iridescent white fabric paint all over the branches.  Spattering was very fun and exciting and messy!  Loved it.  

The shape of the image made me think about looking through a window and I played around with adding a window sill around it, but in the end I gave that idea up. Instead I attached a black and white glittery heavy thread on the top and bottom of the image, another icy note.  Along the way I came across this beautiful purple hand-dyed fabric --also one I've had forever-- and decided it would make a great background. 

 I really liked the b&w glittery thread so I added more.  Then I finished the whole piece by wrapping the purple fabric to the front as a binding.   I quite love it!