July 2: Why I'm Smiling Today

I confess to being very upset about the recent Supreme Court rulings, to the point where I see that I need to step back and focus on the many good things that I'm lucky enough to be enjoying in my life.   So here's a few reasons why I'm managing to smile today despite all the distressing political news. 

1.  I feel really good about how I was able to travel to Utah to stay a few days with a good friend when her husband died suddenly two weeks ago.   I think I was able to be of some comfort and help, and that felt good.  I've known her husband since they married almost fifty years ago and his death reminded me again to make the most of the time I have here on earth.  

 2.  I also felt really good about helping my Venezuelan friend find a refurbished bike to replace the one that was recently stolen.  She'd been using it to cart her two young kids around town and was really missing it, so Ben and I took her to Community Cycle which takes donated old bikes and spruces them up for continued use, selling them at reasonable prices.  It was a long shot that they'd have what Rei needed, but they did, so big smiles all around.

3.  And speaking of feeling good, we moved out of our 90 degree weather and are enjoying a spell of beautiful mid-80 days, generally with a welcome mix of sun and clouds.  Our sunsets have been particularly striking. 

  4.  We had a lovely Father's Day, taking a hike with Paul and then driving up the canyon to Nederland for a delicious meal at Cross Cut Pizza, one of our favorite causal places to eat.  Turbo went with us and bounded up the steep hike with exuberance. 

   5.  I'm quite delighted with a little fabric artwork I finished the other day and hung over the fireplace yesterday.   I was inspired by scraps of the purple and green fabric I used in the border, which was left over from another piece I finished about two years ago.  I found it while cleaning up my studio and decided it was too cool not to use in some way.  The purple reminded me of eggplants, so I drew a design with two of them and then created them by collaging other scraps that I had around.  My critique group helped me with ideas for how to quilt it, I added a piece of fuzzy yarn around the edge, and now it's hanging in the living room next to the blooming artichoke piece that I made a while back.  I think they make a good pair!  

6.  And if all that isn't enough, today is gym day!  It's not always easy getting myself to the gym to lift weights, but I'm always happy when it's all over and I'm back home relaxing! 

Taken from Cartoonstock.com

Hope everyone is finding some joy today.  I find it's usually out there if I shift my focus. 

March 25: Fixing a Quilt Problem

The weather around here is notoriously fickle in these spring months.  Much of the time we have dramatic skies and beautiful snow-topped mountains, with seasonal cold temperatures that keep us all in our heavy coats.  

But other days we have bright sunny days with warmer temperatures that make the spring blossoms suddenly appear and we hunt up our lighter pants and jackets.  

Last night was one of the former times, with a snowstorm dumping about five inches of snow throughout the evening. This afternoon we are seeing the sun again and the forecast for the week looks pretty good. 

I don't usually mind bad weather since it gives me a good excuse to stay home and work in my studio. When we were on the Big Island last fall I bought a kit for making a wall hanging showing a mother and baby Humpback whales.  The whales were precut using a laser, meaning that you didn't have to cut the shapes out yourself.  The kit also included fabric for a background and a border.  The whale cuts had a glue on them so you just placed them on the background fabric and ironed them down, then added the border, added whatever stitching you wanted, added a binding, and bingo! you're done! 

I had used my own background, a beautiful hand-dyed piece made by a friend and seemed destined to be used as the ocean back drop to the whales' dive down from the surface into the deeper water.  I used the border that came with the kit, put everything together, quilted it, sewed on the binding and hung the finished piece up in our study.  

After a few days, I wasn't liking it.  

The quilting, and probably some bad measuring on my part,  had distorted the piece, making the borders look very wonky on the right side. (Though not as wonky as shown in this photo!)  I also didn't like the border fabric, which was too solid and boring for my taste.

So I cut off the borders and determined that the remaining image should be mounted on a 16x20" canvas which I'd cover with a new background fabric.   The photo below shows how I cut out a piece of brown paper the correct size and imagined the central image centered on it. 

 

Once I had that sizing correct, I played around with different background fabrics.  I liked this lovely fabric but it competed too much with the central image so I chose a variegated blue one instead.    

Then I finished the edges with a  fancy blue and white cord which added a bit of sparkle.  I also found some fused organza in my stash and cut out several circles from it to make bubbles which I stitched near the whales' tails in the upper left corner.  I think they added a lot! 

I stitched the central panel to the blue background and enlisted my friend Lotus's help to stretch and stapled the background fabric to the canvas and add a hanging wire.  Then I hung it back up in the study.  

I'm much happier with the piece now!  

January 15: Bitter Cold

In the big studio cleanup I sorted through most of my quilts to see what I had and to find better ways to store them.  I came across this piece that I had made about three years ago in an online class taught by Cindy Grisdela about improvisational design and techniques with fabrics.  I had chosen this palate because the class was in February and I was tired of winter and needed to play with spring like colors. I thought my end design was okay but didn't really say "Welcome Spring,' so I just set it aside as a class piece. 

 But when I found it the other day I had the idea to turn it...

...and to add some flowers to it.  I made some notes on a Post-it and hung it on the design wall to wait for attention after the studio cleanup was done.  

Yesterday was the day, so I cut some flowers out of a piece of commercial fabric and played around with placing them on top of the quilt. Here's the first arrangement. 

And the second.

And what I think is the final design. Once it's not freezing in the basement quilting studio I'll take it down there and add decorative stitching to all the flowers.  It should be a good piece to hang above the fireplace when spring approaches. 

It was bitterly cold today but Meals on Wheels didn't cancel so we were out making our deliveries. It had snowed during the night and into the late morning so there was about five or six inches and I don't think it ever got out of the minus temps.  The cold seeped though my long johns and heavy "deep winter" pants and even through my boots. 

Near the end of my route I took this photo which I think captured the mood of the morning. 

On the way home we picked up some nice hot Thai food, which went a long ways to warming us up, as did our cozy house. Later we were warmed by leftover homemade chicken soup and companionship shared with a good friend who came by for dinner. 

Tomorrow is predicted to start out warmer but still very cold --10 degrees at 8 AM-- but then warm up all the way to 32 degrees by 2 PM.   Whoohoo!

December 27: Christmas, Quilting, and a Full Moon

Boulder received about an inch and a half of snow on Saturday the 23rd.  The low temps kept it from melting so we had a White Christmas!  It was perfect; just enough to make everything lovely and festive and not enough to cause any traffic difficulties. This is not our wreath or our fence --I spotted it while walking Turbo in the neighborhood on Sunday-- but it sure says "Merry Christmas." 

In our home we've been enjoying these lovely flowers from the local florist which I selected Friday from their "Weekly special." The red and white carnations are called  "Candy Cane" and used to be wildly popular.  I love them and was glad to find them for sale. 

I finished the Christmas tree table runner just in time for Christmas dinner.  I had made the tree out of tiny bits of various green fabrics last year, ran across it this year, and vowed to finish it, which I did! It's made of leftover scraps from previous holiday projects and I just put it together in a way that I liked without using a pattern, so it was a lot of fun. 

We had invited five friends over for a lucious Christmas dinner of crab cakes and scallops, and the seating of all of us was made so much easier with our new sliding patio door providing the space the old swinging door had taken.  Then about 6:00 Raymond and Paula came bearing caviar and homemade blinis to have with champagne, so it was a full and fun day.  Paul visited most of the day and made Turbo very happy by paying attention to him when everyone else was busy. 

Yesterday was cleanup day.  Today was devoted to entering three small quilts in an online show.  Two were finished and I "just" needed to do the entry paperwork which meant making sure the photos were formatted correctly and writing both a "materials" statement and an "art statement."  I keep them both very short!  But there was one piece that needed to be completed.  So I knuckled down to the job, finished the stitching on it, and bound the edges with a facing.  Once that was done I took the required photographs and wrote up the entry.  It was all a good half day's work and I'm glad to get it finished so I can relax as we move into the new year. 

Here is the new piece, which is 16x17"in size and made with my own hand dyed, stamped, and painted fabrics. 

And a detail: 

I didn't have any idea when I started what it would turn into, but along the way I realized it reminded me of old traditional "bar quilts," like this Amish one, so I named it Bars.

from the John Moran company website

Have you seen the full moon?  It's not too late!

  

November 19: Staying Amused at Home

The nastier symptoms of this virus --sore throat, racking cough, and headaches-- lasted only about two days, which was certainly manageable.  By day three I was feeling well enough to be be getting bored at home, so I decided to work on a design project I had started back in September and not picked up since.  I had cut up a piece of my hand painted fabric, added some white and colored fabrics to turn them into blocks, and stopped there.  Here's the last photo from September. 

The next step involved actually setting the blocks into a pleasing design.  I messed around with various options yesterday but in the end came up with nothing I really liked.  So I snapped photo of what I had and gave it up.  Way too many decisions for my weak state to handle.  But I knew I didn't like all that white fabric and the blocks didn't seem connected in any way.  

 I did manage to notice that what I liked about these hand painted scraps was how the purple paint bounce around in each scrap, sort of like an insect buzzing in the bushes.  Though most insects aren't purple, of course.

But the actual act of sewing was pleasing and easy enough, so I decided to make some easy "improvisational" blocks from two bins of scraps that remained from a project I had completed a couple of years ago using fabrics featuring southwestern colors and themes.  I'd finished this wall hanging and three other related ones and haven't been able to bring myself to get rid of any of the lucious leftover scraps. 

 Improv blocks aren't made according to any plans or patterns.  You just pick up a scrap and add another scrap and happily sew and press and cut so that in the end you --hopefully- have some blocks that please you.  Here's a couple I made in this sewing session. 

I've been doing these sorts of blocks for years and am at the point where I don't need to even cut the scrap to any shape before sewing it on.  Here you see a big bright piece being added on a slant to an existing strip.  Sew, flip, press, trim most of the bright color away and see what you get.  No big decisions, just lots of little manageable ones. It was a nice soothing way to spend a couple of hours while nursing my virus. 

When I was done sewing the simple improv blocks I had a sudden thought about what direction the hand painted blocks should take.  I quickly striped away some of the fabrics and rearranged the blocks into a tighter formation which emphasized the motion of the purple paint.  This arrangement satisfied me for the moment, and that's what's on the design wall now, waiting further attention.  

This morning was the first in four days that I've taken Turbo for his morning walk.  Things are getting back to normal!  Along the route I stopped to admire the lovely colors and pattern of these fall leaves.  Dog walks are fun for a lot of reasons, but seeing what nature has been up to is always one of the highlights.