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!

Welcome April!

We had some nice weather the past few days and it's been refreshing to enjoy temps in the high 60's and nothing on the ground to make walking challenging.  

It has been quite windy, but unless you were caught in this portapotty which blew over in a gust, you did okay. 

photo by Kylie Bearse, NWS

There's been much snowfall up in the mountains, which have made skiers happy and gave us at the lower elevations some lovely views of the snow topped peaks. 

Snow was predicted for last night into this morning...

 

...and when I awoke I was pleased to find a winter wonderland outside.  I'm writing this about noon on Tuesday and it looks like we have about three inches outside with another inch expected by night.   This is the view from our door; baby, it's cold out there!

Well, let's see; besides our every-changing weather, what's been going on around here lately?

I went with a friend to see the Boulder High School's production of Mary Poppins, which was excellent.  Paul was hired as an adult assistant to work on this, and taught a crew of students how to use the brand new sound board.  He always saves us front row seats, which is a nice perk!

 Ben and I braved the wind and took Turbo to the Louisville dog park which is across the street from the big housing area destroyed in the Marshall Fire on December 30, 2021, and I was excited to see the rebuilding had finally gotten underway. 

We bought a new microwave which doesn't sound like a big deal, but was since it resulted in moving all our small appliances around and generally reorganizing things in our small but powerful kitchen.  I won't bore you with all the details but we ended up with all the appliances in more convenient spots and with less crowded countertops.   At the same time our very old but wonderful coffee maker died and we bought a new one which fits right into the new plan and stream lined look. 

Did you notice the two little racks on either side of the stove?  It's such a handy little thing that I thought you might like to know about it.  Its available here on Amazon in case you're interested.   

We have two traditions when snow days are predicted.  First, we sleep in....

and second I often make overnight cinnamon rolls to enjoy in the morning and to give to neighbors.  

I've enjoyed mine while checking up on the progress of Trump's arrest in NYC.  What an age we live in!

 

Besides distributing cinnamon rolls I have just two things on my "to do" list today: doing my PT and washing and drying this scrap quilt that I recently finished. 

It's cute, isn't it?  It's Timna Tarr's "Strip Sandwich" pattern.  I'm fascinated by how different it looks depending on what fabrics you chose.   Look at how different it is from this one which I made from hand-dyed solid fabrics. 

Before I go, I have to include this fun photo I took the other night when Ben and I walked downtown to have dinner at The Kitchen.  Those are orange slices that the bar tender is dissicating to use as garnishes in cocktails. 

Ordinary Days

It's been a series of ordinary days around here and I'm so glad I can say that.  Yesterday's horror reminds me again to appreciate fully all the goodness that life brings despite the fact that, as Kamala Harris said in her remarks last night, "Our hearts keep getting broken."

Ben and I got away for a pleasant trip down to Canyon City, southwest of Colorado Springs to visit our friends Sandy and Gina who just bought a vacation house there as a home base for rock climbing, hiking and fly fishing.  

The area is known for the Royal Gorge, a ten-mile long steep canyon formed by the Arkansas River.  We didn't see that but we did enjoy the beautiful way the city has incorporated the river into a natural park and waterway.    

We visited one of the several wineries, tasting wines and sampling a delicious assortment of appetizers. Although the wine is made on site, the grapes are generally imported from vineyards in other states.  

While Ben and Sandy were rock climbing, Gina and I hiked up to one of the long limestone walls.

It was the maiden out-of-town voyage for our Tesla, and it was fun to figure out just how the super charging works.  The car's computer led us right to a charging station outside a "quickie mart" type of place, so you could use the facilities and get a snack if you wanted during the twenty minutes it took to recharge. 

Back at home the end-of-the-year celebrations for CU students continued.  Seemed like everywhere there were parties, kids getting their photos taken in their graduation gowns, and very full restaurants.  Walking across campus one day Lotus and I ran into a brass band leading what turned out to be the faculty and graduates of the law school as they paraded out of the hall where they had their departmental graduation ceremony.  Coming across a brass band is always exciting and I was intriqued by the array of gowns, hats and stoles and cords that the faculty wore.  

Ben had a birthday!  Doesn't he look great in this photo? This was taken on the way to Canon City, but for his big day we were back home enjoying a feast of seafood from Maine.  

We had ordered scallops, mussels and an unspecified "firm white fish" from Down East Dayboat.   The fish turned out to be Monkfish.  Ever hear of it?  Me, neither!  But I found a super easy "Monkfish with Caper Sauce" recipe from the New York Times cooking site and it was delicious.  Monkfish fillets are thick enough that you can slice them into nice little fillet chunks that soak up the butter sauce.  So good! 

courtesy of the NY Times

When I asked Ben if he'd like me to make him a cake he said he'd really like a piece of the Triple Berry Pie that we had loved at the Lahaina Grill in Maui in January.  It turns out that restaurant posted the recipe in its online newsletter one Christmas and it was easy to make and just as wonderful as what we had in January.   The recipe is here if you want to try it, and you should!  I made the crust in a food processor and it worked out fine.  It's not a flaky crust but a softer, sweeter one and extremely easy to roll out.  

We have two home improvement projects underway, and I do love to have something going on in the house.   One is that we're replacing our old ready made bookcases by the fireplace with ones that will be custom-made to fit the space better.  The two walls next to the fireplace have different dimensions, so each case will be the same height but different widths and, we hope, will look built-in.  The current bookcases are slated to go to other places in the house, so we'll have a net gain of more shelves for the books that we seem to keep buying.  It's going to take another three months or so for the fellows to make the new cases, so we all have to wait a while for this project to be completed. 

 

Meanwhile we're filled with anticipation and are glad to support our local Boulder craftsmen. 

The other project is an outside one.  We replaced part of our yard with xeriscaping, covering the existing grass near the long perennial bed on Collage Avenue with landscape cloth and six yards of mulch, thereby eliminating much of the grass in that area.   Luckily we didn't do the actual work ourselves but had several capable and smart workers come do it so it was all done in five hours.   

We managed to plant eight Dahlia tubers, six tomato plants and several pots of flowers just in time for the temperatures to plunge and for eight inches of "concrete snow" to hit us the day after Ben's birthday. 

This is the third time since we moved here eight years ago that we've had a heavy late snowstorm, so we weren't too freaked out about all that crushing snow and freezing temperatures affecting our plants.  We just covered them up and hoped for the best, and we did pretty well, losing just two stems off of one small tomato plant.  But it made for an exciting day or two!