Re-Entry

You know how it is when you haven't written to a friend for a long time, and now you can't because there's so much to say and you don't have time? That's where I am with this blog . . . I keep putting off writing because if I go back to where I left off, it's overwhelming! So I'm just going to start with this week.

The snow on Tuesday night was simply beautiful. Here are our woods yesterday:

Good thing Mr. and Mrs. Wren go south for the winter!

I got this back from the long-arm quilter, and now have the binding machine-sewn on, but won't get to the hand-sewing until after Christmas:

I'm happy with it . . . it's the quiet quilt I wanted it to be. Quilted with feathers and feathered wreaths, it seems very feminine to me without being fussy.

During these snow days I've been working on a table runner for Christmas. I'm not liking it. Remember that column in, it was Redbook Magazine, I think, called "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" I keep looking at the table runner and thinking, "Can This Tablerunner Be Saved?" I wanted it to be festive and elegant, but it's just dreary. My friend Renee advises against working on a quilting project you don't like . . . maybe she's right. But I keep hoping something will jazz it up -- I'm making a border, we'll see what that does.

Tomorrow DGS comes for the day to make gifts for his parents and sister. If we have time, we'll make some Christmas cookies, and English gingerbread (quite different from the gingerbread here) for Sunday's Advent Festival of Lessons & Carols.

Now it's time to get my jammies on and have Evening Prayer.

Gratitudes:

winter's quiet beauty

a warm house

good homemade soup for supper

Errrrgghhhh!

Who would think it was possible to make so many mistakes in one tiny sweater? So far I have made the back hem in garter stitch and the two front hems in ribbing, picked up a dropped stitch halfway down the back, made one front too long, and now I discover the first sleeve is 1/2 inch too short. This is an easy fix, but good grief! How oblivious am I???

Nevertheless, it's coming along. I'll finish it pronto when I get home.

Here's an old-fashioned quilting bee -- well, more of a binding bee -- last Monday at our monthly Dump Salad supper. Judy is teaching this quilt at Expo this weekend, and needed to have the sample done and washed by Thursday.

This is the fourth or fifth year (maybe sixth?) of Quilt Expo in Madison. The first year they thought it would be a good sign if they had 2,000 - 4,000 people attend. There were 10,000! It has been very successful: http://wiquiltexpo.com/?page_id=12

I've been busy getting things ready for DH to manage here without me (sob), and getting packed and organized to leave for England tomorrow (yaayyy!). I haven't done any sewing all week; I have been listening to the Goldberg Variations played on harp -- beautiful and amazing. I love that piece of music. I've also been listening to Alexander McCall Smith's 'Love Over Scotland' on my iPod. I'll take it with me, can't leave it behind unfinished! It's laugh-out-loud funny.

Gratitudes:

A great trip ahead

Loving family

Fun with good friends

The name I couldn't remember is Laura Wasilowski, a doyenne of the Chicago School of Fusing. Here's what I learned to do at the class yesterday, taught by one of her proteges:

I want to add a couple of spiky purple flowers yet, and I'm not happy with the center of the one-of-a-kind pink flower so will probably change it. I don't know where this three-dimensional technique will come in handy, but I'm glad to add it to my repertoire. It has possibilities for a fun project for my granddaughter to do.

I have been thinking about things I would like to see happen, and have begun a list. (This is a work in progress.)

Cross-country trucks off the roads and onto the rails.

Convenient passenger rail service between cities of 100,000 or more.

Cell phone service providers share their towers with each other.

Mosquitoes become extinct.

Policy decisions based on facts and reason, not mob threats and rumors.

Gratitudes:

I am healing ahead of schedule, even if it feels glacially slow.

I tried something new and different for supper and DH liked it.

Going on break

I didn't make it to the retreat, I was still too sick, but I did get to the Fest, which was wonderful. So many good, good people in one place, so much affection and kindness and care -- like quilters!

I'm still coughing and saw the doc late this afternoon. He conferred with the surgeon, and I had chest x-rays, and I got the green light for surgery tomorrow. I don't know when I'll be back in business here again, not for a while, at least.

DH helped me take photos of the quilts this afternoon. I don't deserve any credit for Bodie's, as it was a kit. I don't make labor-intensive baby quilts! I save that for their big kid quilts, which they won't outgrow so quickly. I thought the Hungry Caterpillar fabric was fun for a baby boy; the backing fabric is white with colorful bugs, too, and the long-arm quilter used a pantogram with flying bugs and their flight paths. Very cute. I got a copy of the board book to go with the quilt.

Here's Coplan's, which has a lotta seams! It has wool batting, so the quilting will at least show a little more in relief in such a busy quilt. The fabrics are ethnic and faux-ethnic, good for a sixteen-year-old-not-a-little-boy.

Kayla's is done too, but I have to pick it up yet, which will have to wait until I've recovered a little. I can't wait to see it.

Gratitudes:

a wonderful 'family' reunion with my religious order

getting this surgery over with tomorrow

some good recorded books for recuperating time

Decision Time

I have most of the pieced border together, and am trying to decide whether to float it thus:

or insert it right next to the quilt top and make the outside border plain blue:

I think I like it best this second way. I decided against the soft orange 1/4 inch inner border as it makes the quilt too busy. I make enough loud quilts; I want this one to whisper.

Meanwhile the kitchen rug is growing. It take much longer to get around it once, but each round adds about 1 1/2 inches total width. Still, I'm only about half-way there.

Lots of friends have been saving selvages for me; I've even received some in the mail! There will be some fun new colors coming up, as I was given a big bag full last Wednesday when my friend Diane came over from Lake Mills and we made scented soap. She had collected selvages from everyone at her last retreat.

We've had a beautiful weekend so far, not too warm, nice and sunny. I can hear a scarlet tanager in the tree tops. We don't often see them, as they stay up high, but they have a lovely song. Tomorrow I will assist (probably cutting up oranges) to provide refreshments for the 5K Power Walk for Parkinsons' my friend Mary and her son Peter are holding for the second year.

Gratitudes:

Great talk with grandson Noah this morning

birdsong

woods lush with ferns and cranesbill

Simple Gifts

It was a simple gift to be able to work on this after the detailed little Pieces of Times blocks:

It's funny -- for years I didn't like blue and now I just love it. Not all shades, but this one, for sure. I'm pondering the border treatment. I want to keep the quilt calm (and get it done!), so this is one possibility:

But I have a lot of the sashing pieces which were cut (ahem) a bit short

and which I could turn into a pieced border:

Then the questions are: narrow coral stripe with the pieced border? Dark blue outside this border? Inner border? Of what?

Any suggestions?

Gratitudes:

sunny and cool

wildflowers are gorgeous in the woods

Signs of Spring

My grandmother, who could quote reams of poetry by heart, always quoted Swinburne at this time of year: "The hounds of spring are on winter's traces."

Spring has been very slow coming this year, and April more like March. But in spite of continuing grey, rainy days, spring is winning. Here are some ferns poking up through the mulch:

And shy bleeding heart buds hiding their heads under the leaves:

The dear little wood violets:
And my mysterious anemone -- given to me many years ago by a friend to transplant to our woods, it disappeared after the first year, only to pop up this year:
I wonder about these little mysteries. One year a showy double white columbine came up near the path, literally from nowhere. We've never seen it again. And our patch of Dutchman's breeches, once as big across as a round dining table, has gradually shrunk to almost nothing. I don't know enough botany to know if this is natural or if we are losing our wildflowers to doubtful progress.

Wednesday I go to The Clearing in Door County for nine uninterrupted days of quilting (uninterrupted if you don't count taking the time for fabulous meals and even better fellowship). If not my favorite place in the world, it's definitely in the running. (There's a Smilebox slideshow in an earlier post of the magic of the place in January.) I'm going to finish all the pieced blocks for the Pieces of Time sampler quilt class I foolishly started in February of 2008; at least they're all cut. And I hope to get sashing around the blocks of a whimsical 4-Patch Posy I started in October.

Finally, if I finish all that, I'll make the 140 blocks for my contribution to the collaborative quilts (Freddie Moran and Gwen Marston) projects we started a year ago. In January 2008, thirteen of us made 130 blocks, divided them into packages of ten for one another. But most of us decided we need a lot more blocks. Another quilter has joined the project, hence the 140 blocks this year. Each of us makes a different block from brights and black & whites. If you haven't seen Freddie and Gwen's book "Collaborative Quilts" it's a treat. Just seeing Freddie's house is a treat. And I covet Gwen's fire engine red Featherweight.

Gratitudes:

MRI for shoulder over

going to The Clearing!

found my red raincoat

The origins of my header

Leslie, at Pieceful Moments asked about the quilt in my header. It's a bull's-eye. Here's the story: My great-niece Sarah, age 6, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer, and was facing chemotherapy and radiation. As soon as we heard, my daughter-in-law Claire (also a quilter) and I got together and cut all the pieces for background and 'flowers,' then each took half and made them up, met again a few days later and put it together. Next day I sewed little green leaves on and took it to the long-arm quilter, who said she could squeeze it in right away, and she quilted the whole thing overnight! That night Claire and I put the binding on, and the next day (exactly seven days after the news) I took it to the post office and mailed it to Boise, where Sarah lives. I put in a note saying that the more the quilt was washed, the more the flowers would 'bloom' so it was ok to throw up on it. That was a little more than a year ago. Sarah went through a hellacious year with all sorts of complications, but today she is in remission.

Productive Day

I'm being very disciplined about daily physical therapy for my rotator cuff issue, but this 'exercise' is the easy one -- even the cats like to get in on the act.

This is the third rearrangement of the blocks in this one-block wonder quilt.  When I saw the fabric, I saw blue and green, not pink.  There's a whole lot of pink in it, though, and I've been trying to make the blues and greens attract the eye.  I need to make some hollow cube blocks in blue and green to help out.

I promised I'd show the EAA retreat projects, and here they are.  First, a woven table runner.  I finished it today (featherstitching on raw edges and binding) -- I didn't want yet another half-finished project cluttering up the sewing room, which is already beyond redemption.

And this nifty little iPod or cell phone bag from a recycled necktie.  Very quick, and just what I need so I can listen to my iPod while sewing without danger of running a rotary cutter through the earphone cord. Tomorrow I'm going to help my little granddaughter make one for herself.

We also were given demonstrations for mitering hems and for attaching blanket binding without having to handstitch the corners closed.  Don't know how often I'll use the latter technique, but no doubt an application will arise sometime.

Gratitudes:

a day to sew

leftovers for supper

good friends

Quilting Cadets

I spent Monday through Wednesday at a quilting retreat with the Fox Valley Technical College, with demonstrations and assistance from my friend Renee's Aunt Donna.  Aunt Donna is 82 years old, and the mother of ten children.  Here she is:

That tells you something about her personality!  I'll try to get photos of some of the projects she demonstrated (and which I actually made) and post them.  She's both an engineer and an artist.

We stayed and sewed at a lovely chalet owned by the Experimental Aircraft Association in Oshkosh, WI:   www.eaa.org

It was a light, airy space with a glider suspended overhead.  That's a new quilting retreat phenomenon.

We visited an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink fabric shop called YDS near Omro, WI.  This is also run by an 80-something year old woman.  Her prices are fabulous because she has no overhead to speak of.  It's incredibly crowded (and there were twelve of us in there), and nothing is organized according to a system, but the fabrics are good quality (e.g., Moda) and she has excellent thread, etc.  She also has kitschy stuff like doll dresses with full skirts made from milking machine filters.  I found a perfect backing for the brights quilt for my new step-granddaughter.

The high point of the retreat is that after standing for about nine hours over two days, I finished all the cutting for the pieced blocks for the Pieces of Time class, using a more efficient cutting method.  I have gotten so far behind, and class meets again next Wednesday.  Now when I get ten minutes to sew, I'll actually be able to sew, instead of auditioning fabrics for each block and cutting it one piece at a time.

Gratitudes:

time with good friend Renee

all those blocks cut and bagged

home safe in spite of a flat tire

Birthdays and an Owl

A friend showed me a beautiful scarf she's knitting, the pattern is called Ocean Waves, and is available free on Ravelry (www.ravelry.com).  It's very simple and goes very fast.  I'm making two at a time, this one in yarn that really is the color of ocean waves:

And this one:
What I learned is that the more frequent the color changes in the yarn are (every 2 - 4 inches), the more evenly distributed they are in this scarf; whereas when the colors change less frequently  (every 20 - 25 inches), colors appear in large diagonals, as in the first photo.  I may like this better when the scarf gets longer, but for now, I prefer the scarf in the lower photo.  I'll have to remember this in future.

This morning we had a guest during breakfast:

He (or she) has been perched in branches near the house during the day several times lately.  This morning he (or she) stayed a good half hour before flying away.  We have always had a pair of these barred owls in our woods, and we frequently hear them hooting in the night, but we rarely see them during the day.

My friend Diane's birthday arrived last week, one of the ends-in-zero ones, and our quilting group has a tradition for ends-in-zero birthdays:  Each of us makes the celebrant a quilt block in the design and color of her choice.  Diane wanted churn dash blocks in green on tan or black.  Here's the one I made her:

Yesterday was my birthday (not ending in zero -- that was three years ago).   Everyone was so nice to me I felt quite elderly -- no Boy Scouts helped me across the street yet, but I expect that's imminent.  We had a lovely family celebration at an Indian restaurant Friday evening, and a lovely dinner with friends last night.  Roses, candy, heavenly-scented soap and candle (Frasier Fir), a beautifully-bound blank book, phone calls, cards, a portable DVD player on which to play my quilting tutorials -- I am spoiled.  

Early in the morning Jim flies to Florida for a week of golf, and I drive to my friend Renee's house, from whence we will go on to Fox Valley Technical College for a couple of days of quilting.  This is a new group to me, and I'm looking forward to making new friends and learning new things.

Gratitudes:

Another year of a good life

Owls in the woods

Birthday cards handmade by my grandkids

Table Runners

Here are some table runners I finished in 2008.  This first was a sample of the Four-Patch Posy block.  Stack four repeats of a motif, cut in half both way, then arrange in kaleidoscope style.  I had some seed packet fabric which was perfect.    Sashing and borders are gingham.

This is a pattern called Long Lines.  Very simple.  I made a smaller one in blues and golds with koi fish -- a motif like the fish can be cut in half and a strip inserted and the eye fills in so it appears whole.  My son and daughter-in-law have that one.

This next table runner has been the subject of many jokes.  I cut way more 2"x5" strips than I needed, so I made a king size quilt out of the leftovers.  (Of course, I had to cut more strips!)  When I finished it, the center looked kind of blah next to the border, so I went in the backyard and gathered some leaves and traced them.  I cut those shapes out of similar colors of batiks, then cut a few identical ones in half down the center vein and sewed half of one leaf to half of another one.  It's subtle -- you would think it was all one fabric, but it gives depth and texture.  Then I raw-edge appliqued them to the center of the table runner.  It turned out very well.

Finally, this next one was out of the box for me.  The background of each square was embossed using Shiva Paintstix and rubbing plates.  Then the leaf on each used a different paint stick technique.  In theory, when you've made all six blocks, you've learned all the techniques for using them.  I'm sure some artistic folk have come up with a lot of new ways, but it's the basics.  I haven't used them since, but keep drooling over the photos in Quilting Arts magazine.

Gratitudes:

Did everything on my B list today

Started knitting the Ocean Waves scarf in lovely handpainted yarn

Gave the cat a bath and survived

A retreat for the strong-hearted

So far January has not been the doze-in-front-of-the-fireplace kind of time I fantasize about in November and December.  I have not been willfully neglecting this poor blog for so many months -- life is what happens when you have other plans.

Last weekend my daughter-in-law and I went on our annual quilting retreat in Door County, Wisconsin.  When we arrived Thursday afternoon, the temperature was -17 F.

But, as I tell my granddaughter, "The women in our family  are tough cookies."  We had a wonderful time, spending as much time walking around outside gaping at the beauty and taking pictures as inside doing needlework.

It's a unique ecosystem --a  peninsula between two large bodies of water (Green Bay and Lake Michigan), and it's the transitional area between the Northern Hardwood Forest and the Boreal Forest.  It is stunning, especially in January.  Going up there for five days over MLK, Jr. weekend has become a tradition among my close quilting friends.  The fair-weather tourists have long since gone, and quiet reigns.

Snow reigns too.  It is austere and opulent at the same time.  We had six inches of snow on Saturday, in bright sunshine, so it truly appeared that diamonds were falling through the air.

The paths through the woods are right out of a storybook (Narnia).  

Here flowers are wearing white shakos.

This is one of the unheated cabins -- we stay in the few that have heat!  We take our down comforters and hot water bottles and are snug and warm.  And we know how to dress for the cold.  

I had low expectations for what I would accomplish -- and met them:  I finished my grandson's Obama socks (the right one says President and the left says Obama) so he could wear them for the inauguration on Tuesday.  I finished appliqueing a block which I started last June.  I am taking a two-year class to learn hand applique, and the first four blocks went surprisingly well.  It was beginner's luck -- the fifth block is awful, and I was so discouraged I couldn't get myself to pick it up again.  But I finally convinced myself that someday I will look at this quilt and say, "Wow, I've come a long way!"  So I finished it.  And I cut out the next one.  Last, I appliqued over a mistake on a top that's now ready for the quilter, once I get the backing together.

I have watched more television since Obama's nomination acceptance speech than in the past 30 years.  I know our country has huge problems, but we still have natural resources, we still know how to work, we're still inventive.  There's nothing wrong that we can't fix.  I'm so relieved that we now have people in government who can figure it out without getting hung up on ideology.

One of the blogs I like to read is Sara's Scraps.  Sara ends each post with gratitudes for the day, and I like that.  I think I'll steal the idea from her.

Gratitudes:

A warm house

Fresh homemade bread

Lois reads this blog 

Progress Report

I've sketched the block for the bottom of Iznik: I simplified flower and leaf designs from a Dover book of Turkish designs -- there's no way I can applique such sharp points!

I've loved Bach's French Suites for many years, but didn't know the English Suites at all well. I've had Murray Perahia's recording of Nos. 2, 4 and 5, and wasn't in thrall. This week I got his recording of Nos. 1, 3 and 6 and am enchanted. I have to give the first recording another good, hard listen. Took me a long time to fall in love with the Goldbergs, but now they're very close friends. In fact, I realized a couple of months ago that they are the story of a human life -- not necessarily chronological, and certainly not programmatic, but when that ethereal theme returns at the end, you know you have come full circle from birth to the sublimity of death. (I'm not claiming that the process of dying is sublime, but that death itself is.)