Quilt Retreat 2011

Out of the blue a quilt friend invited me to her guild's retreat. It was short notice, but I jumped on it. It's about time I got back to sewing on the projects gathering dust in my sewing room!

Reba and her Ocean Mammals shaded circle quilt

Mavis and two Lady of the Lake blocks.

We had to laugh at how many times it took to piece the dark and light hst's in the right order. What an exercise in patience! She finally got it though.

Kim's Sawtooth Stars in shot cotton from Great Britain

This fabric was essentially solid, but it was woven with black threads going one way and colored threads going the other. It gave the fabric something of a nap that caught the light, making each star look different. Very intriguing.

It was Debbie's birthday so we surprised her with spur of the moment, hand made gifts at dinner that night. It was fun to see what people came up with; fusible applique letters to make a banner, 'paper dolls' out of fabric, a pieced bookmark, a 'mug rug', a needle keeper. She was so touched.

What did I work on? Well whenever I can't seem to get jump started I sew a few of these nine patch blocks from the original fabric I reclaimed from a estate sale find. They're so easy and satisfying, it gets me back in the saddle somehow. I have 25 block so far, no plan, and a bit more original fabric.

The next day I gathered my courage and pieced the next Lone star. Two down, 18 more to go!

Lookin' pretty good. :) I also constructed a jacket from rayon batik. Pictures soon.

Yarn Love

Quilt friends and coworkers ask me what I've been doing lately, "Are you quilting? What are you working on?" I have to answer, knitting.

It's just so nice to come home in the evening and sit in the recliner by the wood stove after dinner and knit. It's more relaxing than going in the sewing room and sitting at the machine. :) I've had my eyes open for a thrift store sweater I could reclaim wool yarn from. On the way home from Nathan's, I found one.

It was quite large and in great condition, I figured it would give me plenty of yarn for what I wanted. The fabric was a beautiful cabled pattern that was sort of lost because the two-ply yarn has a lovely texture of its own. I picked the seams apart and began 'reverse engineering' it. I felt sorta guilty on the one hand, this was someone's handiwork that they'd put time and energy into. On the other, I decided I was giving it a new lease on life. The color doesn't show very well in the pictures. It's a medium periwinkle blue that seems to change color depending on how much light there is. Sometimes it appears to be gray, other times, more purple. Fun!

Of course Spunky had to help. :)

This is the last section of the back with all the yarn I've reclaimed. I don't know how many yards I have yet, but it seems like enough for the medium sized pullover I have in mind.

I took it to knitting guild this week and they suggested I skein the balls, soak each one and hang it to dry weighted, that way the kinks from the previous knitting will relax. I thought my Ginghers were a good weight.

While I was on quilt retreat last weekend I went to the LYS (no website) and browsed patterns. This one looks about my speed. We'll see if I can pull this together.
(Added later: *chuckling* Not knitting yet, just playing with yarn!)

Family Time

There's something about your first born child turning 30. It's magic, it's fun! It's a milestone for him and for us. We had a great weekend with Nathan and Danielle, celebrating, and a nice baked ham dinner with her folks as well. Then the Roberts guys all watched "A Team".

Happy Birthday DS1!

Boneyard Shawl

I struggled with the red, top-down cardigan, ripping and reknitting six times. (!) Finally an experienced knitter-friend reviewed the pattern and told me it had several errors in it. Okay, time to regroup.

Enter the Boneyard Shawl. What an easy knit! And I love wearing it, so soft, so drappy. Knit from the same red merino wool; it's like having your blankie with you at work!

Reelin' in the Years

This is a cameo from a family banquet, fall, 1986. It's fun to look back and remember the good times. We were 28 and our sons were 5 and 7. That's Frank's brother and sister-in-law on the left.

Frank was into photography even then, long before computers and the digital art he does now. He always did like me better without glasses!

Knitted Rag Rug

Last summer I visited the Lower Lake School house Museum with Rosy. As part of the kitchen display, circa 1890, I saw a large basket of cotton rag balls, strips of different colored fabric sewn end to end and wound into balls, sometimes 6" in size. They looked something like this.

Picture from the Internet

What are these for? In the basket was a partially knit rag rug. (!) I was intrigued. I decided to see if I could reproduce the art.

I cut the strips 1 and 1/2" using my rotary cutter. The museum had a device mounted on the kitchen table with a hand crank that rotated a wheel against a metal platform. Could that have been their rotary cutter? I wish I'd taken a picture of the tool. There were strips of fabric there for you to experiment with. It didn't cut worth a rip!

I had noted the display used size 11 knitting needles, so I cast on, figuring how many stitches to the inch and multiplying to create a rug two feet wide. This is turning out to be a great stash buster project, I can't believe how much fabric is going into it! I'm clearing out fabric from the 80's, 90's and 00's. It's great!

What was once done out of necessity and thrift is now being done for the love of color and a refreshed fabric collection.

Oh the Humiliation

Spunky is nonstop lively. As I noted in an earlier post, she's adorable - when she's asleep. Oh she has her moments, don't get me wrong, when I can pick her up and scritch her under the chin and she nuzzles me along the jaw and we have a happy owner and pet moment. Then she wants down and lets me know in no uncertain terms! Things pretty much have be to on her terms.

But she needed another flea bath, so imagine my surprise when she became completely subdued, like - maybe if I go completely docile this won't last long.

Cats look so indignant when they're wet.

Six months

Wasn't it nice of Nathan to leave his soft black sweater out for Spunky to nap on?

Three Rail Fence

The first grand baby is due this July, so Danielle came to sew and get the top together on the baby quilt!

Here's the top before borders. We drafted it in Electric Quilt to play with color options and liked this one.

But when we went to audition border fabrics, nothing on hand looked right. If we use the same blue in the border that's in the blocks, the design gets a little lost. We were done for the day and decided to schedule another sew day and possibly a trip to the LFS to review our choices.

Orange Marmalade

Maybe it was the study in orange that lead me to want to make orange marmalade. Surely I've never made it before, I've only recently decided I *like* marmalade. It always seemed too bitter to me. Or maybe it was the corner vendor I passed day after day on my way home from work, beseeching me to buy his 5 lb bags of oranges with his up raised arms full. I don't know. But I bought some, and I read up on how-to, and got the other ingredients and made a batch.

It was fun to try something new. I've made many, many kinds of jam in the past, so it wasn't that different. The most satisfying part of canning or jamming for me is the audible *pop* the jar makes as it vacuum seals. And it tastes good too!

Featured Artist

There's a small collection of my wall quilts hanging at the Ukiah Natural Foods Co-op. We like to feature a local artist's work for a month at a time and my name came to the top of the list in January.

Jewel in the Night Sky and Russian Sunflower


Radiant Nine Patch


Merial of the Sea


Mariner's Compass


Summer's Heat - Oh look, Orange! - with yellow and green

The response has been so positive, almost overwhelming. The customers exclaim and admire. The staff ask me, "Are those YOUR quilts?!" Well yes...

In the first week I had three offers to buy Merial of the Sea, even after I put up a sign that said for Display Only. One customer was very persistent and didn't want to take no for an answer. I told her quilting isn't my day job, she said, "Well it SHOULD be, you're an ARTIST!"

The kudos are really nice and it feels good to be appreciated, but I've never been able to make my quilting pay. That's not why I quilt.

Orange Continued

Recognize this? It's the link on Blogger's sign up page.

Once I started looking for orange I began to see it everywhere. I decided to take my camera with me to work. Wow! The Natural Foods Co-op is FULL of orange! No wonder it feels fun to be there.

Acorn and Spaghetti Squash


Tangelos, Clementines and apples


Golden beets


Carrots with tops. Man that touch of purple looks good!

Orange looks really great next to green or with blue, which is it's complement on the color wheel. So look at the packaging on these products.

Supplements in the Wellness department


Tinctures


Pasta


Oils


Flavored Pasta Dinner

Someone in a marketing department somewhere must've come up with these combinations. Orange just naturally looks terrific next to green or blue. I bet it would make a great color scheme for a quilt.