Better late than never

Back on April 30 I had the good fortune of being able to attend a quilt show that was held in Denver

I took a few pictures, and until I was doing my monthly clean up of the computer's desktop and backing up all my photo files I completely forgot about them (shame on me!)

So, here they are

and in case you think we're stuck on that whole zebra thing -- we just might be

this quilt is amazing

(although I personally would have used a red background -- you know, black and white and red all over -- heh)



this piece is a really big quilt, and I can understand why it won the blue ribbon

while it didn't photograph very well (probably the fault of the person behind the camera), Glenda is in a "bubble" made of that iridescent shimmery fabric that I have used on projects to create the look of glass

very, very cool

yup, the characters, the city, the balloon -- it's all here

and this piece served to make me think about a piece I did about eight years ago -- (when I find it again, I'll photograph it to show you)

I really liked the way this quilt used the black background

it makes the colors used for the objects and the "frames" just pop out of the background at you

and I'd like to know how the quilter was able to get those nice sharp, clean letters -- I'm guessing this one is fused -- I can't imagine anyone being able to needle turn those

and of course I loved the whole whimsical theme of this one especially since it includes my personal favorite "bad for you" food -- the cheeseburger!







when I saw this quilt I instantly thought about my friend in California

the hummingbirds visit her yard every year, and on several occasions have used her deck rafters to build their nest and raise their babies

this quilt does an amazing job of getting each little flower and feather

I also like the way the quilter "framed" the piece -- one very narrow light colored border, one medium colored medium sized border then the dark binding like a frame -- like double matting a painting
these two quilts were part of the Hoffman Challenge quilts that were on display

as I had mentioned before, I had been concerned that the way I chose to use the Hoffman Challenge fabric in the piece I will be entering this year would not be acceptable in that I had cut it into very small pieces

I'm not worried about that issue any more

In the quilt with the bird, the only place the Challenge fabric was used is in the center around the bird, and in the other quilt (which I note won a blue award) the fabric was used for the honey comb behind the bees

Going to a quilt show is a good thing -- it lets me look at other work and be able to say "yes, my work is this good", and it lets me be inspired by other quilter's ideas and treatment of subjects that either I've worked with myself, or I've been think about working on

Inspiration is a good thing!

from Bee to Zebra

either way there seems to be a black stripe theme going on here

this is the beaded bee I did yesterday that I plan to use on the Wild About Flowers piece

right now he has a stinger and eyes (what BIG eyes you have), but no wings yet --- I hope to get the wings made today

and if I do another one of these I will make it shorter and plumper -- this guy looks a little on the long and lean side to me

and this is the drawing of the zebra stripe that I plan to use for the bead embroidered bracelet

now I have to go through the box of black beads and the box of white beads and see if I have what I need to do this

(doesn't it look like a very cool zebra?)

the next apron has been cut out

this fabric is a satin backed crepe, and while this will be another "half" apron (or hostess apron as is the popular term now days) it will be only loosely based on this vintage pattern

and those trims -- yup, planning on using those -- I really like the whole strawberry theme going here -- and this means I'll be dragging out the size 15 red beads and making a little beaded strawberry to use as an accent piece


occasionally I actually make something for myself

there were two shirts that ended up in my hands -- one is a long sleeved white dress shirt that was my dad's and one is a black and gray plaid that was my son-in-law's

the plan is to take parts of each shirt, and maybe some of this very cool black and gray print and these vintage buttons and some stamping and painting and make myself a sort of light weight jacket of the sort that I like to wear

this doesn't have top priority, but I think it will be a fun project, and if I get it finished I can enter it in the State Fair (which is always fun)


the yarn fairy sent me another box of goodies!

a while back I was talking to my sister about a knitting project that requires 5 double pointed needles

let me say here that I've been knitting for a really long time (over 50 years) and back in the day that I bought my double pointed needles, they came in sets of 4, not 5

my sister has been knitting a long time too -- she agreed to "supplement" my needle stash for this project
well, you can't just pop a bunch of double pointed knitting needles into an envelope and drop it in the mail

Hello! paper envelope --- sharp pointy metal things!!

nope, this required a box -- and packing materials!

heh, yeah

I love her choice of packing materials

4 skeins of super cool baby yarn (I have a cute as pie bootie pattern with little animals to make out of this yarn); 1 more skein of this odd 1960's (?) made in Israel yarn; 2 other skeins of knitting worsted weight stuff

and this AMAZING purple and gold printed fabric -- about 2 yards worth

now this fabric looks to me like it could serve very nicely as the back of the in planning large African Animal piece

WOW!!


finished another strip for the afghan last night -- this makes 46 inches done -- 76.667%!

I'll probably take this one along with me this evening when I go to the quilt guild meeting -- it's good to keep my hands busy while listening to the guest speaker


and the Christmas Sweater is 28.293% complete -- at the next session I should be finishing the decreases for the shoulders and putting everything on the stitch holders for picking up the hood later --- moving right along!!!

ok, time to go get busy

Zebras again?

the bead group I belong to is having a competition titled "At the Zoo"

we're to make something on that theme for the judging then the winners will be on display at the State Fair in August.

I'm thinking about making a cuff bracelet that looks like zebra skin with bead embroidery

got to love those zebras!

finished another afghan square last night -- number 33 since the first of January


the Christmas sweater is 27.073% complete -- almost done with the body of the sweater -- then it's on to the sleeves and the hood


three of the four corners of the Hoffman Challenge are complete, but because I had to pick out some of the quilting I'm not going to have it all finished before our quilt guild meeting tomorrow night -- rats! Oh well --- there's always next month!! then it will be on it's way to the competition.

last night I started stitching down the "stalks" for the holly hocks --- there will be 5 of those, then the flowers go on

time to get to it!

the Red Egyptian

all finished!

once I started working on attaching the center stone, it went really quickly

and attaching the clasp worked well too

I'm pretty pleased with this

the next beading project will be some little three dimensional bumble bees to add to the flowers wall hanging I'm working on --- the pattern was in a recent Beadwork magazine, and I thought they would make a great addition to the sunflowers and hollyhocks -- and I find that I actually have all of the needed materials already -- whooppee!!

the Christmas sweater is now 25.854% complete -- almost to where I make the bind offs on the fronts for the neckline

since yesterday was spent doing a lot of yard work (we mowed the front AND back yards on the same day), today I'm doing the laundry -- flexibility is important in getting these projects done

onward!

Recycling my way

my grandmother believed in recycling long before any of us had ever heard that word

somehow it seemed poetic to use part of mother's day to do something she would have approved of
I've had this piece of garden equipment for a long time

it's sturdy plastic, and turned one way it can be used as a step stool or a seat while turned this way it's supposed to be used as a place to kneel for floor or garden work (note the wood bars on each side that are wonderful to help you get up again!)

trouble was, the foam pad that originally came in this has long since disappeared (actually, I think it disintegrated and I tossed it)
yesterday I took a piece of upholstery foam and an old vinyl table cloth (the table cloth was older than the stool!) and created a new pad for it



here it is all ready to be used for cleaning out the bottom shelf of a cupboard or planting little seedlings in the garden

I think Mammy would have approved

and because I only used about half of that table cloth to create the cover for the pad, I can use the other half to protect the table when I'm working on some dirty project -- like painting or dying or printing on fabric with acrylic paint

the third sunflower is now all attached

I'm really pleased with how this looks -- and yes, I do think each one is even more interesting than the last

I will be adding the leaves to this one then it's on to the next flowers -- which I'm thinking will be the stalk of holly hocks that I think will go there in the gap where the fence board is missing

I still have to create the patterns for those, and there will again be three dimensional flowers involved

the third corner of the Hoffman Challenge is almost complete too, I need to look at the instructions and see what kind of sleeve I need to include on the back -- and I think a label is required too
strip number 12 of the afghan -- this makes 44 inches of this complete -- 73.333% -- edging closer!


and the Christmas sweater is 24.634% complete


today we plan to do the first mowing of the season -- and tomorrow night we could have up to 6 inches of snow -- it's crazy making!!

The Mother's Day 6 a.m. get up

the furry four legged child in this household has no concept of the idea of "sleep in" -- nope, this morning I got my usual 6 a.m. wake up call -- a wet nose on whatever bare skin she can find -- got to love dogs!

but before I launch into what I got done yesterday, I just want to say Happy Mother's Day to all of you moms out there!
feeling pretty good about yesterday's work in the "studio"

one half of the red beads and pewter necklace is strung up

the way this came together is pretty amazing -- I hope to get a lot of the other half done today then I can think about exact placement of the center stone


I have only four more petals to put on to the last sunflower -- which means I need to get busy with figuring out what the next flowers will be on this piece

and the Christmas sweater is 23.415% complete

oh yes, and I finished addressing the 97 postcards for the charity auction!

while I was in the store this skein of yarn just hopped into the basket -- you may recall back at the end of March I gave a baby afghan to the dental assistant that helped me out, so my baby gift stash is need of replenishing

I think this stuff will knit up into a very nice afghan -- and it should be a quick one to do since it is a bulky yarn which means the really big needles will come out


picked these up too -- one can never have too many wash cloths in the house

and there are still patterns on embroidery stitches of my sewing machine that I haven't tried, so I'll be giving some of them a whirl on these

(just because these were inexpensive doesn't mean they need to look "cheap" when I get done!)

then there are these

an office supply store is a dangerous place -- I have always liked markers and recently I've learned that many of them -- these especially -- can be used on fabrics to do art work and they even wash pretty well without fading out too much

the plan, however, is the use these as more accents on the Out of Africa pieces


for doing more detail on this sort of animal --

these would be oryx

a sort of ox like animal with very cool markings and amazing horns

since I'm using rubber stamps to create the basic animal shape on the fabric, the highlighting has to be done with something else --

all those new colors of sharpies should make this fun
maybe well try this one too -- very colorful

and I haven't done any birds for this yet

this would be a Hornbill


-- got to get a couple of other things finished so I can get back to these!!

new bead work and stuff in the Etsy store

here are the first three of the red cube beads strung together

I really like the way these look

the original design instruction said to use those cubes on both the front and the back of the the stringing

but since these are pewter, they are pretty heavy, so I decided to use only the red seed beads on the back of each loop

once I got the hang of how each loop interacted with the long bead this went pretty quickly -- I'm hoping to get a lot more of these strung up today

quilting and appliqueing and knitting continues (the Christmas sweater is now at 20.951% complete)

yesterday I got about half way through the addressing of the post cards for the charity auction -- and writing a list of "to do's" for it as I went (addressing is something that I can do while using part of my brain to "organize" other things)

and,

I finally got this listed in my Etsy shop!

If you'd like to have this for your very own, you can use this link to hop on over and take a look!

while I was listing this one, I also listed a couple of Christmas aprons that I had

perhaps bags soon--


Onward!!

moon garden?

it's kind of weird looking

especially this morning when I got up to another COLD, gray day --

(come on folks, it's MAY already, and it was down to freezing again last night -- and the furnace has been running again)

yesterday it was warm, sunny

so we planted the tomatoes -- they each have their own little "greenhouse" created by these neat little paper forms that you put over them and weight down with dirt all around (the DH says he used to do this when he was raising a garden in his parent's backyard, so it's not new technology!)

we were going to put out the peppers and squash today, but it's just too chilly --- maybe tomorrow
finished another afghan square -- number 32, and now there are 3 in the latest box


the Christmas sweater is 20.732% complete



and under the category of two steps forward and one step back, I spent about an hour removing quilting stitches from the Hoffman piece last night -- somehow in the process of working the two bottom corners, some of the backing got rumpled

just not acceptable! so I picked it out, readjusted the fabric, re-pinned the fabric, and started that corner again -- ok, I'm not as close to done as I thought I was, but it'll be right when I'm finished!

you may remember this from a while back

when I had my appointment with my surgeon on Wednesday, I took this to her

she was delighted -- and it turns out it is her favorite color too -- how cool is that!?

I'm really glad I decided to make this for her

and yes, I'm doing fine

(except for the fact that I "tweeked" my back while we were planting tomatoes and had to resort to an ice pack and major doses of Motrin last night -- I guess the weather is making sure I don't hurt it worse by doing more planting today!)


so today's activities include hand addressing about 75 post cards for the charity auction I'm working on -- then on to some more interesting projects!

an answer to a mystery

for the last two months this magazine has appeared in my mail box

I couldn't figure out why

I know I didn't send in money for it, so how did they know to send it here?

yesterday when I had a long chat with my friend from California I finally remembered to ask her about it

yup, she did it

she got one of those "buy one get one free" things, so when she ordered her new subscription, she ordered one for me!

COOL!

and while neither one of us does a lot of strictly pieced quilts, the techniques, products and ideas in here are great information
another strip of the afghan is now complete -- this one is number 11 -- 42 inches of this is done -- 63.33%!


progress is being made on the Christmas sweater too -- did the splitting for the arm holes last night, so we're at 19.512%


more petals are being added to the sunflower -- and as is usual, each flower gets more interesting than the last -- I still need to get some good pictures of holly hocks for this project


and three of the four corners of the Hoffman Challenge piece are now quilted -- looks like this really might be finished by next week's quilt guild meeting -- which would be very cool

time to get busy!

It's a small, small world

Have I now got that song stuck in your head?

It never fails to surprise me just how small a world it can be.

On Friday, my daughter, the DH and I made our way to Denver to attend the Denver National Quilt Festival V

I had never been to one of these before, and I was totally impressed -- sure it's pricey to attend, but if you live close enough you can go four days on one admission price, which would make it really reasonable

There are a lot of workshops if you have the time and money to attend those too

Let me tell you, the quilts were AMAZING!!

They had 2009 Hoffman quilts on display, which was a really great thing for me to see since I'm working on a piece for the 2010 competition -- in some of them you really had to know what the challenge fabric looked like to find it in the designs -- encouraging since I've also cut the stuff up into little pieces for my design

As we were viewing the last of the displays, before getting into the vendor area, I stopped and had a long chat with one of the Colorado,Wyoming & Utah representatives of the Studio Art Quilt Association.

I'd been looking at the quilts made by their members and saying "I need to be part of that"

They don't make it all that difficult to be a member -- they don't make you jump through hoops and be "approved" by the rest of the membership (unlike some other art groups) -- they want new members and they want to help them grow and share

At first I was going to just take their brochure and think about joining "another day" -- after all, it does cost $60 a year

But I know myself -- if I take the brochure and carry it home I will think about it and yearn to do it and it will never happen because something else will need to be paid for and "another day" will become "another year" which will become never

I filled in the form at the show and used some of the money I just raised selling things on eBay that I was going to try to not touch until there was some "special occasion" (which is my grandmother speaking in my head -- she, who left behind drawers and drawers full of brand new slips and linens -- including pillow cases that had been a gift to her at her wedding and were never used in over 50 years!)

Ok, so now that I've actually spent the money, I will "guilt" myself in other ways if I don't do something about using what I've paid for -- and now I can't wait to get my "welcome packet" which will include the password to the "members only" section of the website (which is here if you want to go see it for yourself). In that area there is the "University" which includes a lot of the association's accumulated knowledge.

And I find that there are other groups in the Denver/Loveland/Longmont area -- in fact the woman that I talked to lives in Berthoud -- also close to that area -- and I've been invited to visit their meetings.

So, as if all that weren't enough excitement for the day, as we're walking through the vendor area, we went into a little booth that was selling quilt batts. The vendor was from Ogden, UT, which is one of the many places I've lived.

We stopped to chat with the vendors (you can check out their website here) and noticed that their last name was the same as one of the DH's cousins. So we chatted some more and in short order I found myself on the vendor's cell phone talking to the DH's cousin -- the vendor is married to the brother of the DH's cousin's husband (got all that?)!

heh, yeah -- like I said -- it's a small world after all

and what did you do on your weekend?

we spent the weekend at our daughter's house -- working on projects and generally enjoying one another's company
this was one of the projects

their big dog did a little damage to the carpet in one of the bedrooms and my daughter asked me if I had any ideas on repairing it until they can save up enough to replace the flooring in that room

I took along my tool kit --






so after figuring out how big a patch we needed here I am cutting away the chunk of damaged carpet

fortunately, a strip of the carpet had been left over by the folks that did the original instillation, so we had some carpet to work with







the best approach for the padding underneath was to glue down the pieces








fortunately, the dog didn't actually EAT any of the carpet or the padding

so when the gluing was complete, there was a complete pad under the carpet again

(good thing we're good at jigsaw puzzles!)







on to the sewing

I had on hand several types of thread, but after some experimentation the nylon stuff I've used for years to close teddy bears with worked the best

several yards of doubled thread and a lot of ladder stitching to seam the one place where the rip could just be re-seamed then a lot more ladder stitching to put in the patch










under the seam where the doorway goes into the hall I used more of the fabritac glue to hold the patch

here we have a number of heavy books sitting on it to hold it firmly while the glue dried

(who knew this was why you kept old college text books!)




the finished repair

the patch is a bit more faded than the rest of the carpet, but it looks lots better than we thought it would


hmmm, add one more thing to the odd assortment of things I can do





during the weekend we went to a quilt show too -- I'll talk about that in tomorrow's blog when I've sorted through all of the paperwork!
car travel means afghan squares get done!

here are numbers 30 and 31 -- the beginning of the new box --

the last box full goes in the mail today


the Christmas sweater is now 17.317% complete

time to get to that laundry!!

animals and sunflowers

this is a picture that my friend in California sent me

(well, actually, her son took the picture with his cell phone and sent it to me in a text message, then I sent it to my daughter in a text message and she downloaded it to her computer and emailed it back to me -- wow, isn't technology amazing!)

anyway -- a while back I sent her some stampings of the animal stamps that I had cut so she could use them for a project

this is the project she did -- I love the panels she added -- the foot prints and the zebra skin and the other animal(s?) above and below the giraffe -- because this was a cell phone photo, I'm not exactly sure what those animals are because the quality of the picture is totally lost when you try to enlarge it --

and the tree in the center is awesome -- running out of the center panel where the elephant is standing in front of the trunk of the tree and the limbs spread out into the blocks on both sides where the gazelle and the giraffe are

yup, it's pretty cool to see what someone else saw in these stamped blocks

the "puffy" center was the first one

the other one is the "re-do" with the fabric I just got --

I really like the new fabric, and I did put some batting behind it too, just not so much as was in the first one

and I'm still planning on using beads on top of that to give it even more texture


the second sunflower is now complete -- check out the fabric used for the center of this one

it looks sort of like leopard -- yet it also looks like sunflower seeds -- very cool

yesterday I got the stem for the third sunflower stitched down and did the first 3 petals of it too --- looking good

better than a new box of crayons

yup, its a new pack of fabrics!

there on the far left is a fat quarter with sea otters printed on it that I'm going to make "something" out of for my daughter -- who has been delighted with this little creatures for years

in the center section at the bottom is a fat quarter that is supposed to be chicken feathers -- but we saw sunflower seeds still on the flower -- consequently, the center of the big sunflower is going to be removed and redone because I like this fabric so much better

the rest of these are for the Out of Africa series -- bold geometrics in (mostly) warm colors, some of them with metallic overtones -- some of these will go in some more small pieces, and I'm working on an idea to put all of the animals in one larger piece as well