Joy in Tahoe

We have officially entered the travel portion of our summer, which has been preceded by a crazy combination of rushing and planning and doing and accomplishing and checking things off of lists.  But last week we flung our lists aside and drove up to Lake Tahoe for the annual family week.


And it was lovely.  But the highlight of the week this year was spending time with our 4 year old niece Boitumelo.  She was born in southern Africa, and her name means "Joy" which is fitting as she is a very happy, bouncy kid.

 As little kids do, she took to her big cousin Caroline with rapt fascination and wanted to emulate everything she did.

But the memory I'll hold close was the morning we took Boitumelo for her first pony ride.  Despite not having seen many horses in her native Lesotho, Boitumelo decided early on that she is going to be a "horse rider" when she grows up.  When asked what horse riders DO for work, she will fix you a serious look with her dark eyes and say "Ride horses!"  Well, duh.

So the first pony ride was a Big Big Deal.  Boitumelo promptly fell in love with her lovely white pony "Merrylegs" (who, by the way, seemed to have very tired legs and didn't seem very merry except when she was headed back toward her hitching post).

 

Her ride consisted of her being led several times in a big circle around a field, accompanied by me (aka Auntie Diane), Uncle Roger, and her moms.  We made quite a procession and I kept thinking that she looked like a princess being escorted by her servants.

I loved seeing the amazed concentration on her face the whole time.  And all four of us grown-ups just grinned the whole morning, too.

We have a few days at home before we head off on our next adventure -- to England! 

Techno-happy

In the midst of the crazy things going on around here, I have felt compelled to do some serious updating of our household technology. Our upcoming trip to England has been one main excuse reason. Because, of course, one needs to sort out one's access to home and world before setting off to venture to another continent.

First, the cellphone issue. We wanted to make sure that we could get calls from the US and the discovery that my little old Blackberry is not global capable set up a whole set of decisions. I will spare you the details but I will show you the outcome:

Is this not the most delightful thing you've ever seen?! My friend Helen found this pay-as-you-go phone for me for the bargain price of £1. I can't imagine why the British aren't snapping these right up. It even comes with a "God Save the Queen" ringtone. I am thrilled. Helen has commented that it will also be useful as a finding device should we become separated -- all she has to do is ask the nearest person "have you seen my American friend?" and everyone will point at me and my obnoxious Royal Wedding phone.

And then there was the "do we bring laptops" question and again, after some pondering this was the outcome:

iPad. I am writing this very post on it, in fact. It is quite wonderful and it promises to make the 13 hour flights to and from Europe quite fun. I can get lost just reading about apps, never mind downloading and using them. (By the way, if you have any great app recommendations, I'd love to hear them.). Hmmm, I wonder if there is a Royal Wedding IPad cover? (Just kidding, Helen! I have a tasteful solid red one.)

But wait, there's more. In the process of making the IPad decision -particularly the "wifi only or wifi+3G" question -- I learned that the price difference between the wifi only and the wifi+3G was pretty much the same as an Iphone4 . No brainer, yes?

This actually makes great sense given how much I dislike my old Blackberry. But all this stuff at once has me in a techno-whirl. This probably means that all of my airport and airplane time will be spent reading the instructions for all of these exciting things.

Now that it has taken me all morning to figure out how to write and post a blog post from the IPad, I'd best get some chores done. But I will be humming "God Save the Queen" as I go.

Not much here, so go here instead...

Oh my, I feel like I'm spinning in all different directions with the different things going on around here.  It's routine stuff (work, household chores, doctors' appointments) and preparing for exciting family times (parents moving closer -- yay!-- and upcoming travels far and excitingly farther.  Dear readers, I'm afraid the blog has slipped far down on the list of things clamoring for my attention.

BUT I must admit that I find a few minutes now and then to take a mental break and visit some of my favorite blogs.  And because I'm lacking for my usual fascinating (ahem) blog fodder, I'm sharing some of my recent delights with you:

Pam over at Three Many Cooks is sharing great ideas for creating your own signature ice cream mix (warning -- do not read this one when you are hungry and/or very hot.) 

Jeni at In Color Order is making me want to dive into my floral prints to jump into her "Warm/Cool Quilt Along"  (and frankly I think I'm showing remarkable restraint for not having chucked all of my chores to do this... but then again, I could cave at any minute.)

Katie at Color Me Katie is, as always, making me smile with her latest exploits with Improv Everywhere -- watch how they surprise carousel-riding kids with an impromptu horse race!

Julia at Hooked on Houses has me dreaming about what it would be like to buy and live in Katherine Hepburn's former house in Connecticut.

Cynthia at Sip and Bite is making me crave all sorts of delicious goodies --  including a buttercrunch toffee that looks scrumptious.

Vivian in Japan takes me away from my daily life by letting me imagine what it would be like to pick up and move to Japan.

Kris at Kristina Klarin continues to make me swoon with her gorgeous photography and her eye for such luscious color.

Happy blog-hopping!

Cropping instead of cutting

 

What you see here is what has become of this piece of painted and stencilled fabric so far.   I cut up the fabric, fused and stitched it onto a ground, and have applied a few more birds and some machine quilting.  I decided to work extra big, figuring I'd sort out the final size and shape later.  

So yesterday, after folding and pinning for a while with the thing up on the design wall, it occurred to me that taking a photo and playing with different crops would make this decision so much easier.  I just LOVE my digital camera.  

So I started with a basic ordinary crop.

How would it look with less green on the sides but more on the bottom? Hmmmm.

What about square?

 Maybe even more green at the bottom?

Maybe off center?

Perhaps a tight crop that cuts off elements ....

So far, the second one down strikes me as a balance I like but it's ordinary.  To my surprise, the last one with cut off bits has the most energy to me. I will mull on this for a while.  What do you think?

What day is it again?

One of the consequences of having husband and daughter both done with school and home all day during the summer is that every day feels like Saturday.  I lose track of what day it is, and I am even more scattered than usual, darting between household business and real work and family and sewing and art projects and just enjoying summertime.

But yes, there has been a bit of activity in my little studio -- I'm having a good time moving forward on several different projects.  Remember that painted fabric I showed you recently?  I've done some things with it and I'm now involved in quilting it which is a lot of fun. 

And then I've been experimenting with something and I have no idea where this is going to end up:

This fabric has been hand-dyed, fused, discharged, paintstikked, masked, and painted.  And I'm not sure what's next. 

But I'm having fun.  I hope you are too!

Who was that little kid?

I think I mentioned here recently that my parents are in the process of moving out of the house they've lived in for the past forty years.  As they are going through everything, my brother and sister and I end up bringing home stuff we can't bear to see go.  My brother is currently having fun going through old family photos, and every few days I get another batch of them in email -- it's like instant flash to childhood.

So here you see the three of us kids -- my sister Laura, the oldest, there on the left, my brother Gregg, the youngest, in the middle, and me on the right.  Don't you just love the angle of the bangs?!  And there, in the background -- all that midcentury modern furniture, some of which still lives in my parents' house and will go with them (long upholstered into something different from that orange, thank goodness) to the new house.

And here's me and Laura posing for what I think is an Easter picture. I can remember how it felt to sit on that brick planter edge to pose, and I remember that jeweled pin that seemed like the height of elegance (Laura and I both had them but I don't remember where we got them).


I wonder what Gregg will send next...

In the Works

Oh, I have so many things in the works and I am pulled in all sorts of directions.  How I am longing for a week -- even one entire day! -- with nothing to do but play with fabric.  Perhaps I can squeeze it into the schedule this weekend.  Meanwhile, here's one of the projects I am excited about.

I made this fabric by drawing the lines with a tjanting tool and acrylic paint, then added color with diluted acrylic paint.  I tell you, just the drawing process is meditative and mesmerizing.

Then these fellows were added with a stencil...

So I am eager to keep going but real work and family matters distract me.  Darn.  You'll have to tune back in to see where this goes.

Container full of inspiration

I am continuing to inch forward in my City and Guilds' patchwork course.  For a recent assessment piece, my task was to design and construct a container based on something architectural.  I decided to use as my inspiration architectural elements from the Shaker Village in Canterbury, New Hampshire -- I lived near there and visited it often as it was a fascinating and beautiful place.  So I started thinking about the white clapboard buildings I love, the brightness of fall leaves against the white buildings...

And the lines of the picket fences and granite posts...

And that got me thinking about the beautiful wooden boxes for which the Shakers are famous...

So so working with all of those ideas, I made a fabric oval container. I used stitch-and-flip piecing techniques for the inner and outer walls of the box; and I machine stitched and then painted leafy branches hanging down.

I decided this looks rather nice holding my small collection of wool roving!

I'm not heading into making more of these, but it was a very satisfying project to put together elements that were meaningful to me and make them into an object. 

You can do it

It's been a busy week here -- all good, just busy -- but I thought I'd share a few words of encouragement while I'm busy elsewhere: 


Kid Gives Speech After Learning To Ride A Bike - Watch more Funny Videos

Quilting Arts likes us!

I just received the June/July 2011 issue of Quilting Arts, and there's a lovely review of our Twelve by Twelve book!  Thanks, QA!  I am so looking forward to sitting down and reading the rest of the issue.

Elusive but Beautiful

Shhhh.  Keep very still.  There's a smiling teenager nearby. 

This is sort of like spying a gorgeous butterfly in the garden -- if you move toward it too fast, it'll fly away.

I moved cautiously,and after a moment of consternation...

she relaxed and let me take some pictures. 

I think she even liked it.

Such a lovely creature.

Old Things

Here I am!  I've been absent lately due to a host of little things ... you know how there are some days when you set out to do one thing and you never even get to that?  It's been like that around here.  One of my tasks has involved upgrading the operating system on my computer, which has meant a whole lot of little glitchy computer things ... but I think I'm back up and running now.

My mom and dad are in the process of moving out of the house they've lived in for 40 years, and so I've managed to bring home boxes of stuff from my life in that house.  My brain tells me to PURGE PURGE PURGE but there is the sentimentalist in me and, despite the fact that I've not even seen these boxes for 20 years (and I should just chuck them unopened), I can't resist opening the up to dig through some old memories.

So here's what I found this week.  Does anyone remember Marriott's Great America?  I worked at the Great America in Santa Clara, California (right across to the convention center where PIQF is, btw) for a summer and a spring break or two.  It was the perfect college-student job, with a whole lot of fun if you didn't mind the incessant noise and crazy people (we used to swear that they checked their brains at the entrance gate.)  Finding the park's event buttons which we were required to wear brought back a lot of memories.  I worked mostly on the park's flagship attraction, the double decker carousel right at the front of the park.  And yep, from time to time people got sick on that ride, even.

In the same box was my beloved Barbie, who is showing serious signs of aging.  Her mascara sure needs a touch-up, and she's got some serious neck issues.  Note the cracks   wrinkles in her neck.  She needs a good turtleneck ... or any clothes at all, really.  (They'll turn up in some other box, I'm sure.)  But the curl in her hair has held up for 40 years, which is something, and there's not a strand of gray.

And then there's the troll doll.

Strangely, I don't remember naming him... her... well, it.  And my sister and I played with them endlessly, in their shoe-box houses.  This little guy ... girl... thing seems to have aged better than Barbie, I'd say. 

I can't wait until my parents get into the storage area above their garage, where my Barbie dream house and my sister's Barbie's Dress Shop have been hiding all these years. We're already looking forward to a Barbie play day.

Using it Up

 If you've been to a quilt shop, or a quilt guild meeting, or read a sewing or quilting magazine in the last few months, then you might have heard about the American Patchwork and Quilting drive to collect one million pillowcases for charity.  It's an appealing idea: corralling quilters and seamstresses to make a simple item that can be useful to lots of people, and encouraging them to donate them to their local charities.  My local group provides pillowcases to a camp for children whose lives have been touched by cancer -- each kid gets his or her own pillowcase and then takes it home with them.  It's sort of hokey -- and yet, it's a lovely, cheery way to touch someone's life.

Last week, I had another burst of energy in the get-stuff-out-of-the-closet kick I'm on, and I pulled a stack of fabric down from the top shelf to get it out of there.  I had a big stack of bright flannels -- I think I bought them years ago thinking I'd make a few of those rag quilts... or maybe it was for those make-your-own-chenille throws... I don't even remember.  But as I was setting them into a bag to give away, it struck me that they'd make a good bunch of pillowcases.

Using a "roll it up" pattern my friend Pat had given me that makes for a really quick and fun pillowcase (and you can see it demonstrated with instructions here) I started cutting hunks of flannel and next thing you know, I had 11 pillowcases.  AND an empty shelf in my closet.  It felt great.

By the way, is this a middle-aged thing?  That it feels better to get stuff out of the house then it does to go shopping for new stuff and bring it home?!

Gotta Share

Improv Everywhere is at it again -- and poking fun at some people sharing everything, every minute...




I keep grinning at "I can't wait to share that with my cat ... Wait, is there an app for that?"

A Random Thursday

I'm having one of those random thursdays, where the day ahead promises to have me ricocheting back and forth among all of the little things I have to today.  Nothing horribly pressing, but just a random collection of stuff that needs to be done.  You know -- call the doctor about an appointment.  Pack up some riding pants that I ordered for Miss C online and have to be returned.  Take the load of stuff to the Salvation Army.  Pick up dry cleaning.  Clean the vegetable bins in the fridge.  Exciting stuff like that. 

I tend to get distracted when I'm working down a list like that -- there are other, more fun things to do around here.  Like what's on my design wall, for instance -- I have made big flying geese with a bunch of scraps and I'm assembling them as shown.  It's fun and so pinky which I always want to be sewing with in the spring.  My lovely Bernina (do you all name your sewing machines?  This one seems so grand that she deserves a name but I've not settled on one yet.)  had a thread jam in the bobbin case that I wasn't unable to untangle at home, so she's at the dealer's for a thorough poke through her innards.  I've set up the trusty Juki so I can piece away at remarkably high speeds.

Oh -- one more random thing.  Thanks so much for the suggestions on how to photograph big quilts!  Sadly, Kristin, I don't have an upstairs balcony but I am amused by your bungee cord-rigging suggestion.  I think I'm going to try Terry's method of pinning quilts to the garage door.  I save my old sewing machine needles for tasks like that, as they don't make large holes in the quilts but they work like sturdy push pins.   Hey! Maybe I can do that this afternoon! 

Ta ta!

Dotty

I should be spending my fabric time figuring out what I am going to do for the upcoming 12x12 challenge which requires that we use a "spice color" palette.  So far I've not had any appealing ideas come to mind, so I'm just letting it be, hoping something good will float to the surface of my distracted mind.

But meanwhile, I've been continuing my mission to use up fabric in the closet.  And that explains this quilt, which I made from a bundle of Moda "layer cake" squares I found on sale a few years ago.  I do love polka dots and these fabrics are so bright and cheerful!  This ended up almost twin-bed sized, to my surprise, but as my goal was just to use up the fabric I'm glad it did.  This is destined for the Valley of the Moon Children's Shelter, my favorite place for donating quilts.

By the way, I always have a hard time figuring out how to photograph large quilts -- my design wall isn't nearly big enough. So this morning I pinned the quilt to a big roller shade that comes off of the patio arbor outside and gave that a try.  Hardly what the Quilt Photography experts would recommend but it got the job done.  (I have heard of people using their garage doors.  Perhaps I'll try that next.) 

Ladies, Start your Machines...

 

Unless you haven't stepped into a fabric store in the last few years (and I feel sorry for you if you haven't), then you might not know that the tidy roll of fabric above is known as a "jelly roll."  It's made up of 40 strips of fabric 2 1/2" wide, usually some assortment of colors or prints designed to look quite nice together.  It makes for a delicious bundle of color, and it's not surprising that because they've become so popular, bunches of projects that use them have proliferated wildly.

Which leads me to the concept of a "Jelly Roll Race."  I'd read about it on someone's blog some time ago, and it involves using one jelly roll to construct a quick quilt top that measures 48 x 60 inches.  The race aspect just makes it silly and fun -- so when I learned about it, I figured it'd be just the sort of goofy thing that would be a fun retreat game.

The directions for making the quilt top are really easy.  You essentially sew the strips together end to end, so that you have one long strip 1600 inches long (which explains why this is also sometimes called the "Jelly Roll 1600" quilt.  You then fold it in half, sew, cut and fold it in half again, until it is quilt sized.  You don't worry about fabric placement -- the strips themselves make the pattern. And it's a whole lot of straight seam sewing, which even a beginning sewer can do.

You can watch a race here, courtesy of Heirloom Creations:

So that's what we did one evening at the retreat last week. It was loads of fun and led to lots of giggling -- AND a gorgeous bunch of quilt tops:

You can find the detailed directions on making one of these here.  Be careful, I think they might be addictive.

Wanna Play?

Happy Mother's Day to my mom, and to all of the great moms out there -- and of course to the great kids who've made us the mothers we are!

And because I'm celebrating Mother's Day by, among other things, NOT doing the tidying and house stuff I would normally do, I thought I'd share a scene from the dining room yesterday.  When I came home from the quilt retreat, I piled the two quilts I'd machine quilted on the dining room table -- and Willow immediately made herself right at home.
 

And Willow up on the table meant that Gemma, our black lab mix, was circling the table, thinking that Willow might want to play.  NOT.

"I said, NO."

Wait, where'd she go?

Is she over there?

 

She's down there again.  NO, I don't want to play.

I think it'll be a stand-off.  Or make that "sleep-off."  (Excuse the blur.)

Back from the Ranch

 

So remember I told you that I had to use that cowboy fabric in a challenge quilt for my ranch retreat?  Well, here's what I did.  

I started thinking about how, at the Bishop's Ranch site of our retreat, our group is known as the "Ranch Hands."  And that led me to think about what a cowboy would expect if he heard that the female ranch hands were putting on a show, which led me to suspect that he would NOT show up for a quilt show.  So I settled on the idea of putting a confused (and disappointed!) cowboy in the middle of one our show-and-tell shows.

Over the years at ranch retreats, I've taken tons of pictures during our show and tell.  I started working with photos in Photoshop, to scale my friends up to a size that would work in proportion to that rather large cowboy.  Once I had the images scaled, I printed them onto fabric with my inkjet printer.  I still find my inkjet printing results to be pretty muted in color no matter how I boost the saturation before I print, so I took Tsukineko inks to paint fresher, brighter colors onto everyone.  That cowboy is pretty garish (not to mention, ORANGE) so I was trying to make the colors a bit more compatible with his tones.

Then I fused everyone into position -- arranging the quilt show was the most fun part, I think -- and then stitched it all down with monofilament thread.  And yes, I put myself in it:

That's me, holding up the black and white quilt.

I even fired up the embroidery part of my machine and figured out how to add the caption, which reads "Tex heard that the ladies at the ranch were putting on a show... but this wasn't what he imagined."

The quilt was a big hit when we revealed our challenge quilts -- but I'm most pleased that I've created a wonderful souvenir of my great friends and fun times at the retreat.

Happy May Day!

It is May 1st!  There are so many things I could be doing today.  Setting up a May pole, decking the patio in ribbons and decorations, having a May Day luncheon.  Basking in the beautiful sunshine outside, enjoying the flowers blooming in the garden -- well, okay, enjoying the THOUGHT of flowers that WILL be blooming as soon as I weed and sort out the mangy flowerbeds and pull all of those weeds... Or I could do a burst of spring cleaning, clearing out the old clutter to make things organized and tidy.

Yep, I could do those things today.  But I won't.  Instead, I'm packing up my sewing gear to head over to Bishop's Ranch this afternoon for our 2011 spring retreat.  And (although I'll be home to sleep in my own comfy bed each night), I'll be escaping to the retreat for most of the week.

So there is much fun, laughter, activity, production, and good food ahead.  What better way to celebrate spring?!  I'll see you next weekend!  Hope you celebrate May's arrival in with your own fun adventure!

Quilting with Cowboys

I have finished a quilt this week, but I can't show it to you.  And it involves this "Cowboy Hunk" fabric.  Nope, I'm not kidding -- but I can at least add that I didn't choose this stuff.  (If you must have some for yourself, you can find it on Equilter.com by searching "cowboy hunks."  I'm not kidding.  And you can even get it in different colorways.)

This coming week, I'll be off on my twice-yearly quilting retreat at the Bishop's Ranch.  A few years ago, we started doing a challenge for the spring retreat, and last April someone chose THIS cowboy fabric as the challenge fabric.  So our task was to use it in a quilt, any way we chose.  It took me a while to decide what I wanted to do, and I came up with an idea I love -- so I've been finishing that up and I'm delighted with it.  I can't wait for the reveal at the retreat, which will happen at the tail end of it all.

I'll show you the quilt when I'm back.

BUT I can say that I had some new and exciting adventures with my Bernina 830 which I am continuing to love.  I had a good experience sewing with monofilament thread on it, even sewing through fusibles with it which can be tricky on any machine.  I incorporated some lettering in the quilt which I machine embroidered, and figured out how to embroider a long sentence and make it all line up despite having to move the hoop.  So the whole thing was a fun experience, and isn't that what it's all about, after all?