j frag hibiscus

j frag hibiscus

My good friend, Janet, has a very special birthday this next week.   We have been friends since our college years, both of us were music majors, we both married our respective spouses on the same day 41 years ago, they lived in Batavia for awhile, our kids are about the same age and now they are our vacation/cruising buddies.  We have maintained a good friendship for lo these many years, despite many lengthy periods of not being able to get together because of family obligations etc.

My good friend Janet also loves hibiscus flowers.   This is a quilt made from the photo of her hibiscus plant taken in early August.    I saw an article on fractured flowers and thought this would make a perfect gift for her.    It was a pretty easy technique, using a photo printed to fabric, in this case, I printed on silk to give it the sheen that is characteristic to a hibiscus bloom.  It went together pretty easily and the stitching didn't hurt the silk fabric.   I added simple quilting lines in the flower, just to show the general shape of the folds etc. of the petals and then a leaf design in the outer part.

I call it "j frag Hibsicus" for "Janet's Fragmented Hibiscus".   It's sort of a play on a "genus" or "species" name in the plant kingdom.   It now resides in her home in Dublin, PA.   Happy Birthday, Janet!!!

I went to Bermuda!!!!

Yes, I, Elaine Ross, went to Bermuda!!!  It's not many years ago that for a myriad of reasons that I won't go into here, this would have been unthinkable or unbelievable.   Yet, "Sailing, Sailing Over the Bounding Main" I went.   And it was "bounding"!!!   The first day out we rode the end of Tropical Storm Emily.   The crew, who had their sea legs, assured us this was nothing.   Maybe to them that was so - not so much to us.   Anyway, once there, it was perfect weather, hot and sunny everyday.   I have lots of pictures and it is truly impossible to pick a favorite.   But, I will share a few now and then.   Probably what impressed me the most was the "color".   I am a "color" person in my gardening and in my quilting and everything from the buildings (beautiful pastel shades), to the water ( a turquoise as blue as the pictures you see) to the pink sands and the beautiful flowers was color intense and inspiring.

Yes, the water is this blue and the sands are this pink!!!

Water Lily from our garden tour in St. George

Sunset on Harborfront Evening.   A perfectly gorgeous evening.

Standing under a tree, waiting for the bus to pick us up at the beach (I won't go into that experience with the buses)........this leaf was just inspiring for its color.   There IS a quilt in here somewhere.

One of the gorgeous churches

Looking at the moon from the back of the ship as we journeyed over the Atlantic and back to NYC.

View of buildings from our deck on the ship.   Something about the graphic, geometric shapes and colors - this was a view I loved.

Sunset on the water.

We took a catamaran ride one evening - a "champagne sunset catamaran" shore excursion!!

Mark and I with our friends, Janet & David Fryling, who we vacationed with both last year and this year.   We all went to college together, 3 of us were music majors (Mark should have been also), we were married on the same day 41 years ago, and have remained good friends since. Special times!!!