Winter................will it ever be spring!

OK, I'm trying to practice gratitude, positive thoughts, serenity etc., but I just don't like winter.   It doesn't like me and I don't like it.  If I'm to find a positive, it would be that last night we had fresh new snow and quite a bit of it, so everything is clean and covered again.

This has been a bad winter for icicles.   We hardly ever get them and both levels of our house have lots of icicles.   The one on the left end of this picture is actually 2 icicles - they had grown together and actually came down almost to the bottom of the window.

A lone clump of  grasses that surround my birdbath in the front yard.   Behind it is the concrete bench - both of these adorn my usually beautiful front yard - at least during the warmest seasons of the year.    I miss my front yard....and all the flowers, the rocks, the stones, the grasses.......all the beautiful textures of summer.

A view thru the gazebo to the shed at the back of the lot.  

Stress Can Kill You.......................

..............please, don't let it.   If your body hurts, listen to it!    Don't try to push through it and don't ignore it.   How do I know?   What I thought was an appointment for a luxurious massage, turned into more massage therapy for a painful shoulder.   All the muscles of the neck, shoulders and one arm were extremely tight.  I had been complaining of shoulder pain thinking it was something like rotator cuff.   Now, I'm not so sure.   I know I tend to hold stress in parts of my body - but this was way more than I was aware of.   Don't be a hero and think you have to work and keep going and ignore pain!    It's not healthy.   Listen to your body and investigate what could be going on with your life that has taken up residence in your body!

Here's a restful picture.........    I find water to be very peaceful.   This is a nearby park where I walk in the summer.    I need to visualize this sort of thing more often!!

Thought for the Day!

I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering;  surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!.....Louise Bogan

Beaded Dress a/k/a "Eye Candy for Kathi"

I call this "Eye Candy for Kathi" because she is always showing her "finds" from the Salvation Army Store (a/k/a Sally's Boutique" ) here in Batavia.   A friend brought me this dress this morning that she had found and she knew I liked beading things.   

Look at this beaded dress!!!   Isn't it absolutely

gorgeous!! It is teal colored sequins, some lace and lots and lots of beading!    Look at the next few pictures to see a close-up of some of the motifs.   This will absolutely have to find its way into some of my art quilt endeavors!!!   (Given that the size of the dress contains only one digit, it will never find its way onto my body for sure)

Group Flower

Our little art quilt group (& yes we do have a name, although I'm not sure I like it and I can say that since I picked it), is doing a group flower.   The flower is called "convolvulous" and the picture was divided into 5 sections with each of us interpreting it in our own way.   3 of us have finished - Sharon on the left, mine in the middle and Kathi's on the right.   Sharon painted some of her fabrics and used light blue satin ribbon.   Kathi used snippets with netting over all and then machien stitched for highlights.   Mine has appliqued pieces and is all-over beaded for highlights.   I also put a bug charm in the center.   I think it will look really neat when it is all done.

Happy Valentine's Day!

My Valentine Flowers - aren't they gorgeous.   I was so surprised to see them sitting on the table when I got home from a guild meeting yesterday - 3 days early!!!!!!

Challenge Quilt Award

OK, so this is a repeat picture posting of my Challenge Quilt for our guild - but I now know that I won a Machine Quilting Award for this quilt.   I quilted water motion & circles where the crystals are to indicate ripples where the dew drops fell.    I still love it.

Beads.Love 'em, hate 'em.

Shoot me if I ever try something like this again.   While I love the results (and of course I don't mean to literally shoot me), I'd be nuts to do this again.

This is called "Right Angle Weave" - size 8 beads, 50 of them in 3 rows.  4 beads form a circle and you do 6 "circles" across and then start the next row.

The finished bead when the above figure is sewn together, end to end.   I have it on the end of a small pair of Fiskars spring-action scissors so you can see just how small it is.

This started out to be a beaded scissor fob project in a small group I'm in.   I won't be doing many of these - the beads are too small, my eyes are too old and my hands - well, just forget them.

I like it, but can't do very many of them.

Play Day

OK, so I haven't done any of my goals..no binding, no organizing beads etc.  

But, I did make this cool card today.   I saw a demo of this at Genesee Valley Quilt Club and had to try it out.    I used 2 5 x 7 sheets of peltex fusible and fused fabric to both sides.   The 2 cards are held together by ribbons, pierced at the top and then tied so the card flips up.

This is the front.   You'll soon know that I love and have a large stash of butterfly-themed fabric.

This is the inside, after flipping up the top card.

Detail of the butterfly.  Stitched first with thread, then colored with pastel watercolor crayons, then used a wet stencil brush to make the "watercolor" feature, then highlighted with pigma pen

This is the back of the card.   Cool, huh!

Knitting Fun

What is this?   

If you guessed a head of Green Cauliflower, then
you're wrong!!!

It's a skein of yarn - that looks like this when unwound.    It's called "Marshmallows".

This is how it looks made into a scarf.   One skein took about one hour to knit this scarf.   Cool, huh?

Goals

Goals for the week:

1.   Binding on the large Shadow Box Quilt
2.   Finish small quilt based on glass cabachon made in RAFA small group
3.   Organize Beads - (ugh - no small task)

Challenge Quilt

Our guild challenge this year was to use colors of fabrics that begin with our initials.   We could even find paint chips, or whatever to verify our choices.   Some people were very creative.   Some found the paint chips first and went from there, I found the fabric first.....and worked backwards.    Here is my picture - I'll explain my choices below:

I saw a picture similar to this on a calendar.   I knew I had this fabric so I then cut out tree branches to hang OVER the water (some people thought this was upside down) so they would appear in silhouette.   I called it "Sunrise over the Water".  The crystals represent dew drops that are falling from the tree into the water.   I quilted in circles around the crystals 

to represent ripples in the water.   The rest is quilted to show movement in the water. 

My initials are E-M-J-R.   My colors are Emerald, Ebony, Mantis Green, Jade and the binding is the exact color of a nail polish by Nicole called "Respect Our World".

There was a saying on the calendar by Lao Tsu:  "If we let go of what we are, we become what we might be."   I like that and used the dew drops or crystals to represent that saying.

Prize or not...........I really love this quilt!

Another chilly day and boy is it cold.  I am brightened however, by my beautiful amaryllis plant sitting here in the window by my computer.   2 of the 4 flowers are opened and so I am posting some pics.

This is a view of the whole plant.

Followed by a close-up of the flower:

Could this be a quilt?   I love taking closeups of the center of a flower.

Finally,   my little frog, sitting on the edge of the pot, anxiously awaiting the flowers.

This week's big accomplishment (so far) was to finish my challenge quilt for our guild challenge which is due on Jan. 16.   Woo hoo - 10 days ahead of the deadline!!!!   The big joke in guild is that everyone is still sewing on the bindings at the turn-in meeting!!!!   Bug, I digress.   I'll post a picture after it is turned in (not that I expect anyone reads my blog and will actually see it before then).

I hae another quilt almost finished which coincidentally could do for the challenge.   I had not intended it for such, but maybe I will turn it in anyway.  

The challenge is to make a quilt using colors of our initials.   We can be as creative as we want in finding colors - such as using paint chips that begin with our initials.   I even found a nail polish.   Woo hoo!!!

My goals for the weekend (quilting wise):

     1.  Finish that other possible challenge quilt
     2.  Put the binding on my large bed quilt
     3.  1/2 hr. per day decluttering that messy quilt room

Free Motion Embroidery

Don't you love the trees?   I did this with free motion embroidery.   The design was drawn on water solvy stabilizer and then I put that between 2 layers of tulle and went to work with embroidering free motion - following the pattern.   I used many shades of green, and in some cases a really brighter shade in the bobbin and then adjusted the tension so the bobbin thread would pull up and show on the top.   Hence - the sparklies!!!!   I made them for a specific small quilt but when I tried to add them, the quilt was very adamant and told me they didn't belong there.   So, now I hae a couple of appliques for another quilt.   (Yes, my quilts do talk to me)

OK, so I'm still a novice at adding pictures to my blog.   This should be the other ornament.    (I haven't figured out how to delete pics after adding them - if there is a way).

Beaded Ornaments

Through my quilts and specifically my art quilts, I've discovered that I really like beading.   This year I did 2 ornaments using store-bought Christmas balls (purple of course).   They ended up being WAY more work than I thought they would be - but aren't they pretty and so sparkly on the tree???

Christmas 2009

Christmas with the Kiddies - I made Samantha her Sarah Palin shirt after copying a newspaper article about her visit with Sarah Palin, onto printer fabric and fusing it to a T-Shirt.  She loves it.   Aaron's quilt was made in 4 days - I didn't get much notice that is what he wanted.   But I had to do it - because Grandma's just do those sorts of things.  Jacob didn't have as many specifics - but he loves to read and got books.

My daughter is inspiring me to keep up with my Blog.   I can't believe my last posting was in October.   I've made quilts since then and taken photographs since then.......no gardening however, except on my windowsill.  I'll try to get some photos and posts added.

Beading & Painting

This is my beaded project based on an article I saw in Quilting Arts magazine.  The background is silk habotai, spritzed with water, and painted with dyna-flow paints which cause the mottle appearance.  The darker bushes are where the green was painted over the blue.   I painted the tree based on a photo of a tree I took on a walk and then added a gazillion beads to show the leaves.  

Detail of
quilting to
depict grasses etc.






Beading Detail