Travels and Projects

What interesting weather we are having. Here it is the middle of October in the Mid-Atlantic region and we're having daytime high temps in the low 80's.......not at all the usual. I'm personally quite ready for Fall and cooler temps.


The beginning of October, we were fortunate to take a trip to San Antonio, TX for a conference for my DH. I kept myself busy while he attended meetings. I enjoyed the Alamo, the Mercado and the Museo Alameda. The Riverwalk was a wonderful place.......so many choices for places to eat. The weather was warm and humid but bearable. Later in the trip, we visited my siblings in Jefferson, TX (NE corner of the state) where it was a lot warmer and a lot more humid.

Once home, we were back to painting. This time, the painters arrived to fix and paint the Master Bedroom ceiling. Nothing like moving out all your furniture and taking down window treatments to energize your day. Great chance to get rid of dust bunnies.....but I really wanted to quilt not clean.

But I finally got to quilting. I finished a baby quilt for a baby due in November. It's all set to have it's binding sewn down this evening when I meet with my small quilt group. I also played around with an art quilt that I'd ignored since April. I finally got up the courage to add some embellishments.




I made this quilt in a class at our guild show in April. It was taught by Amy Stewart Winsor. She called it Wonky Log Cabins. It was fun and very out of the box for me. I just couldn't figure out what to do about embellishments. Basically what I did was to couch yarns on the surface. I've thought about adding a few beads but I'm leaning towards leaving it as is. I don't want to overdo it.

A BUSY QUILTY WEEK

Sometimes I'm all enthused to sew. Sometimes I'm not. But lately, my enthusiasm has come back. I think it is a form of procrastination. At the back of my mind among the myriad of things to do, I know I should be packing up stuff to move out of the master bedroom so the painters can come and repair/paint the ceiling. Since they haven't officially called me with a start date yet, I keep putting off the inevitable job before me. What better way to spend time than to sew, sew, sew.

So what have I been working on lately. Well it began with a small quilt for my DIL's aunt who is about to undergo a lumpectomy and radiation for breast cancer:

This quilt began when I was cleaning out some fabric bins and discovered quite alot of left-over fabric and orphan blocks from a quilt that I had made for my sister. Her quilt was much larger and I wrote in several positive sayings and lots of family names to wrap her in warmth while whe was undergoing chemo. Nina's quilt is smaller but I hope it will also warm her and let her know she is loved.

But wait! There was more left-over fabric in that bin. Among the scraps were some squares that I had begun to hand-piece together. Since there were several squares already cut but not stitched yet, I just sat down at the machine and added them to my already begun piece:

All of these fabrics were from various Quilt For A Cure lines of fabrics. I have to say they are really not colors that I normally lean towards. I'm more a warm color palette kind of person. Fortunately, I still have MORE of all this fabric so I should be able to come up with some borders for this "middle.

Then there are all the baby quilts waiting to be made. The daughter of a dear friend is having a baby girl in November. She and her husband are decorating the nursery with an aquatic theme. Even though I am trying desperately to use up stash, I couldn't resist the cute little fish flannel for this quilt:

This quilt along with the others needs to be sandwiched, quilted, bound and labeled. I've got lots of projects still ahead of me. Basically, I need to stop making new quilt tops and get busy finishing UFOs.

And finally, there's the quilt that got started (and is almost finished) for no rhyme or reason. I just felt the urge to "play" with scraps and before I knew it a quilt top had emerged. About half-way through, I decided it was the perfect gift for my youngest brother who is turning 50 on Sunday. Now that is an incentive to finish. No.....I won't get it there by Sunday but I will get it finished in time for the trip we're taking next week to Texas that will include a side trip to visit my sibs. So Happy Birthday Little Brother:

In general, I am not a very creative person. I tend to work better from following patterns and directions. But for this quilt, I truly worked outside my box and just invented it as I went along. I really like it. What you don't see if stars on the cornerstones that have now been added. I especially like the mini-piping. It really helped set off the middle.

So that's it. My busy, busy, quilty week.

Quilts, Costumes and Life in General

It's been a month since I last visited my blog. In the meantime, I started a blog at thequiltshow.com which I seem to access more often. I've got to watch the time factor here. On-line diary/blogging can be a bit time-consuming and addictive. Then there are all those blogs that are fun to read.


At the end of August, we went out to CA to visit DHs father and sister in Southern CA and then went up to Northern CA for a visit with the DGDs.....oh...their parents, too LOL. We're still exploring Alameda as a place to live in retirement. DH loves the nearness of the SF Bay. Wonderful opportunities for walking enjoyment.


Since I've been back, I've been working on Halloween costumes for the DGDs. I don't think I ever sewed any costumes for my boys when they were young. The extent of my garment sewing for them was PJs and T-Shirts.....those were the days of knit fabrics. For this project I had to get my brain back to a 5/8" seam and not the quarter-inch seam that quilters use. Working off and on, I managed to actually finish two costumes before Halloween. Here they are:





The 10 month old will be a darling little lamb and the 2 1/2 year old will be a cute little ladybug. I think this may be my only foray into costume making. I forgot how I hate sewing curvy garments. But you never know. If the DGDs ask, I'll probably give in. I think that's what grandmas are supposed to do LOL.

In between working on the costumes, I pulled out some scraps for a quilt that I had made for my sister when she was undergoing chemo for breast cancer. I found that I had enough orphan blocks and fabric that I could make another quilt. Since another friend is about to have a mastectomy, I decided to play around with what I had and make a quilt for her. Here's the results of that effort:


It's not a very big quilt but it might be enough for her to put across her lap and know that she is loved.

We are having lovely Fall type weather this week. It's the season I like most in the Mid-Atlantic region. It will be one of the things I miss when we move back to California.

Rip-It, Rip-It, Rip-It

......or check twice, sew once or you'll be doomed to rip and sew again.

I was so thrilled to be so close to finishing the top of my Mr. B Scrappy quilt. My computer had been giving me fits and starts all day and it was happily humming away as I ran a full scan. So that left me free to get back to sewing. Carefully, I sewed rows. Carefully (I thought) I sewed sections. Voila! Open it up to see that the design was "upside down backwards" or something. Out came the seam ripper...*sigh* . So now its back in pieces and this is how it is supposed to look when I sew it together correctly. Remember check twice, sew once.

Home Again and Time to Catch Up

We got home from our 2 week trip last Sunday. Sure didn't leave the heat behind. This last week has set recording breaking high temps and humidity here in Maryland. The humidity is supposed to be a lot less this weekend.

I've managed to finish two baby quilts over the last month. One just got finished this afternoon. Both are awaiting their labels. The colorful one was free-motion quilted with the BSR on my Bernina 440QE. It didn't seem to move very freely but I think that may be because the backing was flannel. I still need more practice with my BSR before I can say I'm really comfortable with it.

The Wonderful Shelburne Museum

Twenty years or so ago, we took a trip with the boys to Quebec, Canada and through the Northeast. One of the highlights I remember from that trip was a visit to the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, VT. Jim remembers that he tried to keep the boys entertained while I tried to see as much of their vast collections as I could. I also remember that I did not see it all but I thought it was a wonderful place. I've wanted to go back ever since.

Today we got there and despite fighting a summer cold, I finally got to leisurely walk around and see all the incredible collections. Along with their permanent collections, every year they have several special exhibits. First and foremost on my list were 3 special quilt exhibits. They were all unique and interesting. One was a collection of contemporary Vermont quilts. I recognized at least two quilts in that exhibit that I had seen in Quilt Shows. The second exhibit was a collection of quilts by an African-American artist named Rosie Lee Tompkins. It reminded me alot of the Gee's Bend Quilts. The third was an exhibit of Amish Quilts called "Stars and Bars". It was from a gift to the museum.

Another interesting and beautiful exhibit was "Out of This World: Shaker Design Past, Present, and Future". It contained five different groupings....historical furniture, commercial items sold by the Shakers, Religious drawings and calligraphy, contemporary Shaker furniture, and a fancy work--which were items that the Shakers were shunning in their own designs. I also enjoyed the Chandelier exhibit and the folk art collection.

Electra Havemeyer Webb was the founder of the museum. In her lifetime, she amassed an incredible amount of art and other collections. Along the way, others have contributed to the collections. At Shelburne, I was able to stand up close and personal to art works by Mary Cassatt (a personal friend of Electra), Monet, Manet and others. It was just amazing. Mrs Webb donated most of her art to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY but quite a few nice pieces are here in VT.

For a visit to the Shelburne, check out this web-site Shelburne Museum. In the meantime, here a few pictures from the outside. Unfortunately you can't take pictures with flash inside so I don't have pictures of the collections.

Travels in the Northeast

We've been off on a vacation. Since the plan is to retire to CA next year, DH and I figure we'd better see everything we want to see on the east coast while we can. This summer's plan has been a trip up through Maine, into Canada to Prince Edward Island and back through Maine, VT, and NY to the Adirondacks. We're currently in Augusta, ME on the way to VT. DH wanted a stop at the Maine State Archives and Library to do genealogy research. Thus.....I am able to access my computer with their free WiFi.

The trip has been truly wonderful. We had a great two nights on the island of Vinalhaven in Maine, where our dear friends own a house. Here's a picture of a typical scene when boating through the islands of Maine.

We traveled up to Bar Harbor and spent a glorious day at Acadia National Park. We stayed at the greatest B&B called the Birches. It was in Southwest Harbor. Our hosts Dick and Rocky Homer were delightful. The view from our bedroom window was the bay. Here is a scene from Bar Harbor.

And then it was off to Canada. We took the CAT ferry to Yarmouth, NS, Canada. Unfortunately, I found out I was not a seasoned boater. I had to stay put and look at the horizon in order to avoid being sick. We drove up the eastern shore of NS to Truro where we spent the night. In the morning, we boarded the ferry for PEI.

PEI is a beautiful place, full of lighthouses, bays, farms, and gentle rolling hills. We stayed at Anglo Rustico at another B&B on the water. Our hosts were a lovely Acadian couple who reccommended a side trip to Greenwich Dunes. It was well worth the drive despite the horrendous heat and humidity......PEI was having an unusual heat spell. On Saturday, we attended the "Anne of Green Gables" musical in Charlottetown. PEI is the setting for the classic L.M. Montgomery stories. Here are some pictures from PEI.

Now we are back in the U.S. having stayed one night in New Brunswick where we saw the Reversing Falls and the Hopewell Rocks. Here is a picture of the interesting rock formations at Hopewell Rocks. When the tide goes out, you can walk out to them. You can really see the effects of the wind and see on the red sandstone.

So now we are in Maine (one of my very favorite states) and my story ends for now. It's been a great trip. I feel so truly blessed to be able to travel and see so many lovely places.