I have been busy. Really I have. My Spider Solitaire scores are better than ever – er – I mean, I continue to quilt, bead, and knit.
I made a quilt top and pillowcase for Outreach, and turned them in last month. Since the guild was at a temporary venue, I wasn’t able to hand over some batting I’d been given by a square dance friend. Hannah tested it while Sydney looked on.
I finished Jean’s quilt. I haven’t managed to take a photo of the full quilt yet (hard to find an 80”x80” chunk of space), but here’s Hannah helping with the binding.
The current plan is to drive to Michigan to deliver it in person, after our trip to Mass in June.
I made spring and fall table runners for Mom. She had wanted a double-sided runner, as she is short on storage space, but graciously accepted the pair. Each side was easy enough to make, but there were too many technical difficulties to making it 2-sided. In spite of my efforts, I think one side was larger than the other. Spring called out for a detailed surface design; Fall wanted an overall meander. And in the end, I wasn’t able to balance the thread tension on the machine for the dark green of fall and the light blue of spring not to show on the other side.
I went to the first meeting of a new art quilt mini-group. We were given a questionnaire, which made me define an art quilt for myself, and look at the projects I wanted to do. All this time I thought I wanted to be an art quilter, but what I really want is to make innovative, original designs. Furthermore, most of what I want to make is identifiable to the viewer, not abstract. However, this process made me think about my “art” UFOs and to get out my “Exercise 4” from Katie Pasquini’s retreat, a project I started about 5 years ago. I enlarged the drawing, and then chose a palette, with help from Hannah.
I then cut out template pieces and fabric.
The next step is to prepare each piece for appliqué. There will also be about fifty very small “potatoes” (many as small as ¼”) in red-orange and yellow-orange scattered throughout the design. These were a real challenge [appliqué or reverse appliqué?] until it popped into my head that I could fuse them on! I may also sew on some beads later – I’ll wait for the piece to tell me.
This abstracted piece started out with a photo of a wooden ladder leading up to a sandstone cave in Bandolier National Park. I think our friend Fannie is in the cave near the top of the ladder. I zoomed in on a small area of the photo, turned the image sideways, and then colored it with a split-complementary palette. [The original beige wood against beige sandstone was a tad boring!] Because the final result becomes abstract, I also added ladder rungs beyond the legs, and more potatoes for color, rather then to realistically show where the dents are in the sandstone. Oh, I can’t wait ‘til it’s done so I see what’s in my mind!
We have a new routine around here. Our water bill literally doubled this month over last month, indicating that we have a leak somewhere. Paul has isolated it to the line between the meter and the house. Unfortunately, that includes two lines that run off into the side yards. Since it has been raining on and off for weeks, and shows no sign of stopping, there is no way to locate the leak by a patch of wet ground or a nice crop of weeds. So he has begun digging up the yard to put in valves to narrow down the location. As for the new routine, he turns off the water at the street every night before we go to bed, and turns it back on just before I get up in the morning. And if I leave the house for more than an hour, he sneaks out and turns it off again. We now keep a pitcher or jug at each sink in the house.
Here’s where the girls decided to sit during a dry spell:
Ooh. Almost forgot. I bought myself a wonderful new chair, an Officemaster PT78. It adjusts in nine – count ‘em nine – different ways. The best part is that it goes up and down with the pull of a lever, good for switching between the computer, the desk, and the sewing machine. [The last time I quilted, I sat on an old Trailer Life directory to get the proper height.] This should reduce the back spasm episodes.
And for those who crave cute cat pix as much as I do, here’s Sydney of an evening lately, on Paul’s side of the couch.
