Snow & a Postquard

This is the first day of snow in our yard this season. It was a dark, gray day all day today, & about noon it started snowing. By night time it was just a couple of inches of wet snow on the ground. Tomorrow Anchorage will have to learn how to drive all over again. It's like that every winter. 

Yesterday I made this 4x6 inch postquard. It is made from a layer of hand painted cotton fabric, with pieces of an Angelina sheet cut into circles, & a few bits of Angelina Fibers, then a layer of painted silk organza over the top. This 1st photo with the flash on highlights the sparkles from the Holoshimmer threads, Angelina, & crystal beads.

The second picture taken without the flash is a little closer to the actual colors of the piece. Neither can show the depth of the layering.

Feathers!

Well it seems I am having a hard time aligning m blog since I messed with the template last week. Hmmm.., I can't seem to get my pictures in the order I wasn't anymore. Well this is about feathers, some that I'm doing on my friend Judy's quilt,..

& some on this little fellow who was knocking on my house. At first I thought it was quite cute, until..

I realized he was actually heading into my kitchen, through a hole left by the old electrical box.I chased him away, & blocked over the hole!

Here are a couple more shots of Judy's quilt. It's her "nontraditional" Christmas quilt.

I'll post it again later, in whole when I've finished it.

My Student Natalie Moten

Natalie has taken every class I've ever offered here in Anchorage. She is such a fun student. Very creative. She picked leaves oust side & dipped them in paint then printed over commercial fabrics to make these leaves. Aren't they great?

This is her field of sun flowers.

This one is about the vote in Iraq.

& this last one is her self portrait. I am very proud to have helped her get to where she is now!

A Challenge

This is my neighbor's house right now. Right next door  us, when we pull into our driveway, this is what we see. Me the ARACHNIPHOBIC one! YIKES!

Now this is my challenge. It's a customer quilt.n I would like to do some spectacular quilting on it, but for the most part, I doubt much of it will show, except in the dark squares.The prints & pattern is pretty busy, so the quilting will get lost.

The prints make my eyes jiggle a bit up close.

Any good suggestions or ideas?

Nessie in Alaska ?

We went down to Girdwood tonight to the Double Musky again. Our friend, traveling nurse Bob had never gotten there & wanted to try it before he leaves Alaska, so we took him down there t eat. The food was wonderful as always.

On the way back to Anchorage we spotted Beluga whales in Turnagain Arm. They were like trying to get pictures of Nessie! If only I had video, it would be so much more impressive. Unfortunately my old Rebel- XT doesn't do video.

The sunset was lovely tonight too.

Going a Little Crazy

I was feeling like working on some hand work in the evenings, so I did a quick pieced crazy quilt sample to work on. I intend to do a class later with this as a sample. I used 3 of Aunt Ethel's old blouses, & several satin fabrics, plus some upholstery samples & an old pair of my DH's pants. I'm looking forward to working on this.

Blanket Toss Quilt & a Glorious Day

The sun was shinning today over Anchorage. It was a balmy 52, & the termination dust has all but disappeared on the mountains behind us. It must be the global warming. I cut back all of the lavender plants that we had grown in our planter on the deck this summer, & hung them to dry in the kitchen window.
Outside most of the leaves have fallen in some of the warm winds we've had in the past few days.

Richard came today & smoothed out both the front & back driveways, & hooked the ice-melt wires back up on the roof, so we won't have ice back-up a leaky roof.

This is the customer quilt that I just finished. It's a Letitia Hutchings pattern. I learn something new with each quilt. This one I had a hard time with the light blue background areas. The light blue thread I had kept skipping stitches & breaking. I finally got through it, but it slowed me down.

I 'm happy with the quilting.

The back side shows it best.

Rena's Quilt & Calendar Girls

Our monthly Calendar Girls meeting was at Mona's house today. I brought Rna's quilt to give to her. Below is (L to R) Mary Lee, Mona Havelock, Rena Brinker & Diane Seawald, getting their first look at Rena's quilt, all quilted.

Rena emailed thumbnail images of photos from things like fishing trips with her family. I blew them up & printed the heavily pixelated images on to regular printer paper, then pinned them in place, where I wanted to put them on her quilt. Once I finished all of the background quilting in the Black to White variegated thread, I switched to a #12 wgt. Red cotton, & quilted right over the paper pictures, outlining the image as best I could.
Below are clams.

This is her husband Hank leaning over the back of their boat.

This is his snow machine.

This was another of the naked ladies I added for him. I made her a little fluffier.

Rena thanked me profusely.

This is miss Bella. Mona's little girl.

Rena brought another project she's working on. The tan blocks were a garage sale purchase, but Rena is not a tan sort of girl, so she found a jazzy fabric to pair them with.

On her way out the door, Mary Gerkin mentioned today is her birthday, so we all sang Happy Birthday to her.

Happy Birthday Boys

Today was my DH Warren's, & 1st son, Brandon's birthdays. I talked to Brandon last night (it was already the 7th in Kwaj). Today we spent a quiet day at home. Below is the face of the card I made for Warren.

This is what it looked like outside our windows, most of the day today. In 1982 when we first moved up here, we woke up to 24 inches of snow outside. Today the only snow was high up on the mountains peaks.
This afternoon we headed down to Girdwood, to go to dinner at the Double Musky.

I is always such a pretty drive, heading south on the Seward Highway.

Happy Birthday Warren & Brandon. Wish you were here to celebrate with us.

It's always Mardi Gras at the Double Musky, & I think my house is cluttered!

We had a good dinner & shared dessert.

When we got home we lit the first fire of the season, & snuggled in for the night.

Happy Birthday Boys