Spring Fishy

 

It’s finaly getting green i my yard. Spring seems to be late this year. It got up to 63 degrees today. I sat out on the deck at lunch time to eat my apple with peanut butter.

Warren planted some flowers in the containers on the deck today.  We still aren’t planting in the yard, because the plan is to do the stone work on the lower half of the house this summer. We are hiring it done.

Warren gave me an early birthday gift this week (the birthday isn’t until next Monday). It’s this nice red grill. I made pizzas on it Saturday evening.

I have been working hard on this Fishy quilt, made by Tracy Trasky. I have all of the borders, & background quilting done, but still have lots of detail quilting to do. You can click on the pictures to get a closer look. There are waves & bubbles on the background & borders (per Tracy’s wishes).

The fishes have scales (& my shoulders have cramps from all of the tight quilting I’ve been doing)

 

Below is the back side.

I have a dress for a friend’s wedding that I am also trying to help her on, though it is very challenging. It’s stretchy velvet & slippery satin. Argh!

 

Convergence Reveal

 

Today is the reveal day for our Fiberactions on-line challenge. The word for this time around was “Convergence”. I had a bit of a mental block happening because all I could think of was Ricky Tims’ pattern by the same name.

I finally had a “Convergence” of the above piece of furniture, with an idea, & a little inspiration from the book below,for the background quilting.

Several designs in the book were of the same era as the furniture, showed large leaves or florals (like this William Morris wall paper) with smalls leaves & floral backgrounds. Which is what I took inspiration from for my border quilting.

 

Below is the finished quilt. An oil paint stick rubbing on fabric, quilted with 2 layers of batting to give the featured designs a traupunto effect without the effort of cutting away a layer.

 

 

Binding was inspired by Laura Wasilowski.

Calendar Girls Meeting at Mary G’s

 

Yesterday we had our Calendar Girl’s meeting at Mary Gerkin’s house. Mary has a beautiful home on the hillside. She was showing us a piece of fabric that she intends to include in a quilt that she’s working on. Her balcony made a great stage.

Mary always serves great food. Today’s was Mexican, some of which she had supplied by Alaska Dinner Factory.

We had a very fun & silly time with me teaching the rest of the group how to whistle down their straws. It makes a very fun slide whistle noise, that kids just love. My Friend Ilene taught me this trick years ago.

Snow dying, Granite, & Chocolate

Here it is May, & I still hadn’t tried snow dying, but had a patch of snow left in my yard. We have been having beautiful weather lately, highs in the 6o’s, so the snow is going to be gone soon.  I decided I’d better get on the stick, & do it before it’s too late. Unfortunately, I realized that I didn’t have any Procion dyes in my stash. All I have are Sabracon, which are more temperature sensitive, requiring temps above 70 degrees to fully react.

I decided to go ahead & experiment, to see what the results might be, & what I got were nice, but dulled colors. I wouldn’t waste the dyes again with this method, unless I had some Procion leftovers to play with. The Sabracon dyes, when used as they are intended are really rich & vibrant colors.

We have also been making a little progress on our house this week. We finally got the granite for 2 of my kitchen counter tops. I still have a lot of work to do in the kitchen, but the granite is nice, & makes it feel so much neater & cleaner than the old wood we had before. If you click on the pictures you an see them better. Note the muddy bear pawprints on the large window below (to the left of the blue dot). We had a visitor at 2 a.m. on Friday who woke me up, playing on the deck above our bedroom. He left his calling card on the window!

I also put a shelf  over the windows to give my barn collection a place to set.

My Mother’s Day lasted all weekend. On Saturday, my youngest, Corey took us to Moose’s Tooth for both Mother’s Day & Father’s Day for dinner. He leaves for Nome soon, & won’t be back to Anchorage until late Fall. Then on Sunday we took him to the Midnight Sun Brewery for lunch, & a beer & chocolate tasting. Since neither Corey or Warren care much for chocolate, & I don’t like beer but LOVE chocolate, it was a fun lunch for all of us! For desert they had beer, & I had chocolate. & yes auntie Em, see, Corey still has hair!

Wendy’s 1st Quilt

 

I am finished with the longarm part of Wendy’s quilt. I still have the binding to do, & a couple of hand stitches that I want to add. I think the eyes need a dot of white. You can click on the images to see bigger pictures. I did really heavy quilting.

The fish & birds need a sparkle of white thread in the eyes to bring them to life.

These last 2 shots are the border on the left, & a backside view of the bear block. Now I’ll be doing the same quilt for Wendy’s daughter Tracy, in a different color-way.