Friday evening we went to Kate's house for dinner (far right), & to see an old friend Kerry (in the center) & meet her daughter & husband. Kate & I worked in the ICU with Kerry about 30 years ago. It was a lovely evening.

Saturday morning we went to our friends the Meyns house for breakfast. Everyone was wearing hand-dyed shirts (or in my case a dress), & Mindy even made colorful pancakes. It was a fun time.

The rest of my weekend has been spent on getting ready for my show at the Midnight Sun Brewery Restaurant, opening July 1st.

This is the pile of quilts, clocks, & signs for the show. I'm hanging 26 pieces. I've been finishing things like labels, & hanging sleeves. Odds & ends that need to be finished up for the show. I've also put a few hours in on Judy's quilt. She chose design A from the last post. 

This was a postcard quilt, that I thought needed something to finish it off, so I quilted a background piece & mounted it on to a stretched canvas.

The clock-quilts finally got their clock parts.Ready for the show.

Client Quilt Design Choices

I love the Wacom Bamboo tablet that I can drawn on the photos of quilts to explore design choices. I learned about this from Carla Barrett, when I took her on-line "Quilt Whisperer" class a while ago.

Above is the next quilt I have to quilt, & below I redrew the designs on a black screen so that they could be seen more easily. I like doing this, because I can draw the designs & tell the client what the charge for each design would be, & she can decide which one she prefers. It makes for a little less anxiety on reveal day, & the client gets some input on the design choice. It's a win-win!

I'm feeling better, the sore throat is almost all gone. Today is the first day since Tuesday that I've eaten solid foods, instead of soup, & yogurt. I finished up working on Wendy's quilt. It had a few issues. Wendy had never done piecing before, & tackled this for her first pieced quilt.  I put 2 layers of batting in it to help square it up, & it worked fairly well.

We had 2 sunny days in a row, Friday & Saturday. I decided that I should get out on my deck in the sun, & take advantage of the weather, as we can't count on having many days this warm.

I used these textile paints on some silk chiffon. Below is a close up of the finished fabric. I will be a lovely top layer for a quilt some day.

I did some "Straw Dying" on 2 rayon jackets & a T-shirt from Dharma.

What I mean by "Straw Dying" is, using straws to scoop up small amounts of dye powder, to sprinkle on the fabric (which I had pre-soaked in a soda-ash solution). I used about 1/3 cup of soda ash in a gallon of warm water. I let the pieces soak a good 1/2 hour prior to the dye session.

I arranged the fabric in the bottom of a big retangular plastic tub, & wearing a face mask, I sprinkled on the dyes. Then I sprayed a little water on, carefully rearranged e fabric, & repeated the sprinkling process.

This is how the fabric looked after setting over night in plastic bags, then washing & drying.

It turned out to be a creative weekend, in spite of myself!



Vacation's End

We had so much joy playing with the kids.

Little Zoe was starting to get more interactive. She actually cooed & smiled for me.

I felt very sad when they left. We had a few quiet days, just the 2 of us, before spending the last day in Seattle with Michelle.

We got back home last Friday & I went back to work on Monday. By Tuesday I had a very sore throat & aching all over. We went out to dinner yesterday with my friend Judy, & Anita's son Bryan, & his friend Brandon are back in Anchorage, so we asked them if they wanted to come too. It was nice seeing the boys again.

 I ate soup, as it was the only thing that sounded good, then went straight to bed when we got home.Today I did nothing. I'm almost finished with Wendy's quilt, it just needs trimming & binding, but I couldn't get enough energy to even trim it today. Feeling ill is such a waste of time! 

Wild Animals

We've been having a blast with the kids.

Close encounters with some of the wild life at the Olympic Game Farm.