A bit more free motion quilting..

Here are a few more pictures of the quilting I've been doing. I hope to finish it by next Sunday!

I had Calendar Girls today. Only 3 showed up. We still had a good time, but hosting made me almost forget about photos. Here's Jackie with her "Fly Me to the Moon" piece, for our flight theme challenge for our 2013 calendars.

It was a wet grey day so we stayed inside. 

Here is how the yard is looking from the back yard. Warren wants to do stone on the  flower bed surrounds on the left. The plant by the large rock in the foreground is the Bleeding Heart that I planted last year in memory of my dad. It's blooming & doing well.

4th of July Anniversary 22 years

For our 22nd wedding anniversary, our friends the Meyns came up for dinner. We did grilled fruit & veggies, 

& beautiful fresh shrimp from friends Trace & Dave. (I quilted 2 baby quilts for her, & took shrimp for payment), it was a great deal!

Mindy made this beautiful plate for us.

This morning I got about 4 hours of quilting in on the orange quilt. Here's one little portion of what I did today.

Rain on the roof

In reply to Judy: the metal roof strips snap together, & over lap much like the closure on a Zip Lock baggie. They lay one sheet down, screw the edges, then cover up the screws with the next sheet. The top sheet is tapped down with a rubber mallet, snapped together like a Zip-Lock bag closure. No screws show when they are done. It's pretty neat.

We've had a pile of wood dumped in our driveway right before the snow started flying. I finally moved it to the side of the garage.. it may not look like much, but it was 3 days of hard labor for me!

It rained quite a bit this past week, making it hard for Richard & Warren to get the roof done, but our flowers liked it. There were 2 areas that leaked until they got the ice & water shield up.

The metal got delivered & they got more than 1/2 up now.

                                                    

Saturday the sun came out just in time for my friend Judy's birthday party on our deck.

Some people actually complained that it was too hot!

After the party guests left, Warren took me to see "Brave". It was a cute movie. 

Today I worked on a very small area of the orange quilt. I started quilting & realized the tension was off. I ended up spending the next couple hours ripping out what took 2 minutes to quilt!

After that I sat down & did a little bead embellishment on a pin. 

Here's hoping the roof will get done, & the quilt will make progress this week!

More roof

Progress is being made on the new roof, & the weather has been grand! Warren claims the hat helps keep him cool. I'm afraid he may be frying his brain!

Eco dye results & free motion quilting

The quilt on Lily right now is being quilted "upside down". This is actually the back. It's a hand-dyed fabric done by Vicki Welsh. It's Fuchsia, yellow & orange, though the pink doesn't show very much in my photos.

I am dividing it up like a crazy quilt & doing something different in each section.

My weekend dying was mixed results. The piece of lichen dyed wool turned out pretty well, & the reflector that my DD Michelle gave me helped me get photo close to the true color. The wool was mordanted with Alum.

This next piece is silk that I used a Eucalyptus plant. It was a bit brittle, so I only got color rather than leaf impressions from it. I used vinegar for the silk mordant.

This next piece of silk is from Elderberry leaves.

The final 2 pieces are the rust dyed cotton that Anita Heady gave me. I used Elderberry leaves on this one,

& Lupin leaves on the last. The process didn't give me good prints, but it did cause changes in the color.

I'm not satisfied with this process yet, but will keep trying. I'm thinking my fabric dried out too fast, as well as the leaves drying too much too, because of the heat & direct sun the day I did it. It might be better to try on a cooler day!

Who's that up on the roof?

Well, we had a lovely metal roof, but the guy who put it up did it all wrong & it's leaked since they put it up. Yesterday Richard came over & with Warren's help they have ripped off the roof & the bad boards & will now be doing it right. I told Richard his new name is Holmes. The yard a bit messy, but once it's done right we can relax without getting dripped on any more! We also had the exterminator in to get rid of the carpenter ants that  were trying to move in!

I got this lovely card from my friend Kathy this past week. It's a sun print of strawberry leaves, & there is a little moon in the upper left corner that has an Angelina halo around it. She is doing a series of moon blocks, & this represents the Strawberry moon.

She also sent this cute book. It may become part of the bathroom library. It's full or short little stories & I love the picture on the cover. I'll read as soon as I've finished the other series I'm reading.

Calendar Girls Round 2 & Eco Dyeing

 These first 7 photos are for Jackie to see. The Calendar Girls met on Thursday, but Jackie was ill & couldn't come. These are our Round Robin after the 3rd round.

Mona shared an art quilt she just finished.

Rena just fot this back from the quilter. It was another group effort from one of her other quilting groups.

Carol has been playing with textures, starting with stuff from the baggie in my embellishment class.

the next piece she used oil paint sticks for the center design.

This 9 block quilt had really nice textures.

The veiws around Mary's house were beautiful. We had some fresh snow on Tuesday, 2 days earlier.

These were wild Lupin in the ditch by her house.

This weekend we had really warm weather. 80 degrees! I spent both days out on the deck.

The elderberry bushes are in bloom around the house, & giving off a Heavenly scent. They remind me of Lily of the Valley.

Warren has been doing some hard labor planting perennials & building a garden.

I plugged in my Kindle & listened to Harry Potter (I was very excited to finally be able to get the books on Kindle). I've reread them multiple times, & always wanted to be able to listen to them while quilting or dying fabric, or cooking, etc.

Today, after getting inspired by a new book, & a phone call from my friend Kathy, I decided to experiment with wool, silk, & cotton that has been rust dyed. I picked leaves from the elderberry bushes, Lupin, Lavender, clover, & Dandelions. The wool had been premordanted in Alum (thank you Kathy), the silk & used vinegar for mordant, & the cotton had been rust dyed then soaked in a salt solution, so I figured that was the mordant for those pieces.

I also did a pot of shelf fungus, which I simmered a piece of the wool, then put it into the glass jar, then added a piece of the rusted cotton fabric to the pot after the wool was removed.

Here are the pieces after steaming, that I wrapped in plastic wrap, & will wait a few days to open them up & see what happened.