Wednesday Work-in-Progress: Zen Garden

Remember the oriental fabric that I had fun quilting on my long-arm on Monday? Here it is after quilting with light blue Signature cotton thread. I outlined some of the gold shapes in the fabric, and just had fun making feathers, flowers and vines in other areas.


Today we are having more of the gorgeous sunny, breezy, low-humidity weather that is so rare in the South in July. I decided to embellish the piece with Shiva paint sticks to bring out the gold of the fabric and some of the quilted motifs.

I am very happy with the way this piece is coming along. When the paint dries, which is not taking long in this weather, I will probably add some Tsukineko inks to some of the smaller detailed areas, and possibly even some gold pen. Then, some beads for more highlighting and shine.

Tomorrow my quilt bee is having a sew-in day at our local quilt shop, Quilts Like Crazy in Wake Forest. One of our bee members works there as their long-arm quilter. The store is going to provide lunch and drinks for us. We are going to be working on more charity quilts for the guild.

After that, Charlie and I are heading to the mountains again, where this time we will have our oldest son and two grandkids to keep us company.

Charity Quilt Kit Assembly

We got at least fifteen quilt kits assembled yesterday at The Flower Cottage on the Dorothea Dix Hospital campus in Raleigh. These will be for small, 40-inch or less "Quilts on Wheels," for senior citizens in rest homes. Our guild basically has a room in the cottage available to store fabric, and we had eleven huge boxes of color-sorted fabric to work with, plus some bolts. Some of this was donated by families of deceased quilters, and there were some bolts and large pieces donated by the owner of Archangel Quilt Shop when they closed.

Jean and I were met by another CyberBee member, Roberta, who works nearby at N.C. State. I was disappointed in The Flower Cottage, as the little house is not well-cared for, had no charm, and had a musty smell. It is surrounded by other small homes that probably once were provided for staff members at Dix Hospital. One of the nearby homes had beautiful windows with leaded arch designs. Sadly, all the buildings have peeling paint and a shabby appearance. The hospital is scheduled to close, and the local developers are salivating over the chance to add condos, office buildings, and shopping to this beautiful green campus with huge oak and pecan trees. My camera's battery died after just one pitiful picture.

Since it is at least a 45-minute drive from Wake Forest, I decided to go ahead and bring home fabric for the kits I am to provide in January. We signed up for different months to sit at a designated table at Guild meetings, take in finished quilts and give out new kits. There was a large stash of homespun plaids as well as some outdoor-themed novelty fabric with cabins, moose, etc., so I took home a bunch of those. They were destined to go straight to the washing machine to get rid of any musty smell.,

Will try to finish two other small quilts on the longarm today, but don't have the backs ready yet.

Yesterday I fired up my Gammill Longarm machine for the first time since January. Yikes! The first project was the long-abandoned baby quilt for my niece Rachel's baby. He was born in March. It is all flannel, Minkee, and combed cotton. Super soft! I decided to just use some of the cloud, sun, kite, and other motifs from the cute border fabric, and freehand the whole thing.

Pleased that everything worked great after the months of inactivity, I decided to do some freehand quilting on an interesting piece of oriental fabric, about the size of a fat quarter. I am thinking of adding fabric paint, beading, and/or other embellishment.

Heading out today with my friend Jean to prepare some quilt kids for one of our guild charities, Quilts on Wheels. The fabric is stored in a place called The Flower Cottage. It is on the campus of the state mental institution in Raleigh, which is actually one of the most lovely, tree-lined, grassy real estate in our capital city. Not sure how the guild got hooked up with them, but I have heard it is very nice. I'll take my camera!

It was wonderful to be in the North Carolina mountains for the long Fourth of July weekend. Good weather, good friends, good food, good drinks, good mountain river float. It was a much smaller group than normal, since one of my nephews and his wife are expecting a baby any day. My sister's whole family stayed home to wait for the baby, who is still not here. But one of their good friends gave birth on Thursday, so congratulations go out to Amy and Mike. Mike gave us the gift of his electrician expertise on wiring the cabin two years ago. I think little Shelby may be getting a home-made gift from me!

When we arrived at the cabin, I was thrilled that some nasturtium seeds that I planted among the plastic flowers in our window boxes had bloomed and were trailing. I watered them ASAP. Little did I know, there was a nest of baby wrens in one of the boxes, hiding under the foliage.

I did not drown them, but Mama Wren was mighty glad when we left and she could feed her babies without so many people close at hand. We had our son Dave, his wife Emily, and four of their college friends all staying at our place.

I put some more perennials out where our driveway forms a switchback coming up the hill. the ferns and rhododendron are gratis from Mother Nature.

Inside, I hung up one of my Collage Mania pieces that were recently framed. I decided to leave it in the horizontal orientation. It is next to my little kitchen sink area.

We had not one, but two days of floating down the New River on tubes. It is so much fun, and what a bonus to see some of the most beautiful picture-perfect postcard scenery as we drifted. One of our college friends and his son joined us on the float on Saturday.

The past few years, we have experienced thunderstorms and even hail last year by the time we reached our pick-up point. This year, no rain at all until all the fun was over and it was time to leave on Sunday. It makes it easier to leave when it is raining. Even in the rain, I hate to see it go.

Wednesday Works-in-Progress: Kid's Quilts and more Painted Fabric

Wednesday already...this will be my last blog until next week, since we are heading to the mountains for our annual Fourth of July river float with family and friends. Can't wait!

Here is a finished quilt top for a little girl. Very easy, just squares and four-patches, plus two rectangles with machine-appliqued hearts.

I like for appliques on bed quilts to have turned edges, not just fused, but I did not want to hand-applique. I turned and ironed the edges, pinned on, and machine-stitched. On one of them, I used some of my machine stitches to add decorative elements.

This one is for a little boy- frogs, fish, and construction equipment. Just blocks on the design wall. I mark the left side of the rows with numbered post-it notes to help when piecing the top.

And here is the first of the Yellow Brick Road tops to be pieced together. Soft and pretty!

Yesterday I continued to paint fabric on the porch since I had all my "stuff" downstairs.

Red and yellow Setacolors mixes

Shiva paint sticks on maroon dyed fabric. The patterned ones have the paint applied over rubbing plates.

Turquoise and green Shiva Paint stick on purple fabric.

Blue and green paints on upholstery fabric, with blue stamps.

Remember my neighbor's cat that thinks it lives at my house? Now they have a kitten that thinks he lives here. He was definitely checking out all the activity on the porch. Those are Tsukineko inks and Fantastix applicators.

I experimented with some glue resist designs. I used Elmer's gel glue, but it is the kind with glitters. It looked pretty drying in the sun!

When the glue was dry, I covered the fabric with Stewart Gill paints. The Byzantium paints have lovely bits of mica or something shiny in them. When this piece has dried for 24 hours, I will wash out the glue and see what I get.

I am continuing to experiment to find the best materials for my "Grand Canyon tree" art quilt. I painted some Nutmeg Stewart Gill paint, and also mixed a brown with red and green Setacolor paints. I tried drying a couple pieces with cheesecloth to add a textural design.

That's it! Have a wonderful rest of the week. And Happy Birthday, America!

Painting Fabric

Yesterday was hot and dry, but not as humid as the weekend. Perfect weather for fabric painting!

I gathered up my stuff and spent the afternoon on the screen porch, where I paint on a glass table that wipes up easily. All of these pieces were painted with Setacolor transparent paints. Some of them are sun-printed. Just apply paint, place some leaves, flowers, pasta or whatever on top, and let them dry flat in the sun.

I used those one inch sponge daubers for most of the paint application. I pick them up when they are on sale at Michael's at twelve for a dollar. This one is printed with seashells and pasta.

Leaves from thyme. It smells nice!

Marigold leaves, ageratum blossoms, daylily stamens

The scarlet pieces are not sun-printed. These mostly resulted because I can't stand to leave paint on the palette, so I keep extra muslin on hand to use it up. I actually wiped the paint palette with the mult-colored piece.

I also transformed a piece of ugly hand-dyed fabric with Shiva paint sticks. That one is still curing.

While I was painting, the mail arrived with a timely DVD: Painting Fabric for Wholecoth Quilts with Judy Coates Perez. It was on sale from Interweave Press.

I stopped my slap-dash paint slopping to watch a true artist achieve lovely results with fabric paint. You get a template with the outline of the painting with the DVD. I could not get it to download from the Internet, but Interweave very helpfully e-mailed the template to me this morning.

I also received a lovely gift in the mail. You may remember the group comfort quilt that I made with other members of my Pamela Allen art quilt online class. There were twelve blocks, and the recipient made us each a 2010 photo calendar with the blocks from her quilt. It's in Norwegian, but she sent a little translation dictionary. I am thrilled with it! Here is Sherryl Buchler's block.

And here is Pamela Allen's.

What a lovely thank-you gift! In case you are wondering about the eighth column: no, Norway does not have eight days a week like the early Beatles suggested. The last column tells you what week of the year it is. I have never seen that feature on a calendar. Now, I will just have to get used to the week starting on Monday next year! The two weekend dates are in red, so that will help me get my mind around the change.

Weekend at Home

We were tempted to go to our mountain place this past weekend, especially with temperatures here in the nineties. But Charlie had to work all day Friday, and we are going up for the long Fourth of July weekend. So, we had a very pleasant weekend at home. We went to see the new Star Trek movie on Friday- very enjoyable although those time-space continuum movies always confuse me. At one point, young Spock was actually in the same place and having a conversation with his older self (Leonard Nimoy looking ancient.) My husband was a huge fan of the original Star Trek TV series, and we have seen every episode many times.

I got some more quilt piecing done, with two tops put together and another cut out. These are all children's quilts with simple squares or Yellow Brick Road blocks.

We dedicated most of our evenings to porch sitting. That activity was rewarded last night with a spectacular sunset. Here are some pictures from our front porch, which sits way back from the street.

A glass of Grand Marnier reflects the colors of the sky.

Our house is bright white, but the setting sun gave it a pink glow.

It was a good weekend. I hope yours was, too!