Changes

You have not heard from me since Easter.   Sometimes life overwhelms.

Over a period of a few weeks, we found out that my husband Charlie's cancer is no longer in remission.  This was disappointing news after the very aggressive treatment he has undergone.  The good news is that Dr. Dattoli and his team in Sarasota think they can successfully treat the new areas with seven to eight weeks of additional radiation.

We are leaving for Florida tomorrow.  This time we are renting a house close to the cancer center.  We are taking our dog.  I am taking my sewing machine and watercolors.

We are going to get through this together.

In the meantime, we have moved!  We are no longer Raleigh residents.  This is quite a change after 52 years.  Our children packed us up and moved us to our mountain cabin just last week.  The basement got finished and the new storage shed arrived just in time for the move.  

So...on to Florida after only one week of being mountain residents.  When we get back we will have lots of time to sort things out and decide where to hang quilts and pictures.





  

Basement Studio Progress

A lot has happened to the basement area of our mountain cabin...which will become my sewing/art studio!  It now has drywall, electricity, and heat.  Charlie and I painted a primer coat on Wednesday until we ran out of both paint and energy, and our family arrived for Thanksgiving.  Besides painting, it will need a ceiling, floor, and light fixtures.  I ordered the bathroom vanity, faucets, cabinet and lights already.

If you want a preview, here is the laundry area just at the base of the stairs.

 We are going to add a utility sink in this area with the furnace.  That will be great for rinsing dyes or cleaning paintbrushes.

Under the stairs will be a closet.

The front room is the whole length of the cabin.  Right now it has my Gammill machine in there, which we have just been working around.

I am looking forward to having these beautiful views when I sew or paint.

You can see the Christmas tree farm across the street from the corner windows.

Here is the door to the bathroom.

The tub is in place, but nothing else.  But walls and a door are good!

After we finish painting, my brother-in-law says he will help us put in the suspended ceiling.  He has done one in his own basement room.

Once we get the sewing room/studio done, we will be making the move to the mountains full time.

And here is your reward for reading to the end...my two precious little turkeys who were here with us for Thanksgiving!

Layla was a good mountain baby, and Charlotte is a great big sister!  We have much to be thankful for.

Trying out Gelatos

Happy Easter!  We are spending Easter weekend at our mountain cabin.  We plan to stay awhile and get some R&R.  Charlie got a drone for his birthday in March, and is having fun flying it around the mountain.  It provides some remarkable photos!

The first one is our cabin, driveway, and the pond below.  That is a reflection of the sun on the water.

The next one shows the cabin and surrounding land.

I recently ordered a set of Gelatos by Faber Castell.  I had noticed a lot of people using them on the Bible Art Journaling pages, and was interested in giving them a try.  The set I got had only pastel colors, a paintbrush, and some wedge-shaped sponges for blending and applying color.

                                                       

The first thing I always do when I get a new set of paints or "colors" is make a color chart.  These gelatos come in tubes like chapsticks.  I applied the color directly to a journal page, then used the paintbrush and water to blend them.  Don't you like the names of the colors?  Yum!

Next I tried making a background by just applying the colors straight from the tubes, blending with water, and then drawing over the background color with different Gelatos.  This have a rather pleasing effect.  The journal I am using has rather smooth paper.  I noticed you can still see the marks of the original application lines.  Probably should have used those blending sponges.

 Then I played around with a composition using the Gelatos to make fruit.  I had to add some darks with watercolor pencils after blending the Gelatos.  My set had only pastels and I just needed some darks for contrast!

I also brought up my Lucky Stars quilt materials to work on this weekend.  I now have stacks of background patches and lots of prints for making many more stars.  I even marked the diagonal line on all the small squares which become the star points.  I hope to do some sewing tomorrow.  I am making this quilt for my friend Marcia using fabrics that she purchased in Europe.  

                                       

I thought this would be a quick pattern to make, but it is not.  There is lots and lots of cutting, lots of seams to sew, and then you have to trim each block to size.  After that you add the rectangular blocks all around the stars to make 15" blocks.  Once those are done, it should be much faster to put this quilt together.

Here is a fun page that I made for the Bible Art Journaling Challenge.  It is about when Solomon was building the Temple, and all the artists and skilled women were called to weave and spin and make the garment for the priest to wear.  It is called an "ephod" and is worn with a breastplate that has twelve symbolic jewels.

I had to look up all this information, especially since I had no idea what an "ephod" was.  To illustrate this verse (Exodus 35:25-29) I decided to make an ephod and breastplate.

I fused Angelina fibers along with some Textiva film to make the garment.  The breastplate is on a piece of gold metallic fiber that you can sew through.  I glued on twelve hot-fix crystals.  I added two pieces of onyx beads for the shoulder straps of the ephod.  The ephod is attached to the page only at the top with Washi tape, so it can be lifted up to reveal the scripture beneath.

I used gold Lumiere paint to frame the actual scripture verses on the opposite page.

More later!

Memorial Day Weekend in Mountains

We had a very productive weekend at our North Carolina mountain place.  We ordered a storage building being built by the Amish.  It will look a lot like this photo, but with a green tin roof.

Then we started building a rose garden along our driveway.  We already had a masonry wall built by our friend Tom Fissel last year.  The little girls in the family were using it as a balance beam, which made me nervous that they fall down onto the lower driveway.  When these knock-out roses fill out, I don't think they will want to be on that wall.

What a labor of love!  I am sure we will enjoy this garden for years to come.  One of these days we will cover that white wall with a rock veneer of some sort.

We also started insulating the basement that will one day be my sewing studio.  Our friend Big Mike also came up and finished the wiring.  Yippee...lights!  Power outlets!

I had not even turned on my Gammill all winter because it was so cold down there.  I briefly turned it on to check out the outlets.  It fired right up, and I gave it a good cleaning and a nice big drink of oil.  Can't wait to have some time to do some quilting.

I have been taking some nice walks with my camera phone.  Here are some of the nature shots of this beautiful area.

Fire pinks and ferns in our back yard.

A flame azalea blossom.

Mountain laurel

Mountain Laurel

On the way back to Raleigh on US 421 we were surprised to look up and see the Goodyear blimp overhead.  I think it was in the area for the Coca-Cola 500 race in Charlotte on Sunday.  I took a picture through our sun roof.

It was a great weekend!

Trip Around the World

Here is the Trip Around the World Quilt that I finished for my friend Marcia.  She and her husband joined us at our mountain cabin last weekend.

It is so large that my husband and I had to hold it up and take a picture remotely with his iPhone camera.

She was thrilled to have it done.  Her mom made the top before she got ill in her last few years.  We found it in her stash when we were going through her bins of fabric.

The quilting does not show in the top photo, but I did lots of swirls and feathers to soften all the lines and squares.  The photos are from when it was still being quilted on the machine.

We enjoyed a good time in the mountains.  It is getting very pretty up there with the fall foliage.

That's Marcia and I on top of our mountain.

How about this sunset on the way up on Thursday night?  Spectacular!

Tom and Pauline also came back up, and Tom and the guys finished the stone steps from the upper to lower driveways.  Now we need to decide how we will finish the walls.  Probably paint or some fake rock.

It was a relief to get the drain system and retaining wall done before the winter sets in.

Finished Junk Mail Journal

I came across an unfinished journal in my studio,  and decided to get it done in time for Christmas gift-giving.

The cover is made from a florist box from Hawaii. 

The inside cover is gessoed and painted and stamped.

I stitched the painted catalog pages together with a long sewing machine stitch.  Then I punctured holes through the pages and the cover, and used pipe cleaners to secure the signature.

I had some colorful lined post-it's and some orange duct tape, and added in places for journaling.

I also used some painted papers I had on hand.

With some colorful paper clips and a few bookmarks, the journal was almost 

Jdone.

I tied some fibers and fabric scraps through the pipe cleaners on the binding, and it was done!

This went to my daughter-in-law's sister, Kate, who is a college student.

Here is a quick little watercolor portrait that I did of my granddaughter, Lily.  We received a photo album full of good pictures of the three kids in our older son's family, and I used one as the reference for this sketch.

We did a lot of traveling during Christmas week.  I slept in five different places in seven days!

We finally got to go inside our new cabin, which is installed in place but not ready for occupancy.

I discovered that from our deck, we can hear the waterfall from the dam on the creek below.

We designed our fireplace while we were there.  We are getting quite excited about our new mountain place!