Sea Turtle Painting...and Going Home!

I saw a sea turtle photograph on the cover of the Scene Magazine at the doctor's office.  I decided I had to paint him!

Sea Turtle, by Jeanne Turner McBrayer, 2015

Wonderful news...my husband finished his last day of radiation on Friday!  We thought Day 44 would never get here!  They awarded him a diploma!

Here is a shout-out to Mary from Dattoli, who is also a quilter.  Thanks for looking at my blog!  I hope to have some more "quilty" content before long.

After finishing at Dattoli Friday morning, we had to go to the Sarasota hospital for a surgical procedure.  He did well, and we came back to Fort Myers to recover for the weekend.  After a return trip to the doctor on Monday, we hope to fly home to North Carolina in time to see a little bit of autumn.

Life is good!

More Quilt Barns

We are having a wonderful time up here in the chilly, windy, but beautiful North Carolina mountains.  We have been on several excursions and enjoyed the beautiful colors of the changing leaves.  Yesterday we went to the New River General Store.

On the way I saw lots of new quilt squares added to barns and storage buildings.  This is one of the prettiest yet, a log cabin block that literally glowed.

Here is a Lemoyne Star.

Both Sunbonnet Sue and Overall Ollie were on this hay barn, looking like signs on rest room doors.

The Blue Ridge Parkway is closed for repairs to the stone guardrails on the way from Sparta to Laurel Springs, but we were able to travel as far as the Stone Mountain overlook.  Beautiful!

The clouds were lined up in formation like they were marching above the mountain ridges.

The day before, we went for a visit to our friends Tom and Vicky's farm in West Jefferson.  We all enjoyed seeing their beautiful garden and orchards. She still had some towering sunflowers.

This is the hillside behind Tom and Vicky's house.

Tom let us load up with apples for the deer.

Not to mention some pumpkins.  The trailer was loaded for Tom's son to take to the Farmers Market the next day.

When we got back, we went up the mountain and put out some of the apples for the deer.  We had a couple buckets outside of our garage last night, and the deer came right to the house and munched on some of them!

Kasey looked like a dog angel with a halo around her as she ran ahead through the meadow.

Tomorrow is the first Monday of the month, which means my art quilt bee meets.  We are going to do some faux screen printing and play with Inktense color blocks.  Can't wait!

Beautiful Day

It is sunny and cool here in beautiful northwestern North Carolina.  This was the view from our yard this morning.  You can just see the dam over Peak Creek down below, and the tree farm across the road.

We went to West Jefferson this morning.  We had not been to Antiques on Main for awhile, so we stopped in to shop te 12,000 square feet of vendor booths.  I came out with a cute little McCoy pitcher.  It's the one on the right on the windowsill.

On the way back, we stopped to take a picture of the quilt barn at the base of Mount Jefferson.  There is a llittle bit of fall color on the mountain near the peak.

We went on another Gator ride this afternoon.  Sure enough, our granddog Roo flopped right back down in the mud puddle at the top of the hill, joined by our dog Kasey, who loves to drink the skanky water.

We have been watching the NC State-Wake Forest game on TV.  State was horrible during the first half, but they just scored a touchdown on fourth down to bring them within seven points in the fourth quarter. 

Tonight we are cooking steaks with Ricky, Mary, and Kenny to end a wonderful day.

We Finally Gave in to the Urge for Internet

Charlie and I headed into West Jefferson Friday morning and signed up for Internet service here in our mountain cabin.  We resisted for a long time, but now we can bring our laptops and keep up with the world.

While we were in town, we stopped by the Ashe County Cheese Factory.  They have painted the milk tanks in front to look like Holstein cows! 

                    

                     

We went up the mountain on the Gators Friday afternoon, and the perpetual mud puddle on the dirt road at the top has turned into a sinkhole of mud.  Which did not stop the dogs from jumping in and cooling off in the skanky water.

                        

In fact, Roo was positively giddy about his mud bath!

                       

We have a big group up here between our three houses on the family compound.  Here is the youngest, precious little Shelby, with her Mamaw Mary and my sister Katy.

                           

And here is the oldest, my father Pete Turner.  He decided he wanted to paint, so I set up a table in the shade of our garage looking out onto the woods.  He made a small 4" x 6" abstract mountain scene in watercolor.  He makes color copies of these and mounts them on greeting cards.

                     

I painted along side him, and will post my painting later when it is dry.

My nephew, Donnie, and his family are also up for the weekend.  Here is his basset hound, Rooster!

                      

He actually has two basset hounds, Rooster and Dixie, who are supposed to make little Basset puppies one day.

My brother Chris came over from Banner Elk after doing a little fishing.  His hip waders looked a little suspicious in the back of his car.

                                 

It has been a nice day with family, dogs, sunshine, and beautiful scenery.

Quilt Projects from The Whacky Ladies Bee

Thursday night was our monthly Whacky Ladies quilt bee meeting at Janice's house.  Lots of great eye candy during show-and-tell!

First, here is another finished charity quilt from our sew-in day at Quilts Like Crazy in January.  The rail fence patchwork is another UFO from my friend Marcia's mother, Anne Vernon.  Kathy took it home and added some borders, machine-quilted, and bound it.  This will be donated to Quilts on Wheels.

Kathy also makes baby quilts to be given at baptisms at her church.  This one has gingerbread cookies.

Here is Carolyn's quilt top made from farm-themed fabrics.  The pattern is called "Warm Wishes." (BTW, I have Armoire Envy over Janice's beautiful painted furniture piece behind Carolyn and Irene!)

Irene's Show-and-Tell was this lovely quilt top made from Bernina block-of-the-month squares.  She used a Marti Michell ruler to make the stars in the sashings.

Lori has been doing some weaving on her new loom.

Janice showed a gorgeous paper-pieced wallhanging from an Eileen Sullivan pattern.

Charlie and I went to the mountains on Friday.  What a difference from the previous weekend.  It was just the two of us and Kasey, and our neighbors Ricky and Mary.  It was very nice on Friday, but Saturday we had rain and storms off and on.  That lead to some interesting cloud shots

The rain was good for the new Christmas tree seedlings that Charlie planted on the hill by our driveway.  They look good behind all the daffodils.

Sunday was warm and beautiful.  We took a long Gator ride up the mountain.

Kasey is loving the chance to run free and cool off in the creek.

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

Mountain Weekend with the Family

Opening Day of Trout Season...the first Saturday in April.  In the North Carolina mountains, winter can linger into early May, and it still had a hold on us for Opening Day this year.  We woke up to a dusting of snow on the picnic tables and the cushions we use in the back of the Gator when the kids are visiting.

It continued to snow off and on all day.  It was windy, too.  Not ideal fishing weather, but the early risers had very good luck.  Most of them caught their limit.

The McBrayer cabin decided to sleep in and fish later.  Bryson and Avery fished a little. Do you see their helper to the left?

This was Kasey's first trip to the mountains when my sister's family and friends were all there with their own dogs.  Everything went well.

That's a mess of dogs!

We bundled up in parkas and went for a Gator ride across the mountain.  We took my nephew's stepdaughter, Anna, along with us. When we got to the Christmas tree farm at the top, the kids got out and ran. 

When we rode back down to the creek, we noticed that some very optimistic beavers had been busy.

We went back to my sister's place and played with the babies.  These are Katy's two grand-babies.

Their parents' friends were also there with their baby girl.  So, there were a whole mess of baby girls to amuse us.  That's Big Mike holding all three little ladies.

Sunday was a totally different story weather-wise.  We are talking sunshine, no wind, and shirt-sleeve weather.  We ate breakfast outside on those same picnic tables that had been covered with snow. We took a wonderful ride, during which five deer ran across the path in front of us.  Then we sat outside on my sister's deck and visited with my father, who Katy had driven down from Boone.  How wonderful to be able to sit out all together and enjoy the sunshine.

I had left my camera behind, so no pictures.  But, I hated to leave for home on Sunday afternoon.  It is going to be nice today, too, with a forecasted high of 83 degrees.  I hope Saturday was my last day to wear my parka this season!  The next time we see Bryson and the kids will be at the beach in two weeks. 

Come on, springtime, stick around!

Mermaid Jacket- WIP

Here is what I have been working on this week-the Mermaid Jacket.    I checked with my instructor, Linda Schmidt from Quilt University, to get the okay about posting our class work.  This jacket requires a lot of construction!

I started with the yokes for both fronts and the back.  This is where the undersea scene will be developed.  Here is what the back looks like with some seaweed before it was all couched down with a variety of threads.

Here are the fronts.  I couched yarns, floss, and other fibers along the edges of the seaweed and ocean floor.  My ocean floor is kind of colorful, yes?

Of course, there must be some mermaids for the Mermaid Jacket.  I decided to paint mine with Tsukineko inks for the skin and Lumiere paints for the torso.  They are drying and might make the next WIP edition.

There is a lot of strip piecing involved to add to the rest of the bodices.  Here are parts of three different strip sets to coordinate with the yokes.  That bottom set is not as curvy as it looks in the picture!

It has been a long time since I have done this much patchwork.  I am almost caught up with Week 3 of 4.  Tomorrow, Week 4's lesson will be posted, but we are leaving for the mountains in the morning. 

 It will be opening weekend of trout season.  You can't just throw in a line and catch a trout any more.  You have to have not only a fishing license, but a trout stamp.  The streams are stocked before opening day.  Traditionally, you can count on bad weather for opening day.  This was especially true back in the day when we used to camp in tents down by the creek.  I remember once going up there when Bryson and my nephew Jason were only two years old.  It rained Friday night, snowed and turned to ice on Saturday.  Everything in the tent got wet, as well as all our cooking gear and food outside.  We went by the K-Mart to get some dry sweatpants and sweatshirts, socks and underwear for the kids.  Then we went back to Greensboro to my sister's for the rest of the weekend.

Bryson is bringing our grand-kids for the weekend, so I hope it is not a repeat of that experience!  It has been raining all week.  They say it might snow on Friday.  At least now we have a snug and cozy cabin to retreat to.  And a washer and dryer.  And a shower.  And a kitchen.

Life is good!