Three Cheers for the Red, White, and Blue

We are going to be celebrating our nation's birthday in the mountains this weekend.  Here is a little bit of Americana to celebrate the Fourth of July.

The entrances to the Heritage neighborhood are all done up in red, white, and blue flowers.

One block up from us is Marshall Farm Road.  Where it is extended past Rogers Road, they have added a traffic circle, and have decorated with a huge fountain and two smaller ones.

All around the circular garden are American flags.

This large home in Heritage has a proper flagpole with the flag on display.

Star of the Garden, pieced and quilted by Jeanne T. McBrayer for Carolina Longarm Challenge

I hope you all have a safe and happy Fourth of July weekend!

WIP-Think Like an Artist, Lesson 1

Finally, a new project to blog about! Between returning to full-time teaching and having my sewing room in a remodeling wreck, I have not done any quilting for a couple of weeks. But, I had signed up for the online class through Quilters' Threads. It is Think Like an Artist with Pamela Allen. The first lesson is about shape, placement, space, and contrasts. I have a lot to learn about these concepts and am looking forward to the experience. It is a little intimidating to put yourself out there to be criticized on the Internet by the instructor and classmates. I just uploaded my photo, so I am eagerly awaiting the feedback. We could only use black and white fabrics, with freehand cutting with scissors. No drawing, no patterns, no rotary cutting. Those scissors are a little funky-looking! All the fabric pieces are just glue-sticked down to a batting. Once we get the OK on the placement of objects, we are to do a blanket-stitch around the edges with three strands of embroidery floss.

In non-quilting news, we had a blessing of heavy rain this week. About two inches or three inches total. When I came home Friday afternoon, my neighbor up the street was out by his pond in rubber boots watching his dam get breached by the water. This is unreal- that pond has been a scummy icky stagnant puddle with no water for about the last year. With all the heavy rain, his pond washed over his earthen dam, across the neighbor's driveway and into their pond, which also overflowed. The creek behind my house is usually about a foot across, but it also flooded and created some new creekbeds and standing water. Well, it hasn't hurt anything in my yard, and we are grateful for the rain. Just when everything has started blooming, it turned very cold and windy today. I hope all the blossoms don't blow off the trees just when they are getting pretty.

My neighbor's driveway that was flooded by breach of dam. Their lower pond is on the right.

Another neighbor's house with forsythia and Bradford pears in bloom.

And this is the new development at the end of my street. Anyone want to buy Lot 4? Looks like it might be a little soggy! Actually, the developer made a series of sediment ponds to protect the creek from mud being washed in. Good thing, huh? They filled up for the first time this week.