Great Mail to Brighten the Day

It is still cold, rainy, and windy today...but I have lots of shiny pretty things that arrived yesterday to fondle and admire!

First was a big Priority Mail box that returned my little art quilt, Second-Hand Rose, who has been traveling with the Breaking Traditions 2008 art quilt exhibit. Rose still looks good despite all the little flowers and beads attached to her.

In the box with Rose were two door prizes that I won for participating in the 2009 Breaking Traditions exhibit with my quilt Mountain Home. One prize was this wonderful little piece of pottery. It is a teabag saucer, donated by the exhibit curator Lynn Krawczyk. I love original pottery, and this piece fits right in with my home decor.


In addition to the little plate, I received a funky hand-knitted pouch donated by Vickie Boteler. I had just e-mailed to my friend Cathie Recca that I would love to try freeform knitting and crochet...and that very day received this little purse made of many different fibers. It is so cute...reminds me of a little hanging bird's nest.


Here it is hanging on my dragonfly wall hooks, along with a treasured mountain fiber art piece that I purchased at the Grove Park Inn gallery years ago.

After posting this blog, I started to put away the prizes and discovered another little surprise that I had overlooked...a piece of hand-dyed fabric and a lovely fiber cord from Chris Daly at Dye Candy! Thank you, Chris!

In the same mail, I received this fabulous hand-dyed fabric that I ordered from Vicki Welsh's Etsy shop. It is one yard of a gradient from fuchsia to blue. I love the variations in the colors, and plan to use this piece in a Layered Waves workshop with Ginny Eckmieir next week.

And since I was fondling fabric, it was only right that my package from Hancock's of Paducah arrived shortly after that, with this lovely assortment of batiks in bright jewel tones. The fabrics have ferns, hummingbirds, butterflies, and leaves- all my favorites.

I also ordered some packaged battings by Quilters Dream. I had never tried the Puff batting before, but wanted to try it for some old and puckery quilt tops that I have promised to finish for my sister-in-law. I have been putting these off for a long time, but am ready to start the first one. The Puff batting is polyester with a nice loft to it, that I am hoping will disguise some of the fullness in the star quilt tops. But, even my husband agreed, this batting is delightfully, delectably soft! It is supposed to be light in weight but incredibly warm. I will let you know how well it works with my Gammill.

An Artsy Retort

When I posted my final pictures of the stitched-down Cut Flowers piece, I received this reply from the workshop instructor (artist Pamela Allen):

Hasn't the stitching enhanced the leaves especially! You tell your turning applique friend that your stems and the stitching is an element that makes the viewer take pleasure in the NEGATIVE space between the stems. This had a good start and now a great finish!

Wow, I could never have phrased that so well. I did not know the viewer was taking pleasure in my negative space!

Yesterday, I was outside weeding the mini-garden surrounding my mailbox when it started to rain. A soft, gentle rain. Just what my flowers needed! Later in the day, the bottom fell out of the clouds and we got at least an inch of rain. Charlie and I had a rare opportunity to sit on the front porch rockers and watch the lightning while we sipped our wine. (Our area has had very little rain for the past year.) Some time during the night, our power went off. I was awakened by a blinding flash of lightning, followed by eerie darkness and silence. We normally have two fans on in our bedroom, a ceiling fan and a box fan, to muffle sounds of barking dogs and provide a nice "white noise." It was strange to try to sleep in total silence. The power was restored before morning.

Yesterday, I went upstairs to begin my Lesson 2 for the workshop I am taking. I had to decide on the two hues I will use. I got all my hand-dyed fabrics out and sorted them by color from light to dark. I did not know I had so much! I collected hand-dyes for several years from a New Zealand fabric dyer who sold on e-Bay. Sometimes I was able to get a meter of gorgeous hand-dye for as a little as $3.00. She does not seem to be e-Baying as frequently any more, but her selling name is 2dye4-fabrics. Anyway, I never did decide on my two hues. I did get a lot of my fabric sorted, including several drawers in my dresser full of fat-quarter size commercial fabrics. And I started going through my two plastic file cabinets of "scraps." Most of these I can get rid of, since the pieces are too small to deal with.

Then, I started cutting some of the scraps into various-sized squares for scrappy quilt projects.

All this did not get my new sewing room put together, or my Lesson 2 completed, but it was satisfying to make some order out of the chaos in the old sewing room.