Oh, Look! The Spider Plant is Having Babies!

Oh, Look!  The Spider Plant is Having Babies

All finished and entered in the PAQA-South exhibit called Art Quilt-WHIMSY!  It has to be juried in, so I will know after March 15 if it is accepted.  I have never entered one of their shows before, although I have gone to see the exhibits at the Page-Walker House in Cary many times.

This quilt languished in the UFO pile for years until I discovered the opportunity for whimsy by adding the little spiders.  I added glitter to the plastic spiders, which I bought around Halloween one year.

It was good to get this one finished.

In other news, my beloved dog Kasey had surgery this week to repair a torn ligament in her right rear leg.  In humans, it is called the ACL.  They had to cut into her leg bone and insert a metal plate with pins into it.  She seems to have tolerated the procedure well.  A little droopy but hanging in there.

She is a very special dog who lets our little grand baby pet and snuggle with her, always comes when she is called, will spend all day lying at my feet, but joyfully runs with us on our trips up the mountain.  I hope she will be able to run again once she recovers.

This weekend we have our older son's family here from South Carolina.  They are being very sweet to our furry patient, too.

More Works-in-Progress

When the snow and ice storms hit last week, I rummaged through my bin of unfinished projects to find a project that needed hand-stitching.  It seemed likely that the power might go out.  I worked on the day lilies piece and got a lot of the hand appliqué done.

Before I could get it finished, I developed a problem with cracked skin around my cuticles on my thumbs.  I often get this problem in the winter.  I had to give the hand-stitching a rest, so I dug out yet another UFO and did some machine quilting on my Janome 6600.

It now has all the quilting done and the binding done.  I am thinking of putting this one in the PAQA-South art quilt show with the theme of Whimsy.  Right now it looks like a still life in a Victorian parlor, but I have some embellishments to add which will make it much more humorous.  For a hint, the featured plant is a spider plant...and look at the quilting in the window in the above right.

The backing is a batik with lots of mottled color.  I am getting better at quilting with the Janome, but would much prefer my Gammill.  It is still with its "foster mother" in Clayton.

This weekend we came up to the mountains to check on the progress of our cabin.  It is looking pretty.

There is still a lot to do.  This weekend we had mild weather, and it did not snow at all.  It was a quiet weekend.  I am longing to get into that new cabin.  Our driveway has gotten so muddy that you can't get up it unless you have four-wheel drive.  One of these days it will all get done.

Wednesday WIP- Trash to Treasure?

Does anyone remember my "Creative Challenge" project that started with a black trash bag and torn strips of colored plastic bags? I had to put it aside for awhile, but have now finished all the steps detailed in the challenge instructions. I started with two large pieces, but have cut them into more manageable sizes. It is surprising to see how pretty they look. The last step was to fill in the holes with the gold wrappers from Ferrero-Rocher chocolates. Since I am thinking of making a purse for the North Carolina Quilt Symposium "Purse-on-ality"challenge with mine, I decided to use the quilters' gold lame for the centers. I fused it to a piece of cotton before sewing to keep it from fraying. On this piece, I stitched around the centers and made flower shapes from a thick black thread.

I started out trying some of the jewel-colored threads for the flowers, but they did not show up against the rainbow organza. I stayed with black after that.

You know me, I get tired of doing the same thing over and over. On this large piece which will probably become the purse, I added a layer of Angelina fibers over the gold lame. Except for one center which I made from a piece of some stretchy, shiny purple polyester that I have had for years.


And, this one is postcard-size and uses the actual Ferrero-Rocher wrappers that my friend Michelle Bonds sent to me for this project. I have added some Lumiere paint and additional stitching to this one.

I am probably going to quilt these on the long-arm to get them to lay down a little flatter. You can't exactly iron them flat! And something needs to be done to improve those thick fern fronds.

Okay, today you get two WIP's for the price of one. Here is the latest revision to the dreaded spider plant art quilt. I changed the window location and fabric so I can add something in the window with embellishment or quilting. There are a few more leaves sewn in.

Speaking of a Work-in-Progress...here is one of my favorites. My oldest grandchild, Charles Avery, is five years old today. On April 29, 2004, I made Charlie get up at 2:00 AM and drive to South Carolina when we found out that the baby had been born by emergency C-section. We will be spending the weekend with them to celebrate.

And if you follow NHL hockey at all, there is a lot of celebrating going on in Raleigh after the Carolina Hurricanes won the Eastern regional playoffs in a stunning come-from-behind win over the New Jersey Devils with two goals in the last minute-and-a-half of play in Game 7. Go Canes! (Hey, Dave, how about that...I wrote about hockey on my blog! And we did watch the end of that game after Dancing with the Stars!)