Doing the Happy Star Dance

This afternoon I followed the directions in Quilting By Improvisation to make this curved star with flames, called "My Star Dances" in the book. Vikki Pignatelli's instructions are very clear, with lots of photos and step-by-steps. I was fairly satisfied with my results, although I had a bit of fullness in the red part of the star. I will quilt it, probably on the Gammill, then add a faced backing in a curvy shape. My biggest problem today was that I burned my left ring finger on the steam iron when I was turning one of the seams under. Nice blister! HMMN, maybe the messy glue stick is not such a bad alternative.

What to do with old quilt magazines?

Yesterday I went upstairs to sew the binding on Lily's quilt, but was stopped by the pile of old quilt magazines that I had pulled out last Thursday for the guild's silent auction. I decided not to haul any mags in for the auction, but did clear out about eight books that I never refer to. The mags were from 2000-2002. I went through all the Quilters' Newsletters and pulled out articles to keep, and actually filed them alphabetically in folders. I still have a pile a foot high to deal with.

Then, I decided to start a different project that I got excited about after watching her on The Quilt Show. I bought Vikki Pignatelli's book, Quilting by Improvisation, and have now created the freezer paper pattern for "My Star Dances." This project introduces her method of piecing with curves. I am excited to try it, because she does not use any glue stick or glue like other methods I have tried and don't like. I end up with glue all over my hands, table, tools, you name it! Vicki uses a lightweight stabilizer and freezer paper. Usually Vikki just irons down the fabric to the stabilizer, using the freezer paper pattern on top as a guide. She recommends using Stitch Witchery on the narrow roll when it is necessary to fix the seam allowance in place. We will see how successful I am with this method. The possiblilities for artistic quilting are endless if you can sew anything you can draw! In fact, I hope to take this book and go through it step by step to learn all her methods. One of my quilting groups has issued a challenge to make a leaf art quilt by our fall quarterly meeting. Maybe I will come up with something original by then!

What Mother Nature is up to in my yard

No new progress on any quilting projects so far today. I have been working on the cabinet under the kitchen sink, which had to be emptied out yesterday when the dishwasher installers were here. Yuck- not my most immaculate area of the house. Anyway, there had been a leak at some point, and everything had to come out, the caulking around the main water pipe was cracked and dried, and there is a hole in the cabinet floor. Time-consuming to fix, but I am on my way to Wally-World for some of that expanding foam to apply around the pipe.

Meanwhile, got caught up in a little yard work, and was astonished to see a nest of bluebird babies almost ready to fledge in one of my boxes! I had been surprised to see on my fellow fiber blogger Vicki W's post that she had a second batch of bluebirds in her yard. My thinking was, it's too d___ hot for that sort of foolishness in the south! Mine look just like the one in her most recent photo.

I was watering the azaleas and camellias near the woods when out shot a little baby bunny, probably only about five inches long, wondering why he was getting a shower! There was another one near the pond on my street when I walked the dog this morning. It was so inexperienced, it did not even try to run away from large-jawed Maggy. I threw a pebble near it to get it to scamper, but it was in the same spot when we walked back. Maggy is doing better about denying herself a delightful chase when she is on the leash. In her younger days she sent me airborne a few times when she saw a squirrel or a deer.

My front yard is in full sun, and once a plant gets established there, they tend to grow well beyond their expected size. I have a weigela and a viburnum that are about twelve feet tall and ten feet wide, and I need to move all the other stuff in the perennial beds that are being crowded out. Well, that's a job for the cooler fall months.

Here is a lavender and a viburnum that have gone crazy in my front garden beds.

Mountain home update

A lovely birthday weekend in the mountains! Got a lot done on the cabin. Kitchen cabinets are installed, exhaust fans vented out, washer/dryer installed, some new landscape grading improvements. We are so thankful to the friends and relatives who have been helping us finish up. The goal is to spend the night in the cabin by July 4 weekend, when gobs of people will be coming to the mountains for our annual tube float down the New River.

Gave the new camera a workout...it is great to have one again! Here is one of my projects, a stairwell to my bench on the fern bank above the creek. I was proud of my manual labor on this one!

Got New Camera...It's My Birthday...

Does the title of this post immediately make you think of that ridiculous Geico commercial with Mini-Me dancing on the table singing, "Got my car fixed, it's my birthday?"



I did the happy dance myself yesterday about an hour after my sad post about ruining my new digital camera. My wonderful husband, Charlie, called me from work and asked me to meet him for lunch at Best Buy to pick out my birthday present- a replacement camera! I had intended to punish myself for my carelessness by doing without a new camera for awhile, especially with our cabin nearing completion. We have many items to purchase in the next few months.



Anyway, we got the same camera, which in four months has been upgraded to a model with more mega pixels and some improved buttons. I feel so fortunate! And yes, this time we got the four-year warranty that will cover anything except loss or theft.



What a great start to my birthday!
Actually, I got a wonderful gift from son and daughter-in-law on Wednesday. My husband and his partners hosted a client appreciation dinner at a fabulous, unique restaurant in Raleigh called Bloomsbury Bistro, and Dave and Emily attended as guests. Look at the house sign they gave me! It will proudly be displayed in our mountain home. It even smells like Christmas trees! Thanks, guys! We are leaving for Laurel Springs in a couple hours, and nephew Jason plans to be there to help us with installing our new cabinets, and finish up some of the construction areas that the inspector wants us to re-do. I am looking forward to the cooler temps of the higher elevation, since the highs will be in the nineties here in the Piedmont this weekend.

Last night I went to my quilt guild meeting and showed off "Cute As a Lily-bug," the name I have chosen for my granddaughter's quilt. It was most gratifying to hear oohs-and-aahs during show-and-tell. I did not have the binding on yet, but I did finish adding some hot-fix crystals to the dragonfly wings, to make them shine, and to the heart appliques.













And finally, here is a joyful picture for my birthday of a ladder I painted last summer, which is now a plant-stand on my back deck. I love looking out the window from my kitchen and seeing the bright colors of this "patchwork" ladder and all the bright flowers.

The Curious Incident of My Camera in the Night-Time

Perhaps you recognize the title of this post as a paraphrase of Mark Haddon's wonderful novel. What happened to my beloved little Canon digital is a sad event with a sad outcome, as I discovered yesterday. Although when you read what happened, you may be ROFLYAO.

I bought the camera in February, mainly in anticipation of taking it with me to MQX and other quilt shows. It is small, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, but with a nice big LCD screen of about three inches. In addition to quilt shows, I used it to take pictures of my finished quilts, my grandchildren, my flowers, the mountains...it was so handy to carry around. My husband has a wonderful Sony with a large zoom lens that is much larger and about twice as expensive, but I hated to borrow his to take to quilt meetings or shows. Besides, mine took better videos!

So, one night in the mountains, I took it with us when we went on a Gator ride up to the top to view the sunset and the mountain valleys. I got some great shots of the mist and fog shrouding the lower areas. A little wine, beautiful scenery...

and when we got back to the cabin, I ran in to make a pit stop, and received a phone call on my cell, which I carry clipped to my waistband when we are in the mountains. Everyone else has a Nextel phone, but unfortunately their service area has not reached out remote little mountain home yet. Anyone that wants to reach us calls my cell phone number. So, here is the curious (or sad or embarrassing) part. I stood up in order to get to my cell phone off my waistband, said hello, and my actions caused my poor little Canon to flip out of the pocket of my jacket and splash into-GASP- the great new porcelain Toto fixture we had recently installed. OH NO! I immediately tried to turn it on, and nothing happened. I took it apart and dried it overnight. It came back on, and I was able to view my pictures just fine. Happy dance! Then I tried to take a picture, and got nothing but wavy lines. UH OH. So I let it dry out several more days. More bad news...got a Lens Error message. The lens is frozen and won't go in or out at all. Not looking good, but I took it to the store where I purchased it. They sent it off for repair. Got a phone call yesterday...the repair shop says that when they took the camera apart, they found CORROSION! That VOIDED MY WARRANTY! It CANNOT BE REPAIRED! And of course, I had not purchased the insurance or extra warranty that would have covered damages due to any reason.

So, it's Requiem for a Camera, and a bit of advice.

Buy the warranty.

Buy a waterproof case.

Use the camera case you purchased with the long strap instead of sticking the oh-so-convenient camera in your pocket.

Bye-Bye little camera. :(

Quilted and Yo-Yo'ed

Yesterday, Lily's quilt had its turn on the Gammill. Just like Lily herself, the quilt was no trouble, and hopefully, full of personality! I did my favorite kind of quilting, free-motion swirls and flowers, with outlining around the appliques. I did not do any quilting inside the leaves, flowers, or letters, thinking that these might be embellished. Hmm, maybe I should have done a little.

The next step was to add fabric yo-yo's, buttons, and beads to make dragonfly eyes and flower centers, as well as spots on the ladybug.

I am thinking that I will add a few more beads or crystals here and there. Melody Crust mentioned at her workshop that her students often ask, "How do I know when I have enough embellishments?" Her reply: "If you have to ask, you're probably not done." Will try to add the binding and sleeve today.