home again

Block #1 and #2 are done. Yea. Started an applique quilt a few days ago, Have all 12 blocks cut out and the pieces ready to glue to fabric. I'm using Stable Stuff for the inside of the blocks and liquid stitch to position the pieces onto the backgrounds. Its working great so now hope to get the rest done in the next month or so. Some blocks have 70 plus small pieces to work, so will take a while. I'm working on #3 and will put it up when I have it finished. This is really fun.
Norfolk retreat was this weekend. What fun. We had to have it at a different venue this year as the place we usually go was being remodeled. So it goes. We were at Divots Golf Course. Nice place but not quite as handy as before. Completely spaced off taking my camera so I didn't get any pictures of the neat stuff people were doing. We had two working on Dear Jane blocks. Oh my goodness, I am glad I didn't start that one. Would take me a lifetime to do all those tiny blocks. The blocks were really neat though and I give them credit for having the nerve to do this quilt. Lots of bright colors this year. and lots of projects completed.
Had best go start unpacking. Will post pictures as I get blocks done.

door decoration

Yea, door decoration for retreat is done. The theme is "
Wine, Women and Song. So, I found this fabric that has ladies going in all directions. Made a wine glass from two layers of fine net and some red fabric for the wine, fused it in place. Wrote Wine women and Song and my name in purple letters, fused in place then added a CD which I painted bronze, then wrote the theme on it with permanent marker and fastened it to the bottom corner of the piece. So am ready for retreat.
Still have to pack my suitcase, but have all my project stuff ready to go. Plan to work on an applique piece at retreat. We will be at the golf course this year, so will be different venue. Usually we are at a Monastery . Will be quite a change. ha. They probably have the wine and song!!
Turned nice today after yesterdays blizzard. Will take the blizzard though as the other side of the front had devastating tornado's. Scary . Heard from the people I know in the storm area and they were ok.

February challenge

The Feb challenge is up. color swatches are a deep colonial blue/ gold/ cream and two shades of egg carton blue. (OK a light and med light blue-but to me its egg carton blue) The theme is What do you remember? A light bulb went off when I read that and now have to figure a way to use the idea in a small piece. I'm thinking maybe trying to do something with photo transfer, but we will see if I can come up with anything.
Next week will be quilt retreat, so will not get anything worked out beyond a sketch or two. Have some more stable stuff appliqué planned for retreat. Wish me luck and that we do not get a snow storm and have to stay home. (That happened last year)

New piece

This is the new piece using the stable stuff inside the pattern pieces. I do not have this quilted yet, but haven't decided if I will do thread work over some of the pieces, or just quilt around each piece. The flower is done with the reverse side of the border fabric. I really liked the subtle coloration on the back of this fabric. The gold running through the front side, I thought, detracted from the fabric when used as flower pieces, so used it as border. Now I need to decide what to do to quilt it. What fun playing with fabric.

The rose pattern came from a class by Kandi Paige Gallup.

new project

Yea, it works great. I tried the stable stuff by Ricky Tims in this applique. It really works great. Keeps the applique pieces fairly stiff while doing the applique and dissolves when washed. I can see many uses for this --You can see some of the quilting in the closeup. Finishes about 24" square.
It was -15F this morning. brrrr Its now 10:30 AM and is still -8F. Unbelievable that they are saying 45F+ in a few days. But its Nebraska, wait 5 minutes and the weather will change.

Take it Further January

Spent the day finishing the January "Take it Further" challenge". Looked at my calendar and decided if it were to get done, I had best do it this weekend. The closeup shows the thread painting I put over the paint/ink in the design. (see yesterdays post) Decided the paint/ink just didn't do what I wanted, so thread painted it all. Added the "lightning" border fabric because it matched the dark purple color in the flowers. Quilted with a pale yellow thread in the body of the piece and purple in the borders. Am pleased with the experiment using the threads on top of the paint/ink ----

Take it Further

OK, worked a bit with the color swatch for the challenge. Sketched out some little fantasy flowers and colored them in with color pencil and some inks.

I did take the print out to the local hardware/paint store and picked up some paint swatches that were close to the color bar given.

So they aren't exact,but close enough. Added some yellow paint wash behind them (doesn't show to good on the picture) Now I think I will try to quilt it and see what happens.
This is really a fun challenge.

Finished my demo cards this morning. The first shows the steps needed to make the flying geese.

The rest shows the different sizes from 1" to 6" at 1/2" increments.

Fun project.

Small quilt

Did this small quilt top yesterday afternoon. Heard about a one seam flying geese, so had to try it out. This is done with two 3" squares of background and 1 -3" x 5- 1/2" rectangle. Fold the rectangle (right side out) and press. Lay the first square (right side up) line raw edge of folded rectangle with raw edge of square. Lay second square (right side down) on top of the folded rectangle. There should be about a 1/4" space between the fold and the edge of the block. Sew down one side of the stack Be sure it is on a side that the fold will be stitched into the seam.
Unfold and take the folded piece and pull the edges down to make the flying geese. The corners should pull down to the edge of the squares. Press in place. You should now have a dimensional flying geese block. Hope that made sense. Just be sure to sew along one edge of the folded rectangle so that it catches the fold and one long edge in that seam.

Now want to figure out if I can make other sizes.

2008

2008--oh my goodness how did it get to be 2008 already. Seems like a couple months ago we were worrying about Y2K.

I did get the sunset fabric picture finished. Shirley H sent me the fabric from Nevada. For Christmas--and along with this some out of this world chocolates. They have the factory near them, so always look hopefully forward to getting a box from her. grin. Love the sunset on the desert fabric. Knew when I opened the box thats what I wanted to do with it. thank you Shirley!!!!

The mask quilt is for the Chooseday Challenge List on Yahoo. Each month we will get a word to make something that represents that word to us. When I read Mask, I immediately thought of Mardi Gras. DS#2 had gone a few years ago and was telling me about some of the masks that people wore in the parades. So I knew thats what I wanted to do. May still add a few more beads, but didn't have the right size on hand so will have to wait for that till I go shopping again.

More frost pictures

The large evergreen is across the street.
The wire roll is across our back lot line.






Looking up into the trees in our front yard.






Tree in our front yard. The thickness of the frost was just amazing. Looked like it was snowing when it came off later in the day.

frosty morining

This is the frost on the small tree by the post office across the street. The frost is at least an inch thick on all the branches. The whole town looked like this. You can see the tree in the background is totally frost covered too.
Sure was a frosty, picture postcard scene. Went out to take some pictures and about froze. It was still quite foggy, cold and penetrated. My fingers were numb when I came in. Will try to put some more pictures up later.

Frosty Morning

A beautiful frosty morning outdoors. All the trees and bushes were about an inch thick with frost. It was foggy all night so the buildup on the trees was spectacular. Took some pictures but can't seem to get them to transfer over to the blog. Will have to work on that some.

Merry Christmas

Its snowing!!! I think there was some icing before it started to snow so will probably be very slick tomorrow morning.
Had dinner with Cindy and family, a nice visit and then home again. Ham, potato casserole, sweet potatoes, fruit plate, and of course Christmas cookies and cherry cheesecake. Oh my, how good. Of course there was a plate sent home, so will have leftovers tomorrow.
Yumm yummm

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve, ah yes, Christmas. Tomorrow we will go to DD's for gathering. Looking forward to a nice day. Weather people are saying maybe snow flurries, but not to be a lot of snow. YEA. We were lucky and missed the last weekends snow storm. Not by much, but it missed us. Not crying as we must have around 6" of the white stuff on the ground already.

My chooseday challenge is done for December. We were to make something with the theme "opposite". I had a lot of ideas, but ended up going with black/white. Mainly because the one I was trying out didn't work. that was clear/fog. Oh well will work on that a bit more in the new year and see if I can make it work out. some other themes I thought about were, thick/thin, visible/invisible, in/out, back/forth, wet/dry, dark/light, expand/contract, hot/cold, big/little, happy/sad, laugh/cry, sunshine/shadow/ winter/summer, spring/fall. All seemed like viable subjects and I will keep them all on file for future projects.
this piece was done by free cutting the shapes for the pieces. Hand appliqueing the black fabric onto the print, then hand putting the beads in place. The quilting is on the black and approximately 1/4" apart. I finished by sitching around, making a slit in the backing and turning, then fusing a piece of fabric over the slit. Quilted 1/4" from edge to make it look like a binding. I really like that way of finishing small pieces.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Holiday

Christmas is getting closer. Finished the cookies yesterday and today need to make fudge, then all is ready. Well as ready as it will ever get. Haven't had time to stitch as its been to busy. However have several things that will be done by the new year. The chooseday challenge is on the drawing board and fabric is pulled. Will not take overly long to complete, but just need to do it.
New computer came to live at my house. Now it is getting used to it. Will take a bit to accomplish that. Large flat screen isn't hard to get used to.
Merry Christmas to any and all who read this.

thinking

Now there is something new. ME thinking???? oh well, have been trying to come up with something for the new word of the month. "opposite" now how am I going to portray that one? black/white, thick/thin, visible/invisible, male/female, in/out, up/down, back/forth, dry/wet, dark/light, oh my so many ideas.
Have a couple preliminary sketches made up, and now will have to really think about trying to do one. Stay tuned to see what happens.

We missed the ice this weekend. Did add a bit of snow again, but all in all not bad. Melted a little today, off the streets that is. Supposed to get colder again tomorrow, but hey, we all cannot have the "global warming" ----Actually its been colder here this year than in probably 10 + years.
So it goes.
More on this later.

let it snow

Its snowing again today. supposed to do the same tomorrow, Monday and Tuesday. yuck. Oh well, good to be able to stay in the house.

This is a small kokopelli I did for a challenge list. the word we had to work with was "connected", so I "connected" the segments of this small hanging with thread. The outline of kokopelli was done with glue and gloss powder, I think it makes him look like he is floating above the landscape.

This months word is "opposite" so I have several sketches and now have to decide what to do with it.

Ice Storm

We had a nice little ice storm over the weekend. The picture is the tree by our back door. The ice was Saturday and I took the picture on Monday morning. Brrrrr. The scene is made from a kit that I bought at Curtis last spring while we were there for the spring fling. Was fun to do and now wish I had done it sooner. I painted the windows and street lights with glue and then put gold powder over it so the windows really look like they have lights in them.

still alive and kickin"

The last 6 weeks have been the pits. In a good way and a bad way. In August went to the Ricky Tims seminar in Omaha, now that was really a fun couple days. Lots of new ideas to play with, but not the time to actually do it.
Next was CQC retreat, this year it was at Camp Moses Merrill by Schuyler. Way out in the country on the bluffs, what a great place that is to have a retreat. Motel type rooms and a huge work area that was well lit and food, oh my, the food was great. We even got a few of the recipes for some of the dishes served.
Next was Threads across Nebraska. What a wonderful 2 days that was. Helped at the silent auction table all day on Saturday and helped sell tickets on our opportunity quilt on Friday. Sara Dillow had a showing of some of her antique quilts. Past presidents quilts were shown and lots of vendors. Ah yes, the vendors, good place to leave your $$$. Although I was good only buying some fat quarters.
Now am rounding up supplies for the Hancock Fabrics retreat at Ashland on Thursday.

H finally is finished with the physical therapy that has been going on since last March, has new glasses to correct the double vision caused by the fall in July. Got the new water heater installed, fixed the hoses on the Mercury, brake line on the Chrysler and I don't know what else that has fallen apart the last while. grin. But now think most is repaired and do not forsee much else going wrong for a while.

Have made a couple purses using the rope technique and will try to get some pictures up soon.
So if anyone does read this, I am still alive and kickin' and will try to get some photos taken soon.