Rhthym

I'm so pleased to have finished the 'Rhythm' Quilt Challenge! With so much going on right now I was worried I wouldn't find enough sewing time but the time was found and a quilt was made. With 'rhythm' in mind, I made several sketches, most of them inspired by the idea of electronic machines that register beats and sounds. I appliqued the pieces in place with a blanket stitch and then quilted all the orange and yellow pieces. The red band was left unquilted. I was happy to finally try some free form circle quilting along the two long borders and then did some vertical quilt lines on the shorter borders.

I'd show a few of the photos of construction but when my computer died so did my Photoshop and I'm now trying to learn to use Gimp. I hope my learning curve gets better!

Note of interest: Sue has created some wonderful little keychain books and is giving them away from her blog. I have one of Sue's books and one of her journals and they are fabulous!

Computer Problems and Quilts

I wonder if the reason that I feel so frustrated with computers is that I didn't use a computer until I was in my thirties and I didn't experience the internet until I was forty. So I remember a much simpler life when I fit tea breaks into my work day instead of fitting work into my computer day! This frustration has come from my last week of computer failure, trying to semi-keep up on my husband's tiny little notebook (I can't imagine trying to use a phone to check the internet or mail!) and finally going out and buying a new computer. Then it has been a couple days of trying to install old programs (and I've discovered that some of my old programs like Photoshop Elements are not compatible with Windows 7) and trying to figure out how to get my email. I'm almost there now and found some time to start turning one of my many sketches for the quilt challenge into an actual quilt. Above are my fabric choices and a couple of the shapes. I hope I find time next week to get it all put together and quilted.

Hope you're having good computer days!

South Park and The Garden

Ever since we moved into our house in South Florida we've been trying to make the yard special; another room of the house. We had a landscaper redo some of our yard shortly after we moved-in about eight years ago. But much of what was planted didn't suite the location or perhaps we didn't water enough. My husband is big on environmental issues and doesn't like to water often. He has since spent a lot of hours reading and learning about native yards. I thought he could just go ahead and landscape our yard himself, but he thought it best to find a landscaper who works with native plantings. He was right, and after much searching we found someone who put in the time and lots of effort to get our yard just as we had envisioned. Well, actually not as we had envisioned because it turned out much better than either of us thought it could! Below is how our wildflower garden looked when it first went in. I was happy!

 

But it has grown more than I imagined it could!

On the south side, which used to be totally plain and unused lawn, is where our landscaper created a surprize with lots of native plantings. I had mentioned that I would like to some day have a veggie/herb garden so she created this fabulous space where we can gradually add our little garden and in the meantime the native plants will grow without all the water that most landscape plants require.

My first experiment with the herb/veggie garden is doing pretty well. It looks like next week we should have our first green pepper and perhaps if I wait a little longer, first red pepper! And we are finding new uses for fresh basil .... our latest favorite is as a topping for baked potatoes with a little olive oil and pepper.

Thanks to Jane our landscaper! (Indian Trail Native Nursery)

Flower and Fabric

Every few days I go blog hopping, soaking in the gorgeous hand dyed, stamped, painted, textured, eye candy fabrics. I dream and plan about when I'll have time to spread out yards of plain fabric and go to it! In the meantime I occasionally find a gorgeous commercial fabric I just have to buy. I add it to my boxes and piles of fabrics and every so often pull them out, admire and caress them as I think of all the things I could create. Then I fold them up and put them away. Last week I pulled out this beauty and took a quick break to cut a scarf length of fabric. This is sheer and ravels so I enclosed the edges with a French seam and I had an easy quick scarf that I wore with a white shirt and black jeans. It satisfied my fiber addiction for the week!

Like many of you I'm out in the garden this time of year. Actually down here I'm out more in the winter but with a new wild flower garden this year I'm been out more than usual. Here are a few of the wild beauties.

I've wanted to use one of my petal vases for our own cut flowers for a long time!

Do You Wax Your Bottoms?

I learned years ago to wax the bottoms of my pots before glazing. The wax resists the glaze, making it quick and easy to wipe away any bits of glaze before firing. Of  course if you've trimmed or added a foot you only need to wax the foot; as long as no glaze touches the kiln shelf. Occasionally I've met potters who prefer to skip the whole step of waxing pots and just opt to wipe away the glaze from the bottoms of the pots. Well recently I have decided to try that route. I've found that my hand sometimes gets a bit shaky when brushing on the wax leaving an uneven edge. I've never considered that a problem but decided to see if no waxing might give me nicer bottom edges. So far I've been happy with this technique. 

Do you wax?

A Different Kind of Yarn Bowl

As I loaded the kiln today I came across two bowls, fired and glazed but waiting for their fiber additions. Rather than continue with my catch-up day I headed into the sewing room with my fired bowls. I dug through my box of yarns, found my crochet hooks and chose the largest hook that would fit through the holes in my bowl.

I wanted to crochet an entire lining for my bowl but was tempted to stop after a couple rows around the top as I really like that look too. I'm glad I pushed forward as I've been wanting to try this full crocheted lining for some time now and I'm glad I went for it! 

 Here's a shot of my yarn bowl in use to create my other kind of yarn bowl!

 And finally the empty nest ......

Passage

This is reveal week for the Quilt Challenge. I went through several different ideas and finally decided to go with the passage I love to take - that of the ferry ride from BC mainland to Vancouver Island. Having lived in the States for so many years I think of it as my northwest passage even though it is southwest Canada.

I took this photo in January 2009 as the ferry approached the island. Below are a few of the choices I had laid out as I tried to decide how to frame this photo. I wanted to go with fabrics I already had but did end up buying a bit of burgundy as I felt I needed a touch of red and all the reds I had were too bright or wrong fiber content.

 I got some practice free motion quilting with my old 830 as my new Bernina needs a check-up and won't sew more than a few stitches without stopping to tell me there's a bobbin problem. I'm not used to having a high maintenance machine.

To see some fabulous interpretations of "Passage" head on over to the quilt challenge blog.