design wall Monday 1-31-11

The last day in January finds me busy at work at the last Bonnie Hunter workshop.  Today we do Playing with Jacks from her website and I spent today cutting up reds, blacks, and greys for the class. 

And I was also gathering pumpkin colors for a Buggy Barn Pumpkin Quilt three of my friends are gathering to make.  We each will bring some fabrics to the table and share.  I am hoping to trade some of my bright oranges for some greyed oranges.  I would  like my quilt to be "dark and foreboding".

My Courthouse Steps from Flavin Glover's Workshop is in the corner.

And my Cathedral Stars from Bonnie Hunter's Thursday class are on the cabinets:

And my Pineapple Blossom hung out on the patio because I was running out of room for all the projects from this week: 

And I still have the orphan blocks up, haven't done much work on them because I have been at Bonnie Hunter Workshops most of this week. 

When tomorrow is over, I will have 4 new UFO quilts to list on my UFO lists!

glen:  I am sure they will be on the list for next year!  LOL

Stop by Judy's site and see what the others have on their design walls

Bonnie Hunter classes, Whoo Hoo!

That is what she says, Whoo Hoo when she likes your blocks.  Of course she likes EVERYONE'S blocks, but that is beside the point. 

She said Whoo Hoo! when she saw MY blocks!

I will admit that you will have a prejudiced view because I recharged my battery last night from her class yesterday and the lecture with her wonderful quilt show and I failed to put the battery back in the camera.  I did, however, bring the camera to the class today, sans battery.

This is Bonnie's quilt:

So here are my wonderful blocks.  I see now that with the scrap fabrics I have that I need to use more corners of the light ilk than the darker beige or creams.  I can scatter these throughout the quilt and they will blend nicely.  But, the further you get away from it, the more you see the lights.  Just like Bonnie's quilt.  That little blur is Grand Dog Hugeaux's butt.

It needs cornerstones.  If you look at Bonnie's quilt you will see her cornerstones.  They are two inch strips of the scraps used in the quilt with a two inch square where the block corners meet.  That makes the little churn dash pattern and separates the blocks a bit more.

This is the Pineapple Blossom quilt on her website.  It goes really fast, so I would definitely recommend this quilt pattern.  And best of all it uses a good amount of scrap strips.

glen 

Throwing myself into quilting

I spent a wonderful afternoon, opening and closing the back door for Chloe the Smelly Basset, Dutch and Cali the Cat.  I cooked Emeril Lagasse's Gumbo and now I am off to make the rice. 

In between I whipped up this little gem from Scraps of the Lemon Lime quilt I am handquilting and lives on the back of the sofa these days.  It looks all bright and cheery, like Carrie's house.  She has a thing for lemons and limes and even had them at her wedding instead of flowers down the aisle.  I had purchased 20 fat quarters and made a huge quilt, and had a lot left over.  I still have some large pieces left over that might just become a tea cozy or something.

It is going into the Gift Box for future use.  It still needs the binding sewn down but I can do that tonight after Toastmasters.

Slow sad days

 

My friend Ralphie Tebbe died on Saturday morning, exactly one week after his first stroke.  It is scary to think it was so fast from beginning to end.  Diane, who now calls herself the Widow Tebbe, is bouncing between lucid moments and hyper moments. 

If I were in her shoes at this moment, I would not have many lucid moments. 

She told me today that they had just come back from spending her birthday in their beloved Smokey Mountains.  Their goal was to retire there.  He loved his kitties too, they always had 3 or 5 around underfoot.  So I will send some money to the cats in his memory.   And an hydrangea will be delivered to the funeral home tomorrow.  They loved to putter on their property and care for the plants.

They will have an Irish Toast for him on Tuesday night, I am still debating if I will go or not.  Of course Frank is out of town and it is about  an hour and a half away.  Not sure I want to be driving by myself at night.  I will decide that tomorrow.

glen:  sleep, my sweet friend, sleep the sleep of the good.

Don't Touch My Junk!

This is the perfect name for this quilt!  LOL.  Carrie is always coming over and wanting to toss out my stuff.  Stuff that is leftover from other quilts.  I keep telling her, Don't touch my stuff!  She say, It isn't stuff, it is JUNK!  So I tell her, Don't touch my JUNK!

I am taking all my orphan blocks and putting them on the design wall and seeing how it flies.  If I like it, it stays, if not I have plenty more where that came from.  In fact, I found a second basket of orphan blocks when I was looking for those danged outhouse blocks.  I am running out of pins so I am putting a few of the blocks together now and then, which makes them more permanent, at least to each other.

I found a lot of treasures from classes I took at Quilt University, like the purple applique flower and the sea shore in the center.  Some are from classes at the Quilt Corner like the thread painting.  I was playing with a Ricky Tims' technique with the big pink and blue flower on the right side. 

There is an entire set of teacups and a teapot. I was going to paperpiece a quilt until I realized I was going to need 347 of the boogers.  I have about 5 total.  And the black and red squares on point are from the cybersisters round robin about 3 years ago. 

The X blocks are from the very first scrap quilt I made when I realized I was getting quite a bit of scraps and had no clue what to do with them.  And even from that I had leftover squares. 

There are some stack and whack and some pieces left over from the Swimming Fish Quilt.  They don't look like fish because I put them longways rather than together like fish.

Check out what else you see in there.  People quilt, England quilt, Doilies from Frank's momma.

glen

Six amazing Flavin Glover blocks!

Six blocks.  That is what I got done.  It may sound like so very little, but it was really a lot.  And wait till you see what the other people did with their fabric and ideas!

Flavin Glover was wonderful   She is very unassuming, laid back, personable and has a great ability to take fabrics and turn them into wonders.  She has based her career on the lowly Log Cabin and Courthouse Steps blocks.  But she has taken them to amazing heights with her creativity and imagination.  And they are all fairly easily done, it is a “why didn’t I think of that” moment when you see a piece of her making.

Yes, of course, I bought the kool-aid, ah…book.  And paid enormous full price for it, but it was worth it.  She SIGNED it with my name and HERS!

She started out with a lecture on the beginnings of the Log Cabin and how it has changed in different periods.  And then she talked about how she saw something differently one day, experimented and learned how to tweak a common block and make it so different in so many ways.

Here are some of the different things we saw and did today.  Hers are first, of course.

She called these guys dogs but they looked more like aliens to me.

 

She said that when she made the heart one, it just happened  one day when  she was making blocks and just piling them up.  She worked out the border and it is spectacular!

I fell in love with her houses about 5 years ago. 

 

Her denim quilt is spectacular. It is based upon the whirl pattern. 

 

 

 

 

Now these are some of the blocks we did in class.  It was free choice so they all are different and amazing in their own right. 

My Chinese Lanterns:

My favorites:

Can’t wait to see these quilts finished!

glen

Blogspot won't post my pictures

I am having to upgrade the storage for the blog........huh?  I have reached 1 gb, if you can believe that.  Well, I don't know.

I am deciding what to do.  It is only $5 a year.

What do the rest of you guys do?

glen:  Inquiring minds want to know this stuff

Ralphie, the ultimate straight man

Talked to Diane this morning to tell her Frank is heading that way and will see them before he has meetings today in New Orleans.  She was home on the North Shore in Covington resting and playing with their beloved kitties.

We talked for a while yesterday as she related the story of the past week for them.  A big problem is that the hospital blocks cell phone transmissions so they cannot easily make calls.  But they can get texts.  Hmm.

This is a typical Ralphie story.  After the first two strokes they are in the hospital and he is alert and looking good.  During an MRI he has a third and a fourth stroke and lapses into a coma.  Back in the room two days later, he wakes up, looks around and asks Diane where he is. 

She says, in the hospital.  Do you know who I am?
He thinks and says, Diane.  She is thrilled.
She says, Do you know who you are?  He says, Ralph.
She is even more thrilled.
Where am I, he asks again.  And why?
She tells him he has had a stroke.

He looks at her like they were talking about an earthquake in the far reaches of the world.  With his deep slow Southern drawl, he says, Bummer.

That is Ralph.

He is now in a coma.  They know there is blood in his brain on the inside, and they can't easily get in there to remove it.  So it is touch and go.  The doctor told her he was not giving up yet and she should not either.  But from our conversation yesterday, I think she is steeling herself for a bad outcome to this.

I am texting her multiple times during the day, with love messages.  And Frank will be able to really hug her and I know she will cry on his shoulder.  I asked him to touch Ralphie's hand for me and let him know we love him.

glen:  and right now, that is all we can do

Two, not without a Third….

I found out last night that my hairdresser (who was thin and ate healthy) died in her sleep the night before.  Everyone was totally shocked  She was 49. 

Irma was the one who made me look beautiful.  She knew just the right combination of ingredients to put that shine on my locks.  And she had class.  She was from Venezuela and had that deep thick accent that made you listen closely to her as she spoke.  I loved to hear her talk about her daughter Tatiana and granddaughter Adriana.  She will be missed terribly by her family and her clients. 

And even more scary, when I got home today from errands and my mom, a dear friend called and left an ominous message to call her, it was about her husband, Ralphie.  I am thinking he died.  He had several problems with his heart, but he was the most laid back non stressed guy you would ever know.  And the funniest.

(Update:  Ralphie had multiple strokes, has had up and down prognosis, and is now in a coma, but with brain activity.  No change from yesterday.  Which is good I guess.  Diane is falling apart about now.)

Diane and I grew up together, sharing those horrible pre-teen years when nothing is beautiful on your body.  She has gorgeous red curly hair, I had limp straight brown (but wanted her hair).  She met Ralphie a year before Frank and I married, and they married the following year.  I stood in her wedding in a huge huge dress with a huge huge hoop skirt!

Ralphie and Frank have been friends from the day they met.  They played softball together, bowled together, drank together.  We shot fireworks every New Year’s Day down on Milne Street in New Orleans.  It was an event for the neighborhood when they tossed out their dead Christmas Trees.  A huge bonfire commenced and they loaded it with thousands of fireworks.  Fireworks went flying everywhere!  You were constantly on the lookout for any coming your way out of the blazing fire in the middle of the street.  Interestingly, 3 of the 5 boys who grew up there playing with the bonfire every year because firemen!  Hmm.

We have so many stories of times together.  There was never a time we didn’t laugh and love being together. 

I fear the news is not good.  And that Diane has lost the love of her life.  I am dreading that return phone call. 

So with Irma and Ralphie I am thinking my stressful life combined with an Italian Cream Cake and fried food diet will keep me going for a long time!

glen:  where’s that candy bar????

work work work –Bonnie Hunter and Flavin Glover

I should have put all this on my Design Wall Monday posting, but i was too busy, busy, busy!

I just finished the second block of this session for the 100 Blocks Magazine.  Sent those off to the publisher.  (Boy that makes me sound so really important, doesn't it!)

And I am busy busy busy gathering and cutting strips and pieces for the 4 classes that I am doing over the next two weeks.  We are having a bevy of great teachers come and I intend to make the most of each one of them.

Bonnie Hunter will be teaching 4 classes and one of my favorite designers, Flavin Glover will be teaching one more.  I have signed up for all but one of them.  I had to take a rest!  Whew!

I am doing three of Bonnie's classes from her vast collection of scrap quilts from her site at Quiltville.  They are Cathedral Stars, Pineapple Blossom and Playing with Jacks.  http://www.quiltville.com/

And my very favorite designer Flavin Glover will be doing her Courthouse Steps and Log Cabin Squares.  I love her stuff.  I won a TWO first place ribbons in two different venues with her Tuscan Village pattern.  And her fabulous quilts are incredible log cabins and courthouse step blocks made into amazing pictures.  You can see the Tuscan Village about 1/2 way down the page.  But take a moment to look at her other quilts.  I dearly love the houses!

http://www.flavinglover.com/Gallery_all.htm

I have kitted all the Bonnie Hunter Classes and will work on the Flavin Glover Class tomorrow.  Oh, I still need the brights for the 2 inch strips for Cathedral Stars.  Oh, my.......I don't have the Playing with Jacks kitted yet, I guess I am working all day tomorrow.

glen:  work, work, work

It's my birthday, and I'll cry if I want to.....

Well, I didn't cry!  Thank goodness!  My boyfriend didn't leave me like he did that girl in the song.

Actually I had a wonderful day!  My girlfriends took me out to lunch.  My husband took me to dinner.  And bought me an Italian Cream Cake.  Ahhhh. Heaven!

He gave me Pictionary for the Wii, I have been wanting it for a while since I saw it on TV for Christmas.  And after he left for work, the only person who would play with me was grand-dog Hugeaux.  And he plays badly.  I beat him twice.  He just couldn't get my drawings.

So now I need at least 3 other people to play with me so it will be better.  And I told Hugeaux that he needed to brush up on his drawing.

glen

Quilt the Swamp Exhibit

OMG!  You have to see the 2011 Quilt the Swamp Exhibit.  Every year my quilty friend Michael Young organizes an Exhibit at the Bluebonnet Swamp with quilts that feature Swamp things.  This year he wanted TREES!

And I would say he got them!

http://cfalart.blogspot.com/2011/01/walk-in-swamp-2011_15.html

Kudos Michael!

Thanks for all the work and the fun you give us.

glen

UFO #6 Progress

Judy asked for an update on the UFO #6 progress so here is mine. 

I have finished the two tops that were the mystery quilt.  I have to do a  secret block for the Volume 3 - 100 Quilt Blocks first and foremost, then I will consider what quilting will be done on the tops. 

At the showing off of the 2010 Snowball Mystery Quilt at the Guild last week, a number of them had the quilting done as snowflakes, no doubt.  So I was thinking of that also.  The ones who won were all quilted and finished, of course, but there were a few tops, like mine. 

My bud, JoPaula won an honorable mention.  I was really glad she won, she really has a sense of color and design even though she is a newer quilter.  I love her work.

Check out the quilts at the meeting and the different ways to make the snowball quilts.  It was interesting to see all the different quilts, yet the same pattern.  The very first two quilts are my two! 

http://rivercityquilts.blogspot.com/

glen

My backyard early this morning

Dutch told me he had to go out about 5 am this morning and while he was taking care of business, I was rewarded with this spectacular view of the sunrise!  Don't you love the powerlines?

I roll my eyes, I am told….

      And this is not the first time I have been told this.  Once, when I was still working at the large medical facility as their Hiring Director, I interviewed some young girl for a position.  At some point during the interview, I raised my eyebrows as she was telling me how infinitely qualified she was.   She happened to be loosely related to or knew someone in the upper management and complained to them about my wayward eyebrow.

While I really didn't think so, I must have an expressive face.  If that is so, then I am sure what I was thinking last night during this encounter must have come through........and it wasn't as sugar cookies, tea and chocolate cupcakes with nonpareil frosting.  It involved weapons of mass destruction, methods of torture and vile evil monsters in mucky swamp!

This person actually screamed at me during a meeting, in which I was taking notes no less and spent most of my time trying to take notes in my own brand of shorthand that I would be able to read later.  But I was not the only one she screamed at, it was a very interesting meeting indeed!

 So, when you see me next, note how my evil eyes watch you.

England Scrap Quilt - just hot off the design wall

Remember when I was so excited about my scraps from Trudi in England?  Well I have been playing with them and they are nearly complete.

I decided to practice the intuition process and kill two birds with one pile of scraps!
My scraps came in and I sorted out the red and the blue ones and combined them with my own.  There were a lot of wonderful greens, but somehow I got hooked on the patriotic colors.  Then the title because England Births a New Nation!
Then I set out to make some blocks.  I really liked what one of our 15 Minute Quilting Bee partners was doing so I practiced on some of my blocks.  Hers was a gorgeous red and black so I think that is where the red came from in my head.   
I really love the quilts all these modern gals are doing with the white spaces.  So I decided to put white spaces in between my red and blue block.   
I had to take the blocks down at this point and finish my mystery quilt for last week, and when I put it back up the blocks were all different.  So I found that I could rearrange them and like them even better!  So I did just that!

See that little piece of black on the top right?  I liked it and decided to put another one in there.  So I made this piece and put it in the quilt, thinking I would get fancy…..but didn’t like it, so I tossed it into the Unused Block Bin for another day.

So here is the top complete.  Do you see the firecracker?  I didn’t until just now, and it is way way too late!  Ugh.  But I guess if we have patriotic colors we need a bit of fireworks to set off the fun.  (hmm.  I wonder why I did not see that before now??)


I did think about the quilting.  I wanted waves like the ocean, the big pond, the water the Englishmen had to cross to get to Jamestown to drop off their settlers and start the Colonies going.  So I thought about the discussion on here recently about just drawing a wavery line across the quilt and going for it. I found my blue disappearing marker and drew my ocean waves.  Trouble was……I lost my line in some blue block, duh, and had to create one on my own.  It turned out OK though.  I managed to do fine.
I started out quilting the middle with red, white and blue thread.  Then I got it into my head to change to white, so I did that.  Not sure if you can see it or not on the whole picture here, but it does have the two colors.
OH!  And the BACK is really cool.  It looks like a quilt in itself!
This was fun.  Freeing.  And exciting.  I sorta kinda knew what it was going to look like, but it changed a bit as I went along.
Now I think I can ease into a REAL intuition quilt.
Thanks Trudi.  Your scraps and mine are living together as mother country and child colonies!
glen: and the best part is…..I still have more scraps!  LOL

The boots with the dangly things on the back at the Cotton Bowl

I bought new shoes yesterday. 

While that may not be a world shattering event for most of you, it is for me.  Since I no longer go to "work" work, I generally wear my New Balance 600 or 608s.  I have them in multiple colors...black, brown, white, dirty white.  I love them.  The NB600 line are the only shoes I have found that fit my high arch most comfortably.  I have the hiking tennis shoes as well from New Balance.  All of them have stepped in doggy do at one time or another.

So nearly 2 years ago when Carrie announced she was getting married, she informed me that I could not wear blue jeans and tennis shoes to the wedding.  So I went out and bought three new pairs of shoes.  One for the shower.  One for the Rehearsal Dinner and one for the reception.  It had been about 10 years since I bought shoes rather than tennies.  My friend Amber helped me pick out the fancy wedding shoes.  The new shoes are comfortable, but not shoes you would walk a mile in, if you know what I mean.  By the time the reception was over I had given away the dressy copper heels to the girl who married Carrie and Andrew.  These are shoes that you do not step in doggy do with.  Oh and I did buy a fancy dress for the wedding and two sets of fancy pants for the other two events so no jeans were worn.  (Carrie did approve my clothes choices as well)

So when I went out yesterday and bought new shoes on my own for no particular reason, it was a Red Letter Day here in Baton Rouge, LA.  They technically are not shoes.  They are boots.  I love them.  I went for the tennis shoes with the rounded bottoms that are supposed to tone your tushie, but when I saw cowboy boots I fell for them immediately.  And while I was on the phone with Carrie (how does she know I am going to buy something that will be embarrassing for her to be seen with me) she tells me that those toning shoes don't work because, while they are different in the beginning, your muscles become used to them quickly and all benefits decrease over time.

So when the cowboy boots caught my attention, I was easily swayed. 

But when I put the size I needed on my feet, they looked HUGE.  So I put them back on the shelf in their gigantic box.  But now I had BOOTS in my mind.  So I tried on every pair of boots with heels below 1 inch.  (And believe you me, there were not that many.)

I ended up with a luscious black leather dream, with dangly things on the back.  My weakness is dangly things on anything.  My leather jacket looks like a Harley momma gone country.

Dutch is not afraid of being photographed with my boots, he is happy I am happy.  Here are the dangly things, which turned out to be a ribbon tied up in a bow, so unlike me, but dangly none-the-less.  Since it is difficult to take a picture of your own feets, I enlisted Frank's help.  He takes lousy pictures, but these are actually fairly OK.  I had to wait until the monster on the TV screen had burst into flames, chased the poor guy in the scrubs down the street into the waiting teeth of another monster who appeared to be choking on a peanut from the green room. 

I like my new boots.  I will wear them to the Cotton Bowl Party this evening.   A friend who has quilted in the past and now knits invited me and Frank to go with her and her husband.  I jumped at the offer!  Cotton meant Fabric. 

Two days later, Frank mentions to me that this is actually a football game.  I was totally disappointed.  I asked Carrie this afternoon, like, uh, who is playing in this Fabric Bowl thing.  She said LSU and somebody.   Since we live in Baton Rouge, this is considered to be pretty important.  The event is a catered party at a Parc 73  (http://parc73.com/home/) , so there will be wonderful food and drinks.  I think I can hang by the bar, with my new black boots with the dangly things on the back and attract some interest all by myself.  I might even meet another quilter there and can really talk FABRIC!

glen