Design Wall Monday 5-30-11

Here it is Monday, but it doesn't feel like a Monday.  That is why I totally forgot to post my Design Wall shot this morning.  So here it is LATE!

It is actually a friend's design bed.  It will be her second quilt from beginning to end.  It is a charity quilt that will hang in our annual Quilt Show in August and be donated, probably to the Giving Quilt people.  The pattern is a mystery quilt that was designed to be used only for charity.  The entire guild has sew days and there are about 5 of these in production at this moment.

the only thing I have sewn this week I can't show you.  They are the Quiltmaker's Volume 4 100 Blocks test blocks.

glen

One of my favorite photos of Frank

These are two (actually) of my favorite photos of Frank.  To show you how much he really wants to be a good husband, he is standing on the rocks overlooking Lake Tahoe on our vacation last year.  I had asked him to put the Swissy out there so i could take a picture of The Swissy on the rocks with the lake in the background.  Here he is wondering where would be the best place for the picture.

The other picture is of him risking his life to place The Swissy for a millisecond picture.  But you have to love that he helps me get that picture!

Here is the Swissy picture that resulted.  Then, of course, he had to go back out there and get him so we could move on to the next picture place.  I really should make a landscape quilt of one of the photos I have of Frank, risking his life to help me get a really great picture!

Memorial Day Weekend!

Take time to remember your heroes.  Without them our lives would be so much less.  I am truly thankful for the boys who go to war and to those like my own husband who serve their country even when there is no war.

We usually are by now planning a vacation to the west or northwest or far northwest (Alaska) but this year we are waiting till later in the year to head to Egypt if it is still there by then.  Cross your fingers and you will see me and Ann on a camel!  She is bound and determined to ride a camel in Egypt.  So ride a camel we shall. This camel is, believe it or not, from the Great Desert of Maine.  Yes, Maine.  A real desert with shifting sand dunes and all.

Maybe in the Spring we can go to Orlando with Carrie and Andrew.  Andrew has never been to Disney World.  Can't imagine how that escaped his parents.

I worked on some Virtual Bee blocks today and just got back from mailing them off to the United Kingdom.  That was exciting.  She wants bright and bold 9 inch blocks of made fabric.  She has an idea to make them into mice.  I can't wait to see it!

Here are my contributions to MICE!       

Marie....get ready to receive your dog

I am just about near ready to ship this dog off to you.  I look at him this morning and see this.  I guess it is appropriate that he chose his skunk to share it with him.  I don't know where he got it from, I never use it............

Leaf Me Alone!

 

June is my month for the virtual bee over at BumbleBeans' 15 Minute Play.  I love all the blocks I have made so far for the others in the Virtual Bee there.  And I knew I would have to think outside the box to get something equally spectacular for my month. 

I decided on leaves.

But that necessitated giving some instructions on curved piecing. 

So if you want to see the technique I used, hop on over to http://www.15minutesplay.com/2011/05/june-scrap-bee-block-from-glen.html

Design Wall Monday 5-23-11

Today is my Alzheimer Mother's Birthday, although she doesnt know it.  I picked up her dirty laundry yesterday and will bring it back today, along with some presents of colors and coloring books and her clean clothes.  So sad.  She used to make beautiful clothing even though as a teenager I didn't appreciate them.

My design wall is so crowded with stuff I can't get to it so i have to have a "design corner".  The leaves are a project for a Virtual Bee and the block is the mystery block from a quilt that was designed to be made for Charity puposes.  We worked on the quilts Saturday at a Sew In.  All the blocks in this one are made and I will create a top for someone to quilt.  

We have 5 quilts going so far in various stages.  

We were asked by the local Habitat For Humanity to create a Charity Quilt for them to auction at their Art For Houses Fair.  This is an interesting auction.  They give anyone interested a $50 gift Certificate to their ReSale Shop.  You go and choose various building materials and create an art object or useful object from it.  It then gets auctioned to raise money for building of houses for those who are working but unable to afford their own house.  The money is also used for ZERO interest loans to those who have a steady employment history but cannot afford to purchase a home.

Anyway, we are excited and thinking about what our Auction Quilts will look like.

glen 

Pre-Blog Quilts

I love seeing things people have done in the past.  I think I will be quite full of myself this morning and post some of the quilts I made before I started blogging about it all.

How's this for a South Seas Adventure?  I made it right before we left on a cruise to Belize, Curacao, Costa Rico.  The trip was not nearly as sunny and blue as the quilt is! 

 

The parrots were too perfect for the back of this one.  It was designed on my EQ6 software.   I wanted a lot of open spaces and I wanted something linear.  I had seen a quilt made of tiny 9 patch squares set in black and loved the look, but hated the tiny squares!  So I made mine 12.5 inches.  It is on point of course to make it straight (as odd as that sounds).  And it was the very first quilt I quilted on my longarm! 

This was the first quilt I made for Andrew.  We had just met him and he was a breath of fresh air after the Boyfriend From Hell.  We were so glad to have a nice, stable boy in her life that when I saw this quilt in one of the magazines, I KNEW it was for him!  I called it Welcome to the Loony Bin!

I did this in 2005 and it was fun to work one.  It gives you the idea that there are curves in the quilt but it is actually appliqued on top of the block backing. And of course the loons are put on there with fusible stuff also.  It is a lap quilt.  After I gave it to Andrew, Carrie informs me that I am not to make anymore "small" quilts.  She only wants to receive BIG quilts.  And then only if I use the right block and the correct fabric.  Needless to say, it was a while before she got another quilt.

glen

Sew Day for Guild Charity Quilts

Today was the second sew day for the Charity Quilts at Sassi Strippers.  7 of us gathered to cut and sort last time.  This time we sewed and cut background strips.  Jessie. Linda and I ran sewing machines, Valerie V ironed, Valerie B cut, Merline laid out the pattern.

The pattern we are using is a mystery  Valerie B found that is designed to be made for Charity Quilts.  So we are in total compliance with the rules on this one!  LOL.

We want to have these finished for the Annual Quilt Show in August at the Library.  We have not decided where the quilts will be donated yet, but we have time to figure that out later!

The pattern was easy to do but it was confusing to put together.  I ripped out several after I thought I had gotten the hang of it all.  Jessie made fun of me ripping all those blocks, then she did the SAME thing!  LOL.

We will meet again to do the next stage of sewing in a few weeks.  I took home the blocks Jessie and I made so I can put them together.  And I made Valerie V take a packet of cut out pieces so she can start to work from a pattern. 

We might make it.  We just might make it if we all give that extra effort!

Thanks, Ladies!

Tequila

I come from a long line of scavengers.  My mother's father, whom I called Papa, and I were very close when I was young.  My mom was an only child and they treated her like a princess.  So when I came along I was the heir-apparent to the affection.  My grandfather was a man who could make something out of anything, and then sell it and make money.  That is how he lived, like Sanford and Son selling stuff he picked up off the street or someone gave him and then fixing it and selling it.

My mother, princess as she was, would drive in the rich neighborhoods, see some sort of thing beside their fancy garbage cans and make me get out of the car and pick it up.  I remember several notable things like a doll's crib, a table for the foyer, a lamp.  You name it, I had to steal it from some rich person's junk pile.

I have been known, on occasion, to stop and toss something into the back of my car and speed off.  I thought the gene was weakening as it drains down the successive generations.  But maybe not.

I was walking the Demolition Dog commonly known as DiNozzo in Valerie's neighborhood this week and saw where one of her neighbors had pulled up a 5 foot blue agave plant.  I texted Carrie and told her about it. 

Two days later Carrie texted back to see if it was still there.  It was.  She went home to grab Andrew's truck and we were going to pop it into the truck and she would be off.  Notice Andrew did not come, nor did Frank.

When we got there I realized it was a tall as I was and three time my weight.  It was HUGE!  I called Frank to come help, and with two of the neighbors and the guy who was transferring ownership,  we spent the next 45 minutes hoisting it to the truck with a system of levers and pulleys and two by fours and come alongs and two wheelers.  And some gloves and towels because the spikes are nasty on those things.

I got stuck early on and nearly bled out.

We headed to Carrie's house and Andrew was none too happy about having a 7 foot agave plant to haul around while Carrie decided where she wanted it. 

She later called me and said even though he was acting not so happy, he began to feel a kinship with it after a while.  And he is talking about margarita party next weekend.

hmmmmm........I hope the plant has some defenses.

glen

Bonnie Hunter would be proud of me!

Didn't get much sewing done last week at all.

But this week promises to be better.  Well, the last half of this week anyway, considering this is Wednesday.  I had to bring some old skinny clothes to the Purple Cow, which is like Goodwill but with better prices).  And I ended up with some bargains.  When I got home I realized I still had the old clothes in my back seat.  Duh!

I scored 4 pairs of shorts of various colors for $2.99 each.  White Stag brand so I know they were not cheap stuff in their previous life.  And two pairs of stretch knit pants for my mom at $2.50 each.  The nursing home is always losing her stuff so it is hard to keep things in her closet.  So I just find things like this and know they will lose them anyway somewhere along the line.

The biggest and bestest thing I got was the men's shirts from the 99 cent rack.  I got 10 shirts, all great plaids and 100% cotton for $10! 

Maybe even better and bigger than that was the Spanx I found for $2.99!  Yeah, buddy, shorts and Spanx, I am hot and rolling this summer!

Then I had a card that got me 20% off the entire order so I walked out with 10 shirts, 2 pants and 4 pairs of shorts AND Spanx for $24.  Can't beat that with a stick.

Now I am going to buy a lottery ticket!

glen

design wall monday 5-16-*11

My design wall is pretty boring.  I have completed three 9 x 12 pieces for AAQI that will be shipped off this week and for some reason I have been really busy with things other than quilting.  I am working on the Volume 4 of the 100 Blocks by Quiltmaker.  Since Volume 3 came out there is renewed frenzy!  But it is fun.  If you get volume 3, check out my name!  LOL.  I am famous!

And we have been river watching.  We live in Baton Rouge, LA along the Mississippi River.  Here is the river downtown.  You can see the river beyond the trees, but the water you see is on what is called the batture.  The men are on the top of the levee which is the bike path we often ride.

The oange thing is called a Tiger Dam and is filled with water, strapped down to the asphalt and supported by sand bags filled by the prisoners.  It is supposed to add about 18 inches to a levee top.

We shall see.

We went to the Bonnet Carre Spillway yesterday and the pictures do not do justice to the force of the water.  Incredible. 

 And this is one of the shelters in the campground inside the spillway.  No one lives here so don't worry about that.  And the fresh water clears out the old water in Lake Pontchartrain.  Shrimp and Crawfish harvests will be booming in the next three or four years!  Yeah!

glen                            

Bonnet Carre Spillway

The actual big news this weekend was the opening of the other spillway, the Morganza Spillway.  The  Morganza is above Baton Rouge and the Bonnet Carre is between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.  New Orleans is downriver from Baton Rouge. 
Frank and I went to the Exterran Picnic in Destrehan at Ormond Plantation on Saturday.  One of the big draws for me to go was the proximity of Bonnet Carre.  I wanted to see it.  At Bonnet Carre, it was the atmosphere of a carnival.  Cars were parked up and down the River Road, people were riding motorcycles and bicycles, walking.  All either heading toward or from the Spillway weir.  The Army Corps of Engineers had set up a tent at the site, I guess to make sure no idiots fell in, and they were answering questions, offering information and keeping the peace.
The board said that on Saturday there were 264 bays open, and the total flow of water through the weir was 258,000 cfs or cubic feet per second.  The incredible thing to see was how fast the water was rushing by.  Such power. 
On the River Road are the large refineries, Norco is where they all line the levee and use the Mississippi River to move their product and provide electricity for their production.  Here are three you can just about touch from the road.
Motiva, Shell Chemicals and Hexion.  Dow is across the water.

Here you are looking at the Spillway Weir from the river side.  This structure was completed in 1931 in response to the Great Flood of 1927.  Prior to 1927 the Mississippi River Commission thought they only needed the levees as flood controls. 

The Bonnet Carre weir structure is 32.8 miles from New Orleans.  It is 7000 feel long with 350 bays of 20 feet each.  There are 20 timbers in each bay.  The Spillway is opened approx. every 10 years. 

This is the top of the weir.  It has a rail that holds two cranes to lift the timbers.  The timbers are then placed on top of the rails to facilitate their replacement in closing the structure.
See the timbers across the top?  I will show you the front in a minutes.  Where the timbers end that bay still has the timbers in place.  The water always leaks through the weir providing some water to the spillway and thus Lake Pontchartrain all the time.  However the water level and pressure behind the weir is not usually this great. 

Look at the bay with the timbers in place here:

The Bonnet Carre Spillway was built at the site of the Bonnet Carre Crevasse, a 3000 foot wide break in the levee.  The water flows into the spillway for  nearly 6 miles before reaching Lake Pontchartrain which eventually drains out to the Gulf of Mexico through the Rigoletes (pronounced rig-o-lees).  We used to swim there as kids.

Here is the Weir from the other side. What you can’t see is the tremendous power of that water as it rushes through.  And it is muddy and brown, like we are used to seeing our rivers and swamps.





  The guage says  22 feet

On the way home we crossed the Spillway on Hwy 61 which is the old way people would go from New Orleans to Laplace and eventually to Baton Rouge.  The Spillway there is dry and is used for recreational activities.  This is the boat launch area now underwater.  And to see just how much water here is the picnic shelter we used when we met my brother’s family there about 8 years ago.

I have added some pictures of the water in the Spillway along Hwy 61 as we headed home. 
Frank keeps using the word “historic”  and I guess this is an historic event.  The Morganza Spillway has only been opened once before and now to have two of them opening is pretty historic. 
I will have more on the Morganza if I can.  It is north of us and accessible only by a  small highway road.  They were closing the area on Saturday, so they didn’t want tourists like they have at Bonnet Carre. 

For more information on the Spillway go to:
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/05/corps_set_to_open_28_spillway.html

And for some great photos go to:
http://www.pbase.com/septembermorn/bonnet_carre_spillway