Fiber and Pulp

Peaceful Holiday

This past long weekend has been peaceful and pleasant. The Stella d'Oro day lilies are starting to bloom - they're favorites around public buildings as they stay short and bunching with splendid blossoms that keep on flowering for ages during the early summer. I love them (am hoping to buy some to plant near my parents' gravestone).

The weather has been quite lovely - mid 70's and sunny. I spent some time late on Friday afternoon sweeping off my deck and rearranging the furniture. I enjoy sitting outside to read and bask in the local (rather tame) nature sounds. :) This has been a great weekend for basking, too.

We spent our first (unofficial) weekend of summer enjoying the peace and quiet. I managed to sew at least some every day. On Friday afternoon, my friend Barbara gave me some scraps and orts* she picked up at a recent guild meeting and I got distracted playing with some of them.

One set of block bits was made with hand dyed fabrics that appealed to me quite a bit. I spent all four days of the weekend improvisation piecing together  bits to make a 'baby' sized quilt top. Way lots of fun! :)

This measures about 30" x 36" in size. As you can see, I had to eke out the hand dyes with some 'low volume' scraps to make my top.  I look forward to finishing this for another charity donation. :)

Today I had an electrician in to find out what is going on with the power in my brother's condo unit - half of his bedroom and his bathroom have no power. The guy was there for more than an hour and a half, hunting down the problem. He finally zeroed in on one of the outlets in the living room - which, unfortunately, is covered over with some of the unpacked materials we are donating. Tomorrow my son and I will clear away the access while we are over at the unit so the electrician can come back Thursday afternoon to finish the job (fingers crossed!).

I took my brother out for lunch (Taco Bell), got him a haircut (long overdue!) and went grocery shopping with him. An afternoon well spent. He seems to be doing fairly well and is not bothered by living alone at all - which surprises me as he has never done that in his life (he's 62 years old:). I glad he is happy!

It is supposed to get really warm by the end of this week (prediction is for 90 degrees by Friday) so summer is definitely coming soon.

:) Linda 

*Orts - old rags tags and snippets. :)

Melancholy May

May has been a melancholy month for me, beginning with the death of my niece, Kim, on the 4th. Above her son begins to dig the hole to inter her ashes beside my parents and my two brothers in a small cemetery in southeastern Ohio. You may not be able to tell from the photo but it was raining buckets that day (hence all the umbrellas). To the left of Kim's son is his foster father, Christian and to the right is my niece Amy (Christian's sister-in-law).

Our private family services were actually quite beautiful - I found them comforting ... and also elating in that it revealed Kim's siblings to all be spectacular people! I was so proud of my family that rainy morning ... for their caring and compassion and mutual support.

We have been working to sort out Kim's possessions - some to give to family members, some to donate to worthy causes, some to keep as memorials to Kim. There are still things to be donated but Hugh (my son) and I are slowly distributing things. It's inspiring me to sort and de-stuff my own house faster so that's a positive aspect to the sadness, I suppose.

I have taken some comfort in nature this month. My brother and I went for a stroll through the azalea gardens in western Howard County (where we live) earlier this month. I found it soothing and reassuring. I go to nature when I visit 'church.'

I've also been sewing quietly in my room, when I can grab a few minutes, working on two projects that I started earlier this spring. 

The first is the Call Me Crazy sew along. I have made six blocks now (out of a total, eventually, of 52?):

 

The other project I'm nearly done with is the Create Your Own Adventure quilt along being run by the Baltimore Modern quilt guild. Today I sewed in the afternoon with my friends Barbara and Patty (and the Faithful Circle Sewing Buddies via Zoom) ... and managed to trim and baste my final story quilt from this exercise. I'm quite happy with it!

Just to share more of my family here ... I was given a copy of a photo of my parents when they were very young (probably 19 or 20) and first dating, standing on the campus of their college:

:) Linda

Tears and Sighs

Kimberly Danielle Berry

6/24/1991 to 5/4/2023

Beloved niece

 

Major Gaps

It has been a beautiful spring here in the MidAtlantic region - lots of lovely flowers (the paulownia trees are flowering now) and the waterfowl pairing off to set nests and raise little fluffy ball babies. :)

I have been massively buried in taking care of my brother and my niece. There have been some happy times, too. A couple of local guild quilt shows to attend ... beading with my niece (who is a past master at stringing pretty baubles!) ... a few days here and there of sewing ... some lovely walks (until this past week when the weather turned unseasonably chilly and wet).

Here is a string of beads I composed in progress. I did finish it and a bracelet to go with:

We bought new summer sun hats one afternoon while shopping and I mugged for a photo to check them out (the color varied between the two a bit - one was beige, the other pinkish ... I chose the pink):

We went walking at Centennial Park one afternoon and Kim brought along one pair of her fans to Flow with:

We went to the long-postponed quilt bingo by Baltimore Modern quilt guild. My friends Barbara, Patty and Kim came with me. I got to see a quilt I made three years ago for one of the 'special' prizes. I collected blocks I had chosen from guild members and designed/assembled the top; other members quilted and then bound the final quilt. I love it! You can click to enlarge the image - take a look at all the great novelty prints used for book covers. Fun!

This past weekend I attended MidAtlanticMod quilt retreat in central PA, sponsored by five of the region's modern guilds (one of which was Baltimore). I had been to MidMod before and enjoyed every minute of it - and this time was even better. I had been feeling pretty left out of sewing as I had so little time for it lately - so it was a delight to be able to devote myself completely to nothing but for four whole days. :)

I got some happy progress made. First I spent a couple of hours resewing and refining the drawstring bags I had made several years ago to carry the various tools and accessories with my travel machine, Blue, my Featherweight. No photos, though. :)

Then I worked for almost two full days to make the first month's block of the Shoreline b.o.m. - the Tulip Shell. If you can imagine it, I improv foundation pieced this pattern:

The designer intended the shell to be made from just one fabric print but I decided to make mine more 'realistic' with assorted stripes. :)

That was so intense and fiddly, I decided to work on another block of the 'month' (I think it is actually two block a month?) I'm doing, Call Me Crazy. I managed to make the first two blocks and am really having fun with this - trying to work some novelty prints into my bright/happy batik assortment.

Oh, I almost forgot. I also participated in one of the collaborative projects at Mod - we had two. The one I worked with was themed around the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Prairie School of Architecture. Here is how it ended up:

One of the people who worked on it won the top (@robinbirdrobin on IG). I made the block in the upper right with the slanting red-brown strip (the roof of a famous house), the brick patchwork set in the lower left, and I sewed a number of the units together. I would have loved to win it! :)

So, things are flowing along. I will try to do a better job of keeping track of my life and recording it here - my memory is very visual and I tend to completely forget events if I don't write them down.

:) Linda