Fiber and Pulp

Memories

Today would have been my Grandmother's 120th birthday. :) I was very close to her in my childhood - I am the oldest member of my generation (on both sides of my family) and benefitted a LOT from the fact that my Grandma was a nurturing motherly person. :) My Aunt Ruby (her daughter) tells me I am temperamentally a lot like her. 

She taught me my first sewing stitches (sewing left over strips of fabric onto a muslin cloth to make striped squares - a process we now call foundation piecing), my first embroidery stitches, my first attempt at crochet. How to hug and enjoy her family was another learn-by-example benefit. :)

The weather continued to be chilly, damp and gray today. I took a turn around the neighborhood for exercise - thought I'd go for a walk but my husband came up with an errand for me. Some time ago (months) I bought a small thermometer for him to keep track of and document the lack of heat in his work office at Goddard. It had run out of battery power so I took a quick drive to our local grocery store and bought a new battery for it. First time I've ever had occasion to buy a round battery - and there they were, right along with the other more usual sorts on the display up front, big as life. :) Easy, peasy. Instead of walking the neighborhood, I walked the grocery. 

I made some necessary phone calls today ... and cooked dinner with my son (a new-to-us recipe for Honey Garlic Chicken in the crock pot) ... and sewed the binding on my cloudy sky wall quilt. I attached it to the back side of the hanging; now I need to sew down the front. I'm planning to use big stitches with pale lavender pearl cotton to finish the binding. I managed to cut and sew together the binding strips at the FCQ guild meeting on Monday night - used a white print with thin gray stripes, cut on the bias, for the binding. I like the way it looks, so far.

The Baltimore Applique Society is selling off its library and I managed to buy a few books from the sale. Maria brought them to me at the meeting. Mostly they were things I have given away and regretted - for example, Susan McKelvey's Friendships Offering about inking on fabric; she taught me my very first courage for writing on fabric and on being brave enough to try. Also two books about Regency era quilt making which is my daughter's favorite fashion time; that and late Victorian fashion, c.1875 and later. 

:) Linda

Winter Skies

The sky looks like this a lot here in Maryland although it often does not precipitate. shrug. The challenge this week on Project Quilting is 'sky' and I immediately thought about my most-disliked heavenly cover/color (GRAY). This afternoon I decided to try to create a (smallish) gray sky quilt.

Here are my results (this is a top; to be quilted tomorrow, hopefully):

I cut 6" squares of a variety of 15 different gray prints. Laid them together in pairs and freehand cut a gentle curve ... then shuffled and sewed the seams. I got two pieced squares from each pair of prints for a total of 16 squares - a four by four array. I _think_ this looks kind of looming and layered in gray. I am thinking to hand quilt with big stitches and gray pearl cotton. We'll see how the spirit moves me tomorrow. :)

I would call this a Squirrel Squared - a squirrel diverting me from a squirrel-in-progress project. :) I did manage to make another Apple Core block last night while Zooming with my  Wednesday night Modern quilting buddies:

This one is another crumb piecing block, using scraps of leftover fabrics from other core blocks.

Hugh and I had another dinner creation success tonight - we made a kind of meat loaf pie with thinly sliced white potatoes on the bottom and a layer of cheddar cheese melted on top. Was quite tasty! :)

My niece's sweetheart, Kip, is coming to visit this weekend. I have not seen him since Kimmi's funeral last May so this will be interesting. He wants to go through Kim's clothing and miscellaneous remaining things to save some for himself.

:) Linda

Snow and Sewing

One of the decisions I made for the new year was that my son and I would cook more often. He got adventurous recently and we tackled Chinese style chicken stir fry. It was YUMMY! We all enjoyed it quite a bit - but decided we'd increase the recipe next time. :)

He and I enjoy cooking together. I cooked with both of my kids when they were little (standing on a chair beside the stove:) - good way to teach following directions, fractions, pride in construction, accomplishment, etc. Still, as they got older (and I had my quilt store to operate), I cooked less and less. Now that I've 'retired' I have more time to prepare and create good meals ... and we enjoy doing it together. :)

We have had masses of snow (for this area) this week - I am not sure what the official number of inches of snowfall is but it looks like somewhere between six and eight on my back deck:

The high temperatures are downright cold this week, too - highs in the 20s to low 30s. Brrrrr! 

This past Thursday afternoon I ventured out to my local quilt shop (Springwater Designs) to attend the first meeting of the new Reproduction Fabric Club. Any of you who know me personally might raise an eyebrow at that as  my personal fabric palette generally runs to the bright and modern these days. :) My daughter, however, loves repro prints (especially Regency Era and Morris, but she pets American Civil War styles a lot, too:). And I love to study quilting history. One of the women who came to the meeting brought a historical quilt called Mrs. Billings' coverlet that she had made to share with us - early 1800s:

I was gobsmacked! This is the style of quilt I most love - heavily patch-worked with lots of intricate details, from the first quarter of the nineteenth century. She made this entirely by English paper piecing - gulp! Lotsa little papers! No quick piecing techniques. :)

Unlike many contemporary quilt makers, I come from a family of quilters and I really enjoy a good patchwork design. I am thinking to make a 'repro' version of something for my sweet daughter and a 'modern' version of the same thing for myself, maybe with some of the Kaffe Collective prints I've been accumulating. :) Don't know exactly what design yet as I'm off on a squirrel sewing chase right now.

I shared some of the Apple Core blocks I've made in my last post. I've doubled the number I have now:

Remember this two leaf core? I put a modified log cabin in the middle (looks like an eye to me)

The same idea but larger

Some crumb piecing

More crumbs

some nine patches

An elongated Churn Dash

Sawtooth Star, one of my favorites

Apparently I can't make just one

Friendship Star, another favorite

I think I have twelve apple core blocks now. Not sure how I will put them together - will think about that when I'm done using up all the batiks in my Layer Cake. :) Originally I thought I'd just put all the patched ones together but now I'm leaning toward needing some 'resting space' in the design - maybe some alternating 'solid' core shapes? We'll see.

It's cold, cold here this weekend. Tomorrow is the scheduled monthly meeting of my Sew&Tell group. Hoping for sunshine tomorrow even though I expect the temps to be chilly.

:) Linda

Snow!

When I got up this morning there were lovely big snowflakes tumbling down from a very gray sky. They kept on coming all day but got smaller and smaller as time went by - becoming tiny icy pellets by dark. They have accumulated on the grass and roadways but (as of the time I turned in to bed) had not amounted to more than maybe an inch or so. SNOW - the first of this winter, I _think_, here in Columbia.

I had to run out to BJs grocery warehouse mid-morning (we ordered a grocery delivery and we got it twice! no way we had enough refrigerator space for that much food:) - and everyone in sight was rushing around, trying to buy comestibles before the deluge. Things tend to screech to a halt here in the Baltimore-DC corridor when it snows. (It amuses us, since we lived for a decade or more in Wisconsin where snow fell about half the year:).

What could I do (after my quick outside venture) but sew all day? Well, actually I did take a nap under my three lap quilts in my cozy armchair in the living room - watching the birds positively flock to our feeders to eat. Even the blue jay (generally too big to eat comfortably at the feeder) was chowing down - and, for the first time, I saw a bluebird at the feeder! Poor cold fluff bundles darting in and out of the bushes near the feeders, filling up on calories.

When I got to sewing, I got pulled off my intended path by yet another shiny squirrel project. In Saturday's mail I got a package from Missouri Star Quilts with a layer cake (42 10" squares) of beautiful rainbow batiks and a large apple core template. I decided to do some improv piecing and make patchwork apple core blocks from my rainbow pretties. Here's what I managed to create:

Here I used some scrap pieces I found in my stuff.

 

Some simple flying geese (no telling what size they are:).

 

A disappearing nine patch (again, don't know what size)

 

Some half square triangles

 

Two more of those leaf lozenges (I think I will put a star in that center)

 

I had fun playing with this shape. If you look carefully, you can probably see that I stay-stitched around the outside edge of each core shape, mostly to stabilize all those easily-stretched sides. This is likely to be a somewhat long-running project and I would prefer to avoid trouble. :)

Faithful Circle guild had our regular Monday night meeting via Zoom tonight with a lecture on the Science of Color  which I found very informative. I have studied color selection and usage many times, both from an 'art' background (color wheels, palette construction guidelines, etc) and from an 'intuitive' use approach. This was the first time I learned details about physical optical color vision, the psychology of color cross culturally, the physics of colored light, etc. Fascinating stuff! Spoke to the trained scientist in me. :)

Apparently it is likely to snow more tomorrow. I had promised my brother I would come over to help him set up his new electric blanket and sand down the spackled places where I repaired the living room wall. You know, house-holder chores. :) We'll see how the roads are - I can drive on snow but most of the other folks here cannot. I tend to get leery of going any distance on main roads but getting to Kevin's condo is neighborhood streets (should be plowed, though).

:) Linda

More New Year

One thing I love to do is learn. New ideas, new techniques, extensions of older ways - it's all good fodder for my creative soul. :) I treated myself to 10 days of collage play with collage artist Catherine Rains recently and took Collage Kickstart. Mostly I just watched as she demonstrated new ways to make marks on paper and then composed collages with the results. Fun!

Another new thing I think I mentioned before was that my son, Hugh, and I made my grandmother's fruit cake recipe on New Year's Day. Here are photos of the yummy results:

I neglected to take a photo of a cut slice - too busy chowing down. :) Tasted EXACTLY like it was supposed to ... I think this will become a tradition in our family, too. Yum!

I decided that I will sew a little every day this year and so far I've done just that. Here's some proof:

I quilted and bound my mosaic Pink Beach House. Now to find a long ruler to hang it up with - it's destined for the door of my sewing room. :)

My sewing is not necessarily fine art (far from it). :) Last Friday my friends and I met for Stitching Together at Springwater Designs quilt shop here in Columbia (first Fridays are their Open Studio days when anyone can come into the classroom and sew). One of the things I bought that day was a 'new' pattern by Plum Easy for folded triangle stars.

I made the original (I think) stars way back in the late 70s (?) or early 80s when they were popular ... but they were fiddly and I'm not a good enough precisionist to get decent symmetry with my layouts. :) These folks have solved that problem with excellently designed layout patterns. The printed interfacing-weight grids cost about $1.50 or so each here in my area ... but I think they are well worth the layout (I"m not about to sit and mark my own with a compass and ruler!).

Here are the first two I've made (the second is not quite finished yet):

I bound the first one in the traditional way I finish most of my quilts (attached binding, machine sewn). I decided to try a simpler finish on the second one (turning the backing fabric edge to the front). Will see how that looks when I finish it soon.

I follow Australian quilt designer Rachel Daisy who has explored the folded fabric star world pretty extensively. I love the happy energy she puts into her work! Now that I see how to make my stars more symmetric, I might try making one of her quilt designs. :)

I have also been spending time with my brother, Kevin, exploring the local shopping scene. Today we found a new 'junk' store (hmm, deep discounts, assorted stuff from pillows to space heaters to books to kids shoes to ... ) called Ollie's. Kevin actually read one of the fliers that came in his mailbox and decided he wanted to buy himself a new sleeping pillow. 

I like to encourage him to be self-directing so I took him to the shop - in an old outlet style mall near the intersection of US1 and MD175. Shopping with Kevin is fun (if I can stay patient) - he's like a five year old (well, MY five year olds:) and wants to examine/touch and evaluate everything that catches his eye. Progress through the store is slow the first time we visit (after that, he remembers where everything is:). 

He ended up buying himself not only a new pillow but an electric blanket for his bed, a scented candle (pine/spruce) and a set of thermal underwear. I think he is cold! :) I have shown him how to record his money spent and keep track of his bank account. Time he has more control of his personal life (my parents and other siblings have never allowed him that, far as I can tell).  :)

Tomorrow is sewing with Patty and Barbara day ... fun, fun!

:) Linda

New Year, New Ways

This is the front side of a recipe card written out by my Grandmother Hampton (my Dad's mother). She was 'famous' for her fruit cakes which were like none other I've ever eaten. More like a rich spice cake with dried fruit and nuts inside - none of that nasty neon red and/or green candied fruit bits. :P Always baked in a bundt-cake-like shape and iced with a brown sugar topping that had half walnuts arranged prettily around. She made hers sometime before the Xmas holiday and 'aged' them for a while to maximize the flavors (I'd guess:). Often those were her gifts to people.

Well, the long and short of this story is that my son, Hugh, and I decided to try making one of Grandma's cakes - of course from her recipe. My Grandmother was born in 1904 (Grandpa in 1897) and cooked all her life on a wood stove (I'm from Appalachia). The 'how to' instructions with this recipe are 'bake in a slow oven until done'. Hmmm.... 

We bought all the ingredients listed and added some of our own (dried cherries, apricots and dates; slivered almonds and walnuts). Could NOT find ground Allspice in either grocery we visited so we used some _very old_ allspice I had (maybe 20 years old?). The cake itself is cooling on a wire rack downstairs as I write this - mixing the batter and baking it was an adventure. :) I had to actually call upon the (meager) culinary skills I have to get the batter correct (fingers crossed!). Tomorrow morning we will make the icing and top the cake. Then the taste testing commences. To be continued...

I managed to sew yesterday - finished another zipper pouch for my guild's sale table:

Not sure how many pouches that makes so far (15? 16?) but I have decided to change gears and make a small quilt for the silent auction. Last month during Mimi's Grad Class meeting at Bear's Paw quilt shop in  Towson, I bought a scrap bag of Australian aboriginal art fabric ... and have decided to make a small log cabin wall hanging with it. The print features a goanna on the pointillist style background I so admire. My tentative working title is Goanna Round-Up. :) I need to buy a dark reddish brown print to enhance the yellow, black, cream and beige palette from the scrap bag. None of the reds I can lay my hand on in the sewing mess are a decent match for the theme print. Luckily I plan to visit my LQS soon.

While I was at the Barnes&Noble with my brother on Sunday, I bought the January issue of Quiltmaker magazine. The cover design caught my instant attention - might have to make this one. It will be a good scrap quilt choice:

Today I sewed also - hand sewing a lining into the last zipper pouch I made previously. That was more challenging than I expected - careful, invisible, tiny stitches were called for. :)

I got some sad family news earlier this week - my mother's brother Buddy passed away the day before Christmas. He was third in birth order in her family and one of only two sons in the set of ten siblings. There are only three of Mom's sibs left alive now. The generation is slowly vanishing, along with all the accumulated wisdom involved. Sad.

:) Linda