Fiber and Pulp

Little Fires

These are gladiolus flowers (also called Sword Lilies). My Mom loved them - they come in many colors and create a fairly long-lasting bloom stem. I haven't seen many growing here in MD but they are pretty common in southern gardens. I always think of Mom when I see them. :)

I have been tending to small, minor sewing projects over the past two weeks. Barbara, Patty and I have been shop hopping in the East and West Central Regions of the Mid-Atlantic Hop ... which has taken much of my energy. Between those days out and dealing with my brother's care and worrying over my husband's health, I have not had much motivation to sew. Sigh.

I have worked on a few things. I moved my paper arts working to my brother's condo and have managed a couple of sessions there. I took a picture of my body evidence for the work (I am a klutz with my art media and tend to get them all over my body:).This was left from my work with Posca paint pens.

The Baltimore Modern quilt guild met on Sunday afternoon for our monthly get together. Our program included making little chickie pincushions. Here are some of the results:

Following the activity, the interested makers did a blind swap with their chickens. I liked mine well enough to keep the one I made for myself, though. :) It was fun - we free-hand cut the combs, beaks and tails from felt and several members brought machines to sew the bodies together. My friend Kathy Fain and I made little walnut shell containing weights to stuff inside so the pinnie would sit soundly (they were stuffed with fiberfill and so were a bit light). Fun!

I've also been working on blocks for the Faithful Circle round robin bee which is a row-along. Each maker created a row of blocks for their beginning and included a yard of some focus fabric(s). Every other maker must create a row of equal length (but block sizes can vary) that 'go' with the original row.

The first row I got to work on had six cute patchwork farm animals. I have made three more blocks to finish my row since I last wrote here:

a fluttery butterfly

every barn needs a cat

a free-form rose; flowers are good to grow, too!

I turned that package in last Monday at meeting and picked up the second one to work on ... this one has stars in it and I'm having fun with them. I decided to make five pointed stars as they are a bit different than the usual. The first go around I tried improv piecing a la Buggy Barn stack/whack/shuffle to make 6" square blocks:

I was not happy with these results. This improv technique yields 'wonky' designs but these stars were more jagged than I wanted. So, I went looking for foundation pieced five pointed stars and found a pattern that included many sizes of star. I was much happier with the results:

This 4" star dances on a frame

This star is only 3" square so I could let it dance inside a floating frame.

I have several more to make and am looking forward to playing with other bright colors for the blocks. :)

Tomorrow I have to tend my brother - lunch out, grocery shopping, one doctor's appointment. Wednesday my friend Patty and I are going down to Virginia to get stamps in two shops - the ones I missed because I forgot my passport book on one of our treks. :P I am looking forward to visiting the two shops (Artistic Artifacts in Alexandria and The Quilt Studio in Fairfax). Hope the traffic gods are with us!

:) Linda

More Construction

August is my personal marker for the flowering of many so-called weeds in the verges of highways and fields. The one above, Goldenrod, is a widely distributed late summer flowering plant and the state flower of Kentucky (probably among others). Since I learned my state history in KY, that's the one I'm most familiar with (well, MD is Black-eyed Susans; VA is Dogwood). Many people are allergic to goldenrod pollen and when I was a child this was the 'hay fever' month (my Mom was allergic to several late summer flowering 'wild' plants, as was her mother).

I haven't seen any goldenrod blooming in our neighborhood ... but it has been so darned HOT that I have not been out walking much. Today is was raining great gushers when I did go outside, around 2 p.m., to drive to my brother's apartment. I had ordered the finishing (I _hope_) parts to my new 'paper arts' corner at the condo and wanted to install them.

The new under-chair mat I ordered was really, really tightly rolled up ... Kevin and I painfully rolled it out flat and weighted it down with furniture (an armchair, ottoman and side table) to try to get it ready for use. It will be interesting to see how many days under weights it takes to tame the beast. :)

The other thing I ordered was another organizational structure to hold files, paper, etc. It came with tiny printed instructions - pictures only - for assembly. I had to have faith in the good engineers' assumption of average housewife construction skills ... and peer carefully at the drawings to make sense of the thing. It only took me about two hours to build and did not require Kevin's help so I guess it was easier than the last rolling structure. Here it is:

It fits very nicely right under the side board of my drafting table and rolls easily on the carpet. So, satisfying and DONE. :)

I spent another hour unpacking another two grocery bags (um, big grocery totes) full of 'paper art' supplies I had brought from home (still working on cleaning my under-desk accumulation). Not sure that the way I am sorting things out will be the final method, but a good start is fine for now. :) 

Maybe the next time I go over I can actually MAKE something, eh? :)

Hugh and I made chicken soup in our crock pot this morning before I went out so the house smelled wonderful when I got home around 5:30 p.m. Such a nice thing to come home to eat. Tomorrow is the monthly meeting of Mimi Dietrich's Grad Class group but I cannot go. I foolishly forgot the meeting and made an appointment for my brother, Kevin, to go to the new dentist at 1 p.m. tomorrow. Sigh. Gotta be more careful with my calendar.

:) Linda