Spring is finally here and more OC!

Spring comes later at 9,000ft. and this year especially with all the late snowfall. The bulbs I planted last fall around Matthew's memorial are coming up & the daffodils & crocus are blooming, along with some little hyacinth I planted inside the deer proof fence. It seems that the deer have no taste for daffodils so it's safe to plant them anywhere. The bluebonnets are still developing their leaves but I found one blooming on the path that leads behind the house & I noticed some beside the road at the lower elevations. In a few weeks they will cover the entire area & everywhere we go up here there will be a sea of blue flowers.I am still working on OC steps 4 & 5, & hope to have them done before Bonnie posts the final clue next week. We have company arriving Sunday, nephew & family from Boston with 3 yr.old twins, so I might not get much sewing time the next week or so & I just don't want this to become another UFO. Here is my step 4 block & one block from step 5, I see a lot of red & blue & of course orange, so I'm thinking it might make a nice Quilt Of valor for a wounded warrior, what do you think? We have a lot of blocks left over but Bonnie has a pieced border in the plan, no doubt where the extras will go. I am pleased that I chose brighter blue & red for the yardage, I think they really help to distract the eye from all the ugly & weird scraps I used in the little blocks.This quilt will be entirely from stash, I have a large piece in the blue family for the backing,but I haven't made a noticeable dent in my stash strips so I must continue to make scrap quilts along with the planned projects.

Kaffe Fasset quilted & ordination pics

This evening I finished quilting the Kaffe Fasset. I thought that I would never finish the floral border, big mistake in my quilting design choice I should have done the same all over design ,as in the middle or a simple panto because with such a busy multi colored floral you can't see the thread so you don't know where you have been or what you have just done! I had chosen a variegated thread & didn't like the effect so I frogged then I had tension issues so I frogged some more, can't stand those railroad tracks & eyelashes! I think I need new tension disks for the bobbin case so I must order a few & some tension springs to have on hand. The black borders in this quilt went quite easily as did the Baby Butt feathers [as Nichole Webb calls them] in the main body of the quilt, but that floral border became tedious after the first side. I hope that Leslie doesn't hate it, I think it will look well on their bed but it's certainly not my favorite work. In spite of Leslie's meticulous cutting & piecing & reworking, there was still some fullness in places which was not too difficult to quilt out but I did spritz the more obvious areas with water then applied the hot hair dryer- that seems to take out a lot of poufiness but of course one must be sure of color fastness before attempting this. I can still see a few areas that aren't as flat as I'd like but probably not noticeable to others.
Here are a couple of photos from Kris's ordination-I love the one of her with Bishop Sandy Greene. Guess I need to get a couple of hours sleep-we are leaving early for the drive to CO. tomorrow-I have a tough time deciding what to pack of all my quilty stuff when we will be away for some weeks. I know that I need to get caught up on the OC Mystery, Bonnie posted step#5 today & I have yet to begin on step#4! I wouldn't want to run short of a project or the necessary fabric & the nearest QS to us in CO. is about 2 hours drive so I would probably order online. Thousand Bolts has a big Memorial Day sale ......I will probably need to get a few little bits & pieces......

Pink bargello

I am pleased to report another project done as I finished up the piped binding this evening. I have to make the label yet, that's a job for tomorrow. In the morning I have to take my car in to Andrew's shop for detailing, it is very overdue so it will be nice to have it spic and span!
Today I went to the Mac store at the Biltmore for a class on iPhoto, that's a great program with a lot of nice features. I took notes, heaven knows how one would ever remember everything otherwise. Next Saturday I am signed up for another Mac class in some of the basics, it may cover a lot of what I know already as the iPhoto class did, but it's all helpful.
Kris's ordination service Saturday was very moving, and Sunday she read the Gospel message for the first time. I wonder if she will ever become accustomed to her new title, "Rev.Kris "!It looks as if we'll be heading up to the mountain house shortly, the weather has to be better there, it was 110deg. in Phx today & the same predicted for tomorrow, that's 15 deg. above normal for this time of year. Supposedly we are to have a cool front later in the week that will drop the temps below 90, seems hard to believe but that's what can happen here, though we know that the triple digits are almost here to stay for the next few months.

Ordination Quilt

This week I have been working on creating this quilt for my friend Kris who is being ordained to the diaconate tomorrow. There are close ups of the quilting on my webshots http://community.webshots.com/user/aussieros
I love watercolor quilts, they are such "eye candy" for me and a very satisfying artistic process. I must have made nearly 20 similar to this for special occasions, birthdays, graduation etc, but most are a little smaller. I try to take pictures of all of my quilts but sometimes I just forget so my portfolio is incomplete.
The pink bargello awaits binding still, I want to do a piped binding as I did on this quilt, Monday I hope to report the bargello completion. Then it's back to the longarm to quilt the kingsize Kaffe Fasset and a Storm at Sea that is all batiks including the backing. Batiks can be a PITA on the LA causing skipped stitches especially when the backing is also batik so I am hoping this one will not be a problem as I need to get both finished before we leave for Colorado for about 6 weeks. One of the most recent QOV's was batiks and I had a lot of broken thread issues but that was during the timing /missing screw period so perhaps that contributed.I still haven't done step 4 of the OC mystery and the next clue is about due. I may not catch up until after we go to CO. -our guild up there meets Wednesdays at a church in Montrose to sew on projects of our own choosing, a weekly mini retreat that can be very productive with no family interruptions.Time for a cuppa then off to bed- I found a wonderful tea shop nearby called Souvia that has an exotic & wide selection of teas of every flavor & style, green tea, black tea white tea & Rooibus which is a decaffeinated herbal tea.We need to be at the church around 9 so I need to get cracking if I'm to get my beauty sleep!

QOV's done!

The QOV's were done a couple of days ago, I'm awaiting the names of three of the AZ Army National Guard from Lucas. There's no point in mailing the quilts out of state when we have combat wounded here in Phoenix.The pink bargello is perhaps 2/3 quilted, I seem to have been distracted by all kinds of other things the past couple of days and yesterday I had to frog a lot of quilting that had less than pleasing tension issues showing on the back. I am still transferring files & working at the set-up of the MacBook, today I spent several hours in a futile effort among other things trying to load the HP printer drivers finally making one of my two free "help" calls to Microsoft & getting some answers about Entourage. iPhoto seems t0 be my other major problem right now & it's a pain working back & forth between two computers, I really want to ditch the Dell! I'm way too weary to do anything more tonight!

Tucson trip

LA friend Debbie[a LA'er for AZ. HOB] drove to Tucson & we met up with Loretta, AZ. HOB Coord. & her friend Cathy. Of course the trip included some quilt shop retail therapy but I only spent what I had planned so I wasn't too bad! It was a long day, over 300 miles round trip plus a major forced detour on the way home, there is always some kind of "work" on the highways. In addition to my fabric purchases I came home with a couple more projects courtesy of Loretta, a quilt top & backing to be completed for donation & enough blocks for another QOV, both off her UFO list & onto mine,LOL! And from Loretta, two more quilt patterns & a book! I have unpacked & petted my purchases, which incidentally were all on sale, & here are the pictures. The marbley pieces with the coordinate are for a WHIMM, aren't they gorgeous? Then these sort of retros are Valori Wells , I love them & want to make a padded computer bag for my MacBook with one of them. Do you see a theme developing here, does it look as if I'm in a "brights" phase, ya think?! Do other stashers also find that your fabric falls into one phase or another of buying trend? As for these last two fabrics, the pink print is replacement for one of the many pinks I used in the Pink Bargello [previous post] & the yellow Ginny Beyer is a good stop border for the small Resurrection water color quilts that I make.
Last but not least here are pics of the two QOV's that I quilted Thursday after I finally got the A-1 retimed & the missing screw replaced. I hadn't been able to use it for a week & boy had I missed it! These are now trimmed & binding in place for final stitching, labeling & laundering before going to a military hospital to offer comfort for a Wounded Warrior.

OC Mystery step 3 and the Pink Bargello

This step was little stress & strain, except that I made way too many of one kind that are now in the orphan block box & that seems to grow weekly! Step 3 is very scrappy, on the eeeuuuwww end of the kitchen sink scale, though I do love using scraps & haven't yet made a dent in mine but it is early days for my focused use of leftover/ignored/rejected fabrics. This is the last step of the OC that will require scraps- Bonnie has told us that in step 4 we begin to use our chosen yardage .

Today I finished piecing the pink bargello & I'm glad because it's a bit boring to piece! I plan to use the backing fabric at the bottom of the picture for borders, I did the math & I have just enough yardage.

I had Andrew & Lana's little Yorkies today, I offered doggie day care when Lana needs to stay for an extended day at the shop so that the little dogs don't have to be shut up for so long. They enjoy the couple of miles we walk in the park & the freedom to go in & out to the backyard with Button through the dog door. There are coyotes & rattlesnakes [& probably Gila Monsters & maybe mountain lions] out where they live so a dog door in their home is out of the question. When we were in the park this morning I took a photo of Matthew's memorial which was placed last week but unfortunately the date is wrong, 2007, it should read 2006 & as yet we are not sure how it will be corrected. We were however very pleased to see that the Palo Brea tree we planted in mid December finally came back to life after lacking leaves or any other sign of life since January. I really thought it was past help but these native desert plants are extraordinary in their ability to survive.

This lovely hybrid yellow rose we planted in our backyard memorial garden last weekend is covered in blooms, it is such a bright splash of color out there. Most of the colorful plantings are very new and they are not so far adding much variety to the garden. Another month & that should change just in time for us to leave for Colorado for a few weeks!

QOV and timing!

I have finished the first of three QOV's on my list to quilt. I had begun on the second when the timing went out on my A-1 & I have been trying for 3 frustrating days to get it back in time, 6 hours today alone. Thursday I discovered that a tiny screw is missing from the shaft, must have vibrated loose, I have searched for it to no avail & I'm wondering if the missing screw is somehow effecting my efforts to time the machine. I have ordered a couple more of those little screws so perhaps I'll wait until they arrive before I expend any more effort on the timing adjustment, I can certainly find plenty of other things to do meantime but I do dislike having the longarm inoperable. Bonnie has posted the third step of the OC Mystery a few days early so I can add that to my to-do list. After church today we went by Ikea & I picked up a set of 6 small storage boxes for the small cabinet beside my DSM, another organizational chore awaiting me.

I am excited that I have been the very fortunate recipient of a preloved MacBook, the last edition of the TiBook. My friend Leslie, maker of that lovely Winding Ways quilt, had upgraded to a new PowerBook & found they weren't using the TiBook so knowing that my Dell is dying she generously gifted the TiBook to me! Wow! I am now in the process of transferring files via Thumbdrive- the Dell has refused my requests to back-up for at least 6 months. I am loving getting to know my Mac & finding all the cool stuff I can do with it.

OC Progress

It is good to have all 142 blocks completed for the second step in the OC mystery & boy are they scrappy! I have never seen a poorly designed quilt from Bonnie so I have every confidence that our fearless leader has a plan to pull them all together with our chosen yardage colors & those are mine below.

I think it was only last week that I was congratulating myself on having organized all of my scraps, left overs & odd/ strange bits of fabric when I discovered, oh horrors another bin full! Well, it wasn't a HUGE bin but sort of a smaller medium size & since I had ever so briefly entertained the thought that surely I had more orphan blocks, I was not too surprised to find the "missing" orphans were also in that bin! I promptly set about cutting & sorting this other "found" fabric & now I am sure that is it- at least pretty sure!

I am continuing to work on the pink bargello in between longarming three QOV's -I didn't get but one pass done today, I had some necessary "chores" & didn't get to the LA until mid afternoon. then when I went to check the timing I discovered that there is a screw missing from the shaft, probably why the timing seemed off. In the morning I will call A-1 & ask them to send me a couple of spares & in the meantime I have tightened the other two screws as much as I can & "Ellie" is running just fine.

Pink Bargello & Posh Bag

Here is half of the first column of the Pink Bargello the "up" part of a "hill". I could only show half the length in the photo. I have cut & sewn strips for 6 colums, that's 6 hills or ups & downs! I now realise[where was my math brain? It was on a migraine trip!] that 6 columns would make the quilt wider than long so I'm not sure if I will stick to the original 4 as in Bonnie's pattern & add a couple of borders or perhaps 4 & a half hills but how odd will that look?! I should have extended the length too but as I said my math brain was inop!The little gift bag is my version of a very cute bag I saw on Buttonberry http://buttonberry.typepad.com/photos/posh_pick_n_mix_bag/index.html I made mine an inch and a half larger each way to hold the gift I have for my Aussie friend Sue's b'day. We were supposed to go to Gooseberry's for tea Wednesday but I had to beg off & so we'll go next week. I did get some flowers planted in my little memorial garden a couple of hibiscus back by the fence. Walt has the fountain in & it looks too bare around it so I need to find some more plants!

I was surprised at how much work it is digging holes & planting, I was hot & weary before I finished. I hope to get to the plant store in the next day or two & choose some more flowering plants to fill in the around the edges of the yard, especially back by the fountain which has a light & looks & sounds very nice especially after dark. I'm pleased with it!

Scraps,scraps & more scraps!

I have been down & out for a day or so with migraine but now that the worst is over I'm hoping to work my way back to full activity.

I am happy to report my progress towards "scrap control"! After persistently cutting for a total of many hours, all of my scraps are cut into the widths suggested on Bonnie's blog & anything larger than 6" has been set aside for other than strip use. Because my bureau drawers are so large I purchased small baskets from the Dollar Store to keep the different widths separated but I have yet to sort each width by light/dark/bright colors, that's a job for another time. There is also a basket of orphan blocks & now that they have all been revealed, I am surprised by the number & variation in size, style & color. I'm hoping that I will have inspiration for their use as I keep reminding myself that I paid the same amount for all of these scraps as I did for the yardage & the orphan blocks have the additional investment of my time for piecing them so it all deserves to be put to use instead of aging in the dark recesses of storage bins! I have discovered that unlike many wines fabric does not improve in taste with age, LOL. All the strips of pinks necessary are now cut & ready for a bargello a la Bonnie Hunter & I have barely any pink left in my stash, so although I won't go shopping for pink fabric I will be on the look out for lovely pink bargains! I have folded back the ends of the stacks to show some of the variation in tone, sufficient I hope to make definition of the ups & downs of the bargello. This will be a monotone quilt because the intended recipient is a 15 year old "pink addicted" girl. I really appreciate the clarity of Bonnie's directions, they are clear & detailed enough to leave no doubts without being unnecessarily verbose so I am sure that her first quilting book now in development, will be a winner.

Quilt class

Today we had a beginning quilting class at church & an enthusiastic group turned up to make a good start on their baby quilts. It's a nice simple pattern I designed to teach the basics & today we covered safe & accurate rotary cutting, piecing & squaring up the blocks. Everyone completed their 16 little blocks but I was too busy to remember to take pictures, however our faithful coordinator was snapping away I know & I will ask her to send me a couple of her photos. I went to the Mac Store with a Mac friend this afternoon & asked a lot of questions about moving from PC to Mac & checking my options for purchase in the near future. I am only slightly apprehensive about the possibility of this change-over, & I'm leaning heavily in that direction but still keeping my options open.This evening I finally completed the pieced borders on the Oriental Stack & Slash, which had been in UFO status since before Christmas. The borders were quite time consuming, making them fit nicely was a challenge I did not anticipate & I am happy to have it ready to quilt. I think I will put it on the longarm next, perhaps even Monday. It's for my niece in Australia & she admired the quilting on the original sample quilt in Australian Quilter's Companion which was very simply done on a DSM. I don't think that I want to copy that because it will require a stop & start in every little individual square & there are over 200 but I will probably try to figure out something resembling the original that can be continuously quilted. There are plants in pots in the backyard awaiting planting & I think it's important to get them in the ground so they can acclimate before the REAL heat sets in so that is on my agenda for tomorrow. This weekend was predicted to be the first to reach 90 degrees & I haven't heard whether or not we made it there yet, we all know it is inevitable unfortunately that the mercury will not stop there!

OC Four Patches & Winding Ways

Here are my 150 four patches, I think they are rather awful, many of them are predominantly black [black goes with everything right?!] I trust Bonnie implicitly, when she says kitchen sink I throw in the kitchen sink! The patches seem very dark to me & you can see if you zoom that the squares are quite mousy & dull but I think the brighter yardages, especially the orange & the blue/green accent I will be adding later to the design will rescue them from the realm of the very ordinary! I cleaned up my studio this afternoon & pulled out my Oriental Stack & Slash UFO & started on the pieced borders. Oh, & last night, or rather early hours of this morning, I finished quilting the Winding Ways with a leafy motif inspired by Kim Stotsenberg's LA quilting book "Just Leaf It". The back view shows the overall effect of the design on this very pretty quilt & I'm relieved that Leslie likes the photos that I emailed to her- I'm always just a little anxious until I know that the owner thinks I have done justice to her work. I did notice in the pics. that I have a few loose threads to clear off before I mail it off to TX tomorrow. The design is freehand & I used QD 70/30 batting & off white thread.

The Wedding!

The wedding celebration was beautiful, the weather held perfect & everyone had a great time. Unfortunately I had major difficulties figuring out how to make my new camera perform under the outside night -time conditions-my fault not the camera I'm sure-so I have very limited pictures but I'll post a couple & replace them later as others provide better photos of our son & his lovely bride. I have posted the rest of the assortment from my camera on my webshots here.

Eve of Andrew & Lana's Big Day!

Minimal sewing today, I pressed my OC strips & cut them, rejecting a dozen or more for various reasons so back to the cutting board, more sewing; pressing not yet because I ran errands & picked up the little Yorkies to keep them out from underfoot till after Andrew & Lana's wedding tomorrow evening. I'll deliver them back home Sunday. I had either or both on my lap all evening, I think they are a little homesick. Little Fatty Patty Abby is happy to share the space with Jake but he's a 5 lb. Napoleon! That's Jake far left, can't you just tell ?! When I take them walking I think people assume the little ones are Button's pups because Aussie Terriers can look a lot like overgrown Yorkies- the Yorkies weigh in at 5-7 lbs, Button's ideal weight is 13[she's a bit over right now so we've switched to feeding low fat Evo]

Now that it is working for me I have been ringsurfing the mystery quilter's blogs & that's taken some of the evening , but I do have more than half of my 150 four patches sewn & they are REALLY scrappy & there are some 'eeeeuuuuuuwwww' fabrics there. I am hoping that 1.5" squares will disguise their ugliness-if a fabric is still ugly then I haven't cut it into small enough pieces, right? LOL! I'll post pics when I get all 150 done. I have at least enough strips left to make another 150 but I'll save them in case I want to use them in the borders.

Arizona & Orange Crush

We returned from CO. yesterday in record time, under 9 hours,LOL & the weather is very pleasant still here in Phx! Walt went right to the car wash to remove a couple of hundred pounds of mud before we went out for sushi with JW & GF for his 34th. birthday. Was our youngest DS really only 7 lbs 2 ozs & 21" long 34 years ago?! That's a far cry from 200 lbs & 76"!Today I hope to work on my 4 patches for the OC mystery-this time around we have 2 weeks between clues for which I'm thankful, as Bonnie is busy working on the publishing of her first quilt book. I have changed the accent fabric for the OC mystery because the blue accent fabric that I had chosen was not "accenting" the other fabrics as it should, & I'm much more pleased with this combo above. Leslie's Winding Ways quilt, below, is begging me to quilt it, & I am eager to get a start on it now that I have a design idea in mind so that she can get it back & bound for a HS grad. gift.

March QOV's

I finished up the second QOV & plan to send them both off tomorrow to the piecer who made them, she will bind,label & launder the quilts before sending them to one of the military hospital chaplains who distribute them to the combat wounded. The other QOV is a compilation of blocks "signed" by the kindergarten class her son attends, so I quilted it with appropriately whimsical motifs. I think that tomorrow I will work on some of the paper pieced BOM blocks from "Singing His Praises" quilt- I have 5 blocks finished but I haven't worked on it since the fall so it's definitely in the UFO category. We took a long walk with Button but the roads are dotted with muddy areas & in spite of our efforts to keep her away from them she needed a good foot & belly wash when we got back! The Cimmarron & Sneffels ranges received a good dusting of snow but we had only a few snow flakes fall on us while we walked even though the wind was icy. It was good to get back to a nice, warm house & some spiced cider. Soon after we returned the snow began to fall very gently & so far we have a couple of inches on the deck- the morning view will be freshly sparkling with new snow.

Orange Crush - and Devonshire Tea!

All the required light & dark scrap strips are cut for the new mystery a few days ahead of the start up date, April 1st. It will be hard to resist sewing that day but I will be busy packing up to return to AZ. As instructed I have thrown in everything but the kitchen sink, & honestly I am amazed at how I managed to amass such a large collection of weird fabrics! To my relief they are all scraps which means they are not part of my actual yardage stash. To my despair, there is far too much of it still remaining! Obviously I have to continue to make more large scrap quilts if I ever hope to reduce this collection of leftovers & rejects! I notice that the light/neutrals are reading as sort of pink, which they are not in reality, it must be the lighting. I took a couple more pics & even tried to edit out the pink in Photosmart without success. Even the fabric they rest on shows up pink, that's strange.

It is a cool, breezy day here at 9,000 ft. in SW Colorado with intermittent sunshine & a balmy 52 degrees outside. This is the view from our deck to the south ; the mountains around us are 12-14,000 ft. Mt Sneffels being the highest just out of view in this picture. It is a spectacular panorama any time of year. I decided to make Devonshire Tea this afternoon-Australian style scones, jam & thickened cream. I wish I had taken a picture before they were all devoured! There's a big difference cooking/baking at 9,000 ft. versus sea level. I notice it most with beans, rice, pasta & cookies. No problem with yeast breads or anything else but I think it took me a year or so of experimenting to conquer the cookies, they would just spread out all over the pans. The scones baked up perfectly at 400 degrees F for about 12 minutes.Yummy! We had elk steaks for dinner, courtesy of my friend Gale, the hunter [& her husband]. Last night it was elk spaghetti, the boys love that; elk meat is very similar to lean beef, no whang to the taste. Last year we had moose from the same source, & the boys would beg for mooseburgers!