Friday Feet 07-15-11

Ohhhh, for the days I could wear open shoes.  Aren't they elegant? 

 
The wearer says they are very comfortable.  I'll bet they are also cool. 

A trip to San Diego 07-14-11

I drove to Visions Art Museum (formerly Visions Art Quilt Gallery) yesterday to see the current exhibit, "Fabric Free Fashion" which ends on Sunday, July 24th.  No pictures allowed, so this is an illegal photo that I took to share with you.  Sorry, Visions.  I was told how difficult it was to keep visitors from taking pictures and also from touching the garments.  Yes, I understand.  I am not interested in fashion and have seen a number of recycled art projects that were terrible, but this exhibit surprised and delighted me.  If you possibly can, go see it before it closes a week from Sunday. 

When I was younger and went places that required dress-up clothes I probably would have been brazen enough to wear this dress.  All of the garments had to be wearable and there are great pictures of each garment on a professional model.

 

Like many (most?) non-profits in this terrible economy the Museum is scraping the bottom of the barrel and has started a fundraising campaign for the biennial exhibit in 2012.  Fortunately they have a supporter who is putting up a $10K matching grant, so every dollar donated will be doubled.  I am a longtime admirer of Visions and urge you to renew/start your membership and also make a donation to the fund for the biennial.  Every little bit counts - give $5 or $5000! 

http://www.visionsartmuseum.org/newsletters/2011Summer.pdf

I lunched with a friend at a nearby restaurant, "Solare".  The seared tuna salad looked so yummy and I was so hungry that I had cleaned my plate before I remembered to take a picture.  Guess I will have to drive down there again and order the same thing - not just for a picture, but because it was so good.   The Wordless Wednesday image is from the restaurant - there are glass candle cups covered with silk ribbon attached to the dark vertical pole on the right.  I imagine they look quite lovely at night.  

Fortunately, for us, the waitress made an error on our bill and the hostess presented us with a complimentary dessert.  They called it a meringue, but it seemed more like a cold souffle to me.  There was just a touch of raspberry puree in the center, to go with the drizzle on the plate dusted with powered sugar.  I tasted a bit of alcohol in the souffle - Kirschwasser?  brandy?  Marsala?  I don't have a palette for liquor any more.  It was the perfect ending and sharing it made it the perfect couple of bites.

By the time I was on the road north I was in the traffic, so I stopped at the outlet mall off Palomar Airport Road to pay a visit to Crate & Barrel.  They didn't have much interesting on the Marimekko fabric shelves, but I found some promising 'remnants' in the 99cents-a-pound barrel.  Only one piece of purple for the purple basket I am preparing for the Surfside Quilters Guild basket auction in November.  Purple and the blue I use in my blue/white kitchen are out of fashion right now = everything is yellow, orange, acid green.  I'll keep looking. 

 

 

I also stopped at the Cupcake Store to buy this treat for a friend whose birthday was Monday.  It is vanilla cake with peanut butter frosting, chocolate sprinkles and a candy cell phone, because she is ALWAYS on her cell phone.  Even with the plastic clam shell box the fragrance was so tempting, I might have eaten it except the traffic had let up and it was a fairly quick drive home. 

Wordless Wednesday 07-13-11

Patriotic Quilts at Surfside Quilters Guild 07-12-11

There were some great red, white and blue quilts at the Surfside Quilters Guild meeting today.  We have just this month started providing quilts for Wounded Warriors, a group devoted to having each wounded service person covered with a quilt when they are transported from a conflict area to a stateside or European based hospital.  Those quilts should be 48" x 78" to fit on the gurneys.  But these different sized quilts are great inspirations. http://patrioticheartstringsquiltingproject.blogspot.com/

Our speaker this month was Lyn Brown http://www.lynbrown.com/  who teaches in north Orange County and creates patterns which are available in her Etsy shop http://www.etsy.com/shop/lynbrowndotcom

"Chains of Friendship" a pattern by Lyn Brown.  This quilt has her "Borders on Blocks" technique which builds the borders onto the blocks before they are assembled.

"Old Glory"  Lyn Brown pattern  64"W x 46"L (but it could be made larger or smaller with re-sized blocks)

"Hooray, U.S.A" -  Judy de Gruy showed this at Show & Tell.  She made it for her red, white & blue patriotic guest room.   It was quilted by Carol Kaplan.

Monica Shafer shared this quilt from a pattern featured on the cover of American Patchwork and Quilting. It was one of the first quilts that she made.

"Patriotic Star" wallhanging made by Maggie Bell from a pattern by Judy Hasselkus.  (not a good picture, sorry!)  This piece is about 18" square.

 

"Come Home Safe - We Love You"  Victoria Crayne

A collection of patriotic blocks - a great Uncle Sam on a bicycle!

Ruth B. McDowell "Red Hen" posted 07-11-11

I just completely ran out of steam last evening and had to go to bed early - before I posted to my Blog.  Sorry.  This is one of four of Ruth's chicken quilts in TCQC - she likes chickens, I like chickens.  I purchased this from Ruth at Asilomar in 2010.   

"The Red Hen"  Ruth B. McDowell - Colrain, MA  2010  17" x 20"

Cotton fabrics, batting, thread.  Machine pieced and quilted.
http://www.ruthbmcdowell.com/

What a great eye!  I think it is from a Kaffe Fassett fabric.  The feather over her head adds a whimsical touch and notice the rust w/irregular white pattern on the back of the neck - a calico!  It was pprobably in Ruth's fabric library for thirty years.

Great feet!  Another of Ruth's chicken quilts has two hens

 - one with these blue feet and the other with purple. 

Ruth has such a great eye for fabrics and uses mostly commercial prints.  but she will also include batiks, hand dyes, furnishing fabrics.... whatever works in the design. 

I appreciate the hand written label - always distinctive. 

And the great backing fabric.  This is a quilt that I will sometimes hang backward for a few days, just to enjoy this awesome fabric, which is enhanced by the red quilting thread.

 

Ruth's quilting lines always add to the image - here with feathers and in the lower left her original version of "Methodist Fan" motif. 

SCCQG July meeting about Newsletters 07-09-11

The Southern California Council of Quilt Guilds http://www.sccqg.org/ meets four times a year with a different theme for each of the meetings.  Today Linda Smith (Flying Geese Quilt Guild - Editor)
Patty Seebold (Beach Cities Quilters Guild - Editor) and I (Surfside Quilters Guild - Past Editor) did a presentation on many different aspects of creating guild newsletters.  The attendance was not announced, but I estimated there were about sixty people attending, some of those were there to provide the refreshments (which were fabulous) and some came to show and sell tickets on their guild's wonderful raffle quilts.   

Linda Smith is a whiz at learning the computer and does a great newsletter for Flying Geese QGuild. http://www.flyinggeese.net/  She put together a power point program for our presentation  based on the notes and photos that we all provided.

Patty Seebold does the newsletter for Beach Cities Quilters Guild http://www.beachcitiesquilters.org/ using modern graphics and all of her experience teaching computer skills at a local college.  At the same time we were meeting to prepare the program she has been helping plan a grandgirl's wedding and remodeling a house she and her spouse have recently move into. 

Both of these ladies are actually Superwomen disguised as quilters!  

"Nature's Friends" is from Friendship Square Quilters Guild, Whittier, CA., http://www.fsqg.org/ is hand appliqued and hand quilted.  Friendship Square does a raffle quilt every two years - the workwomanship is so fabulous it takes two years to complete such and outstanding quilt.  Bonnie Smith and Barbara Silva were attending.

A striding bright green frog must not like berries as he seems to have passed them up. 

Bluebirds usually nest in tree hollows or nesting boxes, but they have used a little artistic license to put this one in a vine wreath so we can see his beautiful blue feathers.

"Bountiful Baskets" raffle quilt from North Cities Quilters Guild in Placentia, CA., http://www.northcitiesquiltguild.org/  is hand embroidered and machine quilted.  It was attended by guild President Becky Sproal.

 

Peggy Carlsen crocheting in the back of the room.  Since my part of the presentation was about photography I am posting this image as an example of a candid shot - good color, background not too distracting, lovely zinnias and roses for a table centerpiece and she is an "active" subject with her busy hands.