Sushi for dinner - yummy 12-08-16

It has been a month since I ate sushi and usually I have it about once a week.  So, I was delighted when Carol and Dick wanted to have dinner at Fish in a Bottle.  It was a delicious meal and the company was great, but it was also very tiring.  Guess I'm not completely well, yet.

 

 

 

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Monday Browsing (on a Tuesday) 12-06-16

I was feeling well enough yesterday to take a trip to SDiego for lunch at VAM.  It was a chance for the volunteers to get together and visit.  They all work alone at the desk and never have any time to visit.  I took my friend Bette Bradley who has been needed an outing.  We enjoyed ourselves even though it was very low key.   By the time I arrived home, picking up KoKo at the sitter's at 5pm, I was exhausted.  I took a nap, ate some dinner and then went to bed - not waking up until 8am!  I guess KoKo had a busy day also because he slept all that time too.  Anyway, I still have a bit of a cough at times, but not so deep or so painful, so I guess I'm on my way to being well again.  Fingers crossed, eh? 

 

Since I didn't post last night I am giving you my Monday Browsing today. 

Lots of tutorials on line, if you just know where to look. Type into your search box “tutorials quilt bag patterns”, move down to “Web Results” and start clicking to find hundreds of patterns.  Same for any tutorial you are seeking. 

Here is Sarah Smith’s facing technique:  http://www.sarahannsmith.com/weblog/?p=532

If you make a coaster and add a space for a cookie it becomes a mug rug:

http://www.allfreesewing.com/Dining-and-Kitchen/13-Free-Mug-Rug-Patterns-and-Placemat-Patterns

Bird quilts from a challenge:

http://play.smilebox.com/SpreadMoreHappy/4e4451304d54497a4d7a633d0d0a

Article about thread from Superior Threads:

http://www.superiorthreads.com/blog/2014/11/thread-labels-what-theyre-really-telling-you/

Bag making – many laws have been passed to eliminate the use of plastic grocery bags.  This is a good opportunity to make fabric bags as gifts for the holidays. Here are just two ideas.  http://www.morsbags.com/get-involved/pattern-download-links/

http://www.bijoulovelydesigns.com/2010/05/market-tote-tutorial.html

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Revisiting a quilt from 2009 12-04-16

Here is a post from 08-16-09.  I have always been especially fond of this quilt - atypical of what was happening in "art quilts" at that time.  And it has a nice story! 

I don't know why I had such a hard time cropping these images. What I think is perfect doesn't come out the same when I 'file' the image. So, I am showing an un-cropped and a cropped image of this quilt.

 

"Tall Trees" Bonnie Jean Thornton - Yachats, OR 1995 21"W x 72"L

[NOTE: Yachats, a chrming beach village, is pronounced "YAH - HOTS"]

"Tall Trees" Bonnie Jean Thornton - Yachats, OR 1995 21"W x 72"L

In the summer of 1996 I drove down Hwy 1 from Seaside, OR, to Mendocino, CA. Before this drive my uncle and aunt had driven me down I-5 at night to see the "Electric Horses". These temporary neon sculptures were located on private land (in the style of Christos fabric works) and lit only at night. It was enchanting and now one of my favorite memories of these loving relatives. A few days later as I drove south I had just a glance of a horse by the same artist outside the (now defunct) Triad Gallery in Seal Rock, OR., and I quickly found a place to turn around so I could more closely see the horse. It happened that the gallery was having their annual textile show - did they know I would be coming? This depiction of tall trees along the Oregon Coast is described by its maker,

"A found piece of fabric printed with forest giants, coupled with cottons and cyanotype prints compose this piece. It is hand and machine quilted and has an embellishment of hand couched yarn. Being a child of the [Pacific] Northwest, I have always been awe struck by the majesty of the huge old trees. This quilt honors them."

I also am an Oregonian and I could not resist this interesting quilt. The first thing is that she used one of what I always thought of as the ugliest prints ever made that came out sometime in the 60s. There were a number of different images and I suppose the trees were the least offensive. Several friends had these fabrics on stretcher bars over their sofas - I always sat on the sofa!

Bonnie Jean combined an assortment of fabrics including some of her own cynotypes, hand-dyes and shibori, along with the Nancy Crow fern print. I like the subtle additions of texture and color with the couched rusty hued yarns.

And her hand stitches to depict the rain. Hand stitching of this type was not so common in 1995.
 

The khaki and white shibori fabric creates additional trees and shadows - very cleverly used.
 

An integrated border of muted color seems to show the cratered bark of the Douglas fir trees that are native to the Oregon coast.

I have not seen any work by Bonnie Jean since about 2005, I don't know if she is still making quilts. Prior to her 1980 venture into fabric she was a watercolor artist and sold her work in galleries along the coast. One of her quilts was in Quilt National -1987.

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Friday Feet 12-02-16

Looking back a few years 11-30-16

I did a road trip to Montana in 2012 driving through a lot of open country (Big Sky Country, you know), but I also saw a few old towns.  Butte, Montana, was a surprise, the oldest part of town rI took these pictures was almost deserted, but an attempt to show some history has been made.

 

Who knew sheep shearers have a union?  There were lots of sheep in fields around.

 

 Many mine headers with signs giving their active dates.

 

This chain link fence adorned with coffee mugs was a mystery.  They are firmly attached with the plastic, no-slip, ties used to bundle bunches of wires.   Reminds me of the bridge of keys in France.

 

An old building with vacant lots on all sides, spruced up and tidy with a large lilac tree.

I admit to thievery - made the car smell lovely.

 

 Way up on the top of the hill were these two restored houses probably built in the early 1900s.  Out of the older area are lots of suburbs of more recent vintage - it is just a regular town, after all.

 

KoKo and Friends 11-29-16

KoKo doesn't ignore his friends, he just prefers Froggie.  He tore an ear off of donkey today, so I will being surgery again.

 

 

I'm beginning to think I will have bronchitis for the rest of my life.  Still four days to go on the medications and who knows on the inhalation therapy.  I have tried not talking today, if someone calls I just say "I can't talk, you do the talking."  Works okay so far.

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Rerun of quilt in TCQC 11-27-16

I thought I could photograph a few quilts today, but we had sprinkles off and on, so I gave up on that idea.  Here is a quilt originally posted on 04-12-09.

"Electric Chard"  Ruth B. McDowell  2006  32"L x 40"W

Machine pieced and Machine quilted. Cotton fabric and thread.

 

Ruth talks about this quilt in her book "Ruth B. McDowell's Design Workshop" Published by C&T in 2007. She had purchased a bunch of rainbow Swiss chard and admired its variety of colors. She started her fabric choices with the bright colors for the strong vertical stems and greens with patterns that reminded her of the leaf texture. To balance them she used a large-scale pattern with checkerboard elements as an integrated border on the top and bottom. The background is entirely cut from a Michael James stripe that looked good with the fabrics she had already chosen. Usually Ruth uses a great variety of different fabrics for the background, but the departure seemed to work in this quilt.

Ruth finds design ideas for her quilts in the most amazing places. I love the crisp contrasts in this piece. The dark greens stand out from the pale background with its varied pastel stripes. Ruth has used eight leaves, but turned one upside down so that it appears there are an uneven number. It seems brighter in reality than in any of the pictures - it is a cheerful quilt.