Friday Feet 07-22-11

Lauren, Terry and Caitlin in new shoes for a wedding.

Things I find on the Internet 07-21-11

Hummingbird fan?  Here is an unbelievable video from Alaska:
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=EUEZkwJulBY
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Women in the village of Lefkara, Cyprus, have been embroidering lace since the 15th century. Now this regional handicraft, recently nominated to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Element collection, is dying out -- replaced by machine-made replicas imported from abroad to meet the demand of tourists.
http://vimeo.com/24025625
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Illuminate your outdoor soiree with a saucy summer lantern made from cocktail umbrellas.
http://vimeo.com/26024795
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I'm a fan of molas.  This seller has a few authentic molas, but most of the pieces are her designs done by women of the San Blas Indian community in Panama.   The money they earn helps support their families.     http://www.etsy.com/shop/molamama

And here is a "cute fix" for the day.  http://www.samscorner.org/?p=1537
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Wordless Wednesday 07-20-11

2005 Road Trip to Montana 07-18-11

One of my best road trips was in July 2005 when I drove to Kalispell, MT, to take a five-day class with Ruth McDowell at The Quilt Gallery.  qg@quiltgallery.net   I traveled from Placentia north to Portland, OR, east to Kalispell,  south to Ft Collins, CO, west on I-70 to I-15 and south through St George, UT, Las Vegas, NV, and home.   I was gone three weeks and stopped along the way to visit friends.  It was a great trip which I would repeat in a second if I had the chance.  I talked a bit about it in a post on July 9, 2011 - http://delquilts.blogspot.com/2011/07/memories-of-montana-2005.html  

 

I am always talking about food, I know.  Obviously from my heft it is one of my favorite things in life. There is a bakery in Kalispell that makes the best bear claws I have ever eaten (I'll dream about them now).  I dubbed them "Grizzly Bear Claws" because of their size.  I put a dollar bill in to give a comparison.  I cannot find the name of the bakery, but I imagine a lot of people in town could point the way if it is still open. 

 

Southern California is tree deprived, so whenever I am out of the LA Basin I look for trees to hug.  After Ruth's class was over I drove east to Glacier National Park, one of the few western parks I had not previously visited.  Along the way I took a stroll on this path in a larch forest - maybe more of a larch wood lot!  The path led off the parking lot of a motel and just pulled me along.  It is surely a short cut to somewhere, but I didn't go far enough to see where.  I hugged a few larches and enjoyed the wildflowers.  

 

Here are the tops of the larches against sunset clouds - being so far north it was quite late, maybe 9pm.  People who have never lived in the very northern states are always dubious when I say that as children we could play outside (in Portland, OR) until 10pm or whenever it got dark.

 

One thing about traveling alone is having to pay attention to where I am driving.  At Glacier they have these reconditioned 1930's "convertible" buses that provide tremendous views for the passengers, so I became a passenger for a few hours. I was very pushy and seated myself first - next to the driver.  Everyone else was with someone so they got to sit together.  Wasn't I thoughtful?  There was a great deal of construction along the way, so I'm not sure I would have wanted to drive the "Going-to-the-Sun" highway anyway - the drop off the unprotected side of the road is thousands of feet.

The little bits of red in the middle of the picture are some of the red buses stopped at a viewpoint.  The views are so expansive that everything man-made seems Lilliputian by comparison.  Gorgeous, gorgeous scenery.

 

These strange plants are bear grasses which seemed to be blooming on every slope.  I had never seen real bear grass before.   Since we were at such a high altitude there were many flowers blooming in late July that bloomed months before at lower levels. 

 

I drove back through Kalispell and south to the National Bison Range National Wildlife Refuge (established in 1908 by edict of the great conservationist President Theodore Roosevelt).  Ruth McDowell had visited earlier in the month and recommended it - she later made a wonderful quilt with a similar view.  http://www.ruthbmcdowell.com/clients/rbm/ShowQuilt.cfm?Quilt=buffaloquilt

It was a long slog on a dirt/gravel road, but I loved it and will go back again someday. 

I think about this trip frequently - especially in July when I long to be somewhere among tall trees and singing streams and slopes of wild flowers. 

Quilt by Carol Ann Waugh 07-17-11

Adding a quilt to the Thomas Contemporary Quilt Collection is always a thrill for me, but I never know when that might happen.   While I was at the SAQA conference in Denver a self-driving tour of quilt exhibits took us to Golden and back to Denver where we saw the quilts of Carol Ann Waugh.  WOW!  Unfortunately, Carol mounts her work and I avoid framed and mounted pieces because of the extra storage requirements.  But Carol had not yet mounted this quilt and agree to finish it unmounted and sell it to me.  Hurrah! 

I'm am showing it sideways because it is long and skinny and a vertical picture doesn't work well.  The bottom of the quilt is darker and is on the right side of the image below. 

"Allegro"  Carol Ann Waugh - Denver, CO  2011  12"W x 48"L 

Hand dyed cotton fabric embellished with hand stitching, machine stitching and couching, machine quilting.   http://www.carolannwaugh.com/

There is such variety in the stitching on this quilt that I see something new every time I look at it.  There are five rows of tiny rick-rack, all but one stitched with a straight stitch down the middle.  That odd man out is a slightly larger rick-rack and it is stitched with zig-zag stitch. 

Machine couching was used for yarn, cords, braid, and, of course, rick-rack.  In the section above the blue curving line is rat-tail cord, the flat blue is a shiny ribbon, two rows below is a nubby yarn, and down another two rows Carol has couched a braided metallic gold cord.  

She has also done lots of hand stitching - French knots (large and small), running stitch, seed stitch and probably others I have yet to discover.

All those fancy stitches on our machines?  Carol has used some I've never seen before.  She has made excellent use of this usually neglected tool most of us have at hand.

I'm impressed that she has been able to create such smooth curves with the fancy stitches - hard to do.

The colors are so rich and warm, my pictures don't do them justice.

The label is hard, shiny plastic - very clever, but I haven't a clue how she made it.  It is special.

 

The back is solid black cotton with the red thread of the quilting showing well.  It doesn't show on the front unless I really focus to find it. 
http://www.carolannwaugh.com/

Sorry Saturday 07-16-11

I'm still having computer problems and was unable to post before I went to bed.  The difficulties are probably more AOL problems!  I have lost all of my incoming mail and don't know if I will ever get it back.  Therefore, no replies to any messages I have not yet answered.  You could try again and maybe cc also to DELQUILTS@aol.com that address seems to work just fine.  There were several comments on my Blog posts that I hadn't acknowledged yet - I will try to go back and retrieve those off the posts, but first I will try to finish up the pictures for Surfside QGuild since the deadline for the N/L is Tuesday. . 

The Poodle Prince is here to help keep me calm, but he goes home this evening. 

Hope to post a quilt tonight.    Love, Del