An occasional visitor 07-02-21

When I turned to back into my garage the other day I saw that the visiting egret was in my neighbor's flower bed looking for a lizard lunch.  I hope he found some as we have an abundance of lizards this year.  I suppose they eat bugs so I should welcome them, but too many is just too many.   I suppose this is the same egret that has visited our neighborhood a number of times in the past.  I always hope to get an image of him/her in flight - so elegant. 

His supple neck makes lovely curves and he keeps it moving all the time.  Perhaps the better to see his prey. 

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Sewing - discovered quilt top 07-01-21

There are boxes and baskets and bags of quilting stuff that I haven't looked at in decades.  But I need to keep digging through it all and find new homes for a lot of it.  Today I looked in a box and discovered a couple quilt tops and miscellaneous fabrics and some self made "kits" of quilts that I thought I would make.  I can tell the ages of some of them by the fabrics.  Mostly the prints, but also some fabrics that are cotton/poly and I don't remember when I last purchased cotton/poly.  The pale blue border on this quilt top is a flimsy cotton/poly.  I think this came from a workshop where one stacks different fabrics, cuts all the layers together, and then "mix and match" to make blocks.  Since I almost never work with pink it struck me how pale this is compared to the most recent bright "Pink Tree".  

Quilt top  52"L 39"W  There are eight blocks in the center cut from eight different fabrics.  The same fabrics are used for the pieced borders.  It is sort of a crazy quilt looking design and I think it is really ugly!  Maybe that is why it has languished in a box for at least 35 years. 

Close up showing two blocks and part of a border. 

I hope all those boxes, baskets, and bags turn up something more impressive than this.

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Sewing 06-30-21

I was on a roll with the background ready to go and decided to add a tree.  Also decided to keep going to finish a piece for the SAQA auction.  The deadline was today!  So, I added the tree, quilted that, put in some birds, zigzagged the edge, put on a label and two rings for hanging.  Finally shipped it late yesterday via FedEx.  I hope someone likes it and buys it on October at the online auction.  

I don't know how to make pictures the correct color.  The pink here is rather washed out while in actuality it is mostly very bright pink.  

"Pink Tree"  Del Thomas (California) 2021  12" X 12"  

Cotton Fabric Scraps, Cotton thread, Poly thread, Cotton batting

Fused, machine quilted.  

There are three birds because there is always at least one bird on each of my quilts. 

In-a-hurry label.  There are two plastic rings on back for hanging.   Somehow I forgot to take a picture of the back, something I usually do.  Sorry. 

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Sewing 06-28-21

I took a large box of scraps to SDiego with me to turn into Salvation Army for their fabric resale project - they sell them to manufacture things like carpet padding.  But the drop-off station was closed by the time i got there, so I passed them off to a SDiego friend who will turn them in for me.  I did look to see what was in the box and it was easier to part with them when I discovered that some were from at least forty years ago.  Some poly, some rayon, but mostly cottons.  I closed the lid and let them go to a good cause!  

I have more boxes, baskets, bags, and Baggies full of scraps and will continue making backgrounds with no idea what will go on the backgrounds.  The latest one I used scraps other than the squaring up pieces which make just strips.  These scraps were in a bag together with some light flowery fabrics.  I vaguely recall they were left over from a desert scene some time in years gone by.   

Here are the scraps arranged on a backing with a layer of WonderUnder.  The white dots are white glass headed pins which just blend in on the top half.   The pins hold the pieces to the thick cardboard so I can move the piece to the ironing area where I fuse everything in place. 

Then to the sewing machine where I sew around the edges of each piece.  Now it is ready for something to be fused/appliqued on top.  

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Traveling 06-27-21

Today was another face-to-face meeting of the art quilt group and I made a weekend of it.  I dropped KoKo with his kind keepers, Cherie and Jim, and drove down Saturday morning.  With one thing and another I didn't leave until 10:30am and the traffic was horrible.  The drive was three hours and twenty minutes, instead of the average two hours.  We just crept along and crept along - I rarely got up to 30 miles an hour.  VERY difficult.  And when I arrive at Visions Art Museum I discovered that they close on Saturday at 2pm.  I had about 20 minutes to look at the exhibits.  Not enough time, but I'm glad I was able to see them in-the-fabric (instead of online).  Showing until July 3rd are "Deed Not Words", quilts about woman's struggles; a one woman exhibit of Jill Kerttula's amazing photographic quilts; and a small showing of cyanotype pieces by Hillary Waters Fayle.  So little time and I took no photos.  Go see the exhibits before July 3rd..

Cars creeping along beside me, in front of me and behind me.  Grrrrr.

When going so slow there is a bit of time to see the surf in several places along I-5.  This is one where the white line of gentle waves shows just beyond the greenish weeds. 

I met my friend Beth Smith for lunch at Solare, almost next door to VAM.  It was so special to eat there again after at least a year and a half.  And the food was delicious and presented so nicely.  This is Beth's beet salad.  

The curled "towers" are cucumber slices.  

I had the mixed seafood/veggie plate with shrimp and calamari - "Frittura di Pesce all'Italiana".  Not as elegant looking as Beth's salad, but oh-so-good.  No dessert.   But we had a great visit sitting on a bench in the shade beside VAM.  Wonderful weather. 

I stayed with the hostess overnight and we had a lot of inspired show and tell at the art qroup meeting this morning before our box lunches.   We are working on quilts for a special exhibit at PIQF in October.  Hope it works out. 

Traffic wasn't too bad coming home, so I picked up KoKo about 4pm.  After I put most everything away we had a little nap.   It was a lovely weekend, but tiring.  I need to work harder at rebuilding some strength - PTherapy on Wednesday. 

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Sewing - Full Moon 06-23-21

A busy day!   I drove down to Anaheim with some books for the 2nd hand book shop - Bookman on Katella.  I already had five small boxes of books in the car and I added two more.  There are many more left in various rooms.  He only gave me credit for about half of them and said he could keep the others for his "dollar shelves", so I said "sure", because I didn't want to take them home and don't know if the library volunteer book shop is taking books now.  Trouble is, I already miss all those books I have already read, some of them twice.

Quite near the Bookman is the one remaining quilt shop in Orange County, that I know of anyway, - Orange Quilting Bee.  So, I stopped there for some batting.  I am about to quilt the little houses quilt I made last spring/summer and thought I had all the dimensions worked out.  WRONG!  The yardage for the backing is 42" and the quilt top is 45"!  I hadn't thought that I would need to add to the back, which is a directional pattern.  The best thing to do would be to construct some more house blocks and put them in a vertical row on the back.  Do I want to spend the time doing that?  Don't know.  

Also the Quilter's Dream batting I had set aside is neither long enough or wide enough!  Hence the stop at OQBee today.  They don't carry Quilter's Dream but JoAnn's does.  However, I want to support the quilt shop so I will use Warm and Natural. 

I was pleasantly surprised that the clerk put in a piece of the label - thoughtful. 

On our walk this evening about 8pm the almost full moon was so bright I had to take a picture.  It doesn't look bright here, however.  Can you even see it on the right side about a third of the way from the top?   Tomorrow night is the full moon, maybe I will try for a better image. 

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More Flowers - TCQC

I do love Monkey Paw plants and the red ones are especially nice, although they come in a number of different colors - yellow, white, rusty brown, and more. 

The flowers before they open do look a little like a monkey's paw. 

The base of the plant is spikey leaves with the flowers stalks growing sometimes to 4 or 5 feet tall.  

At the top right is a side view of the opened blossom. 

And here is one fully open - rather star like, but only about half inch in diameter. 

My friend Liz came today and helped me roll, cover, and store some of the TCQC quilts.  They have been spread out on the guest room bed because my hands are not strong enough to roll a stack of four or five together.  Because of health problems in her family she has not been free to come for some months.  We had a little visit over Starbuck's lattes and then spend a couple hours sorting, rolling, covering, tagging, and storing the quilts.  They are in several places in the house.

On the shelf in the guest room closet.

On the top shelf of my fabric storage racks. 

Each roll has a tag showing what quilts are inside, but there is no order to the storage.  We put them where they fit.  At one time we tried keeping a log of where everything is, but when the quilts are moved around a lot that is a very time consuming job.  What needs to be done is clean out a spare bedroom and put racks up to hold all 370+ quilts.  Right now I don't have the energy and I would need someone to "scribe" for me.  Doing an inventory at the same time would be practical, but very time consuming.  I recently discovered a quilt that I added to the Collection about four years ago that somehow did not get into the Excel document.  Fortunately I am an old fashioned person and also keep paper files on every quilt.  Guess I don't completely trust computers, and probably never will! 

 

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