13 Years Ago

I think we all remember the same certain times in our lives that affected us forever. On September 11, 2001, my friend Barbara was coming over to dye fabric for her studio. It was 9:00 am when the doorbell rang and I opened the door to see Barbara with a look of shock on her face. ....and we turned on the news and listened and listened and cried and was so desperately sad.

 Remembering that terrible day in history, going back many years later was a solemn experience.

Ground Zero -  moving, sad and beautifully done with dignity -  honoring those who died.

Keep this day in your hearts......
Til tomorrow

Feathering the Nest

Years ago when we first moved in, our neighbor gave us a Blue bird house as a gift and every year since, we've had 2 or more families come and take up housekeeping each spring/summer.  

It's always been a highlight for me to watch the new little baby birds learning to fly while keeping our cats indoors for the duration.

The Blue birds have always had this house, it's a given ...until this year when the swallows beat them to it. I think the Blue birds were upset as we would see them circling around the house. We do like to peek when the time is right just to see what's going on inside. What a surprise when we peeked in and saw this.

The nest was completely surrounded by feathers.

It was a work of art.

Nature never ceases to amaze me.

Needless to say, when they all left for the season, I retrieved the nest. My 2 year old granddaughter will love seeing it.......It's just amazing!

Castle

I really like doing small pieces as I usually am working around everyone and everything. I do love the big "sink your teeth into" pieces also, but smaller ones allow me to be creative and move on to something else. I just finished up another small piece using some digital imagery I had printed on fabric.  

 I also get a chance to try out new surface design techniques without a big investment in time or fabric. This piece has a lot going on -  silkscreen, discharge, digital printing, decorative thread work.

 I used a silkscreen of a tree on top of the castle image. I also used it on the orange stripe to give it a little more visual texture.

 I love my silkscreen of thistles which I made from thistles I picked years ago on a morning walk. I do like the colors in this piece but it is quite subdued and needed some added pizazz; I thought stitching with a sparkly thread would help.

 I used thickened discharge paste and screened images of trees along the bottom. The images came from my enormous file of tree pictures, many of which I photographed along the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Here is the finished piece quite squared off but my photgraphy does distort it and make the edges look uneven. Have a glorious weekend.

Stackable Vegetable Soup

No, this is not a new quilting pattern; it's exactly what you would think. We did have a wonderful vegetable garden this year thanks to lots of rain and our new raised beds. We've never used them before and it was quite an investment in time, labor and money but what a difference they make. Our soil here is not great and the raised beds were filled with purchased soil and compost.  

My husband built them; him and my son hauled them outside.

Everything thrived and grew to monstrous sizes...

almost like veggies on steroids.

We don't use any sprays and lucked out with the animals not using them for midnight snacks although we did find some little bunnies hanging out there.

The only bad thing is that they all come in at once; it's great fun and so pretty to see all the colors sitting in baskets in the kitchen...

but what to do with them all.

This was our butternut squash patch, my favorite squash...and by the end of summer

it looked like this, but my husband counted over 80 squash and they are one veggie that will keep for most of the winter in our cold garage.

Everything is going fast but I'm not complaining; as much as I love these wonderful veggies, I love September as in my mind, it's the beginning of fall season and holidays and holiday decorating. I used to be a teacher in NY and we always started back the day after Labor Day, they still do so I would be going back to school this week...

but instead I'm making gobs and gobs of vegetable soup 

to use up all these wonderful veggies......

and then I freeze meal portions in a ziploc bag inside an 8x8 pan. After it freezes, I let it set out for a little while making it easy to remove from the pan and stack them in my freezer - Stackable Vegetable Soup.

Yum...Yum...

A Pop of Color

I've been watching this show on TV featuring Sarah Richardson, an interior designer. It's not on regularly but I have my DVR set up to catch anything that features her. She is very creative and I love seeing what she does with different spaces within a home or condo. She claims to be frugal and hunts for bargains, even picking up furniture put out for trash. She's really into giving rooms a "Pop of Color" which I quickly adopted for my own home. My family room is nice but a little ho-hum and sorely in need of some "Pop" I did go looking for throw pillows but the ones I liked were $40 on sale. How crazy is that when I have a perfectly good sewing machine and a healthy stash of fabric. 

 Of course, Murphy's Law - no matter how much fabric you have, it's never quite right, so off to the Home decor store to find the perfect color. I loved what I found but it needed more body so I had to fuse each piece with a fusible knitted interfacing - So Sheer. I also had to find buttons, when did they get so expensive !! ?. Wow..it adds up fast.

 So, 2 days later and lots of interruptions, I got my "pop" - not as much as I had hoped for but they do go well with the couch and loveseat and I'm a happy camper.

and that's what counts.
Pop..Pop...  (-:

Wonderful Show and Tell

Our show and tell from our Fiber Junkies meeting was wonderful and inspiring as always. 

 Denny brought her most recent piece from her "healing series". It was incredibly moving.

 It was beautifully machine embroidered...

 and equally as beautiful on the back.

 Denny does a lot of writing on her pieces which is very appropriate to the theme of the piece.

 Val has been creating fabric to make into books; she does a lot of layering of techniques starting with dyeing, silk screening and deconstructive screen printing.

 Each one is more beautiful and we were all drooling over her wonderful talent.

Val had one of her pieces framed which I think raises it a notch.

 This is some silk screening over deconstructive screen printing.

What a great look.
Til next time....

Ropes, Rollers and Riotous Fun

Another Fiber Junkies meeting and what can I say - another month of great fun together. There are only 6 of us but we manage to create up a storm and have lots of fun in the process. I've always enjoyed working in groups - the ideas and creative energy are always such a plus and I go home on such a high. 

 This month we were doing Shibori using paint. Never do we stay within the boundaries of our planned project; everyone brings other things to try and share. This month, Denny brought LOTS of new rollers she purchased and was anxious to try.

 There was a wonderful assortment of different patterns to use and after 3 trips to the car for just Denny's stuff, we were ready to dive in.

Here is one of the rollers we used - Mary's (on the left ) did a nice job of taking a not so great fabric and turning it into something wonderful.

 Mary brought fusible web for us to play with - painting on it and then fusing it onto fabric. Kates turned out really nice..

 as did Gens.

 We also wrapped fabric on wide PVC pipe secured in place with rubber bands or string.

and then painted the top edges using a fabric paint. It was a warm day and it didn't take long for paints to dry so results were revealed before we left.

We also had a rope that we used to wrap fabrics around giving it a different look when finished. We used rubber bands at both ends and one in the middle. The rest of the fabric was bunched together and the  tips of the fabric touched with paint.

 Some of the wonderful results - this was a piece that Val worked on - already dyed and color added.

 This was a piece done by Mary using a combination of techniques. Her starting fabric was not too pretty, but she turned it into something so interesting.

This was one of mine and perhaps my best one as far as clean lines. I have no idea what I'll do with it, but I'll have to let it stew for a while. Our show and tell was also wonderful...more on that to come.