An Experience and an Experiment

I walk at Ridley Creek State Park almost every morning, when I'm in town, with a very special friend of mine. Today she ditched me for golf with her husband. I wasn't a happy camper, but Bailey and I bit the bullet and walked ourselves. It became a walk in the woods instead of a chat with a friend where we solve all the problems of the world.

Ridley is a wonderful place and we are so lucky to have it in our backyard. Our walk is a 5 mile loop and it has been the inspiration for a few quilts over the years. Many people live it as much as we do. Since no leaves are on the trees yet, there's lots to see.

People like to decorate the trees. At Christmastime, one person puts an ornament on a tree and then others follow suit leading to a very festive tree and a nice surprise each morning to see the new addition.

The trees in wintertime are the perfect models for creating drawings or quilts of trees.

This is my favorite trees in the park. I can't wait each year for the colorful berries.

There are houses in the park. Don't you love this mailbox?

Speaking of houses, it used to be an estate of Mr. Jeffers, who lived in the mansion. I'm guessing the other houses in the park were where some of the workers lived. Some of the houses have been taken care of and some of them have not.

 

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There are lots of old stone houses in this area. I love them and always wanted to own one until I realized the expense of the upkeep and the lack of modern conveniences. So a bunch of years ago, I created my own stone house/farm that I named Willoway- A Folk Art Farm.

It's as close as I will get, and that's OK.

So now to my experiment that has nothing to do with the park. I usually don't wet my silk dupioni quilts, but recently I needed to block one. It was seriously wonky. Unfortunately, some bleeding occurred. I wanted to find out which of the silks ran. I took a square of all of the colors that I own and fused them to a whole piece of cotton.

I wet it and let it dry. Nothing happened! Not one fugitive dye. I figured that was because it dried too quickly. With a quilt, it takes longer to dry because of the batting.

So the next time I wet it, I placed it on a wet towel so that it took a long time to dry. Voila! Bleeding. And it was interesting. It was the beautiful violets and the hot pink. Not the red. These would be fabrics where a red dye would be used along with another color dye. I'm not an expert dyer, but from what I know it could be attributed to striking, or which dye attached to the fabric first.

My next experiment will be to try and remove the excess red dye from the offending silks before I put it in a quilt.

 

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Torah Stitch By Stitch

I have never done counted cross stitch. I think I remember starting some cross stitch pieces when I was a kid, but I never finished a thing. So, when I read about this project, I only had to think about it for 2 seconds. I knew I had to participate. I thought there's always YouTube to learn.
http://torahstitchbystitch.temmagentles.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/to-engage.jpg

Torah Stitch By Stitch is an extraordinary international project done by ordinary people. Temma Gentles, a Canadian fiber artist had a vision of creating a Torah using counted cross stitch and involving the world wide community. Teams of 4 could work on each section.cyrrently there are over 500 stitchers in 12 countries. When each participants section is assembled into the complete text if the Five Books if Moses to compose a Torah scroll, it will measure 2 meters (6.5 ft) high x 86 meters (282 ft)long. That is almost the length of a football field.
I "recruited" 3 friends of mine from Temple Sholom, my synagogue, to work with me. Fortunately one of us ( not me) had experience with counted cross stitch. She became our leader.
Our first meeting was in October. We were entering the synagogue at the same time as our Rabbi. He was so pleased to hear about the project and offered to share with us the story behind our portion of the Torah. He is a fascinating and funny young guy and his recounting the story of Issac and his 2 sons gave such meaning to what we were going to stitch.
I have finished my 2 1/2 lines and have passed it off to my friend, Dina.

I have to thank Stephanie. She was sitting next to me while I was stitching at our last quilt guild meeting. She saw me looking at the paper, looking at the cloth, looking at the paper, counting the boxes, over and over. She told me about using the disappearing blue marker to place a dot on the cloth. What a difference that made.
I believe more people are needed to complete the project. If you're interested, check out the website:www.torahstitchbystitch.temmagentles.com. If your heart is willing, your hands will follow.
And here are a few more winter scenes from my 11 degree walk on Wednesday morning.

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Wednesday's Wanderings #24 - A Study in Perspective

I love how fences delineate the curves of the landscape.  They are an exercise in perspective as well.
These fences segment the pastures for the stables at Ridley Creek State Park.  I have always wanted to put them in a quilt.  Doing this little piece (6 1/2" x 8 1/2") gave me the opportunity to do it in a relatively short period of time.  But one day I still would like to make a larger quilt.

This is the run-in shed for the horses. 

 

and a close-up of the horse.  I made the mane out of wool embroidery thread.

This section of the fence is right along the road that we walk along to enter the walking path at the park. Sometimes Bailey is not attached to her leash (shhhh, don't tell) and she thinks the horses are for her to play with.  As she runs towards the fence, I freak out!  She has not run under the rails yet.

 

A few weeks ago I made a block with my interpretation of the wisteria growing in the park.  Unfortunately they ended up looking more like grapes.

I bought new buttons that were much smaller and lighter in color. 

 

 Now I am satisfied that they look like wisteria.

Wednesday's Wanderings #20 - Walking Therapy

I missed last week's WW.  I knew it would happen eventually and was just hoping it would not be a slippery slope and the end of my WWs.  But my friend Hattie told me to take a Mulligan.  In golfing terms, that's a "do over".  And that's just one of the things I have learned on my daily morning walks at Ridley Creek State Park.

.  The park  was an estate at one point with a stable, several stone houses where the help lived and a mansion.  Most mornings, rain or shine, heat or snow, I meet at least one friend at this woodsy park.  We walk a paved 5 mile loop, solve all the world's problems, share recipes, stories about our families and talk about crazy TV shows.  Often, it is my therapy session.

As we enter the loop part of the walk, we cross the creek.  There is wisteria growing up a few of the trees.  It is amazingly beautiful.  Or I should say it WAS beautiful.  A few years ago, I guess they decided that the wisteria was invasive and they cut it down.  We were devastated.

This year it has finally started to return.  It will take a few more years for it to return to its former glory.  I hope that the park workers find something else to do to occupy their time and will not cut it down again.

 

So the return of the wisteria has become the topic of this week's WW. 

I decided to make 3-dimensional wisteria leaves.  I do enjoy making "fabric foliage" and like it when it adds to the depth of a piece.  Some of you have asked how I create them.

I started with a green batik.  Batiks are tightly woven and therefore don't fray as much as some other cottons.

I iron paper backed fusible web to half of the batik.

Remove the paper and fuse the fabric to itself.

Then I iron a piece of freezer paper to the fused double sided batik.  If I wanted all of the leaves to be identical, I would have made a template to draw the leaf shapes.  I also could have cut out the leaves free hand without the freezer paper.  This time, I didn't want the leaves to be identical, but I wanted them to be about the same size.  So I drew the shapes and then cut them out.

The freezer paper peels off easily.

 Then I use free motion quilting to attach the leaves.  I don't get too close to the edges because I want them to curl up a bit.

This is my finished block.  I used the buttons that I had and quite truthfully, it looks like grapes, not wisteria.  The leaves are not grape leaves.  It's really all about the color.  As soon as I can, I will look for some lilac colored buttons.

I am heading to the wholesale quilt show in Kansas City today.  I hope to share anything that I find that's new and interesting. I'll blog is I can.   Maybe I'll find some lilac colored buttons!