Garden Tour Surprise

I was invited to a garden tour at White Horse village, a local retirement community.  I had been stuck in the house for so long sewing away, that I decided it would be a good thing to get me out of the house.  Maybe I would get some good photos for future quilts.  (Quilting is always on my mind.)  I was truly inspired and amazingly surprised by what I saw and I walked away with a new outlook.

It was a beautiful day and my friend Frances, also a quilter, was our resident tour guide.  Many of the residents participated with small and beautiful gardens around their places.  I have a black thumb, so I was mightily impressed.

You don't have to be a kid to have a sense of humor!

Some of the residents invited you inside their places.  We were treated to this lovely Victorian crazy quilt.  Unfortunately it's a little blurry :(

The quilt was in almost pristine condition.  Can you see the date of 1885?
 It was a gift from a friend!

The obligatory spider for good luck.

I took many photos of this quilt, but I am embarrassed to say that most of them were blurry.  It is time for me to buy a new camera with that stabilization feature.

This made me giggle.

I was blown over when I met Frances' friend Helen.  Helen eagerly invited us into her apartment.  My eyes lit up as I looked around her living room that was filled with sculptures.  "Did you do these?"  The questions just popped out of my mouth.  This tiny frail woman had a huge smile on her face when she said "yes".  She used to sculpt with clay, but after moving to White Horse Village, she was convinced to try sculpting with stone - yes STONE.  She had sculptures from marble and alabaster and who knows what other types of stone.  How does an 80 something year old woman carve stone??? I was truly awestruck.

"Spirit Rising" by Helen Hucker

"Preening" by Helen Hucker

"The Odd Couple"  by Helen Hucker

In the clubhouse there was an exhibition of sculptures, one more amazing than the next.  I was so taken with this sculpture:

"Proud Guide And Protector"

I found it so sweet and poignant.  It was done by Lou de Moll, another resident.  He was a painter, but he could no longer paint because he lost his eyesight.  So he took up sculpting and created this   sculpture of another resident, complete with her dog and walker - by feel alone!

This whole experience made me think about a topic on the Quiltart list.  Quilters are chatting about milestones and the dread of turning 50 or 60 or 70.  I am not too far from turning 60 and I do understand the feeling of getting old.  In those photos of our parents or grandparents they were in their 60's and they looked so old.  My mother died when she was 74.  I want to be around to see my yet to be born grandchildren grow up.  I think I'll be a fun and wonderful grandmother. 

So my garden visit turned into so much more.  These warm and wonderful people were CREATIVE!  They embraced life and new challenges. Age is only a number.  The one thing I heard over and over were that they were too busy to fit one more thing into their day. 

Who's retired??

Wednesday's Wanderings #23 - Lakeside Quilting

 

I just can't believe it is June already.  This Spring has just flown by, and it will keep flying until after THE wedding of my younger son.  Then I think I will be able to catch my breath.

Talk about flying, I am still flying high from my first successful fabric dyeing retreat at our summer home in the Poconos.  I just had to celebrate it with my WW block.  I also want to remember it as an important event in 2012.  I hope it will be the first of many.  The fabrics I used were from my demo of 2 color gradation dyeing. I used Fuchsia and Sky Blue.

 

This group of 5 women call them selves the 7 Dwarfs (2 of them couldn't come).  I call them my guinea pigs because they were the first and it was definitely a huge experiment. The retreat has been named "Lakeside Quilting".  The block started with their photo on the dock.

I added the "Lakeside Quilting" using bobbin work.  It was a little tricky because I had to "write" backwards with my sewing machine.

I first wrote out the words on a piece of paper.

Then I traced it onto a see through water soluble stabilizer.

Positioned and pinned it to the back of the block and stitched from this side.



This is what it looked like after I turned it over and brought my threads to the back.

We also spent a morning making polymer clay embellishments.  The 2 small side borders have a few blue beads that I made once I got home. They are attached using a seed bead.

For those of you new to my blog, my Wednesday's Wanderings are a weekly block about my comings and goings for the year.  At the end of 2012, I will put them together and construct a quilt.  Now that I am almost halfway there, I am more excited than ever.  The idea that I will be able to look at the quilt, which will be wall hanging size, and be reminded of all the places I've been and all the things that I've done, motivates me.

Practical Fabric Dyeing at the Lakeside Quilt Retreat

My 5 Wonderful Guests

A year or so ago, I had an idea to have a quilting retreat at our summer home in the Pocono Mountains.  This was after having many fun getaways with various groups of quilting friends.  My idea was to share  my quilting knowledge with others as well as provide them with a pampered and fun long weekend in a tranquil setting with wonderful food.

One of our delicious breakfasts, a yogurt buffet

Everyone made their own

My 5 guinea pigs, who I met at a guild in Maryland, arrived on Thursday night to spend 3 days with me, eating and dyeing – fabric dyeing that is.  They had chosen to spend the bulk of their time learning various ways to dye fabric. Over the years I have developed methods to do what I call practical dyeing.  These methods are not unique on their own, but they are my distillation of techniques that others have developed.  We did immersion, direct application, 2-color gradation and thread dyeing.  A lot to accomplish. 

Making up the dye stock - lakeside!

Fabric dyeing in baggies.

Batching overnight.

Out of the dryer after rinsing the next morning.

Frankie having the most fun ironing that she's ever had!

16 yds of immersion dyed fabric

Black and white fat quarters "before"

6 sets of 2 color gradated fabric, oriented vertically.

3 color direct application dyeing.

What a beautiful sight!

My methods for immersion and 2-color gradation dyeing can be found by clicking on the tab near the top of this page.  I also list a bunch of resources.

This entire retreat was a trial run.  First I wanted to see if guinea pigs, er I mean students, would enjoy spending time with me and learning what I had to share.  Second, I wanted to see if I enjoyed it.  The resounding results are Yes!!! And Yes!!!.  This experience exceeded the expectations of me and my guests.  Their joy in discovery, became my joy.

 We dyed over 30 yards of fabric in fat quarter increments.  Woo Hoo!



And a good time was had by all!!!!!

 

So I’m going to do it again. I’m thinking Fall 2012.  The colors here in the Fall are breathtaking.  If there is a group of 5 or 6 of you that would like to come as a group, let’s talk.  Shoot me an e-mail for more details.

A Sneak Peek

I am getting ready to host my first retreat at my mountain house. It is a trial run to see if it’s a good thing, as Martha would say.   My guests are arriving tonight.  They are a group of 6 friends that I met when I visited their quilt guild in Maryland.  They know they are guinea pigs. 

We will be spending 2 ½ days dyeing fabric and creating polymer clay embellishments.  Although I have done a lot of fabric dyeing , I have never done it with a group in a workshop type setting.  So yesterday, I experimented to decide how to break it down for a group.

There will be 3 types of dyeing:  Immersion, Gradation and Direct Application. Most of them will be done in zipper top baggies. If there is time we’ll also dye some decorative thread.  After spending 5 days learning how to dye fabric using a very scientific and technical method with a gram scale and graduated cylinders, I have decided to return to my old ways and dye with teaspoons and measuring cups. It is not as easy to get reproducible results, but the surprise factor is what makes fabric dyeing so exciting for me.

This is the result of my gradation dyeing experiment using 2 colors:

The results are often a surprise, sometimes pleasant - sometimes not.   I just love these colors.  I started with Bright Yellow and Royal Blue MX fiber reactive dyes. The funny thing is that I love dyeing fabric, which may be because I was a chemist, but I don't really use them.   After the retreat I will share my method as well as tons of photos of our retreat.

 And there was another surprise when I arrived in the mountains.  A robin had made her nest in our Rhododendron right off of our sun room.  The eggs had hatched.  She is a wonderful Mama and I have been enjoying watching her come and go.  The babies are not recognizable as birds yet.

Wednesday's Wanderings #22 - Happy Freedom

I spent Memorial Day at our lake house with my favorite veteran, my husband.  I did not know him when he was drafted and served in the army.  I can’t imagine how hard it must be to live without your spouse for 2 years, more so if there are children involved. Or to send you children off to war. I  was lucky enough to meet him after he did his time and went to college.  We met when he was in graduate school. 

Memorial Day is to honor those that have died in service to our country.  At one time it was called Decoration Day.  I’m not sure when the name was changed, but it was quite a while ago.  Does anyone remember?

 

A fellow blogger, Sew Cal Gal, did a great post about Memorial Day.  It moved me and gave some options about we could do as both quilters and non-quilters to honor. 

 Take a look:http://sewcalgal.blogspot.com/2012/05/help-bring-back-memorial-in-memorial.html

 

I made a flag for Wednesday’s Wanderings, as both a decoration and to be all inclusive. We should honor everyone and anyone. It should be for all who have died making our country great, whether they were in the armed forces, or a policeman, fireman or a good Samaritan.

 

I started the block using the sew and flip technique on a backing of batting.  Stitched and quilted in one step. This is what it looks like on the back. It's a great technique to make a quick baby quilt, sewing strips that were cut selvage to selvage.

 

 Then I appliqued the background for the stars and attached the buttons with my sewing machine.

I just move from button to button with my feed dogs down.  I don't cut my threads.  When I have all of the buttons attached, I add a drop of Fray Chek to each button.  When that's dry, I snip the threads. I love these scissors for getting nice and close.

 Thank you to all of our service people, past present and future.  Thank you for our freedom.

And The Winner Is...

The winner of all the goodies from Quilt Market is:

Debbie of Woolen Sails. 

Congratulations Debbie.

  I'll e-mail you.

"Stitch A Story" Workshop

The Program person from The Evening Star Quilters located  near Belividere, NJ, has been following my blog.  She contacted me about visiting her guild about a year ago.  I gave my lecture about quilts inspired by Mexican Tiles a few weeks ago.  She also had booked me to do a workshop.

She really enjoys my Wednesday's  Wanderings and wondered if I could teach them how to make a quilt from a photo or picture.  Since I have been doing this for about 15 years, I thought it would be fun to teach it to others.  Thus "Stitch A Story" was born.  And did we have lots of fun.

I told them to bring either a photo or a memory or a story to use as inspiration for their quilt.

All of the ladies brought photos to work from. They created the drawing from the photo to make a 16"x20" quilt.  Most of them started working with their fabric.

  I'd love to be at Show & Tell next month!

Here's their work in progress:

It never fails that I learn something when I teach a workshop.  This time, my hostess, Rosemary, showed me this amazing portable ironing board she made:

  She bought the little folding table from Target and covered it, and uses it both as an ironing board and a cutting table.  Wouldn't this be wonderful for workshops?

Rosemary also took me on a tour of the barn quilts of Warren County.  One of the members of the quilt guild has initiated this project and it is catching on.  You can follow a driving trail:

And I get paid for this?????