Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Well, my vacation is over and it's back to the real world. When we came home I began spring cleaning the house, went back to work and then late Sunday night my husband was diagnosed with pneumonia, its been a long week. He's starting to feel a little bit better today but it worries me with the swine flu going around. I haven't done much quilting but I did make this card with my natural dyed wool for my girlfriend. She is cooking this weekend for a Christian women's retreat. For the women on the retreat she took tea bags and changed the paper tag to one with a Bible verse on it, hence the tea cup card.

On out way to Florida we stopped at the Canton Museum of Art, on exhibit was a collection of 40, 8 ft. landscape art silk kimomo from Japan. The collection was breathtaking! It featured Mount Fuji in autumn and winter. The kimono hung along side eachother making a panaramic view of the mountain. Itchiku Kubota, the Japanese artist created them with layering dyes, inks, and embroidery. It took him 26 years to figure out the lost art of tsujiganhana dying. When he was 60 he started the Mt. Fuji series. He died before it was finished. One interesting fact he is the only artist to have his collection shown at the Smithonian museum while he was still alive.

Of course you could not photograph any of the collection. This vintage kimono hung in the entrance.


This life size fabric and paper cherry tree also graced the entrance.

And on to Florida where we brought the boys new fishing poles, here their trying them out in the small lake behind their home. They got pretty good at casting. Mom usually dresses the triplets alike.

I thought this was a cute picture, big brother walking the littlest one home. The oldest one is so good to his little brothers.



Here we are dying Easter Eggs, big brother went to play football with the neighbors. He's growing up.


One day we went to a children's Science museum, this is the opening of the "body works".




My last picture is my grandsons (not the blonde) at their friends house for Passover, wearing their yamikas (sp?). My daughters good friends are Jewish and invited them over for the Passover celebration.







Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Quilt guild & Happy Easter

One of the quilt guild members made these cute Easter cookies for the meeting last night. Our gust speaker was Kay England, she said one thing she loves is cookies.

This is Kay giving her very funny lecture and great trunk show. We laughed from the moment she got on stage until she finished. I highly recommend her for your guild programs. This is her tribute to Betsy Ross quilt. Some of the information she gave on Betsy was she "supposedly" taught George Washington how to make a 5 pointed star. We don't know if she made the first American flag but she did design and make many. She out lived 3 husbands.

This is Kay's favorite antique quilt, a nine patch from the civil war era.



This Burgoyne surrounded quilt is also from the civil war era. Kay hand quilted this one.


We also had our annual Earth Day quilt show, I took a few pictures of some of my favorites. This first bug is from a pattern.

This clown fish I believe is also from a pattern. Her colors were beautiful.



This was my favorite, I love the bug jars and wonderful little sayings and poems were sewed on.

One of our guild members doesn't quilt, she's a rug hooker. I love this rug, the style is Pennsylvania Dutch done in the fraktur method. Ok, what that means I can't remember. She design the rug and washed some of the wool together so the colors would run into each other and tone them down.

My husband and I are leaving for Florida to spend Easter with our kids and grandchildren. Part of their Easter basket goodies are these pillow cases I made them. My friend Mary has a wonderful sewing machine that does embroidery, she put their names on them.
I hope you have a Blessed Easter and I'll see you April 20.








Thursday, April 2, 2009

Signs of Spring

Being very tired of winter and painting, last weekend I packed a picnic lunch and my husband and I took a drive in the woods looking for signs of spring. We came across this big flock of turkeys, and as they say in the Bambi movie, I think the Toms are "twitter painted".

A lot of the farms were collecting the maple syrup as it begins to run.


And my friend Lillian made a new summer purse, it's beautifully lined with zipper pockets and of course she made a matching check book cover.

Being in Michigan just because the calender says it's spring the weather doesn't always cooperate, we're suppose to be getting between 3 to 6 " of snow in the next few days. My girlfriends came over the other night for bee and wore their finished wool scarves (although no one would model for me). It was fun to see from one pile of wool we all shared, how different they all looked. You could tell whose scarf belonged to who just by the color. The first one is Laura's.


Mine.



Joni, who left the Abercrombe (sp?) label on the patch.



And Cathy O's. A couple others didn't get theirs finished yet.




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