Girls Weekend

My girlfriends and I left Friday night to spend the weekend at Laura's cottage in "Northern Michigan". The weather was perfect, we packed a picnic and spent all day Saturday in her boat cruising around Torch Lake. The lake is very large and deep and crystal clear.

And a beautiful turquoise color.

Rapper Eminem has two estates on the lake.

The deeper the lake the deeper the color.

Some trees are beginning to turn color.

Laura giving us the tour. It was so relaxing, some of us had a hard time staying awake. Ok, I took a snooze.

Norther Michigan has beautiful rocky shorelines.

A stone hunters paradise.

And the land is full of field stones. This was Laura's grandfathers house he built and her father was born here.

It is beautiful.

With all this inspiration years ago Laura began collecting and making her own stone houses. Her first one on a doll house base.

A bird house with a heart shape door.

This bird house is covered with Petosky stones. Their fun to hunt for as their only found in and around the northern lakes of Michigan. They're a fossil from millions of years ago.

OK, this picture isn't quite in order, but this is the inside of her stone covered outhouse.

And this is the outside. How cute is this?

I would show you pictures of all the quilts we worked on, but their isn't much to show. After your on the Lake in the sun all day you don't have much energy left, just enough to eat and sleep.

Thank-you Laura, is was a wonderful weekend!

New Blogs

Windi and Becky just started new blogs to share their journey's with their handmade quilts and crafts.

http://birdblog.themediacentral.com/ Thank you Windi for the wonderful review of the weekend, I don't know if I deserve such kind words. Your poem is beautiful and perfectly describes natural dyeing.

http://blog.themediacentral.com Click on "Fairy Tale" quilt to read the story of Becky's quilt in progress.

Natural dyeing weekend

I had some friends over for a "natural dyeing weekend". Windi and Becky camped in my back yard, and the others went home at night to sleep. Friday night we mordanted the wool. Saturday morning we began. First cochineal....

great raspberry colors.

Pam did a nice graduated color scheme.

I believe this was onion skins.

All of natures colors go together.

While the dye pots brewed hand work was done. Pam working on a appliqued quilt block.

Becky with the beginning of her "Fairy tale" quilt.

She's hand embroidering and appliqueing the story on different wool blocks. The first is the castle.

She had a lot of light blue wool that she played around with over dying. They took pretty well. They will be the back ground blocks in her quilt.

While Windi's fabric simmered she played around with natural henna on t-shirts.

Great turtle designs.

On Sunday we played with indigo. What a fascinating dye. This is the color in the pot, yellow/green.

As I carefully pulled it out of the pot so no air bubbles got in, the fabric began changing to blue.

Jody dyed 6 pairs of cotton socks (bundled up) for gifts. We kept dipping and then hanging a few minutes then back in the pot until the desired blue was reached.

Becky's hand spun wool yarn.

And Pam's wonderful collection of blues.

Becky tie-dyed some light red wool with indigo. This will be the middle of Windi's quilt, with henna designed blocks pieced around it. Beautiful.

Pam over dyed some cochineal to a beautiful plum/purple.

And yellows over dyed with indigo make green.

There was a lot more, here's a picture of Pam's dyed collection packed to go home. Isn't this beautiful?

By Sunday evening everyone was exhausted.
Windi and Becky loaded up their tent, tied the poles on top of the car and headed home, or should I say back to the real world.

And the party's over!

Herb Society Picnic

Last Tuesday night we had our Herb Society summer picnic at one of our member's house, (Kathy S). We gathered in her beautiful back yard. Herb people are such great cooks, I guess that's why they love their herb gardens.

I wandered around taking pictures of some of her garden accents. There were so many to choose from. The following are a few.

She has 4 of these antique chairs painted with herb words and pictures.

This is a great outdoor stone mosaic clock. I think she may have made the mosaic pieces throughout the garden.

A glass beaded sculpture.

Paths leading to other gardens.

A little rusted doll chair tucked in the flowers.

Sea shells strung on a rope to remind her of time spent at the ocean and a rusted gate.

Another rusty gate with a vine growing up it.

A mermaid.

A gargoyle watching it all.

Bottle bush with vintage bottles.

She had several bird baths throughout the gardens with this wonderful little spinner in them, it keeps the water moving so no mosquito larvae settle in.

A great piece with North, South, East and West each on a different side.

A beautiful bird cage hanging in the flowers.

This weekend I'm having a natural dying class in my dye studio, stay tuned next week I should have some wonderful pictures to share with you.