New projects

On to my other grandsons Christmas quilt, last weekend I cut out the next one. Here is a little of what it's going to look like. Nothings pieced, the peppermint pinwheels will have nice points when finished and the quilt will be full size.

I love this Santa fabic with the Arican print fur on his hat and socks. It celebrates my grandsons African heritage.

And the beautiful reindeer fabric for the boarders.

I also cut out my next block for the "family tree" quilt. My husband and I have owned for the past 25 years a truck and automotive service center. The building has 8 large garage doors but I drafted up just a small portion of the building to represent it.

This is the beginning.

I've been enjoying hand sewing the first sections together of my new wool project. I love how all the natural dyed colors go together.

I bought this wool thread/floss when I attended a lecture by http://suespargo.blogspot.com last fall. It's by Genziana and works wonderful with this project.

New wool quilt

I've been trying to think of a way to use my wool fabric that I dye printed leaves on without having to cut it up into small pieces. I saw on a blog http://paintspinknit.blogspot.com/ last week a lady used her printed silk to make a quilt and shaw somewhat in this manner (without the lattice in between the blocks). I've just started laying it out, (everything will be cut even and I have many more blocks to dye print), I want it to be a good size quilt or blanket for the top of the bed.

Close-up of the top half (so far).

The bottom (so far). I think I'll applique some wool leaves throughout on the lattice.
Next on the list I'm going to try dye printing persimmons. I read you get a beautiful yellow dye we'll see if it leaves a nice image.

Last night was my Herb Society meeting, this is the historical home we meet in. It was built in the late 1800's by a lumber Barron. It's a beautiful place with lots of hand carved fireplace mantles, stair railings, and trim.

Across the street is the old college built around the same time, now it is a office building with a great clock tower.

Our herb lecture last night was "Mustard", who knew there could be a whole lecture on the history and uses for mustard. It was very interesting with great home made mustard dips to try .

Our refreshment table was full of different dishes using mustard.

The table was decorated with an antique linen table runner with hand-made lace over a red table cloth. Placed throughout were old mercury glass hearts.

And a old celluloid heart box that the owners great-aunt received as a gift years ago with a watch inside.

A couple more mercury glass hearts.

I made some herb cards with left over fabric from my table runners. There are a few ill members I'm mailing them to.

Happy Valentines Day

My friend Judy's quilt top using the Lil Twister pattern. I love the updated colors of the reproduction 50's fabrics.

Years ago while at a garage sale I bought this package of old Valentine day cards. The post marks on the envelopes were from the 1920's. I have them on display on my piano for the holiday.

Some of my favorites.

This is a cute hand-made one. The verse inside reads:

Happy will you live,
Happy will you be,
With twenty little kids,
Sitting on each knee.

I hope this was a joke and not the real way of thinking for women in the 20's.

The styles are all so different.

And the "ultimate" Valentine that fold out with red "honey comb".

And a few more styles.

I hope you have a Wonderful Valentines Day, I'll be celebrating with my husband eating chocolate mousse and watching the movie Chocolat, you can not watch that movie without eating good chocolate!

Christmas quilts

Last Friday and Saturday my quilt bee had a winter quilt retreat. What a great way to spend time with good friends and get a lot quilting done. This year by Thanksgiving I want to make my 3 youngest grandsons full size Christmas quilts (I made the oldest brother his a few years ago). Not that I'm in the mood for Christmas but I thought I should get started on them. On this first quilt I got all the rows pieced but their not sewed together. This is a older Santa print from Debbie Mumm. I love how it has Santa snow boarding and sledding. This quilt will be for one of the twins.

Close up of the quilt. I love the peppermint pin wheels. I'm thinking about putting a narrow medium green strip between all the rows, not sure.

Mary's making 10 for her great nieces and nephews for next Christmas. This is one of the first tops she has done.

And this is the second.
She had these done before the retreat.

This was a cute snowman quilt Mary made for herself a few years ago. It's a pattern but I not sure by who.

Bottom.

I bought this wonerful Valentines fabric last week and made a few cards to send out to my and my husbands parents, and one to include in the grandsons Valentine package. I simply used blank cards and stamped red dots along the edge. Cut the background fabric and batting and sewed along the edge with gold thread and my sewing machine. Then cut batting and the heart and sewed it on. The batting makes the cards come to life. Playing with the red fabrics is a nice color change on the eyes, It's pretty white here and another major snow storm coming in tonight. Actually I'm very excited about it, I hope we're snowed in tomorrow.

Steampunk art

My husband and I went to a art show last weekend, we say this wonderful exhibit of "steampunk" art. I never heard of it before but it had a familiar look to me. A short definition: steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction, alternate history and speculative fiction that came into prominence during the 1980's and early 1990s. In my words "Victorian and modern objects are blended together to become work of art". OK, that wasn't a great explanation but you get the idea. The name of this artist is Brent Scofield and these are a few of his pieces.

Some great jewelry, I wish I would have gotten a close up. I also like how he displays it on a antique pillow case.

A few more of his pieces.
Some of the films that used this type of art were: Wild Wild West (1999), and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

I finished up this little heart pillow this past weekend. It's made with a wonderful cotton velvet Deb C. shared with us while we were on our quilt retreat. There is a pocket behind my antique heart button.
And the snow keeps coming!!

Herb of the Year

Last night was my Herb Society meeting, our topic this month was horseradish, 2011 Herb of the Year. Now, you may think of horseradish as being a lowly little unimportant herb, used only as a condiment to beef, but let me tell you I learned differently. Myself, being part of the program and helping with refreshments I had to study up on it. This is a little of what I learned, for centuries this herb was thought of as medicine, not a condiment. The fresh root of horseradish has been used by herbalists as an internal and external medicine for centuries. The chief active constituent of it is mustard oil, and it also contains an antibiotic substance and vitamin c. It is a powerful stimulant to the digestive organs. It has often been used as a poultice to relieve aching joints and rheumatic pain. Horseradish is believed to be one of the more potent herbal diuretics. One favorite way to take it when you want to flush fluids out of your system is to mix it with white wine. A syrup made of grated horseradish, honey and water is one of the standard remedies for hoarseness. And last week on the tv show The Drs. they talked about to lighten dark spots on your skin you can used a little grated fresh horseradish mixed with a little lemon juice and white vinegar. Use it to help bleach out the discoloration. Its medicinal qualities goes on and on.
For my part of the refreshments, for our "centerpiece" I purchased this huge horseradish root and placed it in a vase with curly parsley around it. I found this cute herb fabric at Jo Ann Fabrics designed by Debbie Mumm and made a couple of simple table runners for the tables.
This is one.

This is the other one with yellow sashing.

And this is the back, actually as cute as the front with no piecing.

At the meeting, someone made and brought these cute snails out of herb kitchen towels.

We had lots of refreshments with horseradish as the star. From a big pot of soup to meatballs and everything in between, except for desert and the punch.

All that "green" at herb society this time of year was wonderful, here are a few pictures showing our yard, boy did we get dumped on. The snow is thick and heavy. You can hardly see the spruce trees.

I love how the snow shows the "bones" of the maples.

And my bird house with the vines twisting around it look wonderful in the snow.

Snow

We had a wonderful snowy weekend, just a light nice snow perfect for a taking a ride to the lake. What a different look with all the snow fences and ice but still beautiful with the light house.

A little too cloudy for a bright sunset, but very inspirational for another block for my "earth quilt" .

So back home I went, dug out some of my natural indigo dyed wool challis (I think that's what its called), cut a piece out for background, thinking I can position the white tie-dye spot to be the new moon in the sky. I cut a green tree out, then some snowy lace fabric to stitch over it, and some for the snow on the ground. I added mohair snowflakes in the air. I'm loving doing these little pieces, nothing better than curling up by the fire and doing hand work.

And this is the next block to add to my quilt. Under the snow and tree fabric I added some Angelina fibers for extra sparkle.

I also played around with natural dying wool and silk using pomegranates (good idea Deb).

Cut them open, some slices have great patterns.

Bundled them up tight and steamed them about 1 hour.

Left them for about 4 days then opened to reveal the print. On the wool, the seeds left a great purple print with yellow rind print around.

The silk was more subtle but beautiful.

In between this and work I'm still working on redoing all our family photos, that is going slow but steady. I know someday when I'm finished I will be happy but not feeling it yet.