The Blizzard of 2011 and What She Did

Remember the Midwestern Blizzard of February 1 and 2, 2011? What would you have done in that blizzard?

What would you have done if you opened your front door on February 2 to find this?



Or if you pushed the snow off your back steps and looked across your courtyard toward your garage and found this?


Or if you trudged around the block and into your garage and opened the door to look across your courtyard from the other direction and you saw this?


If there were snowdrifts taller than you, what would you do? If you were She Who Shall Not Be Named, you'd get your snow shovel and twenty (20) minutes later you'd see this:


And this:


Her name must be Superwoman!

And if you were the mother of Superwoman, what would you do? You'd print the photos on fabric and make them into a wall hanging for Superwoman's birthday present.


Happy Birthday, Superwoman!

It's All Connected--February BJP

Another blue page. This time the theme is It's All Connected. I'll let you interpret that anyway you want, but I think it's all connected.

In January I considered the possibility of using blue beads for all 12 journal pages. That's going to be an interesting challenge, but so far I'm two for two. This blue is capri blue, more or less, depending on which bead manufacturer is naming the beads. I have to admit that I prefer the blues with a purplish cast--such as copen or periwinkle, but this was a nice color to work with, too.

Technical Details:

The foundation is Lacy's Stiff Stuff painted with Azure Dye-na-Flow. Actually I painted this background for the January page, but it was not the right color to start the year off.

The beads are primarily 11/0s and 15/0s, with some 8/0s, bugles, cubes and triangles. My favorite beads are the little hearts that connect the two upper circular gears. The silvery-colored beads that go between the gears are Toho Treasures in dyed indigo AB. Who'd guess that was the color?

The backstitch and the lazy stitch were used.

The page is 2.5 inches by 3.5 inches.

I used Nymo B thread is a medium blue.

What I Was Thinking:

I was thinking about connections. And about disconnections. I don't mean un-connections, I mean disconnections. And I was thinking about how blue sometimes gets a bad rap. I mean, I love blue. It's my favorite color(s). It's not sad or the blues. It's beautiful!

Issues That Came Up:

Things got sorta busy, so even though I finished the piece in February, here I am posting it in mid-March. It was my turn to host my book group, a situation that results in 10 or so days of hysterical housecleaning. Generally, I lean more toward casual housecleaning than toward perfect housekeeping. After all, my associate homeowner lives here, too. Even though members of the book group are lovely, kind-hearted women who are more community activist than socialite, I feel internal pressure to get the place up to snuff. So now the place is clean for another year. Or until the Queen comes for tea. (For anyone interested, this month's book was The Living Great Lakes by Jerry Dennis. Everyone in the group would recommended it, especially to those who live near the Great Lakes.)

And now I'm in the middle of my March BJP. Guess what color it is!

Kimono Ladies

Last week our Lakeshore Fiber Arts Guild had a program on "How to Wear Kimono." Mayumi Balfour was our instructor. I volunteered to be one of the models. I can't believe members weren't pushing and shoving to be dressed in kimomo. The front of the kimono (with me in it) is above, and the back of the kimono is below.



This is a close-up of the obi.



I was surprised to learn how many layers went around a woman's middle. The idea is to have a straight up and down figure, with the back of the neck being the most sensual part of the body. I'm sure you can tell that from the back view.

Here is Wendy wearing kimono:



And here are some other members of our group wearing yukata, with Mayumi on the right.

I Found My Underwear!

Woo-Hoo! I found my underwear. Woo-Hoo! Fifteen months later. Twenty-five miles from home.

A couple of friends told me they'd seen my underwear. And they told me where they'd seen it. So I decided to find it myself.

And here it is.



It's hard to see in this photo (more about that adventure later), but this is the beaded bra I made and donated for an auction that raised money for mammograms for uninsured or under-insured women. The bra cups are covered with flower, leaf and butterfly beads. The sides and back are covered with pink fabric. I named the bra "Garden of Hope."

It's hanging in the fitting room of Dockside Clothing in Grand Haven, Michigan. I believe the store owner must have purchased it at the auction.

Taking the picture was itself an adventure. I walked into the store and told the clerk that I understood there was a beaded bra in the fitting room and that I was the person who made the bra. She did a double take. I guess I don't look like the highly embellished undergarment type.

At lunch a friend had shown me how to take a picture with my relatively new phone. (See what happened to the old one here.) So I took the photo with my phone. Then the issue was what to do with it. Apparently my $20 not-very-smart phone and my $5 a month plan do not permit me to send email or to download info from the phone. So I texted it to my daughter-in-law's smart phone and she emailed it back to me. I think I should be able to take better photos with the phone, but the instruction book is not too clear. I'll have to experiment.

But when I get back to Grand Haven next month, I'll take a real camera and get a better picture.

Fabric In Its Prime

I just finished the lap quilt to keep my legs and feet warm while I do hand stitching, read, or watch TV. It's 60 inches long by 40 1/2 inches wide. My plan, as it developed, was to finish the layering and quilting and machine stitch the binding on by last Sunday afternoon so I could hand stitch the binding on to the back during the Super Bowl. I did that, but it took till this morning to get all the hand stitching completed, due to numerous distractions along the way.

Because this is an item that will be washed frequently, I used polyester batting. For the quilting, smoke polyester mono-filament thread was used on the top and brown Gutermann polyester thread was used in the bobbin. I thought the quilt was busy enough with the variety of fabrics and blocks so I machine quilted in the ditch. I used a 75/11 quilting needle and a walking foot.

I wanted to limit my starts and stops in each block and the retracing of any stitching so I consulted the local topologist for the best way to plan the quilting. He referred me to Eulerian Paths and the Bridges of Konigsberg problem.

Aha! Or it would have been Aha!, except that I was distracted by two things. First, I realized we had had this discussion before. More than once. In fact, if I recall correctly, the Bridges of Konigsberg problem was used as a pick-up line some 40 years ago. (It worked.) Second, there was a loud Whooshing noise. The Whoosh was the sound of all that information going right over my head.

Now I know you're not hearing that Whooshing sound because you read and fully comprehended those Wikipedia references. But this is what I took away from the detailed explanation: Sometimes you can quilt all around all the pieces without stopping. Sometimes you can't. I can usually figure it out by eyeballing it. That's because it's Ayrt, not mathematics.

Because this little quilt will not be treated gently, I decided to use a French (double fold) bias binding. Being a book-larnin' kind of a person, I did a little research about how wide to cut my bias strips. What I found was a range of recommended widths. After auditioning the various widths, I went with the Sally Collins recommendation of 1 7/8 inches wide. This worked very well. (For your information, Fons and Porter recommend 2", 2 1/4", or 2 1/2" and Nancy Johnson-Srebro recommends 2".)

I named this quilt "Fabric in its Prime." Shortly after my mother died in 2002, my dad gave me some money for my birthday. I decided to spend it on something both my mother and I both enjoyed--fabric. Most of this fabric in the blocks came from a bundle of quarter yards I bought at that time. I think my dad was pleased to see that I spent it that way. The fabric brings me happy memories of both my parents.

This is the label. You can see the backing fabric in the photo. The dark brown sashing and border fabric is used as a frame for the label. I did have to purchase the backing and border/sashing fabric from our favorite, locally-owned fabric store.



If you want to see the individual blocks, scroll down to earlier posts.

Starting The New Year Right!

My January 2011 Bead Journal Project is Starting The New Year Right. For me, starting the new year right means using my favorite color for beading. I really like all shades of blue, but this periwinkle blue is my all time favorite. It makes me happy, happy, happy!

When I was very little, my sister and I would help my mother bake Christmas cookies. My sister, 14 months older, decided that red was her favorite color and so the cookies with the red sugar were hers. I can remember my mother telling me that green was my color and the cookies with the green sugar were mine. For a long time green was my favorite color. I still like green, but I love blue.

I've used blue in other Bead Journal pages. I used blue to show Abundance here and Tranquility here and to remember Morocco here.

Technical Details:

The foundation is Lacy's Stiff Stuff painted with watered down blue Dye-na-Flow.

This page contains the usual combination of 15/0s, 11/0s, 8/0s, and 6/0s plus some hexes, cubes, and charlottes. There are also some flat teardrop shaped beads and some flat round beads.

I used the backstitch and the stop stitch.

The page is 2.5 inches by 3.5 inches. That's the same size as my 2010 Bead Journal pages.

The thread is blue Nymo D.

What I Was Thinking:

Happy thoughts! I love working with blue. This page has a very small range of color and value, and it was interesting to see myself continue to try to limit that range. And I wondered whether I could really do all twelve pages for 2011 in different shades of blue.

Issues that Came Up:

The most challenging thing about this page was trying to get it balanced. The three "wallpaper motifs" above the row of bugles went on early. The three "eyebrows" (that's the way I think of them--call them what you want) of 6/0 beads seemed so heavy. I didn't have any more of the 6/0 beads to use elsewhere on the page. In the end, I think the teardrop beads and the three smaller "wallpaper motifs" above the "eyebrows" helped to balance the page. Ripping was not required.

And now, can I really do all twelve pages for 2011 in different shades of blue? No need to decide till tomorrow, when February starts.

The Satisfaction of Working Without a Plan

Here's the final--fifteenth--block for my small lap quilt. It's called Eddystone Light. I always thought this block had a pretty cool name, but I had no idea what it meant. For more information, I went to The Real Source Of All True Knowledge, Wikipedia. You can read about the Eddystone Lighthouse here. If you want to hear the song about the Eddystone Light, go here.

My next step in this project is to add sashing and borders. This will be the perfect project for our expected snow day(s) Tuesday afternoon into Wednesday.

I made each block (see previous posts for the others) one at a time. I either picked out a block pattern and chose the fabric, or chose the fabric and picked the block. Then I cut the fabric and sewed the block. As I got most of the blocks finished, I started thinking about balancing the shapes of the blocks and the fabrics in the blocks. As far as I can recall, I have not made any of these blocks before, except possibly Ohio Star.

I really enjoyed working this way because of the variety in activity. The figuring, planning, cutting and sewing were spread out so I did some of each with all the blocks. It was always interesting.

Of course, there can be pitfalls in not planning ahead--a design that veers off to an unsuitable side, no unity in design, running out of fabric, the constant mess of having everything out all the time (so that one doesn't bother me at all). But for a sampler quilt, the no-plan method worked well.

I'm anticipating an attack of quilt block withdrawal. This project was so much fun that I need to start thinking of the next one I can do the same way.

And right now I don't think it will be my traditional January/February project, trying to perfect a pants pattern. Although I do need to adjust my pants pattern (lost 4 pounds--woo-hoo!), I'm in the mood for more fun. If you want to find out about my adventures in fitting pants, go here and here and here