Poor Blogger

I've never been very good about journaling and since a blog is basically a journal I guess that's why I don't post very often.

Lots has happened in the way of quilts since my last post. At the Siouxland Samplers biannual quilt show in September I won 8 ribbons including Best of Show for my homeless man quilt, "Disheartened Sage." The week after that I had to immediately send the quilt to Paducah for judging since it was juried into the AQS Des Moines show the last week in October. It didn't win anything there but it was an honor to have been chosen to have it hang with so many other wonderful quilts. I even got to see it hang and had my picture taken with him. Right after getting home I received a phone call from a very nice woman wanting to purchase him. So in the middle of November I exchanged 'Sage' for a check. It was sort of like letting go of one's child but I know he is being well cared for and will be for many years to come. I can visit him in Omaha when I want she told me. I just may have to do that sometime.

The wall was bare where Sage had hung and the annual Stuhr Museum of the Prairie annual quilt show was approaching and the theme was animals. I'd had a photo taken by Lynea Hinchman that I'd wanted to make into a quilt for quite some time now and got at it. To her two Ring-billed Gulls I added 3 more smaller gulls that I painted, cut out, fused to the background, and then quilted down. I also added some rock cliffs and water. The background is quite bright from anything I've used before but I felt was just what a pair of white gulls needed to set them off. Looks like a sunrise or a sunset.

Next up will be a simple scrap quilt either enlarged to a queen size or completed as a throw size for some future gift probably.

Poor CRV

Last week Richard and I took off on a quick tour around western Nebraska. It is truly lovely this year with all the green after 7 years' drought. And a bonus of very cool temps of 3 degrees below normal was a bonus for the otherwise desert climate. We finally made it to the top of Scott's Bluff National Monument. Richard has lived in Nebraska all his life and me over 40 years and it's a first for both of us. Spectacular views! Go up if you're anywhere in the area.

The only down side to the trip came east of Alliance (Car Henge area). Richard was slowing to pull over on a side road for me to drive when he saw a car cross the center line and come straight at us! He swerved to avoid a head-on collision and the other vehicle hit and broke the driver's side mirror and scraped the back side of the CRV damaging the molding mostly but also bending the rear wheel so it's a bit wobbly to drive. The other driver admitted falling asleep. She was only an hour from her home and still had a 3 hr. drive to Denver to pick up family members there at the airport. I hope she made it safely. Luckily no one was hurt. Trying to drive with the cracked side mirror is hard since everything is quite distorted.

I took the CRV in for a repair estimate this a.m. and I'm glad I'm not paying for it! The other insurance will also provide me with a rental car for the week it will be in the hospital. Good thing, too, since I need to start working at school next week.

Maine

We just returned from a wonderful, albeit a bit rainy, trip to Maine and Nova Scotia. It's a very lovely place and I hope I can return someday with more time to spend there.

Our initial visit to Acadia National Park was a foggy, rainy one. But on our last day in Maine the sun was out so we opted to go there again. What a difference the sun makes! The views from atop Cadillac Mountain are some of the most spectacular I've ever seen. Go if you haven't been.

We worked our way up the coast to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The weather wasn't any better there. We headed to Cape Breton Island and found our first sunshine so decided to drive the Cabot Trail. Of course, the north side of the trail was foggy and drizzly so the views there weren't the best. Once down and on the south side of the trail the sun emerged again. Even the local Mainers and Canadians were complaining about the horrid weather. Both are wonderfully kind and considerate people towards tourists. A great place to visit.

I took lots of photos many of which I want to use in future quilts. The old barn peeking from behind trees on a highway in Nova Scotia was a photo op I couldn't pass up as you can see. The Maine coast is mostly rocky and gorgeous with sun on the rocks. The last is a view from atop Cadillac Mountain. Do you see the quilt ops that I see in these pictures?

Owlets

Sunday I got a call from some neighbors saying they had some owls in their grass and wondering what they were and what to do with them. So I drove over to find two young Screech Owls in their lawn. I convinced them they couldn't feed them anything and only the Raptor Recovery Center could keep them. I picked them up one at a time and placed them on a branch in one of his 20+ pine trees on the edge of his yard. When I placed the second, smaller owlet on the branch I happened to glance up and found a 3rd owlet on a branch above the two I'd just placed in the tree! What are the chances I'd choose the same tree a sibling was already in? I was sure they'd fledged but no way of knowing since the parents were not visible. I worried about them the last couple of days and finally called to see if they were okay. He said he'd checked later that night and the smaller one was back on the ground so he put it back on the tree branch with its one sibling. The next morning he had to get up and leave early before the sun was up and decided to check on them with a flashlight. He found two still in the tree and when he got close an adult swooped down at him making lots of noise. So looks like they are being taken care of.

Gladiolus Finished!

I finally finished quilting the gladiolus. I stitched from the center of the flower outwards in the shape of the petals. I used a red-orange thread throughout except on the small yellow area to the right. That was the lightest spot and I wanted it to stand out to show the light hitting it directly. I also removed some of the yellow lines on the lower petal. They just didn't seem to be quite right. The yellow-orange background piece seemed to have wavy lines heading upward so I heavily quilted it using the same wavy line pattern. I've never used so much quilting on a piece before and it is very flat!

I probably procrastinated most on the binding. I knew a regular binding would be too heavy for the quilt and a satin stitch would ruin the richness of the quilt. I finally opted to use a very small piping that was left over from a large bed quilt I finished two years ago. I actually put that on before I did any of the quilting. The orange fabric in the piping is not like any of the other oranges in the quilt and I feel may have worked well for that reason.

Small Work

I've accomplished another small quiltlet about 9" x 11" in size. Winter just won't leave us this year and Tuesday I got up to a coating of ice on everything canceling school yet again. We'll be going all summer at this rate! Anyway, a day at home gave me a day of playing with fabric. I took an old magazine picture from my collection folder and made it using all cool colors. Quilt in a day! Maybe having a day off now and again and confined to the house isn't so bad?

I scanned it into the computer rather than photograph the piece since the colors turn out more natural this way, but the binding is not shown, either. I didn't quite know what to do for the binding when I started but when I laid it atop a piece of dark blue-violet it worked, so I just cut the binding from that which made a nice frame for the quiltlet, too.

Originals

I thought that maybe I should also post pictures of the original photo of the gladiolus and the contour drawing that I made from the photo before making the analogous picture seen below. I chose to do the flower in the top center of the photo.

Analogous Color Quilt

The latest step in my book study was to make an analogous color quilt. It took me two hours last night to cut out and fuse all the pieces together into the 8 1/2" x 11" size you see here. I don't know when I'll get it quilted but I don't think it turned out too badly? These are colors I don't often use, although they're in my stash for when I do, so a challenge for me. The photo was of a magenta gladiolus I grew a few years ago. Of course the background was green then but red, orange, and yellow are the analogous colors I chose and in the end the yellow and orange blended fabric worked best.

Blizzard Work

The winds were to start yesterday afternoon but after getting up to minimal snow from Monday night as predicted I felt we'd dodged the bullet so to speak. It was my recess duty day at school so I had boots and everything else inside with me. The announcement came about 1:15 that we were dismissing school early since the winds had come up and it was snowing. I had to call all parents to decide what to do with their children. Once they were gone I was free to leave. I had one snow boot on and then decided that maybe I should put on my ski pants in school rather than squirm into them in a crammed car. I have a 7 1/2 mile drive home on country roads and once out in the country it was total white-out conditions. The fastest speed I could attain was 20 mph when I could see bits of the road in front of me. When not, I hit the brakes since I couldn't see where I was headed. I had no idea where I was most of the time and feared I'd miss the turn to head north. Found it and 2 miles from home I was startled to come upon a vehicle in the middle of the road and a person standing beside it!!! I hit the brakes and realized it was my neighbor and her daughter who had gotten stuck in a drift with her mini-van. I could see well enough to 'think' that I could get around them and proceeded to do so barely missing scraping the sides of the two vehicles. Once around I got out and blew back to their vehicle and talked them into getting in with me for the two mile ride to my house. The force of the winds blowing me to them and fighting back to my Honda CRV were unbelievable! We knew where drifts formed on the road ahead but couldn't tell where we were anyhow. We finally made it to my house and she called her husband to come get them. Her husband said he had to stop 3 times in the one mile distance from their house to mine. It took me 40 minutes to drive the 7 1/2 miles home.

The school buses all returned to school loaded with children and I guess the office found places for all of them to stay in town. Some homes had as many as 10 extra kids for the night. Only 3 teachers made it home last night with the rest remaining in town, too. All highways in northeast Nebraska were closed last night many blocked with accidents. Today no school again due to blocked roads. And we're to get another round of snow and wind tonight again! Looks like we'll be having year-round school with all the snow days we'll be making up.

Once home I worked on and finished a small wall hanging for a challenge group I am part of. I have always loved watching birds and their antics, but have only once before included them in any of my quilts. I chose to depict my favorite bird, the Black-capped Chickadee, in this quilt. He looks cold on a bare branch surrounded by Bittersweet.