Surgery

Last week I finally had surgery on my foot to determine what was causing the pain I've had for years but had become more pronounced the past two years. Since inserts, alcohol shots, and taping didn't offer any relief surgery was the last resort. The surgery lasted 2 hrs. and fortunately the cause was found. I've had little pain the past week and get the stitches out next week so then I'll be free to shower again!

I had my foot surgery follow-up appt. today. Once unwrapped I was surprised how little swollen the foot actually was. I also got a better explanation as to what Dr. Eilts did to my foot vs. what Richard 'thought' he heard from him last week after the surgery. He removed the small bunion and then put a pin in the big toe to move it over and get it into better alignment to keep my foot from rolling inward when I walked. But the big surprise was what was causing all my pain in the first place. Dr. Eilts said it's the first time he's ever seen this even though he'd heard of it. Anyway. at some point in the past I stepped wrong and the tendon pulled jerking a 'chunk' of bone about the size of the push top on a ball point pen from my second toe. He said it could have gone un-noticed for several years. The last 2 it's really been bothering me and that's when it probably moved into position to drill a 1/8" hole in the ligament beneath the toe. So, he removed the bone chunk, shortened the tendon, and repaired the hole in the ligament. I get the stitches out next week with a splint remaining on the toe to further heal the tendon and then I should be good to go he said. I still have to wear my lovely knee-high boot for a few weeks and use crutches, but hopefully the pain will be gone in the future. The pictures were really interesting to see.

Sounds like I may be able to travel a bit after all this summer IF I can walk on the 2" incision on the ball of my foot.

Latest FFFC Challenge

Each month I try to do the 4th Friday challenge for the FFFC on-line group. This month's was undersea, thread painting, with a non-traditional binding. Needless to say, the sea is quite foreign to a Nebraskan. So I came across a book I forgot I'd owned, photocopied a page of sea stars, added a batik border that fit with the colors, added color with thread painting and wetted colored pencils. My attempt at thread painting white coral in the right corner didn't show on the quilt so I used Solvy stabilizer and made a new one that I attached loosely making it dimensional. The green plants coming in from the left with a seahorse hanging on helped to add depth to the piece. I rather like the outcome coming from a landlubber.

Winter's Creations

Being snowed in LOTS this winter has really given me time to create different quilts. Once I retire in May I'm hoping to get back into drawing, painting, photography, and whatever else along with my art quilts. Yesterday I finished a 14" x 40" quilt that I plan to give to the elementary for my retirement. The two children are students in my class this year and both very sweet kids. I'm 'hoping' the school will like it enough to hang somewhere in the office area where those coming into the school for business will see it, but who knows, they may choose to roll it up in a drawer someplace. Even though it's completed I won't give it to the school until early August since I have been asked to do my first trunk showing for a quilt guild in southewestern Iowa. I'm in the habit of giving away many of my quilts and will need to keep them now so I'll have plenty to share with this guild in July.

Weather

What a horrible winter we're having here in northeast Nebraska! After 2 major blizzards since just before Christmas and after dropping over 2 feet of snow coupled with the previous 9 inches, daily fog, cold, and an ice storm last week that has left people without power since last Wednesday everyone is hungry for some sunshine no matter how cold it is. Late yesterday the snow started to fall again. Although we only got 2-3 inches we're having 40-45 mph winds which has managed to fill in the roads with 3 foot drifts again and the seventh snow day from school. We'll be going all summer if this continues.

But I have gotten all my UFO's (unfinished quilts) done and started some more. One I even tossed after having it half completed for the last 5 years and decided it wasn't that good anyhow. The biggest quilt I finished was one I'd started in a class with Scott Murkin. I arranged the blocks in a dark to light format putting varied width strips from top to bottom and left to right of purple in-between the blocks. I quilted it in a wavy pattern to complement the wavy blocks. I finally took pictures of it this a.m. and hope to work out something with vining Morning Glory over the quilt to resemble it climbing on a trellis. If I don't get it done it will look fine as is, too.

I also belong to the on-line group, Fast Friday Fabric Challenge, in which we are challenged on the 4th Friday of the month to create a small quilt to fit the challenge in one week's time. Teaching doesn't always give me time to do these but the past two I've completed since I've been snowed in so much. December's was to choose a commercial package from our cupboards and use the colors on the product to create a still life quilt. I used a Jolly Time popcorn package and created the little orange and green 8" x 10" quilt using the package colors. This month's is to choose 3 colors, their shades, values, and tints, use a 'winged thing' as subject matter, and fracture or break up the design. 'Fairy Blues" is the result of this challenge.

Today I'm working on a commercial pattern that I bought several years ago. I've not used one of these for a long time. I'm so used to creating my own that following someone else's design is different. Good thing I have such a big stash of fabric so I don't have to worry about not having a particular color to use.

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.

New Website

Boy, what a difference a month can make weather-wise. It was fairly warm through Thanksgiving but has gone downhill (way downhill) since. We've been in the deepfreeze for the past couple of weeks with temperatures barely getting above zero. Then yesterday we got whalloped with 10 inches of snow when we were predicted to only get 1-3 inches. The winds started blowing before dawn and haven't quit all day. I wonder how long before the plows are able to get out to move the drifts so I can return to my last two days of teaching before winter break begins on Dec. 23rd at 2 p.m.?

I bought a new Apple computer in September and have been learning to use it since. For a few dollars more per year I even got my own website which I finally got published and running yesterday. Check it out when you have the time!

http://web.me./bluebird47

Second project

This one went quite easily compared to the following Christmas quilt. I managed to finish it in about 3 days. Each month my quilt guild has a monthly mini quilt made by a guild member. All who attend the monthly meetings may choose to purchase raffle tickets for that month's quilt. The lucky person gets to take the wall hanging, table runner, etc. home with them that night. The monies raised go into the guild's special projects coffers.
My turn is for the January monthly mini. I'll plan to take it with me next week since one never knows what the weather can be like in January and since I live an hour's drive away I feel it best to get the wall hanging there early. I love watching birds and finally decided to make the quilt bird-related. The Cardinals in the corners were fussy cut from some fabric I already had. If you know anything about birds you'll also know that Cardinals won't go near a nest box but their coloring went well with what I'd chosen for the border fabric so I used that.

Fall Projects

Back at teaching and I don't have as much time to do much of anything. Second grade students have a lot more energy than I do and it takes a lot to keep up with them most days. With Christmas approaching they have only one thing on their minds and it's not much on learning so I have to try to make the lessons exciting enough to keep their attention. Phew!

My quilt guild did have a Christmas challenge for "Christmas Around the World" in which we were to choose a country and make a quilt to depict Christmas there. I chose Czechoslovakia for two reasons. The first was because my grandparents, although German, emigrated from there to the U.S. in the early 1900s. The second reason was that I felt no one else would choose this country.

But then came the challenge for me. The Czechs believe that on December 6th Svety Mikalas comes down from the heavens on a gold rope accompanied by an angel and a devil. He carries a book listing all the children's names as having been good or bad. Those who were good get a back of treats and those who were bad get a bag of coal. Nothing I found mentioned the devil or angel after that but I'm guessing that they passed out the bags to those children in the good or bad categories.

I had a hard time putting a devil on a Christmas quilt but in the end came up with a way to do this without hurting the image of the quilt. I chose to make the devil 2-sided using a very heavy Pellon batting. Then I simply pinned him onto the rope. He can easily be removed later and I plan then to replace him with another angel or just leave the quilt as is without him.

Breaking Traditions

Finally my computer is working again with a new computer! So I can upload and share my entry for Breaking Traditions sewing expo in Michigan. I chose to honor Hospice. They are a wonderful group who cared for my mother in her final hours. They understand so well what the family is going through. I placed a Hospice worker caring for someone encircling them with not only their hands but all of the Hospice workers. Their hands help to brighten a person's final days but in the end must fade away but are still there for the remaining family members as needed.

Neil Diamond's World Tour 2008

Neil Diamond has always been my first love and always will. Don't tell my husband that, though. He was wonderful to take me to my second Neil Diamond concert in the last 3 years last night. The first concert the seats weren't so great but last night's were 9th row center! I could count the wrinkles around his beautiful brown eyes. He still has less than me, I think, and he's older. ND's voice hasn't faltered a bit from his early years. He still has some great, but not as hard, hip movements. I tried to take some illegal photos last night, but with the stage lighting and the photo police constantly moving around looking to snatch my camera and me and exit us from the show, it was a difficult task. My other camera would have been better but this one fit in my purse so these photos will have to do.
Boy, do I love this man. I could enjoy his show nightly.

Quilt Guild Grabbag Challenge

Not only did I participate in the Quiltart Grabbag Challenge but our local guild also sponsored a grabbag challenge. WOW! Did I get a bag of neat oriental fabrics and embellishments! Lots of orange that needed some toning down so I added some purples and a bit of yellow. I then found some of my own oriental fabric with cranes, cut them out and fused them to the quilt to come up with "Following the North Winds". Tomme Fent turned out to be the owner of the fabric and resulting quilt.

We exchanged them last Monday night and oh, did we have some great quilts! Mine was made by Catherine Grigg and was definitely the brightest. I love what she did with the fabrics. She titled it "A Postcard from Quilter's Beach'. Isn't it great and wouldn't you love to have it hanging on your wall?

Grabbag Challenge

I recently participated in the Quiltart Grabbag Challenge. My first and it makes one both nervous and excited. I wondered who received my fabrics and would they like them. Once finished with the grabbag I received I wondered if that person would like the quilt I made for them.

What a relief to finally get mine back. Maureen Lardie did a wonderful job making "Beaded Curtain" from my fabrics and I would not have thought to use them this way ever! I do enjoy looking at it and see new things each time.

I made "Green Mile Squared" for Franziska Gruenig of Switzerland. Lots of greens and purples in this quilt. I added some orange squares and paint to get more color.

All in all it was a great learning experience forcing me to construct something in a short time using another's choice of fabric. Something everyone should do occasionally.