Tuesday, May 5, 2009

An Idyllic Setting for Creating!


These are "the boys" looking out my living room window. George is the orange tabby and Cheney is the black one. George came to us with that name but Cheney was Butterball which didn't fit at all. We figured that wherever George was, there must be a Cheney lurking nearby and since the black cat was a bit of a lurker......


Well after so much time away, I headed out to Marcia's for a sewing day at her home set in the most wonderful spring (or anytime for that matter) setting. Again the colors of the lilacs just beginning to bloom along with her remaining tulips -- the deer trimmed the rest of her tulips rather well, she says.



This is the view towards the back of the pasture where a herd of deer now spends time grazing along with a very well fed ground hog, who was immortalized on an earlier blog.





This is the view toward the pond which is sometimes alive with Canada Geese but not today. Spring colors are almost as good as fall colors!

Marcia is working with a very different pallet since coming back from her last Nancy Crow workshop. I am in love with these new pieces but then again, anything with purple...... She made good use of many of the hand dyes we have made together.




This is the beginnings of the new lillies piece I am doing. I have made the drawing, traced it to tissue paper, numbered everything, colored it in and then transferred it to the freezer paper and have done all my markings! Now I am rethinking the lillies themselves as they look a bit complex but we shall see. I have a habit of changing things as I go!! I want to make sure that the petals are well differentiated without the use of too much thread work. We shall see.


I finally finished the quilting on this quilt, the binding is done and I am DONE. It is far far from perfect but I am far from perfect, so that is okay. I realized when I couldn't find the binding that I had set aside, that it became the green border!! So I had to come up with a new vintage binding so yellow it was!! Oh well, it is by far the most complex quilt with the most quilting that I have ever done. Some of the blocks (they are all 4 inches square) have more than 100 pieces and many have more than 50!! Quilting by hand was not fun...... This is one of those quilts best viewed from about six feet away!! It is about 90 inches by 85 inches. Double clicking will show more detail!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Beth that last quilt is spectacular. Seems so different from what you are doing now. Thanks for sharing!

Claire Welch said...

4 inch squares! You are marvelous! I love looking at miniatures, but don't have the patience for doing them. Love all your photos!