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There was a whole row of Royal Terns down at Ft. Fisher on a rainy day last week. They are all banded but I can't read any numbers but probably the color means something.
One of the Terns is quite vocal and you can actually almost see the eye here!
There was a conflagration of gulls down by the rock wall at Ft. Fisher and I took pictures for identification later figuring they were probably Ring-billed or Laughing Gulls. Surprise, surprise, they were Bonaparte Gulls which I have seen before but not in this number. I still have to identify the other strange birds in this picture (the dark ones).
Ft. Fisher was beautiful today with these big billowy clouds that just dissipated as I was walking.
There are always House Finches belting out their songs by the house. This is a very colorful male.
I finally finished quilting the Houses quilt that I started in the Flavin Glover class. Of course, having it sit on the wall, I noticed two mistakes in it! I am relatively pleased now that I have done the quilting. I wouldn't do another one though as much as I like log cabin blocks. I don't like making quilts that someone is well known for!! The good part is that all the fabrics in this quilt are either my hand dyes or my hand marbled fabrics.
This is just a closeup showing the quilting more clearly. There are curvy lines in the sky, twirlies in the trees and then just straight lines in the houses, one one the seam line and then one bisecting each piece.
You just never know what birds you will run into down at Ft. Fisher. This morning a couple of weeks ago, there were all sorts of shorebirds intermingling Above you can see a Tri-color Heron (the dark one), a Snowy Egret and four immature Ibis who are still a bit tan in color but who will be snowy white soon!
The Marbled Godwits were there also and I never tire of seeing them!
A couple of brightly colored Oystercatchers were also there.
Even a Great Blue Heron was standing on the wooden wall.
The Tri-color has his catch.
I wondered by the Recreation Area and saw 17 deer!! They were only a little timid.
Here is a close-up of one of the fellows. The horns had fallen off of most of their heads which I now understand is what happens in the spring. You could see a little remnant on one of the deer.
I had guests all of last week so I wanted to finish off this house quilt top before they arrived. I also had to get my quilts ready for the quilt show we had last weekend. It has been a VERY busy couple of weeks!! I will have a blog showing some of the quilts from the show as I am the official photographer! You can see that I am using the scrap strips from the houses to put on a border.
It's finished!! I am not totally crazy about the border without some plain strip separating it from the top but it would have meant even more calculating and finagling to get the border to fit!
I was hoping against hope that I would finish quilting this wholecloth quilt before the GVQC show but it will have to be the next one as there is not a prayer!! Most of the middle is done though but since it is queen sized, there is a lot of edge! This is the back of the quilt so you don't see the blue lines!
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We had Flavin Glover as our speaker at our Guild meeting on Monday. The room is not set up to get pictures easily but I did get some of my favorites of her quilts (most of which are posted on her website as well). Here is a link to her gallery of quilts - Flavin Glover's Gallery. I especially liked this hexagonal one but then I love hexagons!
This was my absolute favorite and I can see combining this with some of the Serendipity quilts that I have been doing. I haven't done a diamond log cabin before.
This was a great variation -- you can see enough to get the idea! It combined some stars in with the log cabins.
I liked the colors in this one a lot!
This log cabin is made up of rectangles and nice colors and design..
This was one of Flavin's early quilts and wonderful colors again!
This is Brownstones and was one of the quilts we could have made in class.
One of her quilts that is a landscape made of log cabin bloccks.
We all liked this quilt where she used the back of many fabrics for the tree shadows.
This is the four seasons.
We had our usual show and tell and this was one of the neonatal quilts that was made. I liked the border which was very much like many of Flavin's and one that I will use probably around my log cabin houses.
This was one of the "quilts of valor" that was made. This group is very very active in making quilts for charity.
This really nice quilt was for Habitat for Humanity. If they have an auction or some special project, I will probably donate my log cabin quilt for it. Flavin has donated many of her house quilts to this organization for auctions.
Our quilt show is coming up on March 20 and 21 and there will be about 130 quilts on display so if you live in the area, make sure you visit. Here is the link that gives you more information - 2015 QBTS Quilt Show.
My sewing was interrupted by an ice storm yesterday which left us without electricity for several hours! Good thing I have my handy Kindle Paperwhite so I could read in the dark with no problem! Even provides enough light to get around the house. The ice was not gone this morning and didn't disappear totally until later this afternoon but no more electric outages of significance. It did look pretty when the sun came out and hopefully our palms will be none the worst for it.
Just a closeup of some of the ice cover.
I worked yesterday and today to build up the log cabin house quilt that I started in Flavin Glover's class. I am working on the trees now and using some of my reject marbled fabrics which improve with being cut up!! They were pieces that had been dye "dogs" which I then marbled hoping to improve them which it did a bit.
This is a closeup of the above tree so you can see the marbling. The middle house on the bottom row is also marbled fabric. All the rest are hand dyes. This is one of the few quilts I have made using nothing but my marbled and hand dyed fabrics.
Here it is further along!
This is a closeup of the tree on the far left which used a fairly dark marbled piece.
Here is how I left it on my wall last night. I found a whole lot of gradations of blues in my fat quarter old hand dyes. The plain sky blocks go really fast but not the others!
This is the tree on the right.
This is not a clear image as I used my camera phone but the top (with the exception of the borders) is done and I am relatively pleased. I am going to do a fairly simple border incorporating pieces of all the colors in the quilt. Flavin did quite a few different treatments that I really liked and thought really added something to the quilts she had done. The quilt is currently 37.5 x 26 inches. The finished "logs" are 3/4 inch. After looking at this on my design wall, I am contemplating doing a jacket using a variation of this pattern and of course making it wider (my hips haven't been 37 inches in forty years!). Doesn't it look like it would make a cool jacket?
Just so my northern friends won't think everything is peachy down here. This is the fountain at the Arboretum where we had our class on Saturday! We have been having very chilly weather here the last week although it was in the 60s today!
Well, I am making progress on the jacket. I haven't cut out the black pieces to finish off the front and sides. I am not happy with the black in the middle but am at a loss right now as to how to improve it. Might be some hand applique involved.
I pinned up the sleeve to see how it hung together. It kind of looks like a marching band uniform to me but hopefully won't look like that when I wear it. I had a very definite event in mind to wear this jacket to as it is all silk and hopefully I will have the guts to do that when the time comes!
Saturday I took a really fun class with Flavin Glover. She was just lovely and the class was really fun. I really only took it to support the guild and to get to know people a little better. The class was basically using her patterns to build little log cabin houses and was just fun. Of course I approached it totally differently than anyone else in class did!! I do travel to a different beat sometimes -- it never even occurred to me to do what the others were doing (which I didn't discover until the class was wrapping up). They were all building whole houses, one at a time. As I was sitting alone at a table (I got there later than most), I only knew what the person next to me was doing and she was doing a lot of planning.
Here is Flavin pinning up all the houses that the class did. Mine are noticeably missing as I didn't make a full house at all but just started making the log cabin blocks called for in the pattern I was using (one of hers). There were three different types of block and I was concentrating on efficiently doing just one type.
Well, the class made 54 blocks (the other 13 people) while I made 19 by myself. Of course mine don't look like houses yet!! The beginnings are up on my design wall. I am using some miscellaneous fat quarters of ugly marbled fabrics and fat quarters of many dye experiments done early in my dyeing history. I used to do fat quarters almost exclusively but now don't dye less than a half yard of any color and try to do large pieces even for my marbled fabrics. The marbled fabrics I brought down here are mainly rejects and meant to be cut up and this was ideal. I needed some relaxing sewing after working with the tempermental silks.
This is the pattern I am using. The large medium grey areas are trees. I haven't decided yet whether I am actually going to do the log cabins that make up the sky. If I can find enough different shades of blue, I might. Otherwise I might just piece a large curvy piece in parts of the area. We shall see. I am not anxious to put in gobs of time and doing log cabins using the same fabric is just plain boring to do!
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