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It was a busy afternoon yesterday as I am running out of time to get a whole bunch of things done for our Guild quilt show which is the 20th of March but quilts have to be turned in March 14. Three of my quilts needed sleeves, labels and all of the entries need their own pillowcase with numbers sewn on.
In addition, I wanted to finish up the jacket (at least the outside) as it has been on my design wall too long! I had really grappled with what to do to the front but resolved it by changing the neckline to something that fit more with garment. It did have a vee neckline but I am much happier with this.
I added the black side pieces to both the front and back so all that was left was to do the front darts and then sew everything together and try it on (which was a scary prospect as I just assumed the pattern I made before would fit!
It's all sewn together and on a hanger now!
I tried it on and it fit. This is not a great picture as I am facing a mirror and taking the picture! I think I am going to like the jacket though. You can see how little of the black sides that you see! So now just to do the facing and the lining and I even think I have enough of the black silk to finish it off!
Two of my favorite birds were down at the boat dock yesterday -- Marbled Godwits hanging out with a largish flock of Dunlins.
The other Godwit on a very grey day! I just love their impossibly long beaks!!
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!
Still no Cedar Waxwings this year, but where they were Robins are now feasting. There were between 50 and 100 robins on these berry bushes, flying like a murmuration of Starlings!! Quite a sight. I have seen so many birds in flocks this year that I have never seen in large numbers together before (like the Red-winged Blackbirds). Robins are common but not in groups of 100!!
The weather has been downright cold the past couple of days -- no ice thank goodness but certainly temps teetering on that possibility. Here I am testing out my latest with the jacket back. Cutting up strips of slippery silk is a challenge!!
Here the jacket back is done except for the black side panels which will finish it off. I am okay with it and hopefully it isn't too bright.
Here I decided to test the look with one of the sleeves. The flannel backing certainly does stabilize all the silk and trap all the ravelling. The technique I use to put all my jackets together is almost a "quilt as you go" technique of laying down a strip on the backing and then sewing the next strip on top of the placed strip, then ironing it down. The flannel is great for holding pieces in place and I highly recommend it for jacket construction.
There are eight robins hiding in this picture - can you find them all?
Finally saw my beloved Oystercatchers after a few weeks of no shows!! It was kind of a dreary day and there were a lot of students wandering in the marshy area. I am still hoping to see the Clapper Rail one day.
It has been really cold for down here the past few days but that hasn't kept the Bluebirds and the Yellow-rumped Warblers from showing themselves. There are so many "butter butts", that I am afraid of hitting them as they fly by. There has also been a lot of robins as well which, although common up north, is not so common here.
My favorite viewing area (the boat ramp at the end of the island) was very active yesterday at low tide. I am beginning to see a bit of a pattern here. When the winds are from the north and strong, the birds tend to congregate there more. I have been seeing this male Hooded Merganser a few times the past week. This is not a bird I usually see here and he was close enough for me to get a decent closeup.
The other day there was a Greater Yellowlegs down at the ramp. Here he is joined by a Willet and you can see their relative size. The Yellowlegs is far more elegant looking!
Here is a better picture of the Yellowlegs with his bright legs showing!
One of the Marbled Godwits was also down yesterday. In addition, I saw Semi-palmated Plovers, Dunlins and Horned Grebes as well as the usual gulls and one I haven't been able to clearly identify yet.
I have been continuing to work on the jacket and decided to do the sleeves first as I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do there. Here they are pinned on my design wall where I am testing my idea (which wasn't the original plan of course). I decided this would be okay.
I have discovered with the making of several jackets that there isn't much point in doing a lot of work in areas that don't show (like the underarm area). So I finished off the sleeves with just plain black silk. I had managed to find five yards down here and hope it will be enough to do the jacket and lining both although if worse comes to worse, I will use the navy blue silk for the sleeve lining (which doesn't show).
Now I am tackling the back and am trying to come up with something that won't look so busy (those strips are really busy looking). First try was this multi-colored strip down the middle. Nah....
Next I thought maybe a solid red stripe. Don't like that either though so we shall see what today brings. The back is in two sections but I am thinking of just joining them and treating it as a whole back and maybe just one strip down the middle like the sleeves and then adding some things to either side. Again, not much point in doing a whole heck of a lot on the sides as it goes around the body and doesn't show. Working on jackets is much more three dimensional than working on quilts. You also need to take into account what parts of your body you want to draw your eye to (none in my case!!).
Well, lots of drama around here with cameras. I tried to destroy my camera by taking a ton of pictures in the rain on my last big bird trip. After a week of trying it every day, I decided I needed a new camera as I couldn't change the settings on the camera anymore. I ordered an upgraded model -- Canon 70D which came with a bunch of accessories and I was really happy with it. I have been playing around getting used to the differences. Well, of course the day the camera arrived, my old camera mysteriously started working again, ten days after the trip!! The above sunset picture was taken at a different place down at Ft. Fisher which I discovered thanks to my roommate from the bird trip, Sandra. She knows tons about Kure Beach as she lived here for many years before moving into Wilmington proper.
This past weekend I attempted to go on a field trip around Greenfield Lake with an Audobon group. They walked very fast and there was quite a large group and my ankle gave up after about a mile and a quarter. I did use the new camera to get this nice picture of an osprey though!
Unfortunately, I went out today to take some pictures and the camera wouldn't work!! So much for the new camera. Thank goodness I bought it from Amazon and can easily return. Then I will get another one although now I am a little leary. I never had an error code on my old Canon!
Anyway, the next order of business was to take this big bag of silk scraps I have had for years and make a jacket from them. For a long time, I have thought I would just create strips about four inches wide and separate those strips with black and that would be it. So I have started just taking these leftover 1 1/2 inch wide strips and sewing them down on a flannel foundation. These are cut up silk (only silk) ties that I bought back in the 80s for twenty five cents each. I deconstructed them and then washed them and made a quilt called "Thrift Shop Stained Glass" many years ago -- a pineapple quilt.
This was an attempt to see how it would look together with thicker black strips as it just looks far too busy for my tastes. I decided I had better play a little bit in EQ7 to see if some of the variations I have thought about would work.
This is just a try at a better composition. I decided that I would try to vary a great deal the width of the strips and would add something a little calmer - the checkered red and black strips. There is quite a bit of red in the long strips and I thought I would try to bring this out by adding some more. These are obviously not the actual strips and I would not have the regular rhythm that there is here but would vary it a bit more. I am thinking I would just have one main strip on each sleeve with the red/black checkered pieces on either side and a lot more black. I want this to be a pretty dressy jacket that I can wear with black dress pants. I don't have all my nice silk fabric down here but luckily found some black silk and red silk at a local store so I could make progress down here!
I just can't help myself taking pictures of pretty sunsets at Ft. Fisher. This day I actually drove on my way home from somewhere else when I noticed it would be a good sunset day!!
I went to Greenfield Lake Park one day to see if there were any of the Shovelers (there weren't) and it was a gorgeous warm day (close to 80 that day) and this 8 foot alligator decided it was a good day to come out and sit in the shade. This was not where I usually see them!! He had to be 8 feet long!
I used my telephoto to get up close and personal as he had his eye on me!
This was just a view into the Cypress swamp near where I saw the alligator.
I try to get down to Ft. Fisher at low tide each day to see what is wondering around. A couple of mornings ago, it was this male Belted Kingfisher. I had to take pics while still in the car as they are very shy and won't let you get anywhere near them!
On my way back, I stopped by the rocks and my usual walking place and noticed this House Wren sitting out on the rocks. Usually you see the Carolina Wrens around here, especially at my daughter's house!!
Yesterday there were all sorts of birds down at the basin. I just love the Oystercatchers and there were dozens of them yesterday. There were one remaining Godwit, many Semi-palmated Plovers, Horned Grebes, Ibis, Egret, Herring Gull and the usual Ring-Billed and Laughing Gulls.
Here are two Horned Grebes. They don't let you get too close and spend a lot of their time diving for fish.
Here is a closeup of a Horned Grebe.
This is a Forster's Tern which we see frequently down there.
This is a view to the long brick wall I have mentioned before which separates the basin from the Cape Fear River. Note all the Oystercatchers!
I have been working hard on finishing the jacket and finally I got it done several days ago. This is the back and the next picture is the front.
I hadn't sewed the linings down at this point but it is all done now! I actually found some silk at a local quilt shop for the lining. Optimistically, I bought enough to finish another jacket as well!!
After I finished the jacket, I decided it was time to make my granddaughter some new clothes for Christmas as I just like to do that. Here are two jumpers (corduroy) and two dresses. I underestimated the fabric needed so had to line with some of my quilt fabric but think I like it even better, especially for the corduroy jumpers which would have been pretty bulky with corduroy! Now to get them packed up and in the mail. There are kitties on the fabric on the far left and a jungle scene for the one on the right!
Now I am making some purses from kits I made up before leaving home. Of course I forgot how to put them together but after staring at them for awhile and undoing a little stitching, I remembered (and will now document for myself). It has been months since I have made purses!
I still can't get these ladies to hold up their quilts for more than a few seconds. I really like the colors in this one which is a very simple pattern but done in solid substitutes, the colors really pop. There were a lot of quilts turned in during this meeting for the neo-natal unit at the local hospital. The coordinator had asked for extra effort in creating some of these quilts which have to be at least 40 x 40 inches. Little did she know that almost everyone who got up would have one or two to contribute to her. She left with two chairs filled high. I wish I had my scraps down here but maybe some will manifest themselves by the end of the winter!
I liked this black and white and yellow log cabin. I plan on making a quilt at some point with that palette.
Our program this month was on organizing your quilting space and there were so very clever ideas, a couple of which I will try (using one of the swinging drapery rods to hold fabric to cover up the fabric on your shelves so they don't get bleached out by the light).
This group is very active in making Quilts of Valor as well and I liked this one especially. I have given all my red, white and blue prints away but probably still have some solids hanging around!
This lady had become a big fan of purses such as myself. This one allows you to change the bottom of the bag with the season. May have to look into that!
Well, I now have both sleeves and both fronts done. I would be further along if I hadn't sewn most of the strips in the wrong order on the first front I did. I am not a big fan of ripping out stitches -- especially lots of them. I haven't trimmed the sides yet, nor done the darts the pattern calls for. You will definitely see me coming. I am not sure I will wear this one in public except in quilt venues!! I have to find some fabric for lining. I am partial to silk so will have to find some locally or go online. One of the quilt shops locally used to have silk so maybe there will be some left!
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