A day at the Orchid Show at the Botanical Gardens

This is a view from the window of our room just at sunset. We came back to the room some days to rest before heading back downtown for a show each night.

Well, I happened to see that there was an orchid show at the Botanical Gardens so I found out which train to take and we headed off on Wednesday morning. It was very cold but beautiful and sunny. The orchid show had only opened a couple of days before.

This is me standing in front of a bank of all different kinds of orchids to give you a feel for how they were displayed. Double clicking on any of the pictures will make them bigger. I will be adding a slide show to this blog in a couple of days.


Well, they don't do anything halfway in New York City!! The Botanical Gardens are located in The Bronx just north of the Zoo. We had never been there before but will definitely go back some time when you can tour the outside gardens which cover 550 acres! We had to be satisfied with the Conservatory which was fantastic!! I am sure I haven't been in anything as well done as that ever.


I had been to Longwood Gardens many times but it pales in comparison to this. Add on top of that the absolutely fantastic orchid show -- well, it was a great way to spend half a day. Supposedly there were 2000 varieties of orchids. The display was unbelieveable -- they were woven into the permanent displays with bowers, arches and orchids hanging from trees as well as planted among the other exhibits.

It was truly breathtaking and the day was so beautiful and sunny to begin with! I have included a few pictures for your viewing pleasure but will post a Picasa album later on as I took a lot of pictures there of the various orchids.





Everything in the Conservatory is kept well groomed and beautifully maintained.


Despite the number of people, you felt many times like you were by yourself. It was a definite "must see".

The Trip to New York - Central Park Zoo and the Metropolitan Museum of Art

This is the view from our hotel room at the Riverside Towers at 80th and Riverside Drive in Manhattan -- a very cheap hotel which is clean and has a microwave and fridge but not much else except location, location, location!!!!

Well, we are finally back and exhausted from our trip! Warren seems to have come down with the flu but hopefully I have escaped at least so far but who knows! We were a little nervous about taking Delta instead of Jet Blue but it turned out wonderfully. We had thought that maybe we would be in one of those little jet props as the time to get home was double what is was getting there. But not a problem. They had built in the time we had to wait on the runway for takeoff into the time to get here so even though the flight was less than an hour on a very nice little jet, the wait time was over an hour!! There were 40 planes in line ahead of us on a Saturday night at 8:30!

WOW is all I can say about a week in New York City. Everything is bigger, better and lovelier -- it is just a city of extremes!

We went to four Broadway plays -- Grease, Young Frankenstein, Avenue Q and Chorus Line. We liked Young Frankenstein the best as the staging was unbelievable and the story is such classic Mel Brooks. Avenue Q was a delightful surprise suggested by our oldest daughter. Kind of a marriage between South Park and Sesame Street and laugh out loud funny music -- perfect for the 30 somethings that were brought up on Sesame Street and their parents who watched with them!! Very irreverent to say the least! Grease was okay as it starred the people that were picked on the NBC show. The talent in New York is astounding and many of the subordinates had much better voices than those two leads. I really liked Chorus Line on Broadway but Warren hated it.

Our first two days were spent going to the Central Park Zoo and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.



Here is me posing per Warren's request at the Children's Zoo in Central Park. We had just been through our favorite exhibit which is the Rainforest Conservatory where they have all sorts of tropical birds just flying around.


Here are some of the ducks that were outside in the Children's Zoo.

It was beautiful on Monday and the trip to the park was glorious. It is a favorite for both of us. Tuesday the weather was not so cooperative but we spent the day at the Metropolitan. I spent the entire day looking at all the Special Exhibitions and the 19th and 20th Century painters. I took a lot of pictures of art I liked and so will have my very own inspirational book of art. I had forgotten how much I liked Monet and especially van Gogh -- awesome. They have a wonderful collection of the Impressionists and of modern art at the Metropolitan. They had a couple of wonderful special exhibitions as well. I especially liked the Jasper Johns exhibit of grays as well as a private collection of modern works (we couldn't take pictures in those two exhibits).



This is probably one of my two favorites of the van Gogh's at the Museum -- Cypresses. There are two from different angles in the display.




The sunflowers were my very favorite however -- I just loved the colors. I was lucky enough to see the traveling van Gogh exhibition that toured the United States back in 1962 at the Detroit Museum of Art. Unfortunately, you couldn't get far enough away from some of the paintings in that exhibit.



This one is called Red and Yellow Cliffs by Georgia O'Keefe. I really liked this one and it was different from many of hers.






The first of these is by Georges Braque and the second is by Pablo Picasso. They were both done when the men were together in 1911 and there are two others in the Museum as well that were obviously done about the same time. I liked the use of the neutrals. This is at a time in the painters' careers when they were experimenting with the new cubism. Hard to tell them apart!! After seeing all the Picasso paintings, it is obvious that he is a master of his craft as well as being very innovative. His work always seems so perfect to me.

Genesee Valley Quilt Club Spring Fling

Well, just finished two days with a group of ladies from the Genesee Valley Quilt Club doing our yearly "spring fling". Now yesterday was not particularly spring - like but today pulled through with lots of sunshine.

We had a great time and fantastic lunches arranged by our own Pat Pauly who does a wonderful job promoting and organizing these days. It is always fun to sew with a small group of women, many of whom are long time friends.


This is the final quilt that Beverly Kondolf put together with a very challenging set of blocks that she received during an online exchange. I think it turned out beautifully. Originally it was to be two comfort quilts but she may have changed her mind now.


This is a really pretty traditional applique quilt done by Linda Kronenwetter. Everyone in the room was voicing an opinion about what the borders should be. We didn't reach any kind of consensus at all!! We shall see what Linda does....


This is our own Pat Pauly, sitting down and actually looking a bit relaxed which is a rarity. She was our very successful organizer and was always up and about making sure everyone was having fun, which we were.


This is our fabulous clothing designer Priscilla Kibbee actually making a pieced quilt. We have taken her over to the dark side. I don't think we have influenced her palette to the dark side though. Her blocks were glowing and were intricately and finely pieced. She is famous for her fabulous Seminole piecing which is in most of her Bernina and Fairfied Fashion Show garments.


This was a particularly pretty quilt that I saw in progress on a design wall early on. I don't know who the quilter was but really liked the colors.


This is our Chairman, Barb Brummond hiding behind her beautiful Lemoyne Star quilt. The alternate square blocks were a fabulous fabric that she found which was just perfect to set these stars.



This is Barb Seils ironing away early on!


This is my batik small block quilt in process the first day. I was happy to get it all put together but the border for the second day.


This is my final top incorporating almost all the small blocks I had in batik. Now to just figure on a border. I am think some Seminole work with multiple colors but focusing on some red/oranges. It needs to be a small scale pattern in the border to keep with the scale of the rest of the piece. It ended up being about 60 inches wide and about 80 inches long which was great!

Genesee Valley Quilt Club - February Meeting

Well, it was an excellent program today on color by a male quilter who is an architect in real life but has succumbed to the quilting life thanks to his wife! I did bring my camera to take pictures but unfortunately forgot a memory card for it so no pictures of our monthly "quilt show".

I did, however, make a few purchases. Some time ago I posted a picture of a bird embroidery from Guatemala that I just loved.

My friend Priscilla was heading again to Guatemala so I asked that she keep an eye out for another one which she did.


She also gave me the right of first refusal on a gorgeous bird embroidery from Viet Nam which I scooped up immediately. She is always finding nice things and brought me back a wonderful box with elephants on the lid. Even Warren was admiring it when I got home!



I came home with a small sewing cabinet as well. I have seen these before and others have managed to buy them before I did so was overjoyed to see this one remain unsold -- I didn't even see it until lunchtime. So I have included pictures of my various purchases and a partial picture of the big Blue Lady quilt that is now wonderfully quilted by Teddi Ahern.

Margaret Marie Leary Brandkamp April 14, 1908 - February 9, 2008

Margaret Brandkamp passed away peacefully on Saturday morning after a very short bout with pneumonia. She would have been 100 in April and lived longer than anyone ever had in her family. Both her parents died relatively young. She was the youngest of two children (she had an older brother named Frank) and grew up in Rochester, New York.

I absolutely loved this picture. One of the things about my mother in law is that she was obsessive about always having her purse at her side. Even when there was very little mind left, she would go nuts if the purse was not right there. Warren bought her several purses as she would wear them out just holding tightly onto them. I was amazed when I saw this picture for the first time about ten years ago and here at age 2, she is holding a purse!!

She attended Nazareth Academy and graduated from Nazareth College in 1929. This was the second graduating class at this very new college.

I believe this picture was taken at the time of her graduation either from high school or college.

At the time, according to her, George Eastman was intent on keeping not only the ethnic populations of Rochester out of his factories, but was also interested in keeping them from attending the University of Rochester. My mother in law was primarily of Irish descent and definitely had a twinkle in those blues eyes when I first met her forty years ago.

She left Rochester as soon as her father died in the 30's and moved to New York City to seek her fortune and to teach school which she did until her retirement at age 62. She met Warren's father, Fred, in the late 30's and they were married in 1941 (after he begged her to).
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This is a picture of my mother and father in law about 1943 with their first son Fred. Warren obviously was not in the picture yet!

I can honestly say my mother and father in law were almost total opposites. She was a story teller and had a wonderful sense of humor while his father was very disciplined, organized and had relatively poor sense of humor! Add onto that the age difference (he was five years younger than she was), their educational difference (he never finished college), religious difference (she was Irish Catholic, he was a devout fundamental Baptist), it was a wonder they stayed married for 57 years! They bought their first house in the late 40's on Staten Island. This house came with a barn filled with junk from the previous owner as well as about 2 acres of land and was the beginning of their rather good luck with real estate over successive moves. Her husband Fred was a fireman on Staten Island but studied nuclear physics in his spare time which led to a job as a health physicist in Massachusetts at one of the shipyards and later as an inspector for the Atomic Energy Commission (now the Nuclear Regulatory Commission). They ultimately moved to Bricktown, New Jersey where they stayed after they both retired.

They traveled extensively in retirement first sailing their tri-moran sailboat (Talitha) and later visiting South America, the Carribean, Australia, New Zealand and other islands in the South Pacific as well as a trip to East Africa.

Margaret survived a bout with colon cancer when she was 83 and a minor stroke in her early 80's. She definitely had an iron constitution and was still doing the New York Times Crossword puzzles when she was 90 and her husband Fred died. She lived by herself for the next five years before falling and breaking her hip. At this time she had to move to the Maplewood Nursing Home where she lived the last 5 years of her life in extreme comfort as this was a lovely nursing home.

Her biggest gift was her wonderful son Warren who I have had the great pleasure to be married to for 35+ years. She also had another son Fred and several grandchildren.

Her granddaughter Zann wrote this about her:

Found out my Gramma died on Friday - she was 99 (woulda turned 100 on April 14th). She lived a nice full life so I'm surprised I'm even
upset by it, but I still find myself moping about my apartment a day
after the fact.

I haven't cried for any of my other Granparents who are all deceased
now because I never felt close to them, but my Gramma (Magee) made me feel special.

For years she has been mentally out of it, but I have warm memories of her from my childhood in which she would sneak me chocolate,
encouraged me to write poetry and piled extra blankets on my bed on
cold nights.

Magee was a great story teller. As a young girl she had her love poems published in magazines and "love" seemed to be her greatest
inspiration. All her stories revolved around men who had loved or lost her; the ones that had been "too fresh," and the ones that had entered the priesthood after they had unsuccessfully chased her.

The greatest love story of all was how my Grandpa proposed to her -
the way she would describe it, I could only imagine it in black and
white...like the ending to a beautiful old movie.

"He chased me to the station. I told him to get away from me, that he was too young for me (Magee was 5 years older than my Grandpa). But he was standing there with these two little German dolls he had bought me. He wouldn't leave the train platform until I promised to marry him when I returned from my trip. So I promised, even though I was convinced he was too young - and I was and old woman about to ruin his life!"

Magee and Grandpa were married for 50 + years until my Grandpa's
death. I love ya Magee - wherever you may be


This picture was taken as part of a dress up day at the Maplewood Nursing Home. They took wonderful care of Margaret and she loved being all dressed up and I thought she looked so nice in this picture.

A Very Productive Day at Marcia's!

Well, after a rather tough weekend, I had the pleasure of spending my day at my friend Marcia's (www.decampstudio.blogspot.com). She has about 30 linear feet of design wall so I thought a good idea would be to organize several sets of blocks that I had so that I could so them together this weekend at our annual Spring Fling at Genesee Valley Quilt Club. I needed some projects to work on as it is not easy for me to do design in that kind of setting.

I THOUGHT I had finished up most everything when I was on vacation but when looking through my unfinished projects, several more came up to bite me. Of course at the time, I thought I might do more on some of these. However, as part of my new path, I am not going to concentrate on these very traditional quilts so they are hereby declared finished except for putting together, putting borders on, quilting and then finding them a good home. A couple are fairly complex with lots of blocks.



These are the blocks that are all made out of vintage fabric from the 1930's and 1940's. I combined blocks from a quilt I saw on ebay (and later got the pattern for) and some from my quilting software (Electric Quilt and Blockbase where I picked blocks that were originally designed in the 30's). Originally I had planned on it being much larger but have decided to concentrate my efforts elsewhere. So I am going to put a strip of solid color around each block and then put them together with muslin (off white) strips between each block. The solid color strip will coordinate with each block and will be different colors but still of the 30's fabric. Each of these blocks is only 4 inches by 4 inches and several have over 100 pieces -- see why I am declaring this one finished!


This is one of my first quilt tops made in the late 1980's -- about 20 years ago. The fabric shows its age and this was my sampler to learn how to hand applique and several of the blocks show it. Again, this used to be what I loved to do and I did many of these blocks while traveling on business and on planes and in hotel rooms. I was going to do two - one for each daughter but again am declaring this one done except for a border that I am designing and will also applique!!


This is a small quilt top made with blocks I gathered as part of a basket exchange in 2005 (I think). It deserves to be finished!!
Just needs to be sewn together and some borders applied, then it will be hand quilted I think if I don't have the Baltimore Album one done.



These are batik Dear Jane (4 1/2 inch) blocks that I did as part of an online exchange many years ago. I found I had 111 so decided I could make a 9 x 12 block top. I will be "sashing" this with a nice rich navy blue (if I can find it before Friday). I have just the fabric but the place where I got it no longer carries it -- darn.



Last but not least is this 35 block quilt top which is made with blocks left over from another quilt I made as a shower present for a new bride a couple of years ago. It also deserves to be finished.

Now wasn't that a productive day! I might also add we went out to lunch and also did some fabric shopping at a store that is going out of business!

Yellowstone 3 is Finished!

Well, having nothing but dreary skies outside for days, I have been sitting at the Bernina machine quilting Yellowstone 3. It has been a bit time consuming as almost all the stitching is about 1/4 inch apart.

After I finished all the quilting, I decided to lop off one side of the quilt. After DH (dear husband) when asked to view it, cocked his head sideways to the original orientation (which he had never seen), I decided to put it back to its original orientation as well!!

The weirdest thing is that the piece demanded that I put black binding around the outside. What is strange is that I almost never put binding around the outside of an "art" quilt, much less one that totally contrasted with the inside!! It just seemed to call for something to contain it.

I am relatively pleased with it but suddenly looking at it last night (with the alternate orientation) decided I would REALLY like it if there were six panels instead of the four that there are currently. Hmmm, sounds like Yellowstone 4 might be breathing down my neck.



This shows the different stitches that I used to give different textures. Sometimes I used matching thread but often I used contrasting darker or lighter thread so that it would show up more and change the color of the original fabric somewhat. Double clicking on the pictures will give you more detail.



I was particularly surprised by how the quilting looked in this dark blue area, especially if put on its side. Very even flowing quilting gives such a different look than more staccato quilting.