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An old friend from Xerox days was up visiting from Dallas this week and I got a chance to spend some time with her and her husband at her cousin's house here in Rochester. Her cousin lives in this wonderful ranch with lots of land around it and many feeders visible from her kitchen window. My friend, knowing I hadn't bought my camera the last time I visited here several years ago, urged me to bring it this time. All these pictures were taken through the kitchen window and I was amazed at the quality! This is of course a male Cardinal who is molting I think. There were a number of females hanging out as well.
I wanted this and the next picture close to each other as you can easily see the differences between the Downy (first picture) and the Hairy Woodpeckers (besides the relative size -- Hairy is bigger). These are both males with that little dab of red on their heads. The beak on the Hairy is much longer proportionally to the size of the head. It looks like the stripes on the head are a little more pronounced as well but that may just be difference in individuals. This was the first time I have seen them together so much. There were a number of females of both the Hairy and Downy as well (missing that red patch on the head).
Really woodpecker heaven as there were also several of these Red-bellied Woodpeckers both male and female again.
Another of the Red-bellied Woodpeckers and here you can see his distinctive red belly!
Also there were Catbirds at the feeder -- you can see his red tail underparts here.
Here is a female Red-breasted Grosbeak although we didn't see any of the males. She looks very much like the female Purple Finches except she is larger.
This is a Tufted Titmouse. We saw many of these as well as the flighty Nuthatches -- never did get a good shot of one of them!! There were also Juncos visiting when I first got there -- it was a very active feeder site. She says she has to put out more suet about every day which I believe with all those woodpeckers!
There were also both male and female Blue Jays. I saw my first Blue Jay here at home just this week. I used to see them all the time but not in the past few years. When we first moved here, our feeders were very active and I saw about every woodpecker native to this area at one time or another. The raccoons discovered the feeders and then the squirrels (after many years) finally figured out how to get food from them by balancing precariously. So we discontinued putting out the feed while our neighbors still do.
I had just not been seeing any butterflies this summer which is unusual! My neighbor's butterfly bush has been blooming for a couple of weeks and still none of the usual visitors. The last day in July that all changed and I saw several varieties. I have been seeing the common Eastern Tiger Swallowtail males and females pretty regularly now. This was the best view of a nice non-bedraggled one who still had his swallowtail! They love that butterfly bush!
This is the first Monarch I have seen. Probably more will come by but I think last winter in this part of the country really hurt the populations.
This is a very bad very distant picture of a rapidly moving Spicebush Swallowtail. I usually see these pretty frequently up here and certainly down in NC. They are quite striking. This one never stayed still for a moment and wasn't interested in the butterfly bush.
This is a Skipper although I am not sure which one -- probably Fiery but maybe not. There were a couple of them on the bush. They are only about 3/4 of an inch long and very fuzzy. I think a lot of people mistake them for moths.
This is the underside of a Red Admiral. A few years ago there was a surge in these in one very mild spring. The following pic shows a little bit of his top side but he wasn't in to opening his wings for me!
The top side looks very different than the underneath -- bright orange with the white spots on the bottom.
Had to add in some pictures of our hibiscus. This is one of the tropical ones that my dh takes back and forth to NC each year.
These next two are also tropicals.
This is the first of the perennial hibiscus which are huge (tall and the flowers are the size of dinnerplates). I like the cranberry colored ones best but they aren't out yet!
Well, nothing like showing the results first! These are my first attempts at indigo dyeing and I was pretty unstructured in what I did as I had no idea of the process and how it would work so they are definitely experimental in nature!!
The cool part about the indigo dyeing is that they come out of the dye bath looking a lightish yellow-y green and then slowly change to dark blue. It doesn't seem to matter how long you leave them in the dye bath as long as it is a little bit of time -- leaving in longer does not seem to make them darker. You have to wait for awhile and then redip them to get them darker -- at least that was my limited experience. On most of these, I just twisted them around pvc pipe or just scrunched together with rubber bands. The process is to get them really wet, wring out and them scrunch tightly to slowly put in the bath. If you don't go slowly, you introduce air bubbles which will eventually kill your bath. The oxidation is what turns the fabric from green to blue. Also learned the hard way that dryish fabric means many more air bubbles!
Here you can see the pieces in their various stages of drying.
This was a t-shirt that Donna did and I really liked this one. I did three t-shirts also but none as nice as this one.
Another view of the pieces drying on my rack.
I really want to thank Donna (from our RAFA group) for inviting me to join her and her friends in this dyeing day. Besides being a gorgeous day, she lives within viewing distance of Lake Canandaigua which was a beautiful backdrop for our adventures!! What a fun day.
From a dyeing standpoint, I would definitely do things a bit differently the next time -- more double dipping. I did that with one of the tshirts as I didn't like what I got the first time through. Also did it with the piece in this picture which shows so much white. Another secret is to message the clamped pieces a lot -- that is the secret obviously to Elin Noble's gorgeous pieces that she does using clamped resists. It really gets the dye in all the little places where you want it while keeping it away from the clamps. I could see a real difference in the pieces where I messaged a lot and those that I didn't.
Well, still at it and having soooo much fun!! However, they are more than unpredictable!! I never know what is going to work well and what isn't. I can't even figure out whether the fabric I am using now is mercerised or not! The colors seem lighter but they still look good. This one batch came out really well. I have pieces from two different batches here and won't attempt to put them all up!
This is a collage of six blue/green pieces from my second day of dyeing. All are the smaller 22" x 22" size. This time I used the "drop" cloths underneath and did scrunch them a bit instead of letting them lie flat.
These used a combination of brown, black and some orange. Can't see much of the effect of the black though!
These next three pieces are the drop cloths that were underneath the mandalas. These were random pieces of Egyptian cotton left from my old Joanns purchases. It was great fabric and too bad they don't have it anymore as it dyed like a dream!
These following pieces were done together in one batch and I think are among my favorites. I threw on all sorts of color!
This is just a half yard of one of the drop cloths from this last batch. You can see how bright the colors are!
This is also showing another half yard section.
I found quite a number of half finished projects from classes and leftover blocks from quilts finished years ago. This was one from an one of our club fall retreats. I have the original quilt down at the beach. I had intended this to be a comfort quilt (quilts the club donates to various charities) but may keep as a quilt for the beach. All basted and ready to machine quilt. I did feather wreaths in the other one and can't decide what to do in this one -- maybe the same!
This and the following quilt are definitely comfort quilts. I have been using up all the random pieces of batting that I have accumulated for years on these projects as well. This one has zoo animals in the stack and whack hexagons. They are both all machine quilted and bound (dark green binding as well). The border is made up of the fabric used in the stack and whacks for both as well.
This one uses a flower print. These last two pictures were from my phone so not as good as some of the others.
This was a top donated by someone in the club many years ago for Katrina victims. I sent a whole bunch of quilts down but didn't get this one done so it will now be a comfort quilt. You can see simple cross quilting and I have yet to sew the binding down (yes, I still do this by hand as I really like doing it that way).
These are the leftover blocks from a quilt I did probably 20 years ago. I am going to put a black and white border around it. These quilts are all about 44 inches wide and 54 inches long.
This was a pre-cut set put together by our Comfort Quilt people. It was in the estate of another quilt club member and I finally got around to putting it together. It had solid light pink fabric for the border and it went terribly. This isn't a lot better but is an improvement and from stash fabric I was giving it away! I still have to iron it, baste it and then machine quilt it. I am going to do feathered hearts in the centers (they are large). I will use white thread in the pink and pink thread in the patterned fabric. I will also do stitch in the ditch to hold it together.
This is the third quilt I did out of blocks I cut using "5 Easy Pieces". I have started the machine quilting on this one. Basically I am free hand quilting circles in each of the four block areas. If you look closely, you can see the starts in the corner blocks. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to do this in all the blocks but after putting it on the design wall, decided it was the best choice. Have no idea what I will do with this one as I have two already and was contemplating giving one of those away. It looks a little bright for a comfort quilt! I do love the fabric I selected for the back -- a bright tulip fabric with lots of lime green in it. I also have a large bag of lime green to dark green variations of this block as well that aren't quite finished!
There is still at least one more comfort quilt that I have to baste yet that is not pictured here so you can see I have been busy!!
I found a stash of extra wide fabric (110 inches) that I found could make 5 mandalas across in the size I had been making (22 x 22 inches). I decided I really liked the ones that I had only folded in fours basically. This one used purple and a lot of a very old black which ended up being greener rather than black! I think all the reds had disappeared from the mix!
The next two are also the four folded ones. I used a lot of yellows and brown in this one and also the next one.
I used a thinner fabric for this one and can't figure out how it looked so different from all the others. It was also a four fold (although it may have had an additional fold to make it an 8 sided one).
This and the next four are all hexagonal folds. I tried turquoise again and even though I let them sit for a day and even nuked them at the end, I got very poor coverage. I think the turquoise just goes through the fabric without bonding at all as the ice washes it out. I used "drop" cloths under all these pieces which I laid out flat. Without the these drop cloths, there would have been patterning from the grid. I am contemplating adding a top cloth as well so that any solid specks of dye won't spot the mandalas (although this hasn't really been a big problem).
This was one of the pieces of the sateen (that I wasn't sure about) that I used as a "drop" cloth. I am very happy with it! Looks like one of my sunsets. This and the next piece are about 36 inches x 44 inches. I scrunch up these drop cloths so they kind of look like a bumpy cushion under the carefully folded fabrics.
This was a random piece of cotton I found. I am pretty sure it is some of the Egyptian cotton that I used to get a Joanns but which they no longer carry (and I have used up all that I had, sigh).
Tomorrow I will report on all the "found" projects in my sewing room. I have been ironing, finishing, basting, and binding like crazy!! I have reorganized all my fabric so it looks like books on my shelves and for some reason it makes it a lot easier to find pieces to use for backs and you can fit more on the shelves as well! I am also donating a lot to various charitable groups. There is still a lot I can't give up though!
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