Summer in Rochester - April Style

Well, I should have said that yesterday was the one year anniversary of my blog! I managed to do 111 postings that first year and considering the amount of time I was without a computer, not bad. Of course, I had plenty of travelling to blog about and this year will be slimmer on that front!!

Anyway, spent much of today outside with camera and with a good book to read -- way too nice to be inside and this won't last -- this is after all Rochester!

Well all of the flowers above are these purple flowers that are some sort of perennial that pop right up in my neighbor's flower garden. They are all shades of purple and I am encouraging my husband to find out what they are so I can have some too! Double clicking will show them larger.


We have woods behind our house and we always get these bright yellow trout lillies (I believe that is what they are) as well as many of the purple and white trillium which will come a bit later along with the ferns which will uncurl!


I told my neighbor I would take pictures of his daffodils as well as they will be gone by the time he gets home from his vacation!

A Warm Summer Day at Marcia's

Well, I finally got around to adding the beads and trims to my flowers from yesterday so here they are all dressed up and ready to go somewhere.
My first chore of the day was to baste the two sides of the Extreme Sampler Depression Sherbet quilt. I am going to machine quilt it in two pieces I think. I am still toying with some hand quilting as well. Suki of course decided she had to sit on the only part I hadn't finished pin basting!
These were some absolutely fantastic batiks that Priscilla had gotten in Napal many years ago. She had piles of them and will be making them into a quilt. Some of my hand dyed fabric is currently in the background but will be replaced with something else.
Well, Marcia finally put up pictures of her incredible orchids on her blog so I took some pictures with the new camera and include one picture for your viewing pleasure. She has a number of varieties and colors and they are all in full bloom and this one even smells nice!

Marcia is really making progress on her jacket. She has it sewn together now and just has to put in the lining and put on the bands in front (they are just sitting in the picture).

We almost got a smile out of Marcia!! Warren says she must be sick and tired of seeing us and is escaping to Ohio -- say that isn't so, Marcia!!
This is a jacket which Priscilla affectionately calls "just your basic blue jacket". It is gorgeous and you really should double click to see the detail. It has some wonderful beaded trim as well as the Seminole piecing and Hmong embroidery. Priscilla has been working on this one for the past month and it is just stunning -- one of my favorites!!

It was a most productive day for me as I managed to get both sides to the Depression quilt basted and got my second Yellowstone Angel Terrace piece basted as well. I used some of the new Fairfield cotton/poly blend batting but I think as soft as it is, that it shed cotton which was getting on the backing and making the basting very difficult as the tape would just not hold it down. Well, we shall see as I plan to quilt the heck out of it anyway!!

Pamela's Flower Origami Class

I have to start by saying that all the pictures were taken with my new improved camera which replaces an older model. As an aside, when I got home from the class, a note was on my pc that my old camera had been found in Atlanta. I have to call on Monday (they are closed this weekend) and I hoping that it is that camera as I will then have all my pictures from Las Vegas!!

Well, besides drop dead gorgeous weather outside, we had a wonderful day inside playing lots with fabric and making origami style flowers.

Our teacher was Pamela Langdon who is a GVQC member and is an expert on the making of these flowers. Kumiko Sudo who is the author of a number of books on making flowers was one of Pamela's students here in Rochester and so she learned before the books were even published in English! She has permission from Kumiko to use illustrations from the books. As all of us who didn't have the books already are going to buy them, this was a wise decision!! They are great books. The "flowers" we made all came from the book called Flower Origami by Kumiko Sudo and you can get it about anywhere.

We basically made seven different flowers in the class so we were moving right along as there was a fair amount of hand stitching. I brought with me a Featherweight sewing machine that I had never used and after two false starts, it hummed right along like FWs always do!! It is the Canadian model so is tan instead of the usual black or off white. I really enjoyed the class and the company -- Donna and I shared a table -- neither of us had known the other would be there!




These were all the beautiful samples that Pamela brought with her.

This was a group shot of Mary Wieser, her mom and Donna Patrick -- my tablemate.



This was the table at the end with most of our flowers on it. Rory's were at the other end!



This is a closeup of six of the seven blocks I did. One of the blocks can be split into two pieces (it was made in two pieces) so we really had eight blocks altogether and were really moving!! We used octagons, hexagons, pentagons and circles.

More Progress on the Batik Mini-Sampler

Well, I have gotten impossibly efficient at making Seminole strips so almost have enough to go around the batik mini-sampler. It will be a bit of a challenge to get them JUST the right length for each section though!! I already took off the outside borders because I was afraid that I had inadvertently added a couple of inches to the sides. I also decided that I didn't want them as wide as they were.




These last two pictures are of the current state of Donna's jacket. The colors are perfect for her and she is busily adding more glitz which is her trademark!



Marcia's jacket is definitely getting glitzier as well with the addition of the red trim and the black and silver trim. This will be an elegant jacket when finished!

April Meeting of Genesee Valley Quilt Club

We had a wonderful speaker today at quilt club and one of my fellow club members was more than willing to give up her spot in the Saturday class (she thought she had signed up for the Friday class) so I signed up just to see more of this marvelous artist. Her name is Lura Schwartz Smith and she had one of her quilts in the 100 top quilts of the 20th century. I know you would recognize it -- it looked like a Degas. She is teaching classes on working with inks and drawing so even though I am not particularly interested, I thought I would give it a try as Diane was not happy about not being able to attend on a Saturday. I also signed up for an origami class next Friday taught by one of the quilt club members and I am looking forward to that as well.



This was I believe Carol Spreter's beautiful quilt. She said she was in a "finishing up" mode as well.


This is again the Christmas stack and whack all bound and hung at show and tell. Now what to do with it!


This is the other stack and whack that is all finished. I used some of the hand dyed fabric Marcia and I had dyed the week before for the binding -- it was perfect as the colors in this quilt were really odd and there was nothing like them in any of the shops -- it was almost impossible to find the border fabrics a couple of years ago even.




I loved this quilt by Pat Berardi where she incorporated pictures on fabric as well as fabric she bought on her cruise/tour of Alaska (a couple of months before we took ours!).



These were several projects done by one Genesee Valley quilter from the class she took with Anne Lullo the month before. I love what she did with the bag that the local Wegmans is using for groceries!



Well, here is my one and only Las Vegas picture!! It is a picture taken of me standing in front of the Bell helicopter that I took out over the Grand Canyon. I was the only American on the helicopter -- even the pilot was French Canadian! All the rest were Canadians, some of whom didn't speak much English. It was a wonderful experience and I wish I had all the photos I took on the ride which was very cool.

Two More Quilts Almost Done!

Well, I am still mourning the loss of my camera but have spent quite a bit of time on the internet deciding what to buy next. The newer version of my camera is $400 less and has more features!! I am almost sold on getting that one but will wait for a bit as there may be an even newer version out before too long. In the meantime I resurrected my old Kodak and it is serviceable for quilt pictures but not much else!!



Well, my friend Teddy Ahern called me yesterday to tell me that the last of the three quilts I gave her to machine quilt were ready to be picked up. This first one was done many years ago using a nice Christmas poinsetta print and my hand dyed fabrics for the sashing.


This is a closeup of the quilting so hopefully you can see the poinsetta's that Teddy quilted into the quilt.


This is the second of the stack and whacks to get done. I have the main fabric in a different color that I loved but decided to do this one first in this colorway (not my favorite) to see how I would like the look of the fabric with the stack and whack technique. Now, I have taken the oath to do no more stack and whacks so the nicer one may never get done!!

I have no idea what I am going to do with either of these two quilts. They both are about double bed size but could be used as lap quilt I suppose. Neither of my kids is a big stack and whack fan. I still have to do the binding which is one of my favorite parts of quilting!!

Grand, Grander, Grandest!!!

Well, let me start by saying that NONE of these pictures were taken by me but are pretty identical to pictures I did take. The reason I couldn't use my own (and some of mine were better!) is that I managed to lose my beloved camera on my sleep deprived arrival in Atlanta. That put quite a damper on an otherwise fantastic 4 day vacation in Las Vegas and the surrounding area!



This is a picture of the snail all done up in flowers in the Conservatory at the Bellagio, my very favorite of all the mega resorts out there on the Strip. The gardens were beautiful with all sorts of huge glass poppies hanging from the top to accent the flowers which were beautiful. The lobby was filled with vases of flowers as well. It was a lovely place!!



This is a picture of the incredible water show that is done every half hour at the Bellagio all day and evening. I was there and had pictures for both day and night -- stunning!! A real high point of the trip for me. This is looking toward the Bellagio (although I never saw this view at night only during the day).


This is the view that I had of the evening show. The Eiffel Tower is across the street at Paris and is beautiful all lit up and as a backdrop for the wonderful light and water show.
This is a duplicate of one of my shots from Hoover Dam looking up at Lake Mead. The white line along the canyon wall (the Black Canyon, by the way) is where the high point of the water was. It is in a severe drought (we saw that when we stayed there last summer) and the water is down more than 100 feet. The water was blue and green in the very foreground. These are two of the intake towers. We took the whole power plant tour as well and walked over the Dam. Beautiful area!!




This is the Grand Canyon at Mathers Point and also a duplicate of a shot I took. After I lost my camera my neighbor said that he was sure a million people had taken my shots as well from the same place which is why I have included these wonderful anonymous shots found on Picasa!

A real highlight of the trip for me was a helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon!! I had never been on a helicopter before and it was wonderful -- not the least bit scary. Of course after I signed up I was a bit apprehensive!! What fun!!!

In addition to all the touring we managed to get in a Cirque Du Soleil show (Mystere) which was beyond fantastic!!! We were in the second row and were part of the show several times as the performers come out in the audience. The athletes are beyond belief and the choreography is wonderful. Definitely worth the price!! We also managed to FINALLY see the Bodies show which we just kept missing at several other cities (including Rochester).

Any typos should be blamed on the very little sleep I have gotten in the last 24 hours.