Beginning of a New Week

Or the end of an old life as I start Weight Watchers for the first time in about 15 years tomorrow night! I am not feeling too confident but will try as I have gotten into some awful habits lately!



Today was another of our beautiful spring days so Warren and I took the opportunity to explore Durand Eastman Park. This park is located right on Lake Ontario and is about 1000 acres and includes many paved and dirt paths to explore. What a treat. One thing about dull old Rochester, when there is color, there is COLOR! This is just a view looking out over Trott Lake one of the two of the larger lakes in the park.

We have been trying to get around and continue the exploring we did in the area two years ago when Warren first retired. Last year we were in Colorado at this time at the beginning of our "great adventure". When it rains, I work furiously on machine quilting the quilts I have lined up. I finished the Yellowstone piece and am now working madly on the batik sampler. I am trying to keep quilting time down to no more than an hour or so at a time. When I did the big sampler quilt, I lost use of one rotator cuff for over a year and I don't want to go through that again!! So far, so good. I am beginning to think it was the hand quilting that did it, like Jane Townswick warned. I am now also more careful with this and keep a shorter thread which is what she advised. The batik quilt will have no hand quilting though -- batik is not fun to quilt through!

Just took a few pictures and put them up on a Picasa album but will share a few here as well.

This is more of the magnolia blossoms. Because Durand Eastman is so close to Lake Ontario which is still very cold, trees bloom about two weeks later than further inland.


This is one of the many turkeys that Warren always sees going to the park. We only saw two but he says that this group of 10 or so seems to be hanging out at this south end of the park -- this time in someone's driveway.
This one of the many white dogwoods in the park
This is one of two sets of nesting pairs of mute swans we saw on our walk. The males are very attentive to the female who is very sleepy in this picture.
This is our one lonely rhododendron that we have in front of the house. It doesn't bloom all that often but we were treated this year.

Thursday at RAFA Meeting

RAFA stands for Rochester Area Fiber Artists. We are a group of about 45 women who meet monthly to share and promote our love of fiber arts - primarily quilting but certainly not limited to quilting as we have wide diversity of interests from doll making and felting and wearable art to knitting and hooking rugs. A number of us are also heavily into surface design techniques of all and any kind!

This is Barb Magin's quilt from Pat Pauly's Slash and Burn class. This was one of my favorites from the class! (I love the colors)
This is Nancy Hicks' quilt from the same class as above. Nice use of neutrals and line.
This is Linda Bachman's which I also liked a lot. Let's face it -- I really liked all that was done in this class -- much better than my previous attempts!!
This is actually a quilt done from a kit that Nancy Hicks purchased. She was happy that she did as the investment for the individual fabrics would have been enormous -- it looked like it was all batiks.

This was an example of faces that Nancy Hicks has done. She taught this class down in the Binghamton area after some people saw her work!



The above chartreuse abstract is another of Janet Root's fantastic pieces.

This is another of Linda Bachman's quilt. This one was from the 4-Patch class that Pat Pauly taught in January. This has certainly changed since the last time I saw it up on the design wall!
This is a kind sized quilt that Sarah Terry did -- quite stunning!

I am only sorry that I didn't get pictures of everyone's pieces but some just didn't hold them up long enough for this aged photographer to get a shot. I especially would have liked pictures of Pat Faulkner's horse and Donna Patrick's beautiful Nuno felted scarves -- I was too busy looking at those to snap a picture!

A Day at Highland Park Before the Lilac Festival

Well, we decided we should get to the park before the Festival begins as we had heard that the lilacs were in bloom. For those who are not familiar with the park, it was designed by Frederick Ohlmstead who was also the designer of Central Park in NYC. It is a wonderful place to walk around on a cool spring day (or most anytime for that matter except when the Lilac Festival is in full swing and it is crowded). Just old and a little cranky about crowds!

The amazing thing was to see magnolias, forsythia and the lilacs all out at the same time. Usually, there is an orderly progression with the forsythia coming out first, then magnolias and then the lilacs a bit later. Because of all the warmth the last couple of weeks, it was a profusion of color with forsythia in the foreground and lilacs in the background.
A beautiful white dogwood in full bloom.
Japanese weeping cherries are one of my favorite spring sights!
This is the path through the brilliantly colored magnolias -- everything from creamy white to dark rich rose color.


This was Mr. Cardinal who was singing his heart out trying to capture a lady friend. He was certainly bright colored and melodic!

A Day at Priscilla's

These are the Japanese cherry blossoms that fill our driveway with color every spring.
Well, our summer is now a distant memory and it rained and barely reached 50 today! Although I took the weekend off from blogging, didn't stop me from taking more and more and more flower pictures!
So I added the last of the flowers for awhile. I spent the day today with my friend Priscilla Kibbee and worked on my newest jacket which was a relief after spending most of the weekend machine quilting the second Yellowstone piece as I want it for a quilt show in the fall.


The Bartlett pear trees were loaded with blossoms this weekend and I thought they were rather pretty.
This is an ultra closeup of the wild violets which grow amid the moss in our front yard and in our neighbor's backyard.
This was another wildflower making itself known in our front lawn.
This is Ms. Tiger who was our companion while sewing today. Any time the conversation stopped for a bit, she piped right up with her views which were mostly that she was hungry and attention starved, neither of which are very accurate.
This is one of my favorite wall hangings at Priscilla's. Her house is just filled with wonderful art from around the world from all her travels. I always see something that I haven't seen on a previous visit.
This is the full sized Yellowstone piece and if you double click you may see how much I have quilted (the top half at least).
This shows a closeup of the stitching in the piece which is not obvious until you walk right up to it! Well, guess that is the way it should be. It flattened it down nicely.

Not All Dyes are Created Equal

Just one more picture of all the pretty trillium. With the cold wave that is coming next week, who knows whether they will be covered in snow or not.

This has been a day for two separate questions around dyes so thought I would address them in my blog which was supposed to be about dyeing anyway, not flowers!

There are basically several different kinds of dyes and even paints that are mislabelled as dyes upon occasion. The kinds of dyes that most quilters are using these days are called cold water fiber reactive dyes. They were invented not all that long ago but the patents have run out on them. There are several sub-types under that but I won't attempt to describe the differences as I claim just enough chemical knowledge to be a little dangerous. There are far better experts out there like Doug Wilson on the Dyerslist and Paula Birch who has her own website with lots of information. These cold water fiber reactive dyes work well with "cellulosic" fibers -- i.e., linen, rayon, bamboo, and cotton. They happen to also work very well on silk which has the properties of both animal and vegetable fibers with respect to these dyes. The most popular of these dyes are the Procion MX dyes which is what many of us use exclusively with cotton. On other posts, I have described some of the differences I see within that group of dyes known as MX. Even though they work the same way, each color has it's own individual properties.

A second type of dyes and one that is most popular with dyers of wool and silk (and also nylon) are the acid dyes. They require heat and an acidic medium to set the colors. This is accomplished either on the stovetop (or crockpot) or by steaming. I literally know nothing about this class of dyes as I actually use those aforementioned MX dyes to dye silk.

A third set of dyes are the direct dyes. I liken these to paints as they don't form any kind of real bond with the fibers but sit on top of the fiber (or maybe even surround it). If you see a dye that requires no heat (except for an iron) or other chemicals, I would suspect that it is a direct dye.

The popular RIT dyes are a combination of an acid dye and a direct dye. Therefore they work pretty well on silk, wool or nylon. You will get some color on the cellulosic fibers but this will wash out every time you wash the fabric, fading more each time and fading rather rapidly.

Then there is the class of dyes which people call "natural". I think this is a bit of a misnomer as the chemicals used with many of these dyes are far more deleterious than anything you would find in the other dyes! I think they are called natural as the color elements are obtained from naturally occurring plants and animals but unfortunately, for these dyes to "take", they need a mordant, alum being the safest. These dyes also do not work well on cellulosic fibers but create some beautiful colors on silks and wools.

Haven't you always wondered why people think that "natural" is better somehow? Chemicals are chemicals, whether they are natural or manmade.

Just some more spring flowers for your viewing pleasure!


Even I have taken enough pictures of trillium for this year!!

Introduction of a New Art Quilter!!

Well, as a treat I got to spend one final day at Marcia's studio before she headed off for Nancy Crow's barn for a two week class. We had a full house today with Priscilla Kibbee and Barb Seils also there.



It was the official "coming out" for Priscilla Kibbee as a newly annointed art quilter!! Needless to say, I was blown away by her first foray into this genre of quilts! It looked totally different from what I saw two days ago. This top just blew me away!! Marcia's husband has declared it to be his already though.



Also Barb Seils had her piece very nearly done as well (but Marcia had taken hers down so I didn't get to see that one). I have taken liberties with Barb's pieces and made them into rectangles which may not be their final shape!!









I was busy starting another jacket as well as putting together some older blocks into a top (just what I need another top to machine quilt!!) but am pretty much at the bottom of the pile of things that need to be finished. You can see that I have barely started the back of the jacket but the flannel is at least all cut. I am using some hexagons that I did some time ago as the central theme of the jacket which is the middle of the back. I have some more of these hexagons which will make their appearance on the front and the sleeves.

Quilting on the Yellowstone 2 piece has commenced and it was a pleasure in my newly organized quilt space -- not as nice as Marcia's but a definite improvement over what I had been living with for the past few months.

It's Clean Enough for Me!

The view into the room! I can't see the floor anymore. For each project I have done, I pull more fabric from my basement stash and never return it. There have been a number of comfort quilts and baby quilts the past three months plus those three quilts I have to machine quilt.
Yes, there is a sewing machine on the table and I have used it despite this horrible mess!

As I have those several rather large machine quilting projects ahead, it was about time to do some major picking up in my sewing room which was totally out of control and not a pleasure to work in anymore!!

Off an on the past few days, I have picked up and moved and put back stuff that has accumulated on every surface! I didn't make any attempt to get into the fabric on the shelves or the table next to my sewing machine but that doesn't look as formidable now that there is some SPACE! I like organizing and reorganizing my fabric -- a great deal of visual and tactile pleasure out of that so that won't be a duty!!

I was relentless and have a HUGE bag of scraps and fabric pieces and leftovers from projects that will just be given away. I also threw things out that I just would never finish and which no one else would want as well -- actually THREW them out!

AFTER!!!

This is the view of my bookshelves with the fabric and a few miscellaneous books.




This is the newly cleaned off sewing table -- this will make that machine quilting a lot easier!!


And finally, this is the floor that you couldn't see in the above pictures!! It's not perfect, but clean enough to get some work done and not dread going up there!