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For our 40th wedding anniversary, our oldest daughter Lisa got us a getaway weekend at the Plaza Hotel in New York City complete with High Tea on Sunday afternoon. We arrived on Sunday and left on Tuesday. This is the entrance to the Plaza (just inside the front door). It is just elegant inside with gilded crystal chandeliers everywhere. You just wonder who keeps these all clean and sparkling like they do.
On the same theme, here is the chandelier in our living room. We also had one in the bedroom and both bathrooms. The lighting and temperature in each of the bedroom and living room were controlled by an Ipad in the living room!
Warren sitting on the phone with the aforementioned daughter telling her about the suite! We were on the highest floor of the Plaza (except for the Penthouse) in an Edwardian suite with living room, bedroom and one and one half baths!!
Here is the desk where I did my computer work!
I am standing in front of picture of Eloise who in children's literature lived at the Plaza. When we were sitting in the Palm Court having tea, we could watch the people going by and each time they would stop and take this same picture!!
This is the vantage point for our tea (you can see the Eloise picture in the upper left hand corner). I had the chocolate tea and Warren had the New York tea. It was far, far too much food for two people. Mine included a chocolate fondue with a plate of fruit and various other things for dipping. Then there were scones and my new favorite -- Devonshire clotted cream -- yum. Then there was a tray of samples of all sorts of chocolate goodies. On top of that, they brought us a special treat of these chocolate covered cakes with two flavors of mousse inside. They were awesome!!
Here you can see my three tiered tray. The scones are in the napkin on the mid-level! That bottom level had pretzels, strawberries, pineapple, bananas, sponge cake and marshmallows for dipping. I barely got through the fruit. (I did wrap up some of the top level treats in a paper napkin I had in my purse as I couldn't bare to leave them.)
This is the entrance to the Plaza which is located on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 58th Street right across from Central Park.
Sunday night, we decided it would be best to walk around to walk off some of the tea goodies!! We also wanted to check out the area a bit but also wanted to enjoy the amenities in our nice suite at the hotel.
Luckily we had done some planning ahead of time -- you can find coupons on the net for much reduced parking prices which we dutifully printed out. We were surprised that it actually reduced the price by almost 40% ($30/day instead of $51). We also bought our tickets for the Bronx Zoo online and got a 20% reduction in price -- good deal as it paid for the parking at the zoo.
Well all this is is one very small piece of quilting plan for a new Lone Star quilt. We make these small samples to see if the colors are positioned the way we like and to see if we like the overall look. There is only one 45 degree angled piece with a set of mirrors positioned on either side giving the appearance of a full star when all the images repeat and merge together. I have already changed color placements and plan on changing a couple of more. It is much easier to change your mind at this point. Where the black is will be molas of birds (molas are the applique pieces from the Kuna Indians of Panama). All of these molas have a black background and when I did my original Lone Star as part of the class, I just did a "what if" placing the molas over the "rocket blocks" in the pattern and loved the look and the colors were just right so this will be a slightly larger version with molas where the spikey blocks were before and represented by the black above.
This is Priscilla's spectacular ice dyed piece (she had it in her blog earlier this week). Currently her plan is to slice it down the middle and rearrange and treat it as a wholecloth quilt. I think those corner reds look like poppies myself! We have definitely have had an influence on Priscilla -- first art quilts and now dyeing -- what will be next, a Grandmother's Flower Garden or Baltimore Album?
This is just a small corner of a new piece that Marcia is working on. The colors are just spectacular and I was ogling the purple as it would be perfect in my above Lone Star. She reminded me that we did that color together so that undoubtedly I have some in my stash!! (She's most likely right.) She saved the day later as well trouble shooting the problems I was having with my beloved Juki -- it just wouldn't run even after we checked all the electrical outlets and the plugs and foot pedal for the machine. Duh, you may have guessed but if you didn't, this brain dead senior forgot to turn the machine on -- I will never live that one down!
Last night was the opening night for our new exhibit at the Unitarian Church in Rochester. This is one of my favorites - a piece by Pat Berardi. Down below you can see the announcement and the hours for the exhibit and we hope all who can will come!
This piece was done by Valerie Schultz, another of our award winning quilters and a fantastic custom machine quilter.
This piece was done by one of our newer quilters - Beth Kelly. Beautiful clean lines, don't you think?
There are lots more to enjoy in the show!
This gives a better view of the layout. There was a lot more space than I had thought. Many of the pieces are for sale and think one already sold last night!
There was a lot of good food there so no dinner was necessary!
Janet Root and Donna Patrick (wearing one of her hand felted and beaded scarves) discussing the exhibit and the layout.
Below is the announcement of the exhibition.
Fiber Art exploring the concept of ‘Branching Out’
with new materials, ideas, and complexity.
Williams Gallery
First Unitarian Church of Rochester
220 Winton Road South
Rochester, NY 14610
Opening Reception: Friday, August 24, 5pm-8pm
Gallery Hours: M-F 10am-2pm and 4:30pm-8pm
Couldn't resist this beautiful Monarch on our zinnias. There were lots of them today. It was almost fall like which is nice after all our very hot weather this summer. As a result, I spent the afternoon outside reading Sense and Sensibility -- the best part out e-readers is how many wonderful free books there are out there just waiting to be read!
Finally I managed to get a picture of one of the frequent visitors to the butterfly bush in my neighbor's yard -- one of the hummingbirds. This was taken from about 50 feet away but at least it is identifiable!! I have tried for some time to manage to get the camera out in time to get at least one picture.
Okay, just one more Goldfinch!
I have been very busy trying to get many, many quilts basted so that I can machine quilt them while down in North Carolina and even one to hand quilt! Three of these have been king sized so it has not been a one day process. One more major one to go and a couple of small quilts and it will be done. Now to have all my bindings set up as well so I don't have to go and purchase fabric that I already have down here. Now to find room in my car for the transfer!
Well, maybe not quite fifty, but a lot anyway (33). I decided that I needed to increase my stash of reds so set up one of my extreme overdyeing sessions with a plan to use my reds and then some of the mixed up reds (mixing different reds together like I did with the blues last month) and then overdyeing. Well, it looked great on paper. Biggest problem was that one of the chosen reds was probably 8 years old and didn't have any red left in it and was basically what I would call orange. Of course I didn't know that until I had washed out the first time. So I re-planned and did some things differently on the overdye. I am relatively pleased. The colors on my computer are pretty true to what I got (maybe a mite more orange). I actually got some nice Christmas reds in here.
I have now thrown out several containers of dye that were 13 years old!! If I haven't used them in this long..... A lot of them had reds in them which seems to be the dyes that have the shortest shelf life (they are the most reactive of the MX dyes so this does make sense!)
This is the sheet so you can see basically what I did for each "cell". My change of plans was to add Fuchsia to three of the overdye baths (1, 4 and 5). The three reds I used as my base are Pro Chem's Fuchsia, Mixing Red and Strongest Red (this was the very weak one that red as orange). I then mixed the Fuchsia and Mixing Red with the Strongest Red for the fourth and fifth columns. The first row and the first column are the basic colors (no overdyeing). I overdyed with different concentrations of Pro Chem's Basic Brown, New Black (hadn't used this before and it is a very blue black), and Burnt Orange (this is one of Pro Chem's "pure" dyes). As I have gotten good rich reds with mixing Strong Orange with Fuchsia before, thought I would try the Burnt Orange this time. I also used a mixture of Turquoise and Basic Blue to overdye as well. The differences in the reds is most noticeable here as the orangey reds definitely looked browner while Fuchsia and Mixing Red looked purpley.
So now to re-assess and see what else I should dye before heading south!
My husband and I have our 40th wedding anniversary is this week and in celebration our oldest daughter surprised us with a wonderful surprise trip in September!! She booked us for two nights in an Edwardian suite at the Plaza Hotel in New York City (complete with butler). We also will be going to High Tea as well! Since we usually stay one step above a hostel when we go to NY, this is a very big treat for sure!! Looks like I will have some place to wear my new jackets after all!
A new month has rolled around and time for the meeting of the Rochester Area Fiber Artists (RAFA). This is always a fun meeting as many members have been away for two weeks taking classes at a yearly quilt conference in Syracuse.
This piece is by a new member, Marcia Birken. She is relatively new to sewing but you certainly could never tell from the quality of the workmanship and the color choices in this piece. The center diamond was done in a GVQC class and she really didn't like it so decided to just play and use some of the new techniques she learned at the Ricky Tims seminar. Awesome!!
Glynnis is able to make it to our summer meetings which is great as we sorely missed her (she is a school teacher by profession). She went to Wegmans, bought 5 lbs of ice and did some ice dyeing. Somehow it never occurred to me to buy the ice so may take that approach very soon and do some of my own!! When I move south, this will be the only kind of cold resist dyeing I will be able to do!!
Both Caris and Janet took the same class. This class involved lots of painting, stitching and then more painting and was to use map images. Caris is just beginning and with her wonderful taste and workmanship, this will be wonderful when done!
This is Janet's piece from the same class. The tree has been stitched and then overpainted. Interesting technique!
Donna bought a couple of dyed silk and felted scarves to share. This one is double sided silk with the darker areas being felted. She made 15 yards of this and will use it in a jacket she will be making. Her tshirt is ice dyed and just beautiful as well!
Janet encouraged a new person (Stephanie) she met to join the group and this was her first "show and tell". It was a small beautifully done Great Egret with all sorts of different techniques. She had taken Cynthia Corbin's class in addition and showed a number of the studies she did there. Cynthia is definitely one of my very favorite teachers and probably had more influence untimately on me than about anyone else!! It was great to have Stephanie sitting next to me so I could get to know her a little more -- a great addition to the group as is Marcia!!
Beth K shared this wonderful piece she did in a class with Rosalie Dace. She signed up immediately for another one with her next summer!
Julie shared this wonderful little piece which makes use of her digitally created fabric. She offers this service on line through Red Dog enterprises (at a very reasonable price I might add).
This was a very nice piece done by Liz with all sorts of embellishments.
Sarah has brought the newest Mickey Lawler book (didn't know there was a new one) and couldn't resist creating some fabric to help with the decoration of her new Tucson home.
Caren created this piece in her class and then created the piece below with the leftover scraps!
These first two pictures are of a frequent visitor to our garden. I wanted to get a really good picture in an attempt to identify exactly what kind of Skipper it was although I am still not certain. I think it is a Leonard's Skipper as it looks exactly like some of the pictures I saw. This is the back view and the following picture is the side view. These butterflies are only about an inch and a quarter wide and move pretty fast. I was very pleased with the detail in this one with the new little camera.
This is the side view. I have decided that macro photography is really my favorite I guess! One of the ways to tell butterflies generally from moths is that butterflies have those little feelers on the ends of their antennae which moths don't generally have.
This butterfly is called a Cabbage White and is very common around here. You can tell by the spot on his wings. These rarely stay still but I lucked out and the light was pretty good as well.
American Goldfinches are almost always at my neighbor's bird feeder along with the House Finches and Black Capped Chickadees.
The rest of the above crowd including the beautiful make House Finch.
Last but not least is the Spicebush Swallowtail which is a frequent visitor to our zinnias. This one is in good shape unlike the one from the other day.
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