End of October

Even though the weather is sunny and warm, fall marches on.  The beautiful trees I posted last week have lost almost all their leaves.  It happened in about four days and it wasn't even windy.  Still, the weather makes it hard to think about Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up.  The thought of a day shopping at the mall makes my blood run cold, especially when I could be quilting.  The gift-buying will be nearly all on-line this year.  I love the idea of buying a gift when I think of it and shopping in my bathrobe.

About 30 of us from my guild went on Quilt Retreat last weekend.  The retreat center is only about 30 miles away, the setting is lovely, the staff hospitable and the food really good.  (Yes, I say that about most any food I don't have to cook, but the food WAS really good.)  I made some progress on a Christmas quilt that will be a pattern next year, took pictures for the guild and did a little embroidery.  But the best part was hanging out with other quilters.  It's fun to get to know members of the guild better and enjoy their talent.  I belonged to the guild for about five years before participating.  What was I thinking?

I've just finished quilting a project I started last year.  It was a kit I bought at the Northwest Quilt Expo. I rarely buy kits, but this one was so cute and the price quite reasonable so I went for it.  I finished all the piecing last fall and then put it away after Halloween.  All that's left is the binding.

The new Christmas quilt is a row quilt.  It was initially inspired by some great Christmas fabric.  One of the fabrics in the group is a print of 3-inch squares, which made it a perfect place to start.  The great thing about row quilts is that it's super easy to make them whatever size you need.  Time getting short?  Just stop, add a border (or not), quilt it, bind it and call it good.  Nobody has to know what the original plan was or how big you thought you would make it.  The pattern will be available next summer.

About the holidays in general:
The first year I was married, we lived a couple thousand miles from family and it occurred to me about the week before Thanksgiving that it was up to me to make the holidays special.  There are always a million cool projects and not nearly enough time to do them all.  For a couple of years I actually candied my own fruit for fruit cake.  It made the house smell marvelous and I still have the recipe, but seriously, there aren't enough minutes for that kind of thing anymore.  And I wondered why the holidays became more stressful than fun.

So here's some good advice from someone who's just learning to take it.  Do some things you love and the rest of the stuff the easiest way you can.  Also, delegate.  There's no rule that says you have to do everything.  The season is supposed to be fun for you, too.

A Little of This . . .

Regular Oregon fall is back (finally) and it features lots of sun and blue sky.  Apparently, this is our most colorful leaf week.  I'm not sure who figures that out, but I'm pretty sure they're right.

Wonderful color combination.  Could be a quilt in there.

Our dogs are allowed on one piece of furniture.  It's an old love seat that's been recovered several times.  At some point it would've cheaper to replace it, but it's comfy, good for naps (both human and dog) and fits the space perfectly.  I even made a couple of matching pillows and plan to make a couple more as I way overestimated the yardage to recover it.  The other evening, we found Toby hugging a pillow.

That's actually a new behavior for him.  Wish he'd traded in raiding the pantry for this one.  He loves Ritz Crackers and has been known to help himself to a stack when he's a bit peckish.  Toby actually held the pose while I got the camera.  He knows when he's being adorable and isn't above working it.


Sweet Husband was in Las Vegas this week and sent me this photo of a men's store in the Cosmopolitan Hotel.

Apparently there are about 500  sewing machines in the collection.  I would pay real money to see that and at some point I probably will.  I'm not really into antiques that much, but old sewing machines really charm me.  There's something special about a straight-stitchin', non-computerized, all metal, dependable workhorse of a  sewing machine.  I learned to sew on a 1951 Singer Featherweight (that I still have).  They were pretty easy to maintain and the motherboard never failed.

I'm working on a Christmas pattern that will be available next summer.  I decided to get ahead of the curve for a change even if it means creating Halloween in February.  When the top is finished, I'll post a preview.

Keep quilting,

Candy

Try Something New

Fall fell like a ton of bricks on the Northwest after a very sunny summer.  September here is generally pretty dry, but it rained a LOT last month.  The good news is that things are pretty green again.  The bad news is that my tomatoes got clobbered, as did most everyone's. The mums got pounded, but Sweet Husband staked them back up and now we have chrysanthemum trees.

After a very busy September at the "day job," I'm anxious to get back into the studio and make some quilts!  But first I took a little detour to the Portland Art & Soul Mixed Media Retreat last week.  I find it really fun and inspirational to take a class here and there outside of the quilting arena.  It changes my perspective and gives me new ideas and directions.  Art & Soul retreats are held yearly in Portland, Kansas City and Virginia Beach.  I took two classes:  No Excuses Art Journaling with Gina Rossi Armfield (www.noexcusesjournaling.com) and IPAD as Art with Lisa Thorpe.  Check out their websites; their work is pretty cool.  New skills almost always bleed over into your main passion, so try something different once in a while.  The new thing may not turn out to be a passion, but you'll take something useful with you.

Here's my little project for today:  I made the quilt "Haunting Hoofbeats" from the Dandelion Seed Design pattern.  It's very cute and goes together easily.  Haunted house, headless horseman and tomb stones, how could one go wrong?  However, if it's not in bright light, my choice of background fabric just blends in a little too well.  So now I have a couple of choices:  I can dump it and wait until I find the perfect background fabric to do it again, dump it and call it a learning exercise, or see if I can fix it with a little paint.   I seriously considered all the options and decided to try some paint.  Even if it doesn't work, it'll be worth a little time to take a shot.  The photos make the background stand out more than it does in life, but you'll get the idea.

Here are the paints I started out with.

I tried out my paint colors on a scrap of the background fabric.

It's acrylic paint so it can be thinned a bit with water.  TEST IT.  If the paint is too watery, it will bleed.  It's also worth noting that acrylic paint is permanent; once you get it where you don't want it, it's not ever coming out.  I mixed some together to get the colors I wanted.  The only drawback with mixing is that it's tough to get the exact shade twice.  On this background it won't really matter since it already has lots of shades of red, yellow and green; I'm just spicing them up a bit.

I wound up not using the lightest yellow as it was almost white and the darkest yellow I used sparingly as the paint is starting to get chunky and needs to be replaced.  (That bottle is probably 10 years old.)


Test using paint  right out of the bottle or tube, thinning it down a bit and dry brushing.  Let it dry before adding more as the color tends to blend in more as it dries.  You can always add another layer of paint or dry brush some highlights.


The changes are subtle, which is fine, but the house windows will shine out a bit more when the panes are quilted in and I've just lightened a bit around the path, tomb stones and sword hilt.

If I still feel the colors are too dark, I can go in and add some more highlights after the hanging has been quilted.

I'll post this when it's finished so you can see how it turned out.

Candy