Quilt Retreat

Last weekend we had our annual quilt retreat where we spend two days in lodges in the woods, eating, sewing, taking classes, eating, walking in the woods, eating...  you get the idea. I taught a class - Happy Villages - where you cut up stair step pieces of fabric, arrange them on some batting, and then add roofs, doors and windows. It's like kindergarten and lots of fun. No sewing, no worry about cutting off points, no worry about perfect quarter inch seams.  I had 11 students, and they created 11 very different villages.

Here are some of the

villages at show and tell

on Sunday morning.

 

 

 

  Last summer I tried to teach my Wisconsin Girlfriends this same technique. They were not very well-behaved students as you can see at the right. They actually finally settled down and made some neat villages, but since they don't quilt, I ended up quilting all of them for them. And they had so much fun they're making more! My Uncommon Thread Quilt Guild students were much better behaved!

Our guest teacher was Janet Jones Worley, who was just a delightful person and her Saturday night lecture was hysterical!

Here are most of the people who made challenge blocks.

Race for the Cure

Saturday was the Susan G.Komen Race for the Cure. It's been monsoon season in Memphis, but Saturday morning the rain went away and the sun came out just in time for it to be a beautiful fall day. Over 16,000 people participated! This year when they took the survivors photo, my neighbor and I stood next to some crazy ladies with big pink hair and mardi gras masks - we figured that way we could find ourselves in the photo. It worked! See the lady with the green jacket on the right side of the photo? If you go in about 6 people, I am there, with a pink bandana around my neck.


I'm about in the middle in the photo below, a pink haired lady is on my left, and my neighbor Lynn with a boa is on my right. Julie, who I met on the shuttle bus on the way there is next t Lynn.

Part of the St. Francis Ladies Auxiliary Team  -

Romy, Donna, me, Lori and Karen.

Dyeing with Friends

This past weekend I got together with three friends to dye fabric. Arlene has all the dyes, fabric and equipment so we do it in her driveway. If you had seen me Saturday night, you would wonder if any dye got on the fabric. I was certainly colorful!

Here's Nysha squishing dye around. This is before he just gave up on gloves and used his bare hands. He was pretty colorful too by the end of the day!


This is the neat contraption Arlene's husband built to rinse the fabrics. It beats rinsing in a bucket, and uses less water too. That's Marge rinsing fabric, and you can see the tshirts hanging on the fence that I dyed. Also on the left that splotchy fabric - we decided to use fabric to mop up the spills on the table and then activate the dye. We got some pretty cool pieces of fabric that way!


Here are my fabrics and Marge's fabrics marinating. We used procion dyes. What we do is called "color by accident", which means you will never be able to reproduce a color exactly. We measure about 2 tablespoons of dye powder to about one cup of urea water. And then we pour that onto about one yard of fabric. And leave it about 15 minutes, then add activator and leave that about one hour. You get the idea we aren't being real precise here.


See the gorgeous fabrics on the fence? Nysha fan folded, then scrunched, then wrapped the fabric around a piece of PVC pipe and tied it and then drizzled different color dyes on it. How cool!


More dye marinating in pans. Nysha did something called parfaits - you put a yard of fabric in the bottom of the bucket and pour a color on. Then put another yard on top and pour a different color on. Then a third yard and a third color, and then activate the whole thing. He got some really neat fabrics. I can't wait to see them washed and ironed. Washing them usually lightens the colors some.


Here's more fabric being rinsed. Do you think we like intense colors? I was trying to do gradations from yellow to red. They looked great in the buckets but when I rinsed them, they turned pink. So I overdyed them and got orange with pink overtones.


Here's our "supervisor", Arlene's husband Bill. He was nice to go get us pizza for lunch.


And here's Arlene and Marge showing off Arlene's gradations of purple.

Our Back Yard

I'm not the only talented one in the family. This spring Armando decided to give our back yard a facelift. First he rebuilt the stairs that go to the top of the hill behind our house. Actually he did that after I pitched a fit because the old stairs were rotting and dangerous.



Then he decided to stain the decks. His first attempt at color was a real bright orange. I told him it would have to be changed, so he came back with this redwood color. I like it better.


He decided to build a top for one of our old round tables (in the background) but after it was built he realized it was too heavy for the skinny legs so he built a base for it. And put ceramic tile on top.



Then put tile on our existing table so they match.



That big table will stay permanently where it is - it already was heavy, now with cement board and tile it would take at least three people to move it! I'm not sure how well it will winter. I guess we'll find out.



Then the pool was leaking and I couldn't clean it.



Finally the pool is fixed and clean and sparkling so I took these photos today - the back yard probably won't look this good the rest of the summer!

Ghost Birds Too

My brother David wrote a book about saving cranes and swans. See my March 13 post for more details. I made him a quilt for his office, and he said it was too nice for his office, it would go in the living room. So I said I'd make another for his office.



He received it the other day, and called to tell me it's too nice to hang in the office, so it will go in the dining room.



I told him then I guess his office wall will be bare, because he has had his quota of quilts for awhile, and if I did make another one, it would not have cranes. I'm over cranes and oriental fabrics.



My soon-to-be famous brother has been invited to do a book signing and lecture at the Smithsonian this summer. He'll also be doing book signings and lectures in Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Maryland. He's going to take the quilt along as a prop.

Italian Festivals and Italian Weddings

Jan and Curt, friends from Texas, stopped in last weekend. We headed down to the Italian Festival on Friday.



We actually knew someone who had a booth who invited us to eat and drink with them. Here's Brian and Bill:



And Glen:









The next day we headed to Graceland. They have added the stables as a new attraction, but it costs an extra $15 for the tour. We passed. I've been to Graceland so many times I think I could recite the taped tour by memory. Armando said he is never going again.



After that, Jan, Curt and Armando headed to Tunica and Beale Street. But I passed, since Whitt and Kristle's wedding reception was that night. They were married in Jamaica two weeks ago. She looked like a little Hawaiian princess.



The mother of the bride, Barb...



and the parents of the groom, Suzanne and Dave.