Midsummer Report part 2

I know I don't need to give excuses but for the record things have been a bit crazy here. First there were issues with my shoulder which have been diagnosed. Lots of doctoring for it still though. And secondly, I am hosting a prairie walk here this weekend and we've been getting ready for that. The getting ready was compounded by a freak rain storm where we got 8 1/4" of rain.  Yes we had a little water in our basement twice. But the worst of it was about 5" of sand deposited on most of my prairie garden along the driveway. You see we live at the bottom of a hill and the rain caused erosion of the gully coming down the hill. This is a bit like a ditch along the side the road but over the years it has washed deeper and wider. In spite of the mess I think a good portion of the plants will survive. At least we didn't have any standing water afterwards. Gotta find a bright side. The driveway is to the right of the pine trees.

 In between all that I did find some time to sew. It is so therapeutic after all. I called it quits on my Civil War Bow Tie quilt top once it was big enough to use for a shower curtain. I took my time with this one trying to only use the small scraps when I made them rather than cutting into yardage. I hope to finish it up soon. If I don't use batting and and put muslin on the back, it should stay light enough in the shower so we can still see the dirt. Knowing where all the parts to wash are isn't enough. Ask Mark.

"Challenging Chain" is a good name for this next top with 1930's that I put together. I think this was a kit in the closet I put together a year ago or so. The rectangles are easy enough to sew but I was challenged by the reverse blocks and pressing consistently so that the seams would nest.  Now if I made ALL the blocks I need of the same kind at one time my pressing would be consistent. But because I make a few here and a few there the pressing gets screwed up a little. Maybe I need to make better notes and then follow them like a pattern.  I tend to just look at a block and make it without checking any directions. Besides, where would I put them so I could find them .  But don't you think those wrinkles kinda add texture like the quilting would? Makes me a little eager to quilt it now.

I've been anxious to get back downstairs to the long arm. Between my shoulder and the restoration work in the woods, I think I only quilted 2 so far this year. Believe it or not it was easier on my shoulder to work in the woods than to quilt! I have set up a sewing station in Studio 2 so a friend can join me while I work on the long arm. Margie usually joins me at Studio 3 but with the move downstairs I hope to be more productive soon.

One month later

   Wow, it's been a whole month. I didn't think I'd write much this last month since I was gone to California for 10 days and otherwise across the street.
Quilting has definitely been put on the back burner temporarily. I have even missed meetings at church. I am hoping to get things back on track re: my quilting starting with the comfort quilts. We have a meeting tomorrow so I will prepare for that later today.

  It is supposed to be hot and humid today so I will retreat to my sewing room later but only after I finish the three passes left with the long arm on the raffle quilt.  Only a few classes at Studio 3 have been cancelled cause I was gone and the holiday was in there.  So see, I have been doing some quilting.
  Re: quilting, the rest of this summer I want to focus on making comfort tops with the ever-growing pile of orphan blocks. Here is just a few more from the stack that I am auditioning. I will collect the rest from Studio 3 and sort through them. Perhaps even preparing a kit and passing it on to the gals at church.






    Our trip to California was fantastic. After flying overhead all these years I decided to take a slower route to see the scenery. I'd wanted to see the giant Sequoias since I first learned about them as a girl and never had the opportunity when I'd gone west to teach. I told Mark we could wait till he retired, so finally we went. I didn't want to drive there (we are in SE Wisconsin) and I didn't want to fly so we took the train. I really enjoyed it.  We took the train as far as Reno then rented a car and drove down the East side of the Sierra's to Yosemite Park. Then we drove through Yosemite and south to Kings Canyon  and Sequoia Parks. I never thought to fly back from there so we reversed the route and took the train back home. It is indeed a beautiful country and the trees are really awesome.  So glad we went. I won't share pictures cause really all you need to do is google images of the trees or parks.

     And as it is summer I've been outside. I've taken to calling my restoration project across the street my 18 acre garden. We are not doing a complete restoration but the removal of all the invasives still  qualifies it as a restoration. Between 11 acres of woods and 7 acres of the wetland we have our work cut out for ourselves. Some days we do nothing and others finds us "weeding" as we cut and/or poison the most invasive non-native species. I am continually amazed at all the wildflowers I keep finding. Though I am sure they have been there all along, because of our work we now have access to them and they can thrive and be enjoyed. This patch of Canadian Anemone was actually found growing along side the road a few miles from here. A huge patch that would fill my house, that we'd never noticed before.

Busy May

April was busy and May will be busier.  I've been working outside tending the wildflowers.  The flowers and grasses are continuing to sprout in the savanah we burned a month ago The first flowers to bloom after the burn are the wood anemones and violets.  They are scattered all over the place.

 They aren't very showy, but hardly show up at all if you don't burn cause they are lost in the leaf litter otherwise. Right in the center of this bitty patch is a shooting star sending up it's flower stalk. I sure hope the dear don't devour them this year like they did last year. The state flower of Wisconsin is the violets and we have a bunch. 5 different colors actually. I tried to get a picture of them, but it's pretty blurry. I'll try again. We have white, red-violet, blue-violet and another shade of blue-violet and even yellow. Too bad they are so small; even smaller than the anemones.

I've done a bit of sewing, mostly in preparation for Quilt Market. I quilted another top and have another on the frame now. Two bindings also were done with one to go. That's the one on the frame now. Market has been on my mind lots and my sewing room looks like it. Some of the quilts are heaped in a pile on the floor. You will notice they aren't folded. I try to avoid folding cause I really don't like those permanent creases that can develop on the fold lines.

Things have also been busy at Studio 3. Five new gals have joined the rest of us. Only one of them is a real novice. The others just want to "Learn the right way". They are all real nice and I am looking forward to getting to know them and teaching them things like how to turn the rotary cutter on and off. If I don't write again this month you will know what I am doing.

Stalled on the Wall

Everything has pretty much stalled on the wall, both here and at Studio 3. I did cut more last night and this morning so I am ready to sew, but that will be between hanging out online and outside.

We haven't had much of the snow this winter that others have. Actually only about 1" out there today that promises to be gone by tomorrow night. That allows us to work outside. Monday we had about 4 acres of brush chopped out of our wetland. It was mostly red twig dogwood and the invasive buckthorn.  I am not sure why they don't call the red twig dogwood invasive. They ought to. I'm very excited about how it opened it up. Didn't know there is a bit of a ridge through the middle of it. Perfect place to make a path. Now we have to wait another year before we can burn all that dead vegetation. Meanwhile we will work at using poison to kill some of those bushes and make a path. There are already tons of wildflowers there and now I will be able to see them and they have room to spread.

 


                                                   Here's a before.             And an after.

It's not our property in the distance. And the forestry mower can't do anything over 4" diameter. So there is still some work for us to do out there cutting the stuff that was too big or too close to a tree or water. My idea of gardening.

Quilting at Studio 3 tonight.

Making Progress

 Finally some quilting weather this summer. You might think with all the rain that we have had that I'd have been quilting more but for some reason it hasn't been reason enough to quilt. But it has gotten hot and humid so I have been working on the sampler. I have 1 1/2" rows done except I will still go back and do a background fill in each block when the rest of it is done. Here are two blocks.

It's not been hot all week, so on pleasant mornings I have been outside. This white Turtlehead plant I started from a seed I collected two years ago across the street in the sedge meadow. This one is growing alongside our brook with the orange Jewel Weed.

This afternoon I went with Sue to visit the daughter of a friend and student that had recently inherited some quilts made from great grandma or was it great-great. I admit, I didn't pay close attention. I was busy studying the quilts. They were mostly in pretty poor shape, either treadbare from wear or where the brown dye was disintegrating the fabric or normal fading. This first one was in the best shape. There was another nearly identical to it that was worn out. They looked to be from  about 1880's.

This one was a beaut. This block was faded less than all the others. Would love to have seen it after it was just made. Couldn't guess the age on this one cause it was so faded.

This was an interesting crazy quilt. The patches were sewn to the foundation by hand with a blanket stitch.  Some of the blocks had a thin middle layer. Then the red sashing strips was appliqued between the blocks by machine. They have pretty much rotted away. This one looked more like 1930's or 40's.

Nothing on my design wall. Judy, I hope you don't mind.

The Seed Collector

While I was preparing for quilting at church last week, I came across two bags of quilt seeds.  I'd rather work on these  log cabin blocks with our random widths and lenghts of scraps. Most of the other gals would rather work on string quilts. Quilting has resumed here on "Friday nights so I decided to work on the odd-width log cabin blocks then.  I got a good start on 50 blocks. I'll work on the string blocks with the others at church. I don't have to be different all the time.

 I don't remember ever using these pieces in a quilt. I think I used them for a demo of the technique years ago. I'll leave these out and think about what I will want to make with them.

I brought  3 quilts to church that I did on the longarm and are ready for binding. I have another one on the frame now and I am ready to load yet another. I guess I forgot to take pictures. I AM a bit rusty at this.

I really am a seed collector. If you think that those quilt seeds don't qualify me how's this sound. This year I planted wild flowers from wild seed I collected last year and saved in pill bottles.  I also collected a bit already this year. It's what I do. And possibly on Tuesday I will go to the Kettle Moraine State Forest and help some volunteers collect there. Or around there with somebody.  I'll have to ask my friend, Sue. She has the details.

Feels Like Hookey

Maybe I'm semi-retired. I sure haven't been working hard at my quilting. Not even 100 feet out my back door are lots of wildflowers at the edge of the woods. Distant shots don't show them very well, so here are some shown at closer range of what lures me outside every day.

First up is Hepatica.There leaves come out after they bloom. There are big patches of these. They are mostly white, but some pastel lavender and lilac. The fern-like leaves belong to the Dutchmen's britches that look like bloomers hanging upside down to me. That's the second picture. They are growing along the little brook at the east edge of our property.

 Not shown is the pale pink Spring Beauty. Lots of these in the neighbor's yard. I've moved a few over to this side of the brook.  Below is Blood Root. Their leaves fully develop after blooming too. Not so many of those.

 Also not shown is the big patches of white Cutleaf Toothwort and masses of Skunk's Cabbage. They are mostly in the woods across the street with hundreds of Marsh Marigold's (shown below).

 Now do you understand why it is so hard to stay in and quilt, especially when I have more quilts than I will ever need?  Can you guess what will be blooming next?