Wordless Wednesday

Making Progress

I've been working away on my big green quilt.  I can't show you the design but I'll just give you a sneak peek. It will consist of 96 of these strips, 4 1/2" x 8 1/2" which will sew down to 8" x 4".

  They go from very dark to very light.

From high contrast to low contrast and everything in-between.  I am working with eight shades of green, each with six gradations of dark to light.  There are yellow-greens, blue-greens, olive greens and bright greens. The combinations are endless.

And look at how my scrap pile grows.

The final entry date for the show is early September, but I have a lot going on between now and then including two trips.  So I want to get this done.  The quilt will finish at 64" x 48" unless I decide to make it bigger.

When I started making the strips it took me about an hour to make one and now I have it down to about 35 minutes.  I had a whole day at home yesterday so I got a lot done.  Hopefully this weekend will be productive, too. So far I have 65 strips made out of the needed 96. Then they all have to sewn together then quilted, but now there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

I'm linking up again with Off the Wall Friday.  Go see what everyone else is up to.

Wordless Wednesday

Easter Sunday

As in previous years I spent the day at my niece, Lauren's, she of the gourmet cook and fabulous hostess reputation.  It was a beautiful day, bright and sunny, if a little chilly.

Her table, as usual was a feast for the eyes..  She always does something different.  This year she folded the fringed napkins so that they looked like bunnies complete with cotton tails made from white carnations. So cute.  The food was delish, also, no good photos.

She always makes a special cocktail of the day.  Here she is holding a key lime martini, looking good with her lime tunic and the key lime pie that I had made.

The children (my niece's grandchildren) looked so cute.  Check out dapper Charlie at 2 1/2.

And here are mom and dad holding fashionista, Millie, just over a year old.

And here we are, my sister with her Easter bonnet with Lauren and me.

Hippity-Hoppity

You know that I like to decorate for the seasons and holidays and Easter is no exception.  But it only take me about 15 minutes to get my Easter things out.  If only I could do that for Christmas.  I always love the bunnies that the stores have out for Easter, especially the soft stuffed ones.  Every year I ooh and ahh over them but since I have no grandchildren (sigh) I resist the temptation. But some other bunnies have found their way into my house.

Before you get into my house you are greeted by this bunny on the wreath.  I put this wreath together a few years ago and although the flowers and bow still looked fine, his overalls were faded to almost white, so I took them off and dyed them this light blue.

I have a collection of miniature dress forms that I display in my studio so this bunny dress form just hopped right into my cart at Home Goods.  However she is not in my studio, but on the fireplace mantel.

Here's a cute little semi-soft bunny on the kitchen counter with my Easter cookie jar and cabbage leaf bunny with eggs and yet another rabbit.

This is also a stuffed fabric bunny that has been coated with something to make it very stiff.  He holds court in the living room holding a pot of flowers in front of a pot of tulips.

This little guy is tiny, measuring about 4 inches from the base of the basket to the top of the handle.   Don't you just love the idea of a bunny with a chocolate bunny? And notice his patchwork carrot!

This bisque bunny is on my hall table holding a basket of Easter candy.

In my previous much bigger home I used  to have an Easter egg tree that I made out of faux forsythia branches. I had a nice collection of decorated eggs that hung from it with pastel satin ribbons. It was so pretty, but no room for it in this house. Instead I bought a few pots of daffodils and tulips and have a lovely bouquet of cut tulips on the coffee table.  As I said, so easy.

I know that Easter is about much more than the Easter Bunny and I wish you all a happy, blessed Easter!

I have been busy....

.....but I can't show you what I'm working on.  These are just some of the scraps and I thought they were too pretty to throw away.  I started this project over a year ago and somehow it kept getting pushed to the back of the burner because of other deadlines or obligations.  But now I am determined to finish it and enter it in that big show where your work cannot be seen anywhere on the web prior to the show.  I stand a snowball's chance in hell of getting in, but you never know.  If it doesn't get accepted I'll have a good entry to IQA at Houston next year.

So don't think I'm slacking off.  I'm really madly sewing away.  This is going to be a big quilt.

I'm lining up again with Nina Marie's Off the Wall Friday.

April is the cruelest month

So said T. S. Eliot and last night proved him right. Yesterday it was in the 60's and overnight the temps plummeted to a frosty 24 this morning.  Add to that 2-3 inches of snow.

My daffies had just started blooming and look at them now.  I tried to lift up the flower heads from the sidewalk but they were frozen solid and the stems were like sticks of ice.

The only flowers I had outside were pansies in a big pot by the front door.  I always buy pansies as soon as they are available, the only thing you can put out so soon.  Last night I took them inside.  I knew that the plant wouldn't be killed, but the flowers would have been as frozen as these daffodils.

I tried to take my usual 7AM walk and was bundled up in my mid-winter gear for the frigid weather but I got as far as the corner of my street and turned back because of the black ice.  I didn't want to take a spill.

I well remember my first Easter in Connecticut on April 6, 1969.  We had a surprise storm with 12 inches of snow, so this little glitch in the weather shouldn't surprise us. Hopefully it will warm up for Easter this Sunday.

Go see the quilts at

the FANE blog.  I just put up all the quilts at the show that I told you about in my last post.  You can see them all here.

FANE at Etui

The fiber art group, FANE, of which I am a member is currently having a show, Architectural Elements, at Etui, a wonderful little fiber shop/gallery in Larchmont, NY.  The front of the shop is a gallery with great lighting and room for many small works to be displayed.  I was unable to make the opening of the show last Friday evening due to prior commitments so today I took the opportunity to drive over (about an hour each way) to see the show.  I was delighted with what I saw.  Even though I had previously seen most of the works at a meeting, it's always a treat to see them hang in a gallery setting.

When you walked in the door, this was the first thing you saw.  That is my quilt on the far right, with Nike and Renee to the left of me.  I took individual pictures of all the quilts and plan to get them up on the FANE blog within the next couple of days.

Favela 14" x 16"

If you look closely at the label beneath my quilt you will see that wonderful little red dot. We all know what that means.....SOLD.  However in this case it may or may not be sold.  Apparently a gentleman at the opening really liked it and asked the shop owner, Julie, to hold it until he could bring his wife in with him for final approval.  Well, the shop has not heard back from him in spite of a couple of phone calls. But here's where the plot thickens.  As I was walking into the shop a woman was also entering with her young daughter and they walked directly to my quilt and I could hear them saying nice things about it. I talked to the owner and looked at the other quilts and took photos and when I got back to my quilt the same woman and child were looking at mine again.  I told her that it was mine and that it may or may not be sold.  So she took my information and phone number and, who knows, perhaps she will get to take it home.  According to Julie my piece has been quite popular. That was nice to hear.

The show will run through the end of the month so if you are in the area, it is well worth the visit.

A Pleasant Surprise

When I returned from Florida last week one of the messages on my answering machine was from the director of the New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain, CT asking if they could borrow my quilt that he saw in Studio Art Quilt Associates Portfolio 20. As a Juried Artist Member I am entitled to have one page in each yearly catalog.  Catalogs are open to the public to purchase for $30, but they are also sent to galleries and museums.  I've been in for the past several years and this is the the first time something has come of it. It is lovely catalog with nice glossy paper and a stiff soft cover.  There are 261 pages in this issue.

This is the quilt, Itajime Surprise. He wants it for an exhibit entitled Stitched in Time: American Quilts 1758-2014 that will run from Sept. 20 to January 18. Mine will be one of a few from the 21st century.  Of course I said yes!  I absolutely love this museum.  It has a fabulous permanent collection and the most interesting special exhibits. I have been there several times.  The museum, which opened in 1903, was the first to exclusively show American art.

My only problem is that this is the quilt that I was going to enter into the International Quilt Festival in Houston, TX. in October. I don't have anything else worthy this year, so I will have to miss having a quilt in that show.  Of course it may not have been accepted, but I think I stood a pretty good chance, having been juried into many of their shows in previous years. Oh, well, I can always enter it next year.  

Once again I've linked up with Off the Wall Friday.  Go check it out.

Back to reality

I probably wasn't fooling you with those Wordless Wednesdays.  Yes, I was away with my sister, Ruth, and good friend, Claire, for a whole idyllic month in sunny, warm Florida.  It was wonderful to get away from the endless winter here in CT.  From the moment we stepped off the plane on March 1st to when we left on March 31st we reveled in the blissful weather. Unlike other Marches away when we did a lot of running around and visiting, we had a mostly layed-back relaxing time.

I never got a picture of the main gate with much larger and prettier flower beds.

We stayed at a lovely golf community called Kelly Greens in Fort Myers.  It was a great place to be because of its proximity to many things. It was about a five minute drive to the  Sanibel Island bridge, about an hour from Naples and close to numerous shopping areas, good restaurants and beaches.


We did manage to do a lot of this.....

Ladies who lunch. Dining out with friends from home.

and this...

and this...

Ruthie and Claire relaxing on the beach, but trying not to get too much sun.

and this....

Those who know me well know that I rarely go in the water, but the water in the pool that went with our rented condo was warm as a bathtub and I discovered the joys of floating around with a noodle.

and this...

A St. Patrick's Day party  with friends.  The men were all on the lanai, just like high school.

and this....

A visit to the Edison and Ford estate. We also went to the Artis-Naples Museum for a docent tour of the Duchamp family art.

and this...

Walking every morning with views of the golf course.  We did see an alligator on more that one occasion.

and this....

A trip to the Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island.  Those are rare white pelicans.

and lots of this...

Shopping in Florida is fabulous and we sure did our best to help out the local economy.

 We heard that it was the worst March ever, weather-wise in the north east.  There was even a snow and ice storm on the morning that we got home, but thankfully it was all over with by the time we arrived.  It's always good to get home and I will have a lot to keep me busy, but it was so good to have a lazy month away in warmer climes.