Sawtooth Shirt Quilt

The Sawtooth Shirt Quilt began as part of the first shirt quilt, as you see in this photograph of my sketch on the felt wall. With some help from my advisor, I avoided  ruining the soft look of the curves in the Wave Shirt Quilt with these bold graphic sawtooth strips. They were set aside for a second project which is finished this week. 

Wave Shirt quilt with sawtooth strips on felt wall

I had a lot of sawtooth made out of three repurposed shirts, a blue-gray linen and the burgundy and white shirts from my pals Tom and Peter.  The sawtooth strips are edged with long vintage printed gold fabric and some wider blue or more burgundy shirt fabric. To make the second design I went looking in my pile of yardage fabrics, where I found a blue and orange-gold homespun plaid, also a thrift store find, that seemed to work into the color scheme quite well. This homespun looks and feels like a shirt fabric making a nice complement to the others from real shirts. Then, I wanted something to lighten the whole picture and realized I had some natural beige linen that would be a nice soft light to add to the mostly dark composition. Beige linen makes a good resting spot for the eye as well as a place to show off the hand quilting in the overall design. This top finished up being 8 inches taller than the Wave Shirt Quilt because I had so much of the sawtooth strip made. Since I was thinking about my friends who inspired the quilts the differences in the two men felt like they are reflected in the different designs using their shirts.

Finished Sawtooth Shirt Quilt. 46"x 68"

On the back again in a thrift store I found a beautiful burgundy cotton sheeting and I had solid burnt orange yardage that together would make this quilt back a little different from the Wave Shirt Quilt while a little the same. I was lucky to find a rusty orange perle cotton #12 at Suzzie's Quilt shop in Manassas to complement the homespun plaid and set to work quilting straight away.

back of the Sawtooth Shirt Quilt

For the quilting design I chose to follow the 45 degree angles in the saw tooth's half triangle squares as my pattern lines. It was a coincidence that they were going in opposite directions on the two sections of the quilt top. When I finished basting the layers of cotton, linen top and back together with a fine wool batting, I used the Hera tool with a long metal straight edge to mark diagonal lines across the majority of the top, then shorter lines in the other direction making a arrow point angled design where the two sections meet. 

label is hand embroidery on a blue-gray linen scrap including the content to help advise for cold water wash and low temperature drying.  

Sawtooth Shirt Quilt 46"x 68"

Wave Shirt Quilt finished 46"x 60"

side by side two quilts made from Tom, Peter, my father Clarence and some anonymous fellow's shirts.

Mid July with Mom

The middle of July is when my mother was born. 81 years ago this year and we packed up and went out to spend a couple days with her. Keith walked the garden and selected a few pretty flowers to take for a table arrangement, I packed up my little gift of hand made lavender sachets plus a new purple cone flower and we took off to buy a nice birthday cake at Whole Foods and make the drive out to Manassas.

yellow day lily is a new cut flower for our mid-summer bouquets 

We discovered from Pure Mädderlake that day lilies keep on blooming after cut one day at a time.

Keith the florist on Monday July 15th wrote his journal beside his center piece for mom's birthday

This time of year is usually so hot you can barely breath but this is just beginning to be the start of heat in DC above 90º. We have had great levels of rainfall and no one has had to water anything until now. When we arrived it was a delight to see Mom's garden looks great and is in big bloom and to know she hasn't had to put much effort into maintaining it thus far. We visited a while and made a nice lunch while we caught up on all the news. We took a trip to Lowe's and Home Depot to find some new plants for the garden a kind of tradition for our birthday gift to mom.

Then later we decided to risk a dinner on the lake outdoors in the "heat" on the deck at Logan's Road House. As it turned out this was the perfect night to go. It cooled down and there was a nice breeze and clear blue skies over the deck as we enjoyed the birds swooping over and under the deck. Canada geese, Mallard ducks, and Barn swallows are all around the deck and on the lake. Over in the shrubs by the lakes edge we heard song sparrows singing as we arrived. When we got home we dove into a nice slice of lemon curd topped vanilla cake with a butter cream icing.  Made the mistake of eating it before the butter cream got to room temperature but it still was a nice finish to the meal.

Then Monday the sun came up and the heat started to climb. We enjoyed breakfast but were concerned the AC wasn't keeping up with the heat out side. It was four degrees above the setting on the thermostat so Mom called in the service man from Sears to have a look. While we were eating a delicious Pannera lunch he arrived and quickly found that there was a leak in the coolant lines which would require a repair man, not him a lowly service maintenance guy. To get a repair man would take four days wait since it was so late in the day and at the beginning of a heat wave. We decided to go looking for a solution to the muggy in the house while we had to wait out the next few days. We turned off the AC to let the frozen lines defrost and see how long it took. The system wasn't totally out it still functioned part way. At 81 Keith and I were very concerned about mom waiting for this repair in a hot house. Mom found a little table top oscillating fan that was used at a great price and we brought it home and with that in addition to the struggling central AC unit it was quite pleasant to sit in the living room even with the high heat outdoors. The phone line was also not working right. It came and went, in and out, one minute it was fine and worked then next it was dead and no calls or messages got through. That requires a cable company repair to come and all these repairs require brother David to handle his dogs so that these people can come to the house without fear of injury or the dogs escaping to the streets. The levels of stress that all this mishap added to our "happy birthday" celebration was one to be remembered. In the end I planted the new plants in the ground, watered and mulched, we ate delicious cake and enjoyed beautiful flowers. Jenny and Frank sent a wonderful bouquet of flowers from a new to us Haymarket florist that were a delight to see. We also have Casa Blanca lilies blooming in the yard and at home. I always associate them with Mom's birthday since they usually bloom on or near the 15th of July.

Jenny and Frank's arrangement with a bunch of casa blanca lily and soft pink roses & white daisies.

We got to enjoy the really unusually green scenery and trees at home and all along the route. I made a video of the deck where I sat mornings to write in my journal under the big American Beech tree that we dug up in the forest as a sapling back in the early 1960's with Dad who died five years ago on the day after mom's birthday. It is a great reminder of him and how much he loved flowers and gardens and trees. When we moved into the Manassas house back in 1964 there were only foundation plantings and one little maple tree in the yard. He soon turned it into a forest and ever since I have been a tree hugger because I know what it is like to live in the heat of a pasture with no shade! I used to marvel at the number of plants and trees my mom's dad knew the name of when we went on long drives. He would point them out and ask if I knew them. I do now and it's fun to think of that as a tradition brought to the city by me from my ancestors who come from the  woodlands of Appalachia.

American beech tree planted to shade the back of the house with dad in the 1960's

glider and potted hostas on the deck in Manassas 

Here is a short video sample of the view and songs of birds and cicada July 16th on the deck in Manassas:

We had a lot of unplanned repairs to see scheduled on this trip but soon as those are done it will be good to know that mom will be snug as a bug in a rug with her AC and phone line working and her flower garden blooming pretty pink and white flowers. Then on the next trip we will celebrate like Alice's friend, the Mad Hatter, all 351 Unbirthdays to come!

new potatoes and green beans

Jenny-Leigh, Dad and Freddy on the Nunley's Narrows back porch before they put up the awning to give it some shade in the hot afternoons.

grand parents Sallie and George Nunley on their living room couch sometime in the 1960's just how I remember them when we were down there visiting one hot summer's evening.

The Nunley home place in Narrows Virginia, center shows the house's back porch as it was two summers ago.

Mom, Aunt Emma-Lou her sister and I sitting on the Nunley's back porch rocker and two person glider in Narrows, Virginia

That's what grandmother's glider looked like (from eBay item) only it sits in the shade on the concrete pad porch off the kitchen door.

My latest pot of freshly snapped green beans and new potatoes ready to simmer up a summer dinner treat.

This is my 4th or 5th pot of green beans and new potatoes this summer. I was visiting Manassas farmers market and saw them back in early June. I thought they would make a nice switch from spring greens salad or broccoli we have been enjoying. We have been trying to make more veggies part of our menu and this looked like a fresh new meal. I questioned Mother about how she makes hers and she says, you don't have to use fatback pork in them like the old folks did, she just uses some butter. I bought a batch home I used salt, black pepper and about two tablespoons of sweet cream butter. Amazing how fresh and delicious those freshly picked beans and small newly harvested small potatoes taste.

As a child I remember spending summer time with grandmother Sallie Nunley at the kitchen table or on the back porch glider snapping those long string beans from Grandpa's garden. We had to cut off the top stem and pull the strings out back then, modern beans don't have strings anymore. I always got a thrill out of that sensation & the sound: snap, snap, snap as I broke the beans into three sections. It is a lot like popping bubbles on bubble wrap, need I say more?

If you try some make sure they are local freshly picked green beans. I made the mistake of buying some "fresh green beans" at Whole Foods and where ever they came from they didn't taste half as good as the fresh beans from the Manassas farmer's market and subsequent fresh farm green beans from Washington DC's farmers markets once they arrived.

Digging around looking for photos of that glider I realized today would be my father's 80th birthday if he had survived his maladies. It's nearly two years since he died. These little things like beans and potatoes bring back sweet memories of summer time with his family when I was a child. I know those folks back in the Appalachian mountains ate a lot of home grown vegetables. It's nice to have that heritage and I think it has impacted my love of flower gardening as an adult. Now I like green beans and new potatoes but I as a kid I didn't care much for them the way grandmother cooked them till they were brown with pork fat. My mom however makes them really good in a modern smart way.

bird and wild flower puzzling

barcelona box set

wide view of puzzle parts with box and beverages

bluejay up close and cardinal above him

scrambled egg with cheese and toast or what I call a good breakfast made by mom

I was home again this week for a visit with Mom, and we dismantled the Christmas tree and we packed it up together.  I got my laundry rolling right away and ate some lunch and Mom showed me how far she had come working on a  500 piece jig saw puzzle our family friend Karen sent for Christmas. We used to always have a puzzle which my Dad used to find or buy or some how get on a card table to be worked while waiting on meals and guests over the holidays. Karen must remember working on it when she came to visit with her family years ago and helps us keep the tradition going this year. Dad was a great puzzle solver with his Architectural visual perceptions of space and form. Mom finds it a challenge but one she wanted to explore more to sharpen her mind. I jumped in to add my skills which are OK at this sort of work and lessen the struggle it is to work a puzzle alone. The puzzle was spread out on the dinning room table this time so we had to eat our meals on the edge of the puzzle and that kept us both interested every time we sat down to eat during my visit. Mornings I had a hard time concentrating on my ritual writing morning pages with the puzzle in front of me calling out to be worked.  I had to stop to eat a lovely breakfast and this picture helps me appreciate how great having a Mother who likes to cook for her family is.  I took a few pictures of the progress the last day  to share and to compare when I go back next time. As I began the cardinal was all put together (Mom's favorite bird) and most of the blue jay. Some of you know I love watching birds and wild flowers so this puzzle really did ring my chimes. I knew all the names of the birds and have seen them all live and in person many times. The blue bird is maybe the rarest in Washington DC but I did spot a small flock of them while out on a Christmas Bird Count on the big campus of the old soldier's home in 2006. I wonder if there will still be blue birds in DC after they take up part of the soldiers home campus for retail and residential development?  I can say, this puzzle was extra fun and maybe a little easier because of the birds and the flowers I love. 

When I got home to DC, after my visit, I was greeted by a happy partner who helped me unload the clean folded  laundry and carry in the goods from shopping I did on the way home. Soon after we got things in and settled my phone rang and my Dutch pen pal Cor Windhouwer was on the other end asking for me. We have never spoken on the phone but he was so excited at receiving the Barcelona Box and books he said he wanted to call and tell me before he went to bed. It was a great surprise to get a call from him. Now he knows how I sound even thought we have never met. I spent over two years working on the book and box. The result is a new book and box  holding the precious paintings Cor painted on top of the photos his friend Mr. Waelput gave him from a long ago trip to Barcelona, Spain. We didn't talk long on this first call but just enough to enjoy the exchange of our first conversation via telephone. Years of emails and shared art projects make this a very special event for us that rounds out our relationship. I was relieved to hear the package arrived without damage and in tact fully protected from elements and miss handling and Cor was happy to report he loves his special book set. It was nice to hear his excitement about finally having his book of Barcelona paintings home safely and in an original Frederick box and book. 

Later while eating our late afternoon lunch we got drawn into the exciting news of the amazing emergency landing of a US Airways plane on the Hudson River where it was extremely cold. Happily everyone got out alive and mostly unharmed starting off a new year with something more than just hope for things going better. Inauguration in DC is a great unknown. I will be watching from the safety of our apartment and celebrating a change in our fine city and nation. 

August, in the middle of

orange butterfly purple flowers

orange blackberry lily

brown moth on bricks

orange heirloom tomatoes 

1970's orange wall phone 

orange butterfly

orange monarch butterfly 

woodpecker on choke cherry tree

small woodpecker

orange cock's comb

Manassas finches with orange beak

Well, this weekend is cool and clear like last! What a delight it is to have perfect weather inthe middle of  August. I am  just home from another trip to Manassas where mom and I went to get some fruits and vegetables at the farm market after probating Dad's will with the court and dropping off some tax records. Orange was everywhere and I am moved to post some things orange but also birds and butterflies not to mention some bees and a bouquet of lovely cock's comb in a vintage yellow McCoy vase that Keith bought in a second hand store recently while I was watching laundry spin in the dryers. This morning outside while I was writing I heard a sound and noticed a little woodpecker on the crusty old choke cherry tree. It didn't mind me at all, so I pulled out the camera to take a few zoom photos of him among the vines.  I suppose there are a lot of bugs under that dead English ivy vine clinging to the crusty bark. The dead leaves have been falling all summer, crunchy under foot. I really enjoyed looking at this woodpecker chipping away at the tree. The zoom photographs didn't turn out as detailed as I hoped but still it is a record and that was the only bird I saw in the yard this morning. I saw the monarch butterfly on the butterfly bush's purple blooms and caught it drinking nectar. While in Manassas I got a photo of a couple of the exotic finches my brother Dave gave to my parents a year or two ago. The brown one is a Spice Finch and the orange marked one is called a Zebra Finch and they have different songs they sing when ever inspired. Usually they sing when my cell phone rings.  Also in my camera I have a shot of the arrangement that Keith made from leftover orange cock's comb and some sort of yellow dried flowers from last year. His arrangements this week for his Ikebana blog have been very exciting, even exotic and you can go see them here >>>> SOGETSUDC. I haven't figured out which arragnement is my favorite yet. Earlier in the week I was happy to take Keith downtown to buy a new seamless back ground paper to put behind our still life photos. I think he has become a really good flower arrangement photographer. I began encouraging him to try back in 1999 to do his own. I was surprised to learn then he has been working with flowers for many years and didn't have a professional portfolio and the reason was mostly because he didn't know much about making studio photographs. I didn't either but I knew we could figure it out.  

I do still live photos of  my books and boxes. The worst part of it is figuring what arrangement looks best and how to light them. Then while I was in Manassas I decided to go downstairs and get a quick shot of the orange wall phone. It has been there since originally installed in the late 1960's or early 1970's I forget which. Dad installed that dark walnut paneling in his rooms and there was an orange shag carpet and this matching orange phone! The rotary dial still works and the cord is about 12-14 feet long. That was before cordless phones so when I was in high school I used to talk for hours on that phone and wander around the room twisting the cord and pulling it over obstacles. I found another 1970's tabletop phone with a rotary dial in a deep red last week at the antique store. This week my mother bought it for me as a birthday gift. It is now connected to my phone line with a jack splitter so I can use both: the wireless and the corded phone on the same phone line. When the power goes out due to storms in this part of North East Washington, and it did last week,  I have a hard wired line now I can use for some calls in the dark. I haven't photographed the red phone yet but it makes me smile and feel good to have a touch of the past around that still works. Technology has changed  so quickly a little touch of the past is a bit of reassurance that not everything is out dated. Another thing I saw on my way out the door this morning to write in the garden was a brown moth. It was in the corner of a window. I disturbed it causing it to fly off to the brick wall in the stairwell. Even brown is lovely next to pink and purple gray bricks which some people might call red. 

Well, I am sure I have written too much and loaded way too many photos for a normal well edited blog post.  I am seeing beauty everywhere all the time and photographing what I see is such fun that I would like to show you them all, but I can't.  I have so many photographs  I can't keep up and posting it is a real challenge. I am slowly loading some up on  Flickr.com to my new web gallery that Keith gave to me. I just added a slide show feature to this blog and it scrolls through all the pictures in the flicker gallery on my "orange explains it all" page.  Next perhaps I will develop a book of photos on some theme with one of the new web based book publishers. They print out books of anyone who wants to pay a new technology I want to try out!

 I love to hear your comments. Please drop over to the blog and look at the bottom of each post for the comments icon to share your thoughts or send me an email directly if that doesn't work. 

brookland houses and gardens

 

sears & roebucks house - garage

roofers on the sears house

orange garage

porky pig in the garden

nice porch 

barber's chair with rust and rotting leather seat

I went for a late afternoon walk last week and saw a few interesting things in the blocks around our apartment. I have been admiring this big house on the corner of 12th street for a few years. When I first discovered it the owner was working on the columns of the front porch. He had stripped all the paint down to the wood and was priming them white to portect them from the Carpenter Bees! He told me that he lives elsewhere but keeps this house with plans to refurbish it in it's original style as best he can, " the Sears and Roebuck mail order house"  is a beauty with it's matching garage for a dainty Model - T Ford.

Orange: I found the little garage from earlier this spring behind the dogwood tree on Sigsbee St. is looking hot in the summer heat under the big fir tree. Then further along, I caught sight of a big concrete pig in one yard surrounded by plants, stones and gravel with no lawn to mow, it is a very green design. This porch  looked very welcoming to me I imaged how nice it would be to sit and rock in a chair or glide on a glider and talk while the world went by there. Finally there was an unkempt yard behind a broken down gate that had two old barbers chairs sitting rusting and rotting in the shade. This chair brought so many memories back that I had to take a shot and show you. This chair reminded me of childhood hair cuts. I liked to hear the straight edge razor blades swiping over the long leather strops. After the buzz of the hair clippers for my flat top haircut we always got a quick shave of the neck and around ears before we were done. Barber finished clipping the head dusted the face and shoulders then he opened the collar clip to curl down the paper collar and dust away any hairs that got down your neck. He retightened the clip that held the apron and paper in place lower on the neck then applied the hot foamy shaving cream to the neck and above the ear. Next came the sound of stropping quickly smacking the razor back and forth on the leather strop attached to the counter top or the chair I forget, then he carefully trimmed all the edges.  Last after the apron and collar came off the barber applied the special tonic and finished it off with some powder and more dusting of your face and clothes with his big brush. My Dad used to say we were," going to get our ears lowered." I always got visions of my ears being sliced off by those big old barbers stropping their shinny cutthroat razors but they are still in tact so I see now it was just a joke after all.

Narrows Virginia

Aunt Alice

Aunt Alice's townhouse

Grandma Nunley's Kitchen

Nunley home with flowering four o'clocks

nice green chair

coal buckets in the garage

magenta & red four o'clocks

view of the Narrow pass and Nunley house from Aunt Alices' back yard

yellow speckled four o'clocks

Narrows, Virginia is where my father's family lived when he was a teenager in the 1940s and where he took me and my sister Jenny to stay with his parents and our aunts and uncles for about 6 weeks each summer. Visiting last weekend for his funeral we got to spend a night in the old family house which remains little changed from my childhood. My Aunt Alice still owns the house as well as hers which is right next door. Aunt Alice also has a mountain house and some acres up in the back country where she prefers to spend her time nearer to nature and her mountain friends. I have fond memories of being there those summers we were left to be spoiled by Grand ma & pa Nunley and  Aunt Beth in Narrows, then also the fun of staying up at Aunt Alice & Uncle Kenny's mountain farm with ponies, turkeys, chickens, phesants and wild life! The diamond back rattle snakes I don't remember so fondly but we did meet with them now and then and I learned to watch my step very carefully. Hoot owls and mountain lions or wild cats cries at night made it kind of scary to get to sleep with all the windows open.  This is coal country in the deep Appalachian mountains but my family didn't work in coal mines, they all worked at a thread spinning factory which is still there today. I recall they were on shifts working day and night so we always had to be careful not to wake the sleepers. 7-11, 11-7 and 7-3 all around the clock. Food was always cooking for one meal or another in grandma's Kitchen. I remember fondly the delicious home made cakes she used to bake for my birthdays which were sometimes celebrated in Narrows. The town Narrows is across the New river which passes by just down the hill from this house. In one picture from Aunt Alice's town house you can see the mountains go up from the narrow pass that gives the town it's name. The Nunley Narrows home had a couple big gardens for food and various flowers grew all around to cheer up the place back when I was a kid. One that I recall being especially nice which has survived to this day is the lovely batch of four o'clocks that grow and reseed along the driveway on the side of the house. Jenny and I collected seeds and brought them home to plant many times. I have a front yard full of them now and Jenny in Texas says she has them year round in her climate but they only bloom part of the year. They open late in the day and stay open all night with a sweet perfume that draws moths who pollenate. This house used to be heated by a large coal burning furnace that was in the basement along with the wash machines and the coal storage bin and a lot of jars of canned foods from the big garden. It was part of the work they did each summer to can the fresh tomatoes and green beans and sometimes there were pickles and always some strawberry jam. We usually missed the fresh strawberries my grandfather grew from the garden but the jam was always there. I was very picky, I hated the seeds in strawberry jam so I used the excellent grape jelly Grandma made mostly for me. I did say I was spoiled, didn't I? She had a neighbor down the road who had some nice concord grapes on a vine that grew along her front porch. I don't know how Grandma managed to get a tub full of those grapes every summer to make grape jelly for me, but I sure am glad she did. I have a lot of fond memories as most of us do of our grand parents and childhood and I miss those days in some ways but I am glad now to be grown up and in control of my own life. I got one thing I wish I hadn't from those mountains a fear of driving on the curvy roads. I would love to go back and stay longer but I honestly get white knuckles when I have tried to drive over the mountains to grandmothers house.