Saint Patricks day snow

 There is  snow everywhere, on St. Patrick's day it's kind of unusual for us to see snow in Washington, D.C. The neighbors on Twitter say we got eight inches in Brookland this morning. I have not been out to measure with a ruler but in the back it sure looks eight inches deep on our table and chairs. Yesterday I spent a warm Sunday working on my quilts and reading about the Irish Great Famine of 1845-52 and how the English landlords took tons of food and profits out of Ireland, as capitalists do, they just looked to their own bottom line, ignoring the misery. Millions died of starvation and a few million more left and immigrated all around the world. Many came to Boston and New York where they had food available and work to earn a living for their families. Feels like everyone has some Irish roots or at least on St. Patrick's day they enjoy trying to feel Irish. Wikipedia has a great page describing the whole horrible history in detail.
Being an orange sort of guy, I always wondered about the colors of this holiday. It seems that Orange is the color of the protestants in Ireland the English allies and that comes from the Dutch King William of Orange who ruled the English with his English wife Mary from 1788-1794. The same King William Williamsburg Va. is named for and the college called William & Mary honors. Mixed up world of history and colors so my orange isn't my political statement, it's simply my color preference. I think green is a nice color too and I have several green quilts in my folio and a great grandmother who traced her roots to Ireland most likely from the famine years.

 

The past few days I am struggling with my current project of log cabin blocks. I thought I was going to do a very modern open design but the call of the repeat is winning out. I might have to do a couple different versions in the end but I sure feel the need to go all orange purple on this one today. 

In the 2nd picture it looks OK but on my wall those white and gray bits kind of feel out of place. Maybe it's just that I like the way the color dances when it's all bright and strong versus the softer areas. I love the subtle white and gray shifts but they are such high contrast to the orange purple it makes me want to separate them. You can see in these pictures I was heading toward an orange purple mix originally then shifted to mixed blocks of orange and gray then white on white... I didn't start out with a clear idea of where I would end up. I just go with the flow of each day's inspirations.

 Perhaps my problem is being too slavish to the log cabin block and not adding bigger areas of simple whites like I started doing in the earlier version when I didn't have so many orange blocks. I did reach a point where the plain bits of white and off white fabric felt too difficult to assemble in a way that did not distract from the log cabin construction so I sent them aside. I will have to take it all apart  and see what happens if I mix it up again. So hang in there and wait to see where I go next? I am not sure and nothing is settled until it is done.
Meanwhile spring is trying to arrive so those lovely crocus in our gardens are just below a big blanket of protective snow. Inside we had a nice surprise this weekend. Keith's orchid has been blooming and his walking iris bloomed yesterday! We also forced some quince collected from Phyllis' garden in the wilds of Manassas. Walking iris is a tropical and grows like the spider plant so many of us had in the 1970s when it was discovered to be good for our indoor air to grow house plants. This iris gets shoots that develop flowers and they turn into new plants right on the leaf meaning we get babies every spring. The flower is open one day and smells so sweet it's like a gardenia. All it needs is some light and a little water now and then.

Happy St. Patrick's Snow day to all my Irish friends. Please let me know if I got any of this history wrong or if you have ideas about where my quilt could go. An

other quilt project brewing is a pin wheel quilt top that might be kind of a rainbow affair.

Progress and a visit home

 After a few hours of blind stitching the edges of the Williamsburg Fences quilt all it needed was a label to complete the project.  I dug up a square of green fabric and did a crude embroidery lettering to put on the back. I chose red thread because  the stripe on the reverse has a tiny red stripe between the greens.
I went out to Manassas for a few days. I used this quilt while I was visiting my Mom. It was chilly at night watching TV. I am happy with the results and might make another only bigger next time. I still have a lot to learn about machine and hand quilting.

edges finished and the label applied for Williamsburg Fences lap quilt 

 Then I set to work finishing up triangular side pieces for the blue and white diamond plate quilt. I found a nice baby blue polka dot fabric to run along between the diamond blocks to give it a grid and make it a little bigger so now I think it will fit a double bed when completed with a boarder. .

peek at the diamond plate block quilt top

 I planted a couple dozen tulips and hyacinths in the Japanese red maple bed then added some chrysanthemums to the bed where begonias were looking sad. The daylily pots are there to keep the leaf blowers from wrecking the new mums.

Mom's spring bulbs planted with some chrysanthemums 

 Keith sent home a big bunch of purple lisianthus which were green when he got them and they bloomed out to fully perfect flowers. They fit nicely in the pot from "olde town Manassas"

purple lisianthus 

purple lisianthus in the dinning room with the rooster motif

Time to think about getting back to the Oranges and put some more effort into my Seminole stripes and strips since the leaves outside are full of sunshine and inspiration as the autumn colors begin to show their full color here in DC!

Bustling October

This has been a busy time of year as it usually is but I was astonished how many things were going on that I could not get to because of some climax on October 13th. The two big events I did attend were The DC Modern Quilt Guild's meeting at NGA's Sculpture Garden and my good friends Peter Montgomery and Dan Vera's wedding at the Thrugood Marshall Center. I got to do show and tell and enjoy a visit with 4 quilters in the garden from 10-noon and stitch a few stitches on my Williamsburg throw quilt and show them my bigger quilts in process. Then they showed theirs and it was just warm enough and very quiet down in the gardens where they are beginning to build the ice rink for skating that opens next month. Then I was home for lunch and packed up the 12 lovely mason jars of roses and garden flowers Keith arranged for Dan and Pete's wedding. I delivered them and got to participate in the wedding by tying a ribbon around their hands with all the Lavender friends and family and then enjoyed the picnic theme pot luck dinner and huge delicious wedding Cake made by Chris the baker! I think the plastic ants he brought and Dan's grass table cloths were really fun and made the picnic theme come alive with none of the real problems of out door events.

Pictures of the quilts and wedding are in my flickr.com collections here:

DC Modern Quilt Guild 

Peter and Dan's Wedding 

Things I had to miss included, Peter Wood's Art Soiree in Middleburg VA.
Mid-City Artists Open Studios, Washington DC
Sketch Crawl Internationale's quarterly sketch crawl in DC with Urban sketchers...
There was more but we can not do everything. What a splendid life of plentiful joys.\
Hope you got to do something wonderful this October weekend the best time of year in Washington DC to do almost anything.

walking foot

walking foot on the machine

a white plastic part of the foot catches the needle screw and rises and falls with the needle. That lifts the teeth of  foot to pull the fabric under the needle on top, matching the action of the lower feed dog teeth. 

walking foot 

New walking foot attachment arrived last week and I got right to work on the small green and white Williamsburg fence pattern quilt. I ripped out all the quilt stitching I did at the meeting of the DC modern quilt guild meeting in September using the flat foot.
I decided to do a test swatch and quilted a  pot holder square with the walking foot before I began on the quilt. it worked really well!

Then I added a bunch of new safety pins to the quilt to secure the layers. Then I began quilting the bigger project.  It works, it moves along so much better than the flat foot did. The walking foot pulls the fabric on top with teeth just like the "feed dog" does on the bottom under the foot. They move along in unison under the needle sewing very smoothly. The thick fabric, batting and backing is a fat sandwich of materials to pass under the needle of the sewing machine. It still needs to be basted together before sewing and I tried the safety pin basting trick. I was disappointed they didn't work perfectly but this was my first try using them. I bought a bunch more to make sure I had them pinned in about every six inches. It looks, as Keith says, kind of punk rock with so many safety pins.

quilt top with safety pins.

detail of the quilting with safety pin basting 

back striped side of the Williamsburg fence quilt 

Next comes the tape on the edges and some hand blind stitching to hold in on the back side... and this one will be done very soon. Then I can move on to the next project and practice more quilting on another small quilt. I know now that I am not ready to do a large quilt with this machine quilting technique yet. I hope with practice I will be able to do some very nice work on a full bed sized quilt. It's much faster than hand quilting as I expected. Thanks for loaning me your Singer sewing machine Mom, as you see the walking foot fits your Singer too!

DC Modern Quilt Guild

Williamsburg fence blocks ready for backing. 

Saturday I went to my first quilt guild meeting. It was an all day sewing affair with about a dozen artists who work with fabric to do wonderful things. The meeting space was perfect for sewing and that is what we did from 10-4PM there were tables and we brought our tools. The goal was to get some work done on a charity 100 quilts for children. I am still trying to figure out how to use my vintage sewing machine to do quilting on a big fabric sandwich. I had my 3x5" quilt top the Williamsburg Fence design ready to quilt. I laid it out twice to pin it together with the batting and the backing just right. I got there on time to help set up in North Arlington at a beautiful new library community room. We had tables with plugs and plenty of space light and chairs. It was perfect. The group was welcoming and I really had a great time. I got lots of tips from everyone but especially Elle who also gave a demo on some triangle squares. I only took a few photos at the end just to show that I was there and help me remember a few faces for future meetings. The green and white project is going on hold until I get a walking foot attachment to make the machine quilting work correctly. I tried but it didn't work with the straight foot I have.
Today we head to the bay for a week of creative work in Molly's red cottage! I can't wait.
Thanks to everyone at the guild for making me feel so welcome and normal. I can't wait for next month's meet up in the NGA sculpture garden. I have to bring some rose star English paper pieced blocks to show and who knows what else...

Jessie was a sweetheart and brought her Dresden plate Epp applique blocks to show me but I didn't know she wanted to see mine until I met her... Next time Jessie~!

I sat next to Carrie who is due in Dec. and was making that great star pattern block you can see in the next photo. 

Two projects begun at the meet up. 

Elle there with her blue shirt and back to us was the most help to me with my first time machine quilting project and she demonstrated a cool block trick for triangle squares. 

Jelly roll in red turquoise and whites makes us all smile

Williamsburg with pins

with backing and batting and ready to sew

the problem with my machine stitching without the walking foot is the bunching of the fabric. 

presently quilting

gate and fence of pickets in Colonial Willamsburg (inspiration)

blue plate parts for Dresden plate blocks 

blue skies and white clouds so clear in September

part of the Williamsburg design

gardens behind the big houses are always fenced in Colonial Williamsburg

I am working in this great weather in the garden a little and with the sewing machine a lot. I set the hand sewing down to move back to the 20th century machine and get a little quick satisfaction. The trip last week to VA to get more green fabric was a boon and I got right to work on a small throw using the green and white pattern I am calling Williamsburg's fences. I am also making great progress on the Dresden plate blocks. The speed that comes with a machine and the rotary cutter and a ruler is amazing. I think I will have a full queen sized Dresden plate top done by this time next week. I have completed a small top in the green and white Williamsburg pattern to test the vintage Singer sewing machine as my quilting machine. Mr. Burger, at the sewing repair shop who sold it to me, claimed it was an excellent machine for quilting in spite of it's age. So we will see soon if he was he was telling the truth. This first year it has done very well on piecing but now I am ready to test it further.

This cooler clear weather of the last week has really been a great stimulus to creativity for me or at least I feel like working long hours on these projects. Also driving my ambition is my first visit to the DC Modern Quilt Guild meeting Saturday. They meet once a month to work and share some time as a group of Washington DC area quilters. I am excited to meet and work with them and share stories. Maybe I will learn something new from the experienced quilters. I am especially excited to see a demo by Elle of something about a stencil for a square made from triangles that is suppose to make them easier to sew.

Then we get to go to the Chesapeake bay cottage we used last summer. At the bay I will have all my tools and lots of time to draw and sew and quilt and walk and enjoy the weather with my partner. We are looking forward to getting out of the city for a little retreat. My first plan is to lay out the Rose-Star quilt and get it basted to the batting and backing on the big bare floors of the bay house. Then I can begin to quilt the layers together.

from Ebay a real blue and white Dresden porcelain plate circa 1880's

The cardinal looking for handouts

sage is so silvery this morning and smells to remind me soon Thanksgiving will be here  

poke berries looking good 

In the garden today a cardinal came to visit and sing and seemed to be looking for the feeder that I put out a couple days ago that the sparrows emptied last evening. He wasn't very shy and I got a quick shot of him perched on the choke cherry tree. I was moved by the color of the Sage and the Poke berries as they ripen and draw the mocking birds to the garden. After taking pictures I spent an hour clipping over grown grasses away from the edges of our side and front yard flower beds. Perfect weather meant this job barely make me break out in a laborious sweat. Now it's time to get back to the sewing and preparations for a delicious dinner.