It Snowed AGAIN!

View from our class room. Its snowing on the other side of the lake.

I have spent the last 2 days in my pink flannel (Christmas sock monkey) jammies.  No, I don’t have a cold.  It’s just the coziest outfit I have and it’s pink.  I am just resting up after a fun and busy week at my Flowers on the Lake retreat on beautiful Lake Tahoe.   

The water is so clear.

Pearl taking a break.

Helen and her vibrant clematis.

You know you must have had a good time even though your feet still hurt and you have slept 12 hours straight for 2 days but there is still a smile on your face.  At one point I did question if I had bit off more than I could chew as I tried to meet the needs of a room full of 20 panicky women on that first day. The first day of all classes you have a room full of big eyes with questioning looks.

Kathy's sunflower.

Gale's roses.

We had some exciting moments and I learned that I can’t do it all.  But I can’t wait to try it again next year.

Starting to snow on the lake.

We did have some exciting moment when one of the students got sick and we had to call the fire department for help. Nothing perks up a group of woman quicker than cute young firemen walking through the room. Makes you forget you where just in a panic.

The weather was crazy. But it seems to be crazy this year all over the country. Is God trying to say something?  So, of course it did snow the second day and the girls from Arizona got all excited.  

It's only June 1.  Why not snow?

Pat and Cathy in the snow.

The student that traveled the farthest to the retreat was Donna. She and her husband came all the way from Massachusetts where it was 95 degrees and humid. Thank God she brought a sweater at the last minute.

Thread Play on a coneflower.

Claire's hibiscus.

Jan's zinnia 

Linda working hard!

Joe and I talked and I am going to try it again next May.  I like the end of May because we have the whole place to ourselves.  It’s quiet and peaceful.  

View from above!

On the last night I stood up on the second floor and looked down at the class as they worked so intensely. I was pooped, but the room was filled with beautiful colors and you could feel the spark of creativity.  Some sat contently, admiring their finished flower. 

Donna's inspiration photo.

She's got it!

Kim's zinnia.

Dede working on a fabulous quilt she started in a Janet Fogg class.

Cheri's clematis from her own hand dyed fabrics.

Leila and her flowers.

Ruby's hibiscus from her husband's photo.

I felt like a proud mother watching the group.  I thought to myself, who would have predicted that the little dyslexic girl, who felt so retarded at one point in her life, would have a group of talented, dynamic women drive 100s of miles to take a class from her?  God is so good!  

Hope to see you next year! If not at Tahoe maybe in New York in December at the Hudson River Valley Art Rhttp://www.artworkshops.com/

Yards (and yards) of Thread

Painting by Delilah Smith 

   (Second time posting this blog.  Blogger seems to have lost everyone's blogs this week.)


Today I counted how many spools of thread I have gone through since I started quilting Monet in Pasadena.  So far it's 3,600 yards. That's a lot and I just started.  I think it's starting to look good.  Whenever I start a new quilt the first few days are frustrating and pure torture and I hate everything I am doing. I just want to throw it away.  Joe will tell you I am not a happy camper. That must be the temperamental artist in me.  I hate being like that.   Then I turn a corner and, hopefully, start to see it coming to life.

Here are some tools I can’t live without when quilting: tweezers, stilettos, curved-tip snips, sticky tape roller (you might call a lint roller), and a curved-tip knife, which is really a scalpel, I think. These are all my fix-it tools.  That means YES I can take out and put back in my stitches as I go.  It’s like having a big  eraser.  If you spell a word wrong you can just erase it.  The eraser has always been a very useful and much needed tool in my life.  I used to get so mad at myself in school after erasing so many words on the page that the paper looked really messy.   But I guess that was preparing me for now. 

I call what I am doing sketching or coloring with my thread.  Some call this quilting. But I don’t think that is what I am really doing. Yes, I am quilting the 3 layers together, but it’s more like weaving the colors of fabric together with the thread.  I am visualizing as I quilt that I have a crayon in my hand and I am filling in and adding detail with the crayon/thread.  I focus on one small space at a time.  That way I don't get overwhelmed or distracted.  I roll, fold, smush and squeeze my quilt to get the area I want to work on under my needle. This is a home machine I am using, a Bernina 158.

I have also been using a thread conditioner called Sewer Add. This helps the rayon thread not to fray too much, which it will do because it is rayon and going through heavy fabrics. But don’t get it confused with the Fray Check bottle - they look alike in the bottom of a drawer.

Back of the quilt.

I am also using some 40 weight thread along with my normal 30 weight rayon thread.  The quilt is  predominantly blues and greens.  I felt I needed more shades of blue and green thread to add the depth and detail.  The 40 weight thread comes in more colors.  I still like the look of the 30 weight but sometimes having the right color is more important than the weight of the thread.  It reminded me of how wonderful it was to have the big box of 64 colors of crayons as opposed to the 8 pack.  Even back then it was all about the color. Remember the sharpener that came on the back of the box?  I thought that was so cool.

Today I will be buying more bobbins, too.   I thought I had enough but since I need a bobbin for every color I am using I am going to splurge on a few more. Having the right tools and supplies to work with makes all the difference.

P.S. I read a blogging forum lately that suggests removing music from your site, saying that most people find it irritating. What do you think?

Stitch, stitch, STITCH!

I just bought a new iron today and it's pink! Will it not fall on the floor and break?...I don't know but I have been having that problem with irons that like to jump off my ironing board, crash to the floor and then leak water all over my quilts. So I'm hoping that this beautiful pink one will not be so jumpy. Besides, it goes with my studio.

The picture I took at the Huntington Gardens in Pasadena, CA.

A big deadline is looming over my head as I finish my Monet in Pasadena quilt. The quilt has been done since last year but I have not had time to quilt it until now.  So I made a large order to my favorite thread guy, Mike at speedstitch.com. I will hide the thread bill from my husband, as all good wives do. Bought 2 packs of new needles and  cleaned out the dust bunnies hidng in my machine then revved up the old girl I call Bertha but better know as a Bernina 158.

I love to do big quilts but maneuvering the large and heavy quilt under the machine can move the layers if you don’t have it pinned or basted really well and I've been using safety pins in the past.

On small quilts I can just safety pin the layer and start stitching in the middle and work out but not on this big girl so I tried a new pin basting device that I got from the Cotton Patch store when teaching at Asilomar.  It's a rubber plug or stop that you put on the sharp tip of your quilting straight pins. Brilliant idea. 

The new pin basting device I tried.  I think it will work better without all the fusible web.

But it didn't work that great with the fusible web.  I kept bending the straight pins trying to push it in and take it out. Now I have 50 bent pins.  Then I had an idea.  How about trying a free motion basting using really large stitches that can easily be taken out?  It’s about time to dust off the old seam ripper, if I can find it. 

My free motion basting.

But to get those big 1/2 inch stitches, I had to move my hand and the quilt really fast and my foot on the peddle has to go  really slow.  It was a little tricky at first but it seems to be working so far.

I need at least 3 weeks of solid quilting to get it done.   But only have 2 weeks to work. I guess it going to be take-out, for a few weeks. 

Pattern Success!

Well, the zinnia pattern seems to be a big hit. Just taught a 2 day class up in Pine Grove, CA, beautiful country just 45 minutes from my house.  It  reminds me a lot of Ireland without all the castles.  Anyways, there were 15 students in this class and they all brought their own color choices and all the flowers were beautiful.  This is not the easiest pattern in my collection as it has many layers but turns out wonderful.   I love watching them grow and bloom in class.  I will be teaching this again in Sisters in July and at Thimble Creek in August.  Check my calendar for more info.

You prepare 3 different color charts for each flower.  The best way to do that is to make black and white copies of the original color chart that comes with all my patterns.  With a black and white copy you just see the values of the colors and how they relate to each other and it makes it much easier to change your color palate.  Easy probably isn't the right word.  You are taking the pattern pieces for color A and pinning it to all 3 layers of  the  A fabrics on the color chart and cutting them out all at once.  

Then you would lay the cut fabrics down on the background for all 3 flowers, then do the same for the next color in the color chart, and so on.   I think there are 21 different fabrics in the pattern.  Beside sore thumbs I think I heard a little whimpering on the 3rd day.  They worked hard and persevered. I was so proud.

But last week at the Empty Spools Seminars in Pacific Grove, I had 2 very brave students who wanted to do a 3 zinnia quilt inspired by one of my quilts.  It's  a sample to show the variety of colors you could make the flower in.  I never thought that someone would want to take on the challenge of doing 3 different colors at the same time.  I thought I was the only one crazy enough to try to cut out all 3 color ways at the same time.  But, no!!!!  These girl where determined. 

That is just it.  You have to persevere through the hard parts to reap the rewards and everyone’s level of perseverance is different.  Each student comes to my classes at a different level, battling different fears and challenges.  That is what is so exciting.  But, of course, there is the naysayer  observing this from afar.

Melissa's

Nancy's

I had a student tell me one day at lunch that someone expressed to her, “I don’t know how you can even work from someone else's pattern.”   What!  If I had heard that statement or knew who that was,  I would  slap them.   We are all different.   People think they are diverse and open minded but they are not.  Let's check ourselves before we make stupid statements.  I know a group of girls that believe very strongly in diversity as long as it lines up with their beliefs and it also trickles into the quilting community.  Have you met that person who thinks it not legitimate quilting if it’s not done a certain way?  That’s not being open minded, diverse, or even polite.  

So, we in the quilting world need to cut each other some slack and, if you come to one of my classes, please know that I will help you, whatever level you are at.  At least I will try my very best.  Remember, its only fabric and we can get more.  Unless, of course, you are in Ierland and then you had better conserve.

Hidden Treasures

I love junk shops, antique stores, and garage sales.  Things that one person may call junk are someone else's gold.   There is a funky little antique/junk shop up the mountain about 10 minutes away that I love. The problem is she is never open. I have tried weekends, then she is on vacation.  I tried Wednesday or Thursday.  No luck.  It makes my heart start to beat fast just thinking of it.  Mind you, the shop does not have priceless heirlooms. That's not really my style.  But it is full of mismatches, chipped and used, odds and ends.  Her backyard is full of great rusty tools, patio stuff, buckets and just all-around crap.  I see them as garden art.  Joe shakes his head whenever I come home with some of my artist finds.  To me this shop is full of treasures and  when it is open it’s paradise for a junker like me.  

This Chinese restaurant was across the street from our hotel in Galway.

This one is for you, Tim. He is drinking Smithwick's.

Last night I watched an episode of Hoarders.  Nice segue, don’t you think?  Matt came home 4 weeks ago with his girlfriend and  took one look at the garage and said, ”Mom, are you a hoarder?”  His father shot me a glance then respond to his son “All that crap is yours!”  So I had to watch an episode just to make sure I was OK.

Park House Hotel, we circled it 8 times until we found where parking was.

I must say as I am still unpacking from our wonderful Ireland adventure and I found my bag of Irish treasure.  The second night after the Quilt Festival we drove to Galway on the west side of the country.  It’s a cool college town and you can feel the hip nature in the air. The hotel was to die for. 

First of all, we had our own beds. Always a plus. Don't get me wrong, I am passionate for my hot husband but my own bed and a pair of ear plugs and I am in heaven and so is Joe. The Park House Hotel was very elegant and reasonably priced. The next day we took a ferry ride over the Shannon River to our next stop, Dingle.  How can you not have a good time in a place called Dingle?   

Ferry Ride

Just like the roads in Ireland, the ferry was a little narrow, too.  Joe had to drive us up and onto the ferry next to a big gas tanker truck.  He got so close to the left side, not wanting to hit the truck that I couldn't get out of the car on my side. Do you think he did that on purpose? 

Just a few miles (30) from the ferry, in the tiny town of Kenvarra, we saw our first castle.  I yelled for Joe to pull the car over.  I think he thought I was yelling about his driving again.  He found a place to pull over which wasn't much but our sweet and sporty Ford Mondeo fit it nicely. We bundled up and walked around our first castle, Dunguaire Castle, circa 1520.  It was breathtaking.   

My first castle.

The best part about our first castle is that nobody was there but us and a Japanese couple that seemed to be taking the same tourist route as us that day as we saw them at several other sites, too.. There was moss  growing on the side of the 4 story stone walls.  It was so soft and green. I pulled a little off and put it in my pocket.  As we walked back to the car we closed the rusty iron gate and a chip of rusty paint fell off the gate.  I picked it up and put that in my pocket, too.  I asked Joe if I would have trouble getting through TSA with my rust and moss.  He rolled his eyes and said he thought I would be OK.  Ah, treasures!

I love rust.

Last night I looked all over the house for them, thinking that I had lost my treasures. But I found them this morning in the bag with  my other priceless finds. Yes, I bought a shirt and a beautiful handwoven scarf and some pretty earrings. 

Irish gold!

But the sea glass, broken pottery, shells, rust and moss mean more to me than gold.  Because they are Irish

moss and rust.

The good news is that I am not a hoarder.  I can proudly stand by that.  But a little weird ?  Absolutely.

The 40 Greens of Ireland

Color has always been my thing. Whether I am making it, playing with it or manipulating it for a painting or quilt, I seem to have been born with the color eye and an overwhelming need to be surrounded by it.  

I have noticed as I travel that there is a color palette to every place I go.  In Hawaii it is the blues.  Arizona is pastels.  At Lake Tahoe it’s the turquoises and in Ireland, it is the greens.  They say there are over 40 different greens in Ireland but I think they are wrong - it’s more like 80 plus. I sat in the car counting them, while Joe was avoiding traffic cones and tourist buses on the small and winding Irish roads.  

Narrow road plus you are driving on the left side.

That was keeping my mind off the fact that I might not make it to our next Irish vista.  Joe was either going to kill me and leave me in a Irish bog somewhere never to be found again or we were going to drive head-on into a large tour bus called the PaddyWagon.  Anyways, there are more than 40 greens, I am sure.  

So you see that the reason I haven’t written you sooner is because I was invited to teach at the Quilt Guild of Ireland for their Festival this year in Dublin.  Yes, it was a dream come true to be in Ireland and with some very talentened quilters.  This guild incorporates all of Ireland, both north and south.  How spoiled we are in the states to have quilt guilds in almost every town.  In California, sometimes we have more than one per town. But in Ireland they have just one or 2 groups.  The quilters drove great distances to get to this festival.   OK, in California that is no big deal to drive 4 hours to search for fabrics.  We just call that a "Shop Hop".

They also have a loving respect for their fabrics. Fabric is hard to come by and they don’t waste a bit of it.  I learned that in class one day when I mistakenly told my students that this was a practice piece and you can throw it away when you get home. The whole class yelled out “Oh no!!!!! We can't through it away. We will make something out of it.”  

That’s when I knew I was so spoiled.  Batiks can cost at least 15 euros per meter, which is about $22 a yard American.  So I have a new respect for my fabric collection and went up to my studio and patted them all and said thank you to the big guy (and I didn’t mean Joe!) when I got home.  

So thank you Quilter Guild of Ireland for the wonderful time Joe and I had.  You are warm, gracious and talented.  And you have way more than 40 greens.

More of our Irish adventure to come but I am sleep deprived right now.

Need a Quilting Break?

 I only have 2 more rooms available for my Flowers On the Lake Retreat, May 30- June 3.

I love retreats. I love to go to them and teach at them.

When the phone is ringing at home and I can’t get anything finished I long for the focused time just to work on a project and get something done.  As a teacher it is such a wonderful experience to work with the students, one on one, and help them achieve their goals and watch them grow.  It is also a great bonding and sharing time with others with similar interests. I always come home learning some new technique, idea or new product as we share ideas.  I have met women that I know I will always be friends with.

Our great-grandmothers had their sewing bees. They would meet at the church or someone’s house, bring a casserole to share and sit around the quilting frame, talking and stitching.  But only for that day.

Today’s woman doesn’t have to milk the cow or bring in the wheat and stay close to home.  She has her own car and may even be in charge of her own work schedule.  Boy, how things have changed.  I remember going my first time to Empty Spools Seminars at Asilomar in Pacific Grove, CA.  I had heard about it for years.  I saved up to go with friends and took Mary Lou Weidman's class.   In class I had the pleasure of sitting next to Freddy Moran.  I was in color heaven. I knew that it couldn’t get any better than that.  

That when I realized that these very independent women and men do this retreating thing all the time.  Wow. They may take a long weekend or a week. They sometimes go by themselves.  All making their way to this creative environment and do the thing they love most - being creative and fondling fabrics.  Yes, I said fondling and you know you do it. 

Before I started traveling and teaching so much, I would have the pleasure of meeting my 2 friends for a day of quilting.  We would meet at one friend’s house who has a beautiful studio with 3 sewing machines and lots of fabrics.  She also owns a great quilt shop.   We never ran out of fabric.   We would all decide on a pattern we all liked.  Then we set up an assembly line of cutting and ironing and sewing.  We would end up making 3 of the same quilt, one for each of us.  It was so much fun.  But it was only 3 hours, one day a week.  Still, I miss that time.

As you working girls know, we all can’t have that precious time to quilt every week. That is why retreating is so heavenly.  You can block out an uninterrupted time to immerse yourself in whatever project you want and   listen to funny stories and eat chocolate and maybe even enjoy some wine. 

Last year was my first time hosting my own retreat, Flowers On the Lake. I had no idea how this would go.   It was a wonderful time, if I do say so myself.  It brought 9 women together and by the end of the retreat we had all bonded and were not ready to leave, acting like little girls who don’t want to leave the party yet! As I was packing up my car they were on the phone, finding a hotel to stay and sew another 2 days. It wasn’t long enough they said.  It made me feel good that they wanted to stay.

So that is what a retreat does.  I see it all the time at these events. So, if you have never experienced a quilting retreat, I want to invite you to some of my favorites.  And, of course, I will be there.

Empty Spools Seminars, Pacific Grove, April 15-20 

Flowers On the Lake, Lake Tahoe, May 30-June 3

Hudson River Valley Quilt Art Retreat, Albany, New York, Dec 4 -10

You don’t have to be an experienced sewer or artist. Newbees are always welcome. You can work from your own flower photo or use one on my patterns.  I help you all along the way. This is for you.

Also, for you west coast girls, this will be my first time at Sisters, Oregon and Quilters Affair but we will talk more about that later.

Camellias, Daffodiles and Snow?

I can’t think of anything to write about today. So how about pictures of my garden?   It’s February and my camellia bushes are bursting and the daffodils are up in some places in the yard. What is with that?  But on a cold and dreary day like today it makes me happy.

New! Camellia quilt.
 I made this arrangement for the kitchen table.  It has lasted 3 days which is hard to do with arrangements with camellias because the heavy flowers usually drop off the stem right away.  But this one is lasting.   These pictures make me think spring is on its way.  But is it?

I love how the light reflects in the wet glass vase

Last night while watching the local evening news, our overly perky weather man ran to the Doppler weather map with a little skip in his step.  He was so elated to inform all of us that we could have snow sprinkles tomorrow as low as 500 feet.  What?  This is California!  I live at 1,100 ft.  Well, there go my daffodils and what about my oranges?
Maybe that is why the birds are eating up all the bird seed so fast. They know something is up.  The other day we had 15 large tom turkeys in our yard and now the female turkeys are hanging out here.  Joe "accidentally" drops bird seed on the ground when refilling the feeder for his new pet turkeys. Which reminds me that I really need to get him another dog soon.  The turkeys are fine but their droppings are like land mines on our sidewalk that you have to dodge every time you get the mail.

When company leaves we have to say "Watch where you are stepping" and then try not to laugh as we watch them hop and dance back to their car avoiding while piles.
 This bird feeder has been so much fun.  I can't believe I said that. We can view the bird action up close from the safety of our dining room without their detection. We have counted about 8 different species not counting the turkeys.

Where is Waldo?  You have to finds 2 birds in this picture.

We also have a new little hairy friend that has adopted us from time to time.  I came out on the porch the other day and she was curled up in Joe's lap.  She likes to hang out on our warm porch also watching the bird feeder.   I call her Jade because of her light jade green eyes.  She will now let us pet her.  I don’t think she has a real family but goes from house to house.  Our neighborhood is not that friendly and the few I have talked to about her say she visits them also.  I want to give her a bath and a flea collar, but her teeth are really sharp and I happen to be very allergic to her.   I overdid the petting the other day and paid for it the rest of the evening.  So yesterday was spring and today its winter again. So if you live to the east of California, get ready! Another storm is coming and you didn’t need Skippy the weather boy to tell you that one.

I think I will work on my camellia quilt today and pretend it is spring anyway.