On Friday I finished the top and forgot to get a photo before I layered it and started the quilting. I decided to fill in some of the top area with sky which is not in the original photo, but then neither is all that area on the right where I extended it to be long. I think it was a good solution as I had no good fabric for distant prairie to fill it in.

I’m anxious to get more quilting done!

Last week we replaced the stonework on this corner of the fish pond where we had removed it to fix a leak. I smashed a finger and have a bruised nail which is making typing difficult! There used to be an overgrowth of cattails where the liner is showing, but we did not want to redo those really big rocks, so yesterday we bought this floating cork plant holder. I hope when the plants grow, the liner will not be noticeable and will also be protected from the sun.

The local Pond and Water Garden tour is this weekend and we went yesterday. There were 9 gardens on the tour and it was actually a bit of a disappointment this year as less than half of them were that good. I forgot to get a picture of the best one, I was so busy admiring it and talking to the owner, but this one was pretty good.

It was a lovely day with the high only in the 80’s. When we got home and I finished my little planting job, I retired to the hammock with my summer Stephen King read.  It was actually chilly there in the shade with the nice breeze blowing through!

Both of my computers spent the weekend in the shop again. This is really getting old. The laptop only had photos prior to 2009 and no calendar entries prior to June since I had it cleaned for spyware. They were able to transfer all of the photos but the calendar information is gone. The old MacMini is the one that I mostly use for photos as it has an older version of Photoshop that I am more comfortable using, but Friday I discovered that it is no longer able to burn CDs. !!! This is a problem since this is mostly required for entering shows these days and I burn a lot of CDs so I took that one in to be fixed. Unfortunately they were not able to fix it. So now I have two choices. Transfer manipulated photos to the laptop to burn CDs or learn to deal with the Photoshop version that is on the laptop that I don’t like. The MacMini is too old to get an external CD burner for, but it does have calendar information prior to June.

The new fabric that I ordered for the landscape background doesn’t work so I am going to have to suck it up and deal with what I have. I did re-do the fawn’s face a couple of times til I think it looks better now.

In the meantime I have been sorting old fabric, weeding out those prints and traditional fabrics that I will never be able to work into what I do now. Here is a shot of the progress so far.

And here is the rejected fabric, which is all wonderful fabric, just not the type that I use anymore. I am not even half way through and that is a lot of fabric to get rid of! Hard to believe it was on the shelves, really packed in!

I’m still in the process of sorting the blues.

I continue to have computer problems which make it difficult to post, but in the meantime I have been sewing. Here is the progress to date:

The original photograph shows a lot of pink in the distance and I think this fabric portrays it pretty well. We really do have pink grass in Kansas and it is blooming right now. I took these photos this morning!

I’m afraid people might question all that pink if they live where there is no pink grass – but it is what it is!

Nice progress was made yesterday as I stayed inside all day waiting for a call that never came from a computer tech. The weather was cool and nice and I would have loved to have been outside working, but the time was well spent anyway.

The doe is taking shape, and the only two fabrics that I have that show leaves against a pale green background are laid in at the top. I think they will do the trick. Finding fabrics that will work together and play off one another is part of the challenge that makes this fun. I like how this one is coming together, but it has been slow work, with so many little pieces!

Charles Benton is a local photographer who has participated in the annual Inspirations exhibit, as have I, since the beginning three years ago. This year he offered me his “Konza Mother and Child” as inspiration, so this year for the first time I will have two pieces there. This one, and the “Eagles Soar” one inspired by Tammy Patterson’s “Eagle Soars” that I started earlier.

His copyrighted photograph is on canvas and I can’t get a good picture without reflections, but you get the idea. It is a wonderful photo and I am fortunate to be able to use it with his permission.

Susan said she would like to see the two layouts, so I took this picture this morning.

The top one was my first and I wasn’t happy with it so never finished it. Then I decided to start over without looking at the first one that had been done probably a month ago. It was interesting to compare the two after I was finished with the new layout.

Here is the progress to date, work done over a period of about three days.

Usually when I do animals, I start with the eyes, but in this case, remembering how much trouble I had finding fawn spot fabric for “Spring Encounter”, (click on ‘fawn’ in the sidebar) I needed to see what I could find to render the fawn’s spots and set my colors by that. I couldn’t do very much though, until I established the background fabrics.  That distant background is going to be hard. It has a lot of pink in it and I haven’t been able to find much of that. The foreground grasses were easy and the scale of the bush fabric was good. It was nice that it had dark areas that worked in well against the tree.

I started quilting in 1984, and also started collecting fabrics! In the beginning I was mostly doing traditionally based things, but with a slant toward something a little different, artsy, maybe. Fabrics were pretty calico-y for the most part, back then. Some of the stuff I bought then is still on the shelf today taking up valuable space. Those fabrics will never fit into the things I am doing now and more desirable fabrics are living on a chair for want of shelf space. The sensible thing to do is to get rid of some of that old stuff so I decided to make some charity quilts for my guild. They are always asking for kid’s quilts. One of the agencies is for the homeless population and every child gets their own quilt.

For some reason, probably because it wasn’t calico, I bought this whole line and have, over the years, only used a little of it. There was enough to end up with this almost twin size quilt that a teenager might like. Four different black and whites will make up the back and this is next in line to be machine quilted.

These are smaller, baby or toddler size. The smaller one on the top features a red truck print along with an abstract which is also on the back. The one below that has a very old teddy bear print with plaid and an an early Virginia Robertson print with plaid and two orange prints on the back. The larger one started with the Noah’s Ark animal print and attempted to use up the leftovers from the preceding ones, with an African print on the back. It is quilted but still needs a binding.

This one started with an old circus print. The back is black and white stripes, I quilted it yesterday, and have yet to bind it.

This endeavor was not fun.  I did use up a lot of fabric, which was good, but not enough to warrant the time I spent away from what I enjoy doing. I don’t think I can stand to do anymore and will probably just donate some fabric so people who enjoy this sort of thing can use them. I do feel good about having some quilts to donate that I hope someone will enjoy, but that is time gone, that I will never get back, and I do have art quilts that I am anxious to work on!!

“Snow Buddies” formerly known as “the dogs quilt” is finally finished! It measures 48 x 48″.

Quilting it took a long time due to the size of it and the density of the stitching. These are my dogs, a Komondor, 145 lbs and a Shepard mix, 165 lbs!

I took the photo several years ago and have wanted for some time to make it into an art quilt.   Komondors are a fairly rare breed and it is not easy to find them in art so I was especially interested in doing this for a special exhibit that will take place at International Quilt Festival in Houston in the fall.

For those of you who are not quilters, my work is entirely pieced by machine from bits of commercially printed or hand dyed fabrics and then machine quilted.I love the search for just the right fabric to portray my vision.

Koms are always white and are usually shown with long cords to the ground so they resemble a big rag mop. I don’t show this one so I keep his cords cut back so as to lessen the amount of stuff he can collect outside.  Still he can bring in a lot of trash as he loves to roll in leaves and dirt.  They both have huge feet and I dread mud season!

The Kaw Valley Quilt Guild met yesterday and I learned that my quilt “The Merchant’s House” won First Place in the Viewer’s Choice voting in the show last weekend.

A little over a week ago it was 87 degrees here and I spent the better part of two days working outside, trimming, weeding and transplanting! Now we are covered in snow again, I have never seen snow as deep as this on the branches, at least 7 inches!

It only lasted an hour or so until the wind and the birds knocked it off but it was pretty neat while it lasted.

The whirligig thing looked pretty, too, until the wind came up and the drifting started.

It was the kind of day you want to stay inside and hunker down with some fun project. I finished my 12 inch square for the SAQA auction which I was hoping to get finished in time to send it to them before the April 1 Early Bird Deadline.

In the past my entry has always been in the A group. but I am slow this year and it will be in the B group, I think. “Northern Cardinal” is from a photo I took after the last snowfall, and it came out even better than I expected! I want to keep it!!

The background fabric is a batik with a subtle tree branch print that I purchased especially for this piece. I highlighted some of the print with the quilting lines.

So this is what it looked like the last time I posted. I was working with fabric that was not exactly what I wanted and was not happy with the results.

I liked the idea of the large scale white on blue leaf print for the foregound, but the reality of it was not so good. It was too busy, too demanding of your attention.

Saturday I taught an Intro to Picture Piecing class at a local shop and found a batik with possibilities. It was one that I had rejected earlier because It was a clearer blue than I wanted and it had muddy brownish areas. Since that time, I had added some browns around the dogs’ feet, so that became a possible asset and I purchased a half yard which cost more than a full yard did back when I started his crazy journey!

I used the new fabric to replace the large leaf print and I like it much better. I finished the sewing yesterday and spent a couple of hours watching “The Way We Were” and removing all of the hundreds of little bits of paper. Today I hope to put away the fabric and begin the layering and quilting process. This piece has already taken way too long!

Yesterday we awoke to a winter wonderland; about six more inches of snow on top of the 11 inches that was already there. It is heavy and wet and much appreciated for the moisture that we so badly need.

Yes it is pretty, but perhaps not so much for those who have to deal with it up close and personal! For me, I’m staying inside because I can!

The birds appreciate the feeders. This one is only a few inches away from the window by my sewing machine so I am treated to their antics all day long.

Speaking of windows, the new ones were installed just before the first storm hit and the workers will have to come back when the weather warms up to paint the outside trim that had to be replaced. Inside, I am slowly getting things back in order. I’ve washed  and ironed the curtains and rehung those, and got the furniture back in place. I am working on cleaning all of the venetian blinds so they can be donated to  the ReStore since the new windows have blinds inside the panes of glass.  Hopefully these will be the last blinds I will ever have to clean!

Waiting his turn.

I sewed most of yesterday, having given up on the right fabric, and I am struggling to “make it work” as Tim Gunn would say.  It is so not what I had envisioned.