The Great, the Not So Great and the Improvement

Since I am still experiencing some computer difficulties (for which I will once again visit my computer guru early tomorrow morning--and, of course, he has never heard of the problem I'm having), I have had to email my pictures to post on our other computer. When I sat down at the other computer to open the email, there was one from Karen Kendo--which I opened first. And what a great and wonderful surprise. She emailed me a picture of her Palmetto quilt in progress and I was so excited I could hardly stand it. She took a major step outside of her "follow the pattern" box and the results are wonderful. I'm not going to post the picture because that's her's to do, but watch out! It's going to be great.

And now to my originally intended post. About a year ago I took the following picture of a hydrangea in my yard. The other evening, I came up with an idea on how to use it so I saved it in black & white and printed it out as a 16 page poster. After gluing the pieces together, I outlined the entire picture with a magic marker to use as my patern. Then I made a pieced background from soft-colored batiks. I really liked the background ,but when I put a few of the hydrangea pieces on top, it looked REALLY bad. I keep trying to make pieced

backgrounds for things and almost always

end up discarding them. So this is

now my

background--after some color consultsation with my resident color expert (my

husband). It's a final choice for now, but I'll fuse the entire hydrangea before I make the final decision.

In the mean time, I have also taken my husband's recommendation that I take the original 3' x3' background and turn it into a baby quilt. And here are the two fabrics I've chosen for the borders. So, maybe I'm killing two birds with one stone? Well, at least I'll look at it that way/

Note: Check out Karen's blog to view her Palmetto Quilt. It's awesome! http://quiltingwithkaren.wordpress.com/

Life's Unexpected Turns

I don't have any picture's for tonight's post. I had hoped to, but it turned out there wasn't anything worth photographing--sadly. We went to Hendersonville yesterday and came back this morning. We mainly went to turn in our cable boxes and bring home a few other sewing items. Since we just aren't there enough to warrant paying for services we're not using, it made sense to do that. We all are trying to conserve in one way or another right now and this is just one of those steps.
One of the things we brought home was my EQ6 software. Tuesday night, my computer crashed with, as it turned out, a fatal heart attack. I literally lost everything on it. I spent several hours with a computer guru on Wednesday and he did everything he could to retreive the data, but it was a no-go. And here is a little tip that I picked up from that experience--other than you should back up everything important. When you get a screen that tells you that there is an error reading the disk and to hit Ctl-Alt-Delete, DON"T TURN OFF YOUR COMPUTER--unless, of course, you know what you're doing. I learned that the more times you turn off and on your computer in an effort to make it work as you try different things, the greater the chance is that you will not be able to retreive data from a damaged hard drive. Needless to say, I turned it on and off too many times.
So . . .with a new hard drive, I have had to reload as many programs as I could. The nice thing is that all but one of them have reloaded without a problem. I was really crossing my fingers over Microsoft Office because you can be sure that it would not be a picnic to have to call them in order to get it authenticated.
Fortunately, I had most of my quilts saved onto disk and some of my patterns. Things could have been much worse, I guess. The computer guru told me that I was taking it far better than most people but what are you going to do? You have only yourself to blame if you don't have things backed up properly. Karen Kendo has given me the name of a good back-up system and I will be getting that for my future work.
What I HAD planned on taking a picture of today was the fruit stand where we stop to buy peaches every year. We were expecting the peaches to look good since they didn't get hit by a frost this year; however, the weather in the upstate of South Carolina has been so dry that things just are not looking very good. The peaches were about 1/2 size. We only bought a small bag and I didn't have the heart to take a picture. Hopefully, the later peaches will be better--the farmers sure need a break.

Can't See The Forest For The Trees!

Well, I had another great day in Harleyville with the TTT Gang. Today I taught my Palmetto Tree class and I was so very pleased with the way everyone's turned out. It's always great when students follow their own ideas about color and develop an entirely new aspect to the design. And here they are:

Janice didn't get hers to the "picture stage" before she left but it was an entirely different color hue. I can hardly wait to see all of the finished hangings. Congratulations,girls!

P.S.--The red quilt is Karen's and the person hiding behind the top right quilt is Sheila.

Not Much

This past week has been one of emergency rooms and hospitals with my mother and my mother-in-law. I won't go into the various aspects of these events--I'm sure many of you have been through similar experiences--except to say that the energy that it takes to get through each one of these days doesn't leave much for anything else. So . . .there hasn't been much quilting in my neck of the woods this week. I had ordered thread to finish out the quilting of my Guild Challenge Quilt (see post just before this one) and it came on Thursday, I was excited, opened the box and . . .you guessed it--the most important thread was backordered. So, since I didn't want to start with a partial spool and maybe not see the rest of the thread until who knows when, I'm using another thread. What did come was more Bottom Line thread and I am REALLY enjoying using it in my Juki machine. For some reason, it has solved a lot of my tension problems.

I thought I would just post a few pictures of flowers in my yard that are blooming right now. They can do so much to lift your spirits and they are so thankful right now for all the rain they've gotten in the past couple of days.

The shrub on the left is a hydrangea--which I'm sure you already know. The unique thing about this particular one is its history. My mother-in-law had a border of hydrangeas when she lived in the Village in Mt. Pleasant and when she built this house about 25 years ago, she rooted some of those and brought them here with her. This is one of them. It's kind of small because it's been through some hard times! But what I didn't know about this plant is that it originally came from the family plantation on James Island, Stiles Point. She rooted from those plants in the 50's and planted them in that original border in the Village. So, you might say that it's a family heirloom.

The plant on the right is is a daylilly. I included this one because of the double center. I had gotten some like that from a neighbor when we built our first house in Mt. Pleasant and when I saw this one, it just brought back those memories of that first growing experience.

And the last plant is the Swamp Hibiscus, which inspired one of my most recent quilts. The plant that I had last year died over the winter but, lo and behold, the one that my mother-in-law had planted in the shade--and didn't do well--survived the winter. (I guess that'll teach me!). Anyway, I moved it into the sun and it's beginning to bloom.

So, this week will be better than last. I get to go to Karen Kendo's TTT and teach my Palmetto Class and I'm really looking forward to that. And, in the meantime, I remind myself of the many blessings I receive each day just by looking around me.

Eek!

We've had a painter here for the last week or so painting the wooden areas of the outside of the house. We both could have picked a better time temperaturewise to do this work, but he doesn't seem to mind the heat. HOWEVER, what he does mind is snakes. We heard this loud shouting and yelling and when my husband got there, Roger--the painter--was pointing at a 6-foot long snake. He told Smokey that he was going to have to get rid of it--"It's either me or the snake," he said. "But, Roger," my husband said, "it's not a poisoness snake, it eats rats (it was a rat snake) and, besides, you were an Eagle Scout." Roger's response: "That was then, this is NOW.' Anyway, the snake eventually moved on and the painting proceeded--although with a certain amount of residual trepidation. I guess we all have things that terrify us, but non-poisoness snakes is not one of mine. The year I turned up the nest of baby copperheads in my compost pile was another story entirely . . .

Well, in the midst of all that, I have been working on the wallhanging for out Guild Challenge in October. We're supposed to be doing something that somehow relates to the basket on our logo.

And this is what I've come up with. The piecing and applique are done and I'm now getting ready to do all of the top stitching. I've been working on the design and fuseing of the basket portion for quite a while but put it aside during all the things going on with Smokey's heart. But I got back to it this week after I had an inspiration about how to finish it off. So, it's onward and upward--and I think I'll finish before October.

Yum

For many, many years, I have been an organic gardener and one thing I've really missed since moving back to Charleston is a vegetable garden. Well, I still don't have one but this summer I am figuring out ways to have small areas of plants wherever there is sun--and not too much wind. Since we live on a creek, sometimes the breeze is just too much for the plants to thrive. I have 3 tomato plants pretty close to the water and they are definitely telling me that they would much prefer to be somewhere else--but there ARE a few tomatoes on those bushes making a great effort to grow and ripen out there since they can't be moved to another location.

Anyway, I planted these basil plants near the side entrance to our house and this evening, I gave them a major haircut. I gathered up all of those leaves, took them inside and made two batches of pesto--most of it for the freezer but I saved some to eat with the plum tomatoes we had with our supper. I wouldn't go so far as to call it "nectar of the gods" but it was pretty darn good. Here's the recipe in case you're interested: 3 cups (packed) basil leaves, 3 large cloves garlic, 1/3 cup pine nuts, 1/3 cup olive oil. 1/3 cup parmesan . Put all of these ingredients into a food processor--and process. How easy can you get? It's great served on hot pasta.

While I was working outside this evening, one of the young girls in the neighborhood (who has ALL of the info on anything you want to know about your neighbors) stopped by to chat. She was really intersted in seeing how I made compost and what it meant to fertilize naturally. It was kind of fun to show her what I was doing. And like most young people, she didn't know that potatoes develop underground--not on the bush. So . . .I guess tomorrow, some of the neighbors will know that I have a compost pile and that I put my weeds into it to make good stuff for the soil. That's pretty good, as far as I'm concerned. And maybe she'll tell one of her friends about how potatoes grow.

And now, it's back to quilting my patriotic quilt.

Life Keeps Moving On

Since our house was full of relatives during the time before Smokey's surgery, I decided to work on a small, simple project that I had wanted to do for a while--something that wouldn't require a lot of concentration. This table runner was the result. I worked on it in snatches of 45-60 minutes and finished it in 4 or 5 days--quilting and all. So, one of my friends will receive it for a birthday gift. And it's even ready ahead of time--what a concept.

The other project I've been working on is this patriotic wall hanging from a Blackbird Designs book. I originally started working on it with a friend in North Carolina but I had wanted to get mine done by the 4th of July, so I've plowed on forward. The size is 42" x 82". I have a little more buttonhole stitching to do and then it'll be ready to pin for quilting. You'll have to click to enlarge so you can see it, but there's some red work embroidery in the center of the bottom. I didn't quite realize just how complex this piece was until I started on it, but it's been fun. Most of the fabrics are homespuns or light weight flannels.

This has not been a good time for me to be considering original, art quilting so it's been nice to have something to focus on that keeps moving forward without angst (although it did take several days to come up with the outside border without having to go buy even more fabric!).