Appreciate The Good Things That Are Yours

I know that I am not alone in worrying about hurricanes these days. And although it appears that we won't get much damage from Hannah, Ike is roaring up from the vast ocean with a terrible force that threatens to destroy all that we hold dear. I know that I will be very difficult to live with in the coming days until either we evacuate and wait to see what we have left afterwards OR we are spared once again. I think that once you have lived through a hurricane such as Hugo you just don't view storms quite so cavalierly as you might once have.
So between worrying about what I can't change and just the general personal hassle of dealing with two elderly parents, I've probably had a little pity party going on.
And then my husband read the obituaries this morning and we learned that our computer guru had died at the age of 49, leaving 5 children and a wife to mourn his loss. And then Smokey and I went to the hospital and sat with a friend while his wife was in surgery--rather, I should say her FIRST surgery because she will be having another one after she recovers from this one. And her husband, himself, is dealing with the devastating side-effects of lifesaving drugs for the treatment of his leukemia. After we returned home from the hospital, I had a call from another friend who is waiting for September 15th to arrive so she can go to Charlotte and have extensive surgery on her knee so that, hopefully, she will once again she will be able to live without constant, debilitating pain. And the list goes on. And if I can let go of my ego just long enough to really think about how greatly blessed I am in spite of my lack of free time and possible need to evacuate, then, perhaps, my life will be more joy-filled and I will be far less crabby. I'm working on it. . .

Some Checks Off The List

Time has been very scrunched for me lately because I'm in the middle of moving my mother from one living situation to another--which has meant interviews, doctors' visits and now weeding through personal things to make the new smaller acommodations not be too crowded. My brother is helping in his own way but sometimes men (and maybe women) don't understand the needs of older people and the necessity to make the move as smooth as possible. The usual chaos of moving just doesn't work with someone who is confused and not steady on their feet.

All of which is to say that I haven't been doing a lot of quilting. However, I do have the next block on my Red & Green Quilt finished. I worked on it on our trip to Nashville. With needleturn, you really need a smooth road for the car to travel on or you don't do too well on those little circles. I'm happy to report that most of the roads were. So now I have one more corner block and one more side block to go. Moving right along.

I also have finished the wallhanging that I did with the woven strips. I added the circles across the surface of the quilt and named it "Tubing Down The Red River. I made the quilt to try out the weaving technique. I have to say, I don't think I'll do it again because I didn't like the finished appearance of the fabric pieces--too much raveling. I secured all of the edges with invisible thread but still didn't like it. BUT I may be a bit too picky about that. I'm hoping that I'm the only one that feels that way because I'm donating it to the silent auction in Houston and I REALLY hope someone wants to take it home with them.

The last thing that I've been working on this this fall project that was on the cover of the latest Fons & Porter magazine. The orginal project called for the applique pieces to be out of wool and to be hand appliqued. Well, since I would want it to go on a dining table I didn't want to use the wool. And the sunflowers were 3-dimensional, but I didn't do that either. One really good thing about this pattern was that it presents a different way to do the border. You'd have to get the magazine and read the instructions but, in short, you cut the strips on the bias and then sew them together as a frame--with the 45 degree-- edges and then overlay them on the background. And, since it's on the bias, you can turn back the inner edges to make scallops. The only trick is to keep that bias from stretching! Anyway, it was a fun technique and I think I'll use it again.

Well, the low tide awaits and I think I'll go catch a few shrimp. Have a great Labor Day Weekend.

Home Again, Home Again

Well, we made it to Nashville and back--tired but glad to have gotten away for a while. I know I promised that I would come back with pictures, but I'm sorry to say I didn't. I made the mistake of buying the Show Program and actually reading it. It said that you could take all the pictures you wanted for personal use but had to get the permission of each quiltmaker whose quilt you wanted to post to the Web. Since that would have been next to impossible, I didn't even take my camera into the showroom. I will say that there were some very wonderful quilts there and I came away inspired by what I saw. There were also great vendors and I bought some hand dyes and thread. I like to look at all of the threads in the Superior booth but this time I focused on Bottom Line thread (from Superior). I REALLY like to use Bottom Line in the bobbin when I'm quilting. I seem to have a lot fewer tension problems with it. I also bought 2 large spools of Blendables. And I was drawn into the Hobbs batting booth and bought a Silk batting to try.
We ended up leaving a day early because Smokey just gave out. This was his first real trip since his heart surgery and it was not a restful place. The Opryland Hotel is quite a place--full of wonderful plants--many of them orchids--and waterfalls and beautiful gardens. The problem was that it was so noisy everywhere you went. One thing that we really enjoyed was the evening show of "Dancing Waters" with lighted fountains of water. We liked it so much that we went both evenings. The first night we watched it from a position above the water and the second evening we watched it from the water level. And the different perspectives resulted in two completely different experiences.
It was nice that we would go back to Hendersonville before we came back to Charleston so Smokey could get a little rest before hitting I-26. We did walk downtown that morning but that was it for the day. He slept and I sewed (a good combination)
One thing we did on the way back to Hendersonville was to stop at the Farmer's Market in Asheville to buy peaches.I can't even begin to tell you just how many baskets of peaches they had there! Too many to count. I bought two so I could bring some back to the family and neighbors who watched out for our house & mail while we were gone. ( And now, I'm just hoping that they're GOOD peaches).
One of the first things gardeners do after coming home after a trip if to look around the yard and see what's grown while they were gone. I was glad to come home to some ripe tomatoes--lunch is looking good for tomorrow--but the okra was another story. The thing about okra is that bigger is NOT better. The plants were filled with pods like this one that measured almost ten inches. Boy, you could make gumbo with only 5 or 6 pods like that! That is, you could if you could get a knife through the pod to slice it. The bigger these things get, the tougher they are. I guess I'm going to have to figure out some kind of yard art out of them.
I can tell you that the cardinals had a field day while we were gone. All of my sunflowers had drooped over with their burden of seeds when we left, but when we returned every seed was gone and the cardinals were fussing at us for not having any more! I'm sorry I didn't get to see the show but I'm very glad they had such a party.
Sooooo, these are the pictures of our trip. Not great, I know, but we did have a good time. I wish I had captured the image of the Dancing Waters and I wish I have taken a picture of all those baskets of peaches at the Market, but I didn't. I'll have to do better next time.

A Week of Learning Curves

Did you ever feel as if you were learning more than you really wanted to? I KNOW that they say that you need to keep your brain active to help offset the onset of dementia, but sometimes I feel that there are too many oppotunities to do that. Ever since my hard drive crashed, I have been encountering things on my computer that are challenges--and it still isn't back to where it was when it went kerplop.
I really enjoy listening the books from Audible.com. They are great for downloading to the IPod to take in the car on trips or for listening in my studio when the books I got from the library turn out to be duds. Well, it hasn't worked since the crash. Finally, this week I got on the phone with the techie from Audible and he tried for over a half hour to make it work. The bottom line was that there was something about the Firefox internet on my computer was just didn't interface with it (which also happened with a couple of other things). So, he searched for Internet Explorer on my computer (which was hidden), reactivated it and, voila, I now have my Audible. I am a happy camper. If you want to experience wierd, however, during that process I had to give the techie permission to go into my computer and try to find the problem. So, here I was sitting in front of my computer and someone miles away was using HIS mouse to sift through MY files. It kind of gave me the willies.
Another learning curve this week was signing up for a FedEx account on the computer so I could ship my quilts for less money. When I was working on our quilt show and had to ship the quilts back to their owners afterwards, I learned that one quilt box would have cost $60.00 to ship at the store and only $30.00 to do the work at home. Big difference. Of course, it has taken me four months to actually sign up. I figure that by the time I use it three times, it will have paid for the scale to weigh the packages at home. Pretty good.
Well, I'll be out for a week. Going to Hendersonville for a play and then on to Nashville for the AQS show. I'll bring back pictures. Stay cool.

A Very Quick Notice

Just a quick notice for those of you who might be interested: The 13th, 14th, 15th & 16th are sale days at Batiks, etc. for the Fat Quarter Frenzy. It's $1.00 per fat quarter with a 25 fat quarter minimum purchase. Web address is: www.batiks.com. I already bought mine!

The Next Installment

I thought I'd post the next two completed blocks on my Red & Green Quilt. These will both be corner blocks--which means that I have two more corners and one interior block left to complete. And THEN, I'll have to decide just how I want it all to go together along with borders, etc. I don't guess it will be finished anytime soon but I'm not really in any hurry with it.
I went to an organizational meeting yesterday for an Art Quilt Group. I have been wanting to participate in something like this for quite a while and was very encouraged by our gathering. Everyone was full of ideas and the energy was running all around the room. There are so many ways to approach this kind of group and I imagine that we will be feeling our way as we go. I think with anything like this, it is better not to have a preconceived notion--you never know what might find its way in if you don't! I'm excited.

It Really IS Cooler In The Mountains!

We left Saturday morning to go the Asheville Quilt Show. On the way, we stopped in Columbia to see our grandson's first competition tennis match. He was nervous, of course, and at 13 still has a lot to learn about moving around the court and all those other things that make one a winner against a strong opponent. (I guess you can figure where I'm going with this). Yes, he lost but I can tell that he has what it takes to be an above average player. He was very upset that he lost and didn't want to go on with his other match that day. My son walked him down the sidewalk and had a private moment with him to calm him down and encourage him. I captured that moment with my camera and I think it is one of the dearest pictures of them that I have ever seen. Some of our greatest accomplishments are born out of failure and I have no doubt that that will be true for him.
And then we traveled on up to Hendersonville. Our yard hadn't been weeded all summer, so that was my main task of the afternoon. And I also went to My Quilt Shop to finish up using a credit I had there (I CERTAINLY wouldn't want to waste it!) The next afternoon, we went to the quilt show. Since I was going to bring my quilts home rather than have them mailed, I had to stay to the end and, so, I had plenty of time to look at all of the quilts several times. This is really a very good quality show and the members if the Guild work very hard to put it on each year. I was very excited to win a first and second place. I won't post the pictures because they are posted on my website, www.judithheyward.com. They are Lowcountry Musings (1st) and Magical Thinking (2nd). But I WILL post several of the quilts that I liked.
The first one is by Diana Pickens from the upstate. She has been working with stripes for the past year or so and this is one of her efforts. She has a very analytical mind and is very good at rearranging objects to form a different object.
This next quilt uses the same technique that I used in my Althea's Waltz quilt--only better. And the quilting was great on it, too. This quilt of the fish was handpainted (I think) and really captured the movement of the fish jumping out of the water. It won a special award (which I don't remember). The angle on the photo is a little strange because it was hung so high up.
Each year, the Arboretum (where the quilt show is held) gives a special award for the quilt that best expresses the feeling of nature and this is the quilt that won it this year. There is a lot of broderie-purse around the bottom using fabrics that include animals and other elements of nature and many of the leaves were 3-dimensional. And this was all put against a log cabin background. It was very well done.
This next pictorial quilt was really amazing with all of the piecing (which I guess was foundation piecing). It really captured the moment . You got the sense of a hot summer afternoon and maybe the old man was telling the young girl a story while they sat.
And,finally, this last quilt was done by Nancy Prince, a well known, award-winning quilter who makes quilts with intricate scenes (and the ones that I've seen all are somewhat nostalgic). The quilting on this was quite extensive.
All in all, it was a great show and I really enjoyed seeing some of the Asheville quilters I know and also a lot of quilters from the upstate. The Arboretum is such a beautiful setting for the show and really adds another element to the experience. I can hardly wait for next year's!