Hampton Park

This post was supposed to have been written several days ago; however, I misplaced my camera (with the pictures inside).  I searched high and low--even got depressed because I had no memory of where I might have actually put the camera.  When my husband got back in town this afternoon, I was sitting in his "Men's Room" and catching up with what had happened while he was away and--low and behold--there sat the camera--black case against black background.  It was a good excuse as to why I hadn't seen it, but did little to explain why I didn't remember WHERE I had put it.  Oh well.  On with the story . . .

 Last week was our wedding anniversary and I thought it would be nice to visit a local garden since we couldn't go out of town that day.  The weather was gorgeous and I suggested Hampton Park--a lovely city park near the Citadel.  Hampton Park has been around for years and years--and has had many lives.  In the late 1800's, it was a race track; in the early 1900's, it was an Exposition Park; in the 60's it was a zoo and it now is a large public park with lakes, trees, bandstand, jogging trails and flowers, flowers, flowers.
I first went there as a young mother to take my son for picnics and to see the zoo.  It really wasn't much of a zoo by today's standards but it was fine for a

3-year old.  There were alligators (up close and personal), otters, monkeys and other assorted animals.  And I can still hear--and smell--the monkeys.  I guess it all kind of fell away after Charlestowne Landing opened up but I have many fond memories of it.
But now the gardens have been rejunvenated and explanded and the flowers are well worth seeing although I would recommend going early in the day because the paths are not well shaded.  You can see here some of the ones I saw last week.  Notice the bumble bee on the blue flowers.  You can also see that there were edible plants--cabbage and swiss chard.

 I was especially interested in the swiss chard because it costs so much in the grocery store and is so delicious.  Since there were a couple of people planting flowers along the pathway, I stopped to ask them about planting times, etc (It's a fall-planted crop here in the Charleston area).  While I talked with them, I learned that every single flower that is planted in this huge garden is grown either from seeds or cuttings.  They have many volunteers who do this and I would have to think that it saves the City a lot of money.  And so much beauty results from all of the effort.

 Cabbage

Swiss Chard

 Part of the "Lake-System"

 This looks like a good climbing tree to me--once you used an extension ladder to get up into it!

There has been a lot of attention paid to Angel Oak on John's Island and it is well-deserved.  But look at this limb on one of the trees at Hampton Park.  Can you imagine just how long it took to grow down to the ground like that?
So, all in all, it was a nice outing for our anniversary.  And, hopefully, some of those flowers will end up in a quilt one day.

Sacred Threads

Several months ago, I applied to have my Imagine quilt included in the Sacred Threads exhibit in Herndon, Virginia (outside Washington, D.C.) this June. http://www.sacredthreadsquilts.com/
This quilt was inspired by John Lennon's song Imagine and is about people putting aside their prejudices, territories and symbols of "rightness" to live in a world of peace and love.  I have loved this song from the first moment I heard it and knew immediately how I wanted to interpret it in fabric and thread.
The application to Sacred Threads states the following:
Sacred Threads is an exhibition of quilts exploring themes of spirituality, joy, inspiration, peace/brotherhood, grief and healing. This biennial exhibition was established to provide a safe venue for quilters who see their work as a connection to the sacred and/or as an expression of their spiritual journey.

The objective is to create a dignified exhibition of artwork that touches on both spiritual and personal levels all those who view it. We want to share with others the experiences of quilters whose stories may be a source of healing and strength.
I knew as soon as I finished this work that I wanted it to be in the exhibition.  It was sort of a "kismet" feeling as Herndon, Virginia was the town I grew up in and even as a young person I felt a need to search out avenues of spirituality and to seek answers to the unanswerable.  I am, of course, still seeking and that is how Imagine came to be.  The acceptance email I received this morning (how appropriate for it to arrive on Easter morning!) said that there were far more applications this year than ever before so I guess the seeking continues as we try to make sense of our chaotic world.   I am looking forward to being in Herndon the last part of June and experiencing the entire show.  I know that it is going to be powerful.

An Art-Filled Journey

 This past Friday, three friends and I set off for North Carolina--and beyond--in order to visit several of my favorite quilt shops and to see some other things along the way.  Our first stop was in Forest City, the home base of Schoolhouse Quilts.  Many of you have visited their booth at various quilts shows (they're the ones with all the books and notions).  BUT, at their shop (which is located in the lower lever of their home) they also have bolts and bolts of beautiful fabric.  It's well worth the effort to go there.  While we were in there, our friend Diana Pickens arrived and clued us in to a wonderful bead shop just down the road.  Of course, we HAD to go.

 Here is the exterior.  Isn't it wonderful?

 And these interior shots just capture part of the entire space.  There were so many beautiful beads and I'll have to admit that some went home with me.

 After we left the bead shop, we headed on to Spindale where the Rutherfordton Quilt Guild was holding its very first quilt show.  The quilts were nice and there were over 20 vendors.

 This very unusual butterfly quilt was made by Robin Parton.

 And this fabric floral arrangement was made by Amy Moye.  Both of these talented women were in a quilting class that I taught in Rutherfordton last year so I was delighted to see more of their work.

 This next floral quilt was made by Martha McGinnis.

 And this one was by Carol Griffin.  I really liked the
"mountain feeling" that it captured.

 Dorothy Baird-McKinney made this quilt and it was entered in the catagory that was for people who had been quilting for less than two years.  She quilted it herself and I think should be very pleased with the result.

This last quilt has a little story to it.  It was pieced and quilted by my friend Jeanette Auld who lives most of the year at Lake Lure and the rest of the time in Mt. Pleasant.  I gave her the leftover pieces from a quilt I had made and she used them to make the same quilt I did--only bigger.  That's a real "two-fer"!
Well, we covered so much ground on this first day of our trip that we were ready to kick back after we finally got our groceries and arrived at my house in Hendersonville.  We knew we better get some rest because the next day we were heading to Tennessee.  More on that later . . .

Not Just One Block

 While I was in Murrells Inlet this past Fall, I bought a beautiful piece of fabric with Purple and Green Floral Tones.  When I showed it to my friend Corky, she said that it would make a great fabric for a One-Block Wonder Quilt.  I, of course, asked, "What's that?"  Well, you can see from the picture, it is a pretty busy quilt made with hexagonal blocks.  You have to measure how often the design repeats and buy enough fabric that you'll have 6 repeats.  Since my fabric had a 24" repeat, I had to go back to the store and get more.

 This is the fabric that I had chosen.

 And you can see from these sample blocks the very different effect you can get from each block.  Corky and Dotty came over for a day of sewing these blocks and we spent quite a bit of time oohing and aahing over each other's results.  If you're wondering about the pins in the blocks, you don't sew the two halves together until you sew the rows together for ease of construction.  (After all, it IS a little easier to sew a straight line than it is to sew a "Y" seam).

 After I had sewn all my patterned hexagons, I decided to add cubes to add a dimensional element to the quilt.  The first one took an hour to sew (due to a poor choice in a ruler and trying to "make" the cube fit), but after that they just buzzed along.  I then started playing with the placement on the design wall.

A closeup of the cube.

 And then the finished layout.  I was aiming at the light coming downward from the upper left to the lower right.

And here is my finished quilt.  I don't have a sleeve on it yet, so the photo isn't the best in the world.  In my quilting, I decided to try using metallic thread on the main body of the quilt.  I used a Superior Metallic  Thread, a 90 Top Stitch Needle and Superior Bottom Line thread in the bobbin with a tension setting of .5.  Over all, I was very pleased with the result.  And, on top of that, it was a lot of fun.  What more could I want?

A Perfect Afternoon

Our Art Group has been invited to mount an exhibition at Charlestowne Landing this December--with the theme being, of course, Charlerstowne Landing.  Last fall, we spent the afternoon there walking around, taking pictures and generally soaking up the atmosphere for inspiration.  I was very inspired and took lots of pictures.  Just one problem--I had inserted the memory card in the wrong direction and ended up with a huge ZERO in terms of photos by which to call forth the inspiration. (I really got some good shots, too.)
So, anyway, I've been waiting for a nice spring day to head back over there to be inspired once again.  And, as you can see, I didn't have a disagreement with my camera this time.  This first shot just reminded me of how I liked to climb trees when I was a young girl.  Have you noticed that climbing trees are hard to find these days?  It seems they're either cut down for progress or they haven't had enough time to grow into climb-able getaways in newer subdivisions.  I used to climb the maple tree in our yard, hang upside down and swing (Hmm..that may account for some of my off-kilter thought processes now  . . .) and just sit there and dream.  Time well spent, I'd say.  These three girls were having a great time.

 And the formosa azaleas were at their height--and the aroma of their flowers!  Formosa azaleas grow much larger than the average azaleas in our yards today and they look great in park-type situations.  Another wonderful place to see them in Charleston is at Hampton Park (well worth visiting).

And this split rail fence is an example of how fences were constructed back in colonial times.   Without chain saws and log splitters this effort took quite a while, I'm sure.  They have a little demo area set up to show how they sawed logs into boards.  Whew. . .A good muscle builder.

 This wooden Indian sculpture has been at Charlestowne Landing for years but there was a plaque that said it had been restored a few years ago so I guess it had fallen into some hard times.  They have changed the configuration for the park and this statue used to face you as you came to the Animal Forest.  It's still in the same place but you have to walk around a little to see the full frontal view.  Pretty impressive from any view.

 Mrs Waring was the person who owned all of the land that now comprises Charlestowne Landing.  She spent many years developing the gardens and gave the entire property to the state.  This is the view she would have seen from her house.  Almost like a perfect postcard.  One little thing though . . .Can you see the sign by the water?  It says, "Watch Out For Alligators."  I don't think I'd be walking around there much after dark.  There was an 8-foot alligator siteing while we were there yesterday but I'm just as happy that I wasn't the one who saw it.

And Charlestowne Landing has its own Angel Oak potential with some of its very old trees.  This huge limb is propped up with steel to keep it from breaking.  I don't know if they were afraid it could potentially fall on someone or if they just didn't want the limb to break but it was impressive with its size.
So, these are just a few pictures from my afternoon at the Park.  The weather was so gorgeous--just enough breeze to keep away the bugs, flowers all around and, hopefully, enough inspiration for me to make a quilt that will honor this wonderful place in our part of the world.

Phillipa Naylor

 I had the pleasure this past week of taking two classes from Phillipa Naylor from Great Britain.  Her book--that I have here--is all about piecing curves.  In addition, it tells of her very interesting life in Saudi Arabia, her return to England and her earlier career as a fashion designer and how it impacted her style of working in quilting fabric.  I also attended her lecture where she had some of her gorgeous, PERFECT quilts.
Throughout my two days with her, one thing that really stood out was her willingness to take her time in all of the steps that go into making an award-winning quilt.  I found it so inspiring and also a reminder that, for me at least, it is better to do one quilt really well than to have an entire closet of them done with little thought and caring about the process that makes them special. 

 We just made a sample block in the Curved Piecing class.  She started out with a conventional Churn Dash block and then showed us how to make it curvy.  And then once that was done, she showed us her method of piecing those curves.  I really liked her method.  It called for a lot of preparation before the first seam is ever sewn.  As you can see by my picture of the back side of the block, there is a LOT of "V" snipping and all of the seams are pressed open to achieve a flatness to the finished piece.  She also talked about threads (thinner is better for piecing) and the size of the needle (smaller needle leaves a smaller hole).
It was a great class and I came home with plenty to think about. 

On the second day, we learned her method of machine applique (no pictures).  Again, we did a LOT of hand work before we ever got to the machine work (actually, we didn't get to the machine work except to do some samples of satin stitching around circles). This workshop would have been better if it had been at least two days because there was so much information to hear, assimilate and use.  Phillipa will soon have a book out on this topic and it will absolutely be part of my library.  I plan on finishing the piece that I started and will share it later.  In the meantime, I'm still thinking about all the things that I came home with and how I might use them in my own work.  I know for sure that I'll be pressing more seams open than ever before and precision is always a much sought after skill.  I'm working on it.

Two Finished Projects

 My last post showed the construction process of this abstract wallhanging that I started in a class with Gloria Loughman.  Well, "started" is somewhat of a loose term because I actually started again from scratch once I got home.  However, the concepts she shared were really great and I came home excited to start again.  I mean, you know how it is--you go to a class thinking you KNOW what it's all about, you have your design in mind (and maybe even have it drawn out)--and then the whole thing is blown away when you find out what REALLY  is going to happen in the class.  I enjoyed the entire process and now I even have another design ready to interpret in fabric--after I finish a couple of other things . . .

 Today at our Art Group, we had our "reveal" in our Zentangle challenge.  It was great.  Our members came up with some really creative zentangles.  Doreen actually made a lampshade with freemotion zentangles, Linda applied her zentangles to a teeshirt, Dotty made two zentangle projects--a beautiful wallhanging and a 3-dimensional piece.  Corky free-motioned zentangles that changed colors as they overlapped--and the list goes on.  They were all so inspiring.  As you can see, I went the 3-dimensional route.  I had seen a picture of an embroidered cat in a catalogue and decided that would work for my project.  I used faux leather and several different kinds of pens.  I also added color.  As I thought through the construction process, I realized I was going to have to insert a zipper because I didn't think that I could sew the opened seam with a hand needle after I finished the stuffing process.  So, I had to draw the outlines for the two back pieces, sew the zipper and THEN draw.  I wanted the cat to be able to stand on it's own, so I figured out how to make a flat bottom and then put a bag of sand in the lower one quarter so it would have stability.  I'll have to say, it was lots of fun and I was glad that it actually turned out the way I had envisioned (well, almost).
Our next challenge is going to be based on a haiku poem--I can hardly wait to see what this talented group of women is going to come up with this time!