Wedding Stuff - Burlap Runners

As I have mentioned, our daughter is getting married and we are now down to 3 weeks!!!  So lots of wedding projects are going on.  The wedding will be an outdoor ceremony (all good thoughts for great weather on Oct. 20 is appreciated), and the reception will be in a barn.  The barn is at a local orchard so we are hoping for a beautiful fall day with the trees all in beautiful shades of red and gold.  The trees have started to turn colors around here due to the recent cold snap.  We are really hoping for an Indian summer kind of a day with beautiful sunshine.

Anyway one of the projects we did last week was to make burlap runners that will go down the center of the tables.  We are doing rectangular tables that are set up boarding house style, so the runners are LONG.  We started with 10 yards of burlap which I cut into thirds lengthwise, and then started serging and serging...  it was time consuming but so rewarding.

 Yeah, I know - LOTS of burlap!  We then added a beautiful lace edging that we found at Joann Fabrics, in an off white color.

 

 

We used an acetate stencil my other daughter Alyssa custom made for Kelly with Kelly and Doug's initials, and stenciled with brown craft paint onto the burlap at each end of all the runners.  It was a bit fiddly getting everything lined up just right but once we had the process figured out we were on a roll.  And due to some starbucks and good music, we were up till 1:00 am working on these, we were determined to get them all done.

 

 

 

The runner with the stenciling complete.  We loved how the brown paint and stencil design looks with the bulap and lace.  Sorry about the hot pink drop cloth, it was the only plastic bag we could come up with to use under the burlap.  We found otherwise the paint would go through the loose weave of the burlap and get all over my table.

 

And this is what the runner looks like all completed.  Yes we had these layed out all over the studio to let them dry.  OK, one more project we can cross off Kelly's wedding to do list!

 

 

 

 

Keepsake Quilt

This is a picture of the antique bow tie quilt I got at an auction. We used it as a table cover at my daughter's wedding shower.   My daughter loved the vibrant colors and fun scrappiness of the antique quilt so we decided to make a keepsake quilt for her that is similar. 

 

 

We decided to do 4 patch blocks instead of the bow tie but used a lot of reproduction scraps to give the same feel with the colors and prints of the antique quilt.  I pieced all of the blocks and put freezer paper onto the back of the plain muslin squares.  I used a sharpie to put lines on the freezer paper to make it easier for people to write on the fabric squares.  Everyone at the shower added good wishes and their name to a pieced block.  We used the brown Pigma permanent pens which are for fabric

 

 

 

Here is the quilt blocks all layed out and ready to be put together. I pulled all of the freezer paper squares off before piecing the blocks together.   As you can see getting all of the prints arranged "randomly" and the signed blocks all facing the right way was kind of a project.

 

 

 

This is the quilt with the blocks all together and part of the gold borders on it.  I still needed to add the red borders.  The quilt now has all its borders and is layered and ready to quilt.  Just need to get some time to work on the quilting.  It's been a crazy busy week here with wedding stuff.  Hopefully I will have some finished pics of the quilt soon!

Really Random

We have been gone on vacation.  We went to the lake and had a great time.  Spent part of the week with friends and had lots of fun with them.  This is the view from the deck, and our favorite swing, so relaxing to sit here and swing.  The guys fished and my friend Rissa and I went on walks, played scrabble, went antiqueing, and had some great food including fish tacos with mango salsa, and blueberry buckle and apricot bars. 

Here is a pic of a large fish I "caught" a pic of on my iphone, he was right at the edge of the water.  Due to the drought we have had this summer the water is way lower (11') than normal.  Unfortunately,  this was the only fish "caught" all week, even though the guys fished a LOT over the 3 days.

 

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I came out to may car a few weeks ago and here was a leaf that had turned golden and fallen already, again due to the drought.  My daughter is getting married in October which is normally when the leaves would be beautiful.  But this year we are worried all the leaves will fall by then.  This tulip tree leaf really caught my eye though as I went to open my car door.

This is Dazey, my youngest daughters new puppy.  Hard to get her to sit still for a pic.  She is very cute, and energetic!

An iphone photo of an antique bowtie quilt I got at an auction.  My daughter who is getting married has confiscated it, and used it for her engagement pics which turned out amazing (you can see some of the pics on her blog at http://theeastbarn.blogspot.com/  Check out the post for Aug. 17th ).  So we are going to make a new quilt for her that will hopefully look similar to the antique quilt.  I will share more about it in another post.

 

 

Once again, sorry about the bad iphone photo but I couldn't resist getting a quick pic of these 2 signs my husband saw at a shop we were in recently.  He decided they might come in handy next time he has a conference meeting Ha Ha.

 

 

 

And to end this randomness a cute pic of my grandaughter Cora.  She loves to swing.  Her Mom and Dad installed a "swing beam" in their back yard earlier in the summer, so now her favorite plea is "Swing high please"

 

Oh to be so young and your only wish be to swing high please :>)

 

 

A Thousand Pyramids

I read many blogs, mostly quilting blogs and one of my favorites is mollyflanders.blogspot.com/2011/11/pyramid-quilt.html I really enjoy her posts, and love her quilts.  This pyramid quilt inspired me.  I also love Anthropologie and enjoy their catalogs.  So here is the beginning of my pyramid quilt. 

I was having so much fun cutting out pyramids I think this is going to end up much bigger than originally planned  I used a green and aqua solid that I already had but ran out after 4 rows of each.  So I ended up deciding to piece a couple of rows of just prints together.  Not totally sure I like that, so stopped working on it and decided I needed to get more of the solid fabric, or maybe some other colors of solid fabrics.

I ended up with about 36" x 60" at this point.  I have also found some other colors of solids that I intend to use.  So stay tuned.

Hot, Hot, Hot

We are having one of the hottest summers on record here, and severe drought conditions.  Tempuratures have been in the 90's every day in July so far and a few days over 100 degrees.   We have had very little rain in the last 8 weeks,.  The one day it did rain, I was waiting in line to check out at Michaels and everyone around me started screaming and running to the front windows to see the rain, everyone was just so excited, it was crazy, but we hadn't seen rain in so long it was an exciting event.  The sad part about this is that a lot of the farmers around here raise corn and much of the crop this year is going to be lost because of the weather.  My daughter's fiance however has sweet corn ready, and it is so, so good.  There are not as many ears as usual, and the ears are much smaller than normal and not filled out well BUT it still tastes amazing.  Around here, this time of year we eat sweet corn a LOT, freshly picked it is so sweet and yummy.  Not anything like what the grocery store carries as sweet corn.  Usually, we would pick and freeze 12 to 14 dozen ears of corn to have throughout the next year.  This year we were only able to get about 5 dozen decent ears to freeze, but thats OK. 

I always cook the corn in the husk in the oven, that way you can do about 2 dozen at once.  Then let it cool a bit and shuck it, the jacket and silks all come off easily since corn has steamed inside the husk.  Then we cut the corn off the ear, put it into freezer bags and freeze it.  I also have a tool to cut the corn off the ear which works pretty well. 

My daughter Kelly's fiance Doug also plants fields (yes fields! usually 3 or 4)  of sunflowers every summer.  It is such an amazing sight.  So she and Doug had their engagement pics done at the height of the sunflowers.  I will post some of the pics later, they turned out really well.  The photographer loved the sunfower fields.

Amazingly the heat and drought have not affected the sunflowers.  They are shortlived however, only at their peak for a week to 10 days, then they all turn dark brown and start falling over.   I should add that these pics are from last year, this year that corn in the field behind the sunflowers is barely half as tall, and mostly brown.

It is always so amazing to me that they all face towards the sun., and the flowers are so huge, just makes you smile.

Every year I take pictures of them.  Someday I am going to make a sunflower inspired quilt.  Not gonna happen this year though, way too busy with all the wedding plans.  Kelly and Doug got engaged on May 31st and the wedding is planned for October 20, 2012!  And my daughter has all kinds of ideas and plans for cute vintage burlap table runners (to be sewn by Mom), galvanized buckets with burlap printed numbers and dried flowers in them arranged by Mom, an album quilt with each guest at the bridal shower signing a center block, (my idea), cute homemade invitations with burlap and scrapbooking paper ....  so yeah we are keeping busy around here.

Thanks for stopping by hope you are enjoying your summer!

Details

I thought I would show some detail shots of some of my paintings.  With the oil and wax techniques there is a lot of texture on the surface that gets lost in pictures.  Hopefully the detail shots will give you a better feel for the layering of color, and surface texture. 

This is a close-up of a small corner of the painting October.  I love the rich colors of it and also most of the linear parts of this detail is raised from the surface of the painting.

This is a detail of a small painting called Wall.  Once again you can see some of the raised and indented texture on the surface of the painting.   I use different things such as stamping texture plates, letter press numbers, whisk broom, netting, cardboard, notched trowels, bamboo skewers....  this is just a few of the "tools" I use to get texture into the painting.

I also use oil paint sticks to make marks within the layers of the painting.  And depending on the surface they can be very bold as in this painting above called Structure, or more soft as in the detail below.

And lastly a detail of one of my shibori quilts called Ebb and Flow it is machine pieced and hand quilted.

Somehow the texture and colors of the quilt seems similar to the paintings even though they are completely different media.  I am always so drawn to these beautiful soft earthtone colors and the linear textures of water, trees and sky.

Hope you enjoyed my detail shots, any questions please don't hesitate to contact me. 

A Quick Visit

My daughter Alyssa and her husband Matt and Ethan and Cora stopped for a quick lunch and visit on their way to Michigan (they live an hour away).  Every year they go to Michigan and stay at a place on the beach near Grand Haven with some of Matt's family.  This is Cora, she just turned 2, and while she is so sweet in this pic, that is not always the case - she has her tantrum moments now and then :>).

This is Ethan and Cora, Ethan is 3 1/2 and as you can see here a sweet big brother who picked some flowers for Grammy.  Yes, they are weeds, but to Ethan they were beautiful flowers, and in his little bouquet they are very pretty!  I loved getting to see them even though it was short visit.