Pink Garden Progress

As promised, here are pictures of the orgami flowers along the bottom of the Pink Garden wall hanging. I used a pattern from Flower Origami by Kumiko Sudo. Coincidentally, Kumiko's books have recently been mentioned enthusiastically on the Crazy Quilt International listserve. This is the only book of hers I have. It merits the enthusiasm in my opinion. The flowers are fabic flowers and her instructions are very clear. I haven't been successful following directions for paper orgami, so I appreciate her descriptive skill a lot.

The brown flowers were purchased, made to fuse to fabric. I embellished them with beads. Getting started on this project feels great!

Snowstorm!! Bracelet Finished.

Got to blog about this record snowstorm for this area. It's being called snowmagedon, snowzilla or snowpocalypse. Over two feet fell from Friday morning until Saturday evening. Electricity went out for about 2 1/2 hours yesterday. My inside temperature fell from 72 to 64 degrees. I had wood in the fireplace for a nice fire in the evening but I didn't light it. Maybe tonight.
This picture is of the path I dug from the back side door yesterday morning. Another 5 or 6 inches fell and I had to dig out again, but it was easier than tackling the caboodle at once. Here's a picture of my backyard at the same time.

There was plenty of light in my studio for stitching and I have a battery operated radio so I could listen to my favorite Saturday NPR programs while the electricity was out. I finished the Jewel of India bracelet started in a class at my local Embroidery Guild meeting last Monday. This was taught by Susan Elliott from an article in the October/November 2004 issue of Beadwork magazine. My finished product sure shows the faults of a first timer. Not smooth on the edges. I do like the look of herrringbone stitch. I don't wear bracelets very often, but I'm thinking of adapting it to crazy quilt embellishment or bead embroidery. It was really fun during the workshop to see the different colors the students used. This pattern lends itself to some beautiful results. I just picked my colors from the 6 colors of delica beads I had in my stash. I was lucky to have four that went well together.

Today the sun is shining and the snow is beautiful. My good neighbors scooped my sidewalk and I snapped this picture of Jocelyn being silly behind the snow in their front yard. I had my fill of snow growing up in Iowa, but this storm somehow has been nice. It makes a cosy break from the routine, it brings people together to deal with it and it's lovely at the moment.

Design Breakthrough: Pink Garden Wallhanging

This design has been in my head for probably two years and I've been collecting things to use on it. It will be a wall hanging for the wall beside my big picture window where I have no drapes. I intend it to be "encrusted"  with 3-D pink flowers to blend colors with my sofa upholstery. I was having trouble with placing a garden path in the design. I couldn't find a route for it I liked. Here's the breakthrough: there will be no path! I like my vision of it now. I've pieced the background. It doesn't look very pink yet. Wait for the flowers.

The piece measures 24x48 inches. As I look at the picture. I see the background is skewed, but I think that will be corrected by the encrusting. The dark part on the upper right and top is mean to indicate a tree branch which will support dangling wisteria. The brown garden bed on the right is smocked, American style. That took a very long time to do. I used a pattern from Artistic Quiltmaker, 1999 by David K Small. (His books are self-published and are no longer in print as his interest has moved on to art quilting and drawing.) And, yes, the bottom of the Pink Garden is not straight. I intend to make a beaded fringe which will be longer on the left to make a straight bottom of the fringe.

I'm currently blessed with a snowstorm yesterday providing two days of free time during which I've made progress on some of the flowers. More on that later.

Happy New Year!

I can't believe I've been home five days already and we're four days into the new year and the new decade. I hope it's all good for you.

My holiday trip was a "go with the flow" experience. On the day after the big snow here in DC the Capitol Limited was four hours late out of the city because of frozen switches. It made up time and got me into Chicago in time to make my connection to the California Zephyr, but that too was late, two and a half hours, into Osceola, Iowa. Luckily, it was a window of opportunity for good road conditions. My sister and neice drove 70 miles from Ames to pick me up.

Then it was snow and ice off and on until it, luckily again was clear roads when I came back on the 29th. We were only able to gather about a third of the expected family for the celebration: those south and east of Ames. What with weather and stomach flu, I didn't see any of my little grand-neices and nephews while I was there. The youngest was aged seventeen. I did have a good time with those I did see, though.

Coming home was a bit of an ordeal. The California Zephyr was four hours late and didn't make it to Chicago for my connection. So they unloaded us at Galesburg, Illinois, (I found this photo by Stephen J. Brown online of the Zehpyr in Galesburg in a nicer season) and put us on a Trailways bus to Indianopolis, Indiana, to catch the Cardinal to DC. The bus was tight seating, they ran movies with no personal headphones so I had to block out the sound while reading and the only food was a brief stop at McDonald's during the six hour drive. Luckily I had a Zone bar in my purse. The Cardinal has a wonderful scenic route through the New River valley in West Virginia. This picture was taken at Thurmond, West Virginia, through a dirty window. I somehow didn't get a picture of the actual river, which is renowned for white-water rafting. I enjoyed  the scenery, but didn't enjoy trying to sleep in coach because there were no available sleepers on the train. I got home at 9:30 pm on the 30th instead of 1:00 pm as scheduled.

I hope this story doesn't discourage anyone from train travel. It would have been much worse to be stranded in an airport or trying to drive through all that.

I always take needlework with me. This time I finished a crocheted toy train engine for my great-grand nephew Sam. Isn't it something that steam engines are still popular toys and stories fifty years after they were replaced by diesel! A diesel engine just doesn't have the same character. I used a free pattern from Irka in Argentina.