RAINY DAY DISCOVERY

Marilyn Doheny has worked her butt off the past two days, presenting an amazing and awesome trunk show on Wednesday and a jam-packed full day class on Thursday using her remarkable 9 degree rulers.  We were all completely saturated with  the variety of designs that could be accomplished with her quilting techniques, and we were also totally immersed in the process to the extent that while finally creeping out of the class at the end of the day, we found ourselves tired but exhilarated by all that we had learned to do.

So I thought that today, Marilyn, who is my guest for the next several days, should have a little relaxation.  The first requirement was that the fun would not require any of us to meet anyone's schedule on anything, and the second was that it must involve fabric.

After the trunk show on Wednesday, we had held a luncheon for her at the Rosemont Winery.  Chef David had made incredibly delectable tidbits of this and that for us, topping it all off with a heavenly flan.  During that luncheon, I heard of a new quilt shop in the area, the Threads Run Thru It Quilt Shop in Phenix, VA.

Now, you have to realize that "the area" in rural Virginia does not mean "the area" in any other civilized and populated part of the world.  If you lived in a suburb of a big city, it could mean just a few blocks.  If you lived in a small town, it could include the backroads between that town and the next.  But in rural Virginia, "the area" means anything between your home and about 2 hours away, because there is absolutely NOTHING around where we all live down here until we get to a major city, like Richmond or Raleigh. 

So that meant that we needed to make an hour and a half trip to see this quilt shop.  And we did.  In the rain on a grey and somewhat muggy day. But oh boy!  Was it ever worth it!

The quilt shop itself is a charming log cabin out in the middle of nowhere.  It's not even near the three or four houses that pass for a town in this neck of the woods.  It is REMOTE!  As you go down the lane and come upon this pretty place, you are immediately greeted by two things:  the lovely quilts hanging on the outer walls, and the cat, Wing Nut, who is a long-haired, multicolored, affectionate "familiar" of this bewitching place.

Once inside, the warm greetings continue.  Lori and Steve Clayton (who built the log cabin himself!) welcome you with an exquisite collection of every fabric you could possibly want, with the exception of no Amy Butler(which I don't use anyway) or Kaffe Fassett (which is ok, because I can get his stuff any number of places).  The fabrics are top notch quality and very up to date.  I spent over an hour just drooling and touching and thinking and planning and combining one with the other.  Finally, I bought a whole bunch of yummy stuff and sat down to wait for the others in my party.  Myrt was with us, and she looked over some fabrics I wanted to make into strata for the Eye of Rah quilt.  She quickly saw that I needed a particular red as a zinger, so back I went to the batiks rows to choose a strong, deep red.  While there, Marilyn had found a batik with several heart-catching colors in it, so of course I needed some of that, too.  I ended up at the cash register for two more purchases.

This is Emily.  She must have cut more than 50 fabrics for the three of us today!  And always with a smile.  While we were there, four more ladies arrived, and by the time we left, another two had come in the door and were proceeding up and down the aisles, eyes glazed over, slack-mouthed and drooling, just like we had been upon seeing all those fabrics, willing and eager to jump into our arms almost of their own volition.

l 

I sat back down again and watched others fondle, carry and combine their treasures.  Then another spark of color caught my eye, and of course, that needed to go in my bag.  And the black and white diagonal stripes -- I had forgotten I needed them, too.  By now, I'm a little embarrassed at showing up for a third time at the register, but what's a quilter to do?  You have to have the correct supplies, right?

If you look at the top picture, you will see that Marilyn is seated at a little bistro table.  These tables are in one section of the cabin/shop, as is a small kitchenette.  Lori Clayton will prepare lunch for her customers if she knows when you are coming and how many there will be!  We had delicious chicken salad sandwiches, potato chips, brownies and iced tea -- for free!!!  What service!

Lori is also a longarmer.  She has a Gammill with the Statler computerized robotics attached.  I'm giving her a plug even though she is competition for me.  But she's also a good sport about it and seems to have a comfortably large customer base.

This quilt shop has been in business for a year and is doing very well.  Both Steve and Lori are personable quilters who know what is required to have a successful enterprise.  They make a good team, and the shop is absolutely, 100% worth the trip.  I highly recommend them to all the quilters in "the area."

I'M DONE!

Although I spent pretty much a sleepless night last night, convinced that I would die of carbon monoxide poisoning in my sleep, I did manage to catch a few winks when all of a sudden we were startled awake with the sound of a thunk/explosion!  We jumped out of bed, DH with a baseball bat and flashlight, me dashing headlong to the basement stairs to see if the noise had come from there.  We discovered that the generator had stopped -- no electricity at all.  We went outside to see what had happened.  The indicator said that the coolant was too hot.  Ok.  We'll just have to fix it in the morning.

When morning came, however, this is what we found:

This is a generator fan belt, pretty much stripped and chewed up and slung around the insides of the generator enclosure.  That explained both the crashing sound and the cessation of function of the generator, for without the cooling effects of the fan, the whole thing would overheat.

Resigned, but undaunted, we marched off to the Napa Auto store to get a new belt.  Turns out they gave us the wrong size, even though we gave them the identical numbers off the old belt.  We'll have to exchange it tomorrow.

One good thing happened, though.  The electricity was restored to the development this morning.

While at the Napa store, DH got a lead on a new job, but it turned out that the shop owner talked bigger than he could deliver.  We saw no sign of any work having been brought in, worked on, or waiting for pick up while we were there. Back to the drawing board.

We're done.  We're fried.  One more thing is going to put us over the edge.  We rail against the gods who have made it their quest to test our mettle.  It's over.  Mother Nature and I have called it quits.

TRAUMA CENTRAL

There are days that it just doesn't pay to get up in the morning.  Some Machiavellian destiny awaits, and we, unsuspectingly, march blithely forward, innocent of where it lurks or how it will affect our lives forever more.

One of my dogs has seizures and is on phenobarbital.  The other one, Razzy, above, doesn't.  However about a week ago I was sitting on the couch with Razzy behind it where she likes to lie next to the air conditioning floor vents, and I felt this shaking of the back of the couch.  I put my feet on the floor, thinking that now Razzy must be having seizures and wanting to go to her to comfort her while she went through it.  The floor was shaking, and I looked at DH and said "The dog's having a seizure!"  The shaking got worse and worse.  The whole house seemed to be bouncing up and down from it!  My husband, being from California and experienced in this sort of thing,  grabbed my hand and said, "That's no seizure!  That's an earthquake!" and he tried to drag me to the stairs to the basement.  An earthquake!?  Who ever heard of an earthquake without a fault line nearby?  I tried to go to the dog to make sure it wasn't her quaking, but he was insistent.  No sooner did we get to the top steps than it subsided.  Nothing broken, no stonework in the house loosened.  I still couldn't believe it.  But there it was, on the internet.  A 5.9 quake centered near Lake Anna and felt as far as Atlanta, Rhode Island, and Ohio!  Go figure! 

So, that was interesting, and we were none the worse for wear, but over the next few days, Hurricane Irene formed, strengthened, and travelled her inexorable route along the East coast, wreaking havoc in her path.  We cleared the patio of furniture, covered and tied down the tarp over the mulch we had just had delivered, put away the lawn tractor and wheel barrows, and planted the few remaining chrysanthemums that remained from my gardening spruce up spree.  We called in an electrician to correct the errors that the idiot who had wired the house and generator panel when we first built this place had made, and we thought we were ready.

Then came Irene.  Wind and rain blew SIDEWAYS at 40 mph, hard as a pressure washer against our Pella windows, two of which leaked.  Water ran down the great room wall from the clerestory window far above us.  We sopped it up with towels and waited. 

Of course, at this particular moment in time, the dogs needed to piddle, so out I went with them.  They took one look outside and cowered, but a mixture of firmness and coaxing got them out into the storm.  A dead tree that belonged to our mean neighbor was swaying.  Finally they finished and we went back in.  About an hour later we heard a thump.  It was the dead tree.  It fell onto the mean neighbor's yard, not ours.  Hurray!

Then the power went out.  Smugly, I went outside to turn on the generator.  Nothing happened.  Much criticism from IH (irate husband) about my technique ensued until he went outside and couldn't get the darn thing to go on, either.  Turned out that the electrician that checked out our generator the day before had turned it off, so we had to dissemble the front panel and turn the switch back to automatic so it would work.  This in gale winds and pouring rain, whipping our faces like tiny splinters.  Success!  We had power!  Lights.  Microwave. Gas stove. Air conditioning -- ahhhhh!

But no phone.  So no internet.  For a short time we had TV, but then the power went out to the DirecTV people, too, and that was the end of that.  We watched DVD's and listened to the howling winds.  By about 11 or 12 at night, the rain settled down and the winds calmed to about 20 mph.  One more bathroom trip for the doggies, and we toddled off to bed.

This morning I let doggies out, totally forgetting that the underground fence was not on, it being a "non-essential" item and therefore not on the emergency panel.  They, of course, took advantage of the lack of warning beeps and went scampering off into the neighborhood.  We jumped in the golf cart to look for them, taking with us a chain saw in case a neighbor needed help or there was a tree in the road, but two trips around the development failed to reveal their whereabouts. 

We did find some trees down across the road, so DH fired up the chain saw and had at it.  During the second tree, the chain saw clutch seized up.  Brand new Poulan. Apparently he had had this same trouble with it before, and no amount of fiddling with it could get it to loosen back up.  So he threw it on the ground a few times -- his version of anger management.  Wouldn't you know, the neighborhood psychologist drives up at that instant, hears what happened, laughs his head off and goes on to breakfast.  We go back home.

When we returned, a neighbor was in our driveway (the phones still being out) in her van.  Our dogs had gone to her court and had treed one of their "volunteer" outdoor cats and had killed the other.  We were heartsick!  She told us where they were, still  circling the tree that the second cat had escaped into, so we hopped back into the golf cart and high tailed it to the empty lot, capturing them before more damage could be done.

Back home, chagrinned and sweaty, generator chugging away, air conditioning beckoning, dreadful dogs refusing to meet our eyes.  They knew they had done two bad things already, and it wasn't even 9 AM!

The phone service returned.  We checked in with our kids to let them know we were fine and to see how they had fared. Fired up the internet and checked Irene's path and email.  Then the phone lines went down again.  We decided we had had enough of being responsible adults for today and went out for lunch, badly in need of some mothering and comfort food.

When we got home, the alarms were going off.  Specifically, the carbon monoxide alarms.  We opened all the doors and turned off the generator, which emits alot of carbon monoxide in its exhaust since it runs on propane.  Every single alarm in the entire house was shrieking "Warning!  Carbon monoxide!"  There was nothing more to do but go outside and begin cleaning up the leaves and branches all over our lawn and blow off the patio.  About an hour into that, we'd had enough, so we poked our heads back into the house.  Silence.  We shut the doors and discovered that Razzy had gotten out again.  This time she was only two doors away when we found her, and she came right back.  Good thing.  I think there may have been an iota of murderous intent in our tone when we ordered her to "Come!"

In another half hour we fired the generator back up, took showers, ate something, and nearly died when the alarms went off again.  This time we decided to disarm the alarm that seemed to be triggering all the others.  And that did the trick.  Apparently all the alarms were having sympathy pains to this one alarm.  We had replaced the battery when we went outside to work on the lawn, thinking that that would do the trick.  But it didn't, so it got dissembled.  We intend to sleep through the night.  All other alarms are now silent!  Hurray!

I'm tired of being a grown up this week.



SPRUCING UP

The dock has been power washed and resealed!  Hurray!  It has only taken us 4 years to get around to doing this, but now it looks pretty spiffy.  However, the woods in front of it could use a good bushwhacking.  Trouble is, we don't have a bushwhacker.  So machetes and weed whackers and chain saws will have to do.  I've got the weekend's schedule full of this for us, combined with jumping in the lake from time to time to cool off.  I'm going to have to bring some heavy lawn chairs with colorful cushions down to decorate this dock a little.

We're doing a little sprucing up around here.  All of our gardens had gone to grass, so I hired a crew to come out and pull up as much grass as they could see.  Dig it out, pull it up, rake it within an inch of its life -- whatever it took.  And even after two days with three men working pretty much nonstop, there were still little slivers here and there. That crew was too expensive, so I found someone else who could work odd hours before or after his other jobs to help me remulch my gardens.

DH has pretty much every tool known to man, whether it be for automobiles or lawn tractors or gardening, so I filled his metal pump cylinder with weed/grass killer, sealed it, pumped air into it, and went charging out to conquer those remaining insolent weeds!  Alas, the nozzle was clogged, and despite scraping and turning and rinsing and using all my magic words ($))^$@#&*(*^##**!!!), the thing just wouldn't work. 

Undaunted, I grabbed my keys and headed for the local hardware store, purchasing a cheaper, plastic version of DH's super duper spray pump system.  This one worked perfectly.  Someone had told me to spray Round Up on the weeds and grass bits before recovering with landscape cloth.  Hah!  Southern grass scoffs at Round Up!  Scoffs!  I grow more grass on my gravel driveway than in my lawn!!  And for years, I have sprayed the darn stuff with Round Up to no avail. 

This year, we used a layman's version of Agent Orange it seems -- Crossbow.  Don't ask me what it is.  I just know it works.  However, you do need to keep up with it.

Here's the front garden newly weeded, sprayed and mulched.  And yes, that's grass on the driveway.  I'll be getting to that this weekend.

Two other gardens down and two more to go.  The one on the bottom needs some new plants.  I'll check in with the local nursery to see what would do well being transplanted at this time of year.

Now for a glass of iced tea and a pizza!

THE BUGS AND FLOWERS QUILT

I'm a big fan of Marilyn Doheny's work.  In fact, I'm so much a fan that I have arranged for her to come to my guild in September for a trunk show one day and a class the next.  Marilyn works with free form art to make leaves and stems, but she also is the inventor of the 9 degree ruler, with which she has created many wonderful masterpieces.

This is my favorite of her quilts.  The wedges created by making strata of very different fabrics and then cutting them in different ways are well demonstrated in this quilt.  You may remember that Mary and I went to Tryon, NC last September for a week long quilting retreat at Marilyn's newly refurbished Melrose Inn.  That's where I started this quilt:

I haven't finished the antennae or the butterfly bodies just yet, but I'm working on them.  I hope to complete at least the applique on this quilt before Marilyn comes to our guild.

Of course, Mary, being the over achiever she is (and I like that about her!), has not only finished her applique but has quilted her quilt and bound it!  She is coming in September at the same time as Marilyn, and I will be hosting these two creative ladies in my home.  Can't wait!

BUSY DAYS

First and foremost, I want to say Happy Birthday to my brother.  He is such a delight, and I am very lucky to have him in my life, even though we seldom see each other.  You know how it is with good friends, though -- even if you don't get together often, when you do, you just pick up the thread of conversation and keep going.  My baby brother is like that.  He's the real deal.  What you see is what you get, and I like him that way.  Many more, bro'!

In my quilting world, I am working on a small project, a wool needle keeper, that I started in Sue Spargo's class at Quilt Odyssey.  Above is a sampler that she did for us with wool leaf shapes that were all the same but had different embroidery stitches and embellishments on them.

Here's a closeup of some of the stitching.  Isn't it luscious?  The shapes I have on my needle keeper are just circles, but it's surprising how unique they can be made with just a few cleverly placed stitches.  When I get it finished, I'll post it for you.

Meanwhile, here's a little preview of the larger wall hanging project that Mary started in another of Sue's classes.  This is just one section of the quilt, but Mary is a very fast quilter/stitcher, and she had this part almost finished by the time the show was over.  The background is a gorgeous turquoise raw silk, not shiney at all, and fairly loosely woven, but it has great texture. 

Yesterday a lady called me wanting me to put her granddaughter's name on a laundry bag that she was making for her to take to college this fall.  I don't do embroidery as a business, but the lady's friend, who usually did her embroidery, had injured her arm, so I did it for her.  What a great idea!  I immediately called my DIL to ask if my grandson, who is going to VA Tech this fall, needed a laundry bag.  Turns out he already has one, and it isn't made of any type of fabric that can be embroidered.  Oh well.  I'll save that idea for some other time.

TRADITIONAL BEAUTIES

Isn't this just the loveliest quilt?  It's all appliqued, and then finished with a scalloped border.  Click on this picture to see it better.  I love to see hand piecing and applique, but I find it tedious to do.  Maybe that's why I value quilts that have this kind of work on them so much more than straight pieced ones.  The quilting on this one is by hand, too.  Sorry I didn't get the name of the artist, but this quilt was among the others I have shown that were hanging in the show at Quilt Odyssey.

Talk about quilting!  Take a look at this one.  Again, hand appliqued and hand quilted.  These traditional style quilts are such beautiful presentations.  I think for all their novelty and inventiveness, art quilts can never have the grace and solidity of traditional quilts.

Karen Marchetti created this simple but dynamic example of a pieced quilt and won second prize in the wall quilt category!  She named her work "Clouds in my Latte", which reminds me of a Carly Simon song, "You're So Vain" in which she sings about "I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee, clouds in my coffee...."

This miniature quilt is mind boggling!  The quilting is so very tiny and detailed.  I can't imagine how she accomplished that without going blind!  The name of this quilt is "Secret Garden" by Terri Doyle.

This large quilt was made by the Friendship Star Quilt Guild from Montgomery Village in Maryland and is called "Sunflower Square Dance."

This last one is the creme de la creme.  "Pine Burr" by Judy Elwood is machine pieced, hand appliqued and hand quilted.  For her superlative efforts, Judy won First Place as Best Traditional Quilt in the show!  Click on it to magnify it to see each tiny piece.  It is stunning!

I hope all this has stimulated you just as it has me to reach beyond my present grasp when designing or sewing or quilting your quilts.  The show was everything I've come to expect from it over the years and more.  Missy Molino deserves kudos yet again for another year of perfection.  Great classes, great show, and great vendors' mall!

As I complete the projects from my classes, I'll post them here.  Meanwhile, take a look at Mary's blog. She has information on the classes we took with wool queen, Sue Spargo.