Lark Crafts Quilt Festival!

All during the month of October, Lark Crafts is featuring a Quilt Festival on their blog. Full of free quilt projects, interviews with quilt designers, and lots of fun quilting inspiration!

Ho Jo Space Spores

And guess who is their first featured artist? That's right, yours truly!

Morning Glory

To make things even more sweet, they are offering 3 FREE projects of mine, that were featured in their book Quilts, BABY!

Click on this link to read the interview and to learn how to make my 3 "Space Spores Trilogy" quilts shown here!

River

Happy Quilting!

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On a more serious note... In regards to yesterday's post, many heart felt good wishes to all of you for your kind words. Please know that I am not always, (although I wish I were) such a "look at the glass half full" kind of gal. In fact I am often the complete opposite and know very well how to throw a full blown pity party for myself.


But sometimes, when everything is raining down on you at once you just have to give in, let go, and count your blessings, for which I have many. Unfortunately sometimes it takes the act of dying to fully embrace the gift of living.

xo Vic

One Week

The events of this week included my youngest finally getting her wisdom teeth out, myself having ocular migraines, rain pouring through the closed windows in our living room, and my husband traveling to be at his mothers bedside, because she is in the process of dying, despite being the picture of health a mere two months ago.


All of this seems to point to a pretty bad week, but in reality my daughter is healing well. I was relieved to find out the strange visual disturbances and pressure behind my eyes were just a migraine and not a retinal tear, as I had feared. I'm blessed with a pretty view as I sop up the water from my leaky windows. And most importantly, my Mother-in-Law in the last days of her life has brought family together who needed to be brought together. She is surrounded by people who love her and will miss her, and in the profound sadness of her passing there is tremendous grace and gratitude for her life.

Having Fun

I thought it might be fun this week to switch to some brighter, richer colors, (a final farewell to the vibrancy of summer) and let myself be inspired by the weavings that one might find in Mexico or Guatemala...


Using stripes of solid shot cottons, along with some striped shot cotton, plaids and a madras fabric, I pieced the tops.


Then using 12wt. Premium Sulky® 100% Blendable Cotton Threads, I did the same closely, but unevenly spaced rows of meandering straight stitch that I used on my last piece ...


I really had a lot of fun with these two little quilts... probably because I use to weave before I quilted, and I got a real kick out of the one art form inspiring the other. More of these quilts are in the works.


Color Weave no.1


and Color Weave no.2

are currently available for sale in my shop.

(P.S. Lest you are thinking that I have abandoned my hand stitching, rest assured that is not the case! I am currently working on the hand quilted layer on Work Quilt no.4 as well as working on another Yukata cloth table runner similar to the one shown here. More about those, coming soon!

Keeping it Simple

My hands needed a break from hand stitching, and my mind needed something very straight forward to work on, and so this is what I made...


A very simple table runner made from muslin,
(some of which I hand dyed with coffee, turmeric and walnut ink).


The center strips were torn, and the edges left raw...


The machine stitching consists of closely, but unevenly spaced rows of meandering straight stitch...


The piece was most definitely inspired by the colors and textures which I see on the old, (and once white) barns that I pass everyday.


I think it would lovely on an old wood table.

(Now for sale in my shop).

(Note: Now sold)

Cleveland Or Bust - Part 2: My Adventures as a Tourist

As promised here's a little of our Cleveland sightseeing...

First stop was to visit the house that played the role of the Parker Family's home in one of my favorite movies, A Christmas Story. Now, seeing as it is played 24 hours a day around Christmas time, I imagine most of you are familiar with the story of young Ralphie Parker, who's only 2 wishes in the world are to receive a Red Rider BB gun for Christmas, (No, Ralphie you'll shoot your eye out!) and to finally get his little Orphan Annie secret decoder pin, in the mail.


A small talk is given outside of the house, and once inside you are basically given free range of the home and encouraged to act out your favorite scenes! An added bonus to our visit was that Ian Petrella, the actor who played Ralphie's little brother Randy, was visiting his old home as well! All grown up now, he was gracious enough to pose for a picture with me, (second row middle). The whole thing was a complete blast!

Now, no trip to Cleveland would be complete without a visit to The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame...


What a fabulous piece of architecture! In fact the whole surrounding area was gorgeous! I had no idea that the city of Cleveland was so beautiful. Lots to see in the museum, but picture taking was only allowed in the lobby. Also, if you ever are looking for obscure and generally hard to find music, the gift shop is a super resource. Lots of great finds!

We also did lots of exploring of various small towns and beaches. My favorite town was the beautiful Chagrin Falls. If I had the money, I could see retiring here, it was that enchanting...


(First picture top row, is of a restaurant we ate at, with a view overlooking the falls.)

On the way back home to Pennsylvania we visited one of my favorite places, Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater. This was a joy to see again. No photo's are allowed to be taken inside the home, but outside it's free range... the only stipulation is that you don't share any of the images of the house publicly, (which is too bad as I got some beauties!). I am however, (just to validate that we were there!) going to share this one photo of hubby and me, with just a wee little bit of the home in the background... I think that would be okay...
(don't tell!)



Thanks for indulging me. Next blog post will be about sewing. Promise!