Back home

Busy weekend - lots of fun and lots of driving. The quilt retreat time was fun and productive. I made considerable progress on the color wheel challenge and almost came to like red-orange. Photos later.

On the way home (with a 40 mile side trip), I went to the monthly meeting of the art/contemporary bee with my other guild and saw some other color wheel challenge pieces in progress. Great stuff! Our twelve quilts will make a wonderful exhibit in August at the Guild's show.

And today it is snowing! Enough winter! However, I am going to take advantage of this and do some snow dyeing. I need some backing fabric for my marsh pieces - I will use some new dyes in marshy colors. This is my usual bookkeeping job day, but the snow changed that. So I get to play. Woo Hoo! I hope I'll have photos in a day or two of newly dyed fabric.

The other news of the weekend is that my oldest grandson just bought his first car. Oh, how time flies - wasn't he just putting legos together and playing little league!!!! He's a good guy and I am happy for him making this step of independence.

Karen

Ah, quilting weekend

I'm almost completely packed and hope to be on the road by 10 tomorrow morning. I will be working on the color wheel challenge for my art mini group. I was so lucky -- not -- to work with red orange. Not a color I usually work with, but I did have some in my stash -- a good thing because all my favorite quilt shops had very little red orange fabric.

After I gathered them all, I realized that I had mostly dark and mediums -- only one light. So, I got out my fabric paints and created some textures that will look and act like lights.

Not only was the color a challenge to gather, but I could not come up with a design other than the traditional orange slice. I pulled out an old sketchbook and found two possible designs. Can't wait to get started tomorrow.

I've got my camera packed and hope to have some photos to share when I get back.

Where's your sketchbook? When did you last doodle in it?

Peace to you,
Karen

A bit of catch-up

First, apologies to anyone who has been disappointed in my lack of posts. No excuses, just busy and distracted.

This past weekend was Quilt Expo - the biennial show by the Baltimore Heritage Quilt Guild. There were over 300 quilts on display and a bunch of vendors (including my friend Alice and me with our hand dyed fabrics and stuff). As many of you know, staging such a show is a lot of work and organization - kudos to the Guild and particularly Cathy Kleeman, who is a wonder at organizing set up and take down.

Here's a photo of two of my quilts hanging. I received some great feedback on all five of my quilts. Alice and I did great - a lot of people took home some of our wares and we took home more money.

Going back a couple weeks, granddaughter Juliana turned 9. Her Grandmom Judy is a fantastic baker and always finds cake designs to thrill everyone. Juliana loves pandas. Here's her cake and then a photo of her just beaming.

Life is good. I am now trying to finish a couple charity things - a quilt for Linus and a 10 x 10" piece for our local arts council celebrating their 10th anniversary and then a color challenge for my mini-group. This weekend is the spring retreat for the Heritage Guild. Lots more lining up - busy, busy, busy - all good stuff. And the sun is shining today!!

Thanks for stopping by.
Karen