Big History Pieced and Hung

Fabric for the backing and thread for hand quilting.

Kalmia Gardens Walk

We went for a walk this a.m. at 8:30, while it was still cool and cloudy.  Kalmia Gardens is such a beautiful place, even when it is not smothered in blooming azaleas.

 My fellow hikers were not as crazy about my idea of a morning walk as I was.

The turtles were happy to see us with our bag of bread crumbs.

 Map reading.

The Kids Make Dinner

They found the recipe.

They shopped for the ingredients.  And they prepared the dish all by themselves.  I so proud.

The kids continue on their cooking way.  Here's two more examples of their handiwork:

 BLT in a bowl.

 More fruit salad.

 Fried rice.

 Even dinosaurs love fruit salad.

Today we met up with my sister and went for a little hike with the dogs.  It was hot, humid, and swarming with those damn yellow flies that bite, but it was good exercise.  Molly pulled so hard on her leash she made goose honking noises.  She had a burning desire to be first.  After about 30 minutes she quit pulling quite so hard.  She needs a little more leash work than she gets.

Labels and Borders

Big History Top Pieced

I'm still working on some of the embroidery in the blocks, but the top is sewn together.

The Need to Finish Pile

Our Halloween Quilt.  We embroidered the pictures we drew and then put them into blocks.  It needs to be machine quilted and then the binding folded over and stitched.  I'm just working out how to do machine quilting so we'll see how it goes.  I started trying to handquilt it but since I didn't know how to handquilt either, that wasn't too successful.

One of the ghosts from the Halloween quilt.

Mami Wata, African Mermaid.  This is small, like 9 x 11.  It's mostly finished.

 Pieced from scraps of clothes--an old shirt of Yifan's, a housecoat, and other bits--and solar prints I made and printed onto muslin. 

 Close up of solar print:  the Buddha, my father as a little boy and chrysanthemums, on top of a night sky.

  Cactus garden.Eight blocks, appliqued and embroidered.  No idea how I'm going to arrange them or put it together yet.

 I made these blocks of Australian animals, but somehow I got an ostrich in there.  What was I thinking?  I meant to do an emu.  I must have been drinking.  It all started with the koala wine label.  Then the kangaroo wine label and before I knew it, I was sucked into making Australian animals.   I guess that's a feral ostrich that escaped from a farmer. (I had to research that bit.)

 Close up of one of the blocks.  I did reverse applique, I think it is called.  I pieced a section of  random fabrics, cut the animals shape out of the orange fabric and but the pieced section underneath.  I folded under the edges of the orange fabric after clipping it to make it easier, then sewed around the edge of the orange fabric, very close to the edge.

  This is a scrap quilt piece made from pieces left over from Sam's bed quilt.  I haven't decided what to do with it yet.  Maybe it will be the center of something.

My goal is to finish these up before I move on to something else.  We'll see.  I might be too distracted by something new to follow through on that goal.