Mean Pumpkin

Well, this month is nearly gone already, which is hard to believe.  I snapped this picture of the Mean Pumpkin on one of my walks around town.  Actually the first time I saw it, the little pumpkin had a beer bottle stuck in its mouth, which seemed appropriate, considering what’s happening to it.  But by the time I came back the next day with my camera, somebody had removed the beer bottle!  Too bad…

I played a lot of hooky this month.  Fall was glorious here this year, with unbelievable leaf colors, and mild temperatures.  Andrew and I went on many, many walks, and even a few bike rides.

We climbed to the top of Hogback Mountain on Columbus Day weekend, which surprised both of us, since Andrew is a disabled vet who sometimes has trouble getting around.  It was a long hike back there, and the last bit to get to the top was quite challenging.  But it was worth the trip.

View of Harlow Lake and Lake Superior from the top of Hogback Mountain

Here’s one of the views from the top.  Harlow Lake is the gorgeous blue jewel in the center of the picture.  You can see Lake Superior in the background.  It was warm and a little hazy that day, so it’s hard to see where the Big Lake ends and the sky begins!

It was amazing how many people made the climb up to the top.  There was quite a crowd up there that day.  If you ever visit Marquette, you really have to go.

The very next day, we took a hike back to the Lily Pond, which is in back of Wetmore Bog, and southwest of Hogback Mountain.  All the trails are interconnected.

The Lily Pond was a total surprise.  We were expecting a little pond with a marshy area around it.  This place has to be one of the best-kept secrets in the Upper Peninsula!

Me by the Lily Pond. It was absolutely gorgeous back there.

Andrew snapped this picture of me.  It was a perfect, glorious fall afternoon in this incredible place.  We stopped and rested on the rocks overlooking the Lily Pond, and ate our snack there.  It was hard to tear ourselves away from it!  If we get another nice day, we may get back there again this fall, even though the leaves are down now.

Somehow the season changed, when we weren’t looking!  It’s been a lot colder since that big storm went through last week.  And I even had snowflakes hitting me in the face on one of my walks along the beach on the Big Lake last week.  Winter is closing in.

But I’ve been weaving up a storm on my new rigid heddle loom.  Molly Cat was afraid of it at first, but now she skulks around underneath while I’m weaving, looking for loose yarns she can grab at.

First project on my rigid heddle loom! You can see Molly lurking underneath.

Here’s my first project.  This loom is so EASY to use, and it’s even easy to warp.  I totally love it!  I’m working on my fourth scarf now, with plans for another as soon as it’s off the loom.

I also want to order some carpet warp so I can do some rag weaving.  I have several ideas for rag tote bags.  I used to do a lot of rag rug weaving when I lived in Tennessee.  I have LOTS of material already cut in strips, so I’m ready to go!

The business cards I ordered from VistaPrint should be here in another week.  When they come in, I’m going to try selling some of my scarves at Zero Degrees, the local art co-op.  I just applied to join, so we’ll see what happens!

Winter may be coming, but I have lots to keep me busy.  Plus I’m looking forward to getting out my snowshoes again!

Lake Superior from Sugarloaf Mountain, north of Marquette

Hope you all had a great summer.  Mine certainly had its ups and downs, but we’re still here, and we’re reasonably healthy, so I can’t complain!  Didn’t do much sewing until September, when I pulled out a bunch of blocks and decided to put them together into baby quilts.  I’ve gotten two done, with the last one laid out in the floor, waiting to be sewn together.  I’ll get some pix once I finish the last one.  Then I can set up an assembly line to quilt them.

It may be a while before I get around to the quilting part, though.  I’m also a weaver and a spinner, and I’ve been bitten hard by the weaving bug again!

Weaving used to be a pretty good source of income for me when I lived in Tennessee.  I wove rag rugs, and sold just about everything I made.  But banging away on that big loom was just too much for aging shoulder and wrist joints, and I was getting tired of it, so it was time to move on.  I sold my big rugs looms and looked ahead to the next chapter.

Rayon chenille yarn is wonderful stuff to look at, and to feel.  It dyes beautifully, drapes amazingly well, and produces beautiful handwoven items.  I thought, hey, I can weave this into scarves, shawls, and throws, and sell them.  I bought a bunch (and I mean LOTS) of this yarn on ebay and was ready to start weaving!

The sad truth, though, is that it’s the yarn from hell.  This stuff tangles if you look at it cross-eyed.  It’s very easy to twist while warping the loom, and then you wind up having to untangle the fringe so you can knot it.  All in all, a very unpleasant experience, repeated several times.  I never got the first rayon chenille warp woven off my loom.  The upshot was that I sold the whole mess, loom, yarn and all,  and washed my hands of weaving.

Until last week.  Someplace in my online travels I stumbled across rigid heddle looms.  Like many weavers, I had dismissed them in the past as being toys.  But at this point in my life, simpler is better.  I don’t want to have to deal with long warps, and threading multiple heddles.  I always found complicated weaving patterns very frustrating since I  invariably made a mistake that I never found until several inches later.  Unweaving, like unsewing, is NOT fun!  So I usually stuck to plain weave, which only requires two heddles.

Rigid heddle looms are supposed to be very easy and quick to warp, too, which is another plus.  I’m looking at a 24″ Ashford rigid heddle loom.  This way I can weave shawls if I want to, but the loom isn’t too big for smaller projects like scarves.  I think I can also weave with fabric strips if I keep them around an inch wide.

The End Of Summer Blues inspired me  to pull out my trusty old Ashford spinning wheel.  I bought her back in the mid-80′s, which really doesn’t seem possible.  A new tension spring and a good cleaning is all it will take to get her humming away again.

We’ve been getting out and enjoying the beautiful fall weather.  The leaves are at their peak here, and the colors are breathtaking, especially when the leaves are lit up from behind by a late afternoon sun.  But they were coming down in a colorful fall shower of leaves yesterday, so they won’t last much longer.  Winter will be here soon, so it’s good to know I’ll have lots of projects to work on as the days shorten and the temperature drops.

Molly thinking about what she can make from these fabric strings

Took a few days off from sewing.  I could say it was spring break, but it was more like a bad case of spring fever!

The weather here in the Upper Peninsula has been unseasonably spring-like, with temperatures reaching into the 50′s nearly every day this past week.  The snow is melting fast, leaving behind icky-looking piles of dirt and leaves on the sidewalks and streets.  I’m almost ready for it to snow again to cover up the mess.

I found myself at loose ends for a few days.  With all the warm weather, what I really wanted to do was to go out and start working in the yard, cutting brush and  cleaning up for spring.  But since there’s still over a foot of snow on the ground,  it’s just not possible yet.

I wanted to start a new project, but couldn’t seem to settle on what to do.  Somebody on the Heartstrings Yahoo Group had suggested looking at these Project Improv quilts on Flickr.  Project Improv is a charity quilt project started by Jacquie at Tallgrass Prairie Studio over a year ago.

These strip quilts are bright and snappy, as well as being inspiring.  In fact, they’ve inspired me to sort out my fabric strips by color, and also by value–lights, mediums, and darks.  So far I’ve done the 2″ and the 2-1/2″ strips.  Tomorrow I need to continue with the 1-1/2″ strips and also the five or six bags of crumbs that have been lurking in the closet for years.  The picture shows Molly surrounded by fabric strips.  Actually she curled up in a box and went to sleep while I was sorting strips, which was probably a good thing.

This sorting project has been very enlightening.  I thought I didn’t have very many lights, but I discovered that I had a lot more than I had thought!  A lot of the mediums could go either light or dark, too, depending on whether I pair them with lights or darks.

So I’m starting to get jazzed about my next project.  Instead of a scrappy look, my focus will be on just two or three colors at a time.

I’m also considering donating finished tops, and letting someone with a long-arm do the quilting.  Machine quilting is hard on my wrists, so I’d rather avoid it when I can.

It’s been said that a messy studio is a sign of a creative mind.  Think I qualify?  Ah well, things will be tidied up tomorrow.

My latest strip quilt

Time for another change in direction!  Making strip quilts to donate is fun, and I’m really enjoying it.  It’s been a challenge to come up with a way to make them quickly, and I think I’ve finally figured it out.

Here’s a picture of the strip quilt I finished yesterday.  It went together very quickly, even though I got a little arty with piecing the back.  That was fun to do, though.

There’s no binding either.  I layered the quilt, backing, and batting and sewed them together, leaving an opening to turn the quilt along one edge.  I whipstitched the opening closed after turning it, and then pin-basted to keep the layers from shifting while it was machine quilted.

Pieced back of strip quilt

The quilting is long wavy lines along the long axis of the quilt. The quilting only took about an hour. Not bad!

This kind of strip quilt is very easy to do, and it’s fast.  By varying the width of the long pieced strips, getting a slightly different look is easy, too.

This quilt is about 39″ by 47″.  Haven’t washed it yet, but it will probably shrink up a couple of inches.  I’ll have to remember to measure it once it comes out of the dryer.

OK, so one challenge down.  Looks like I’ll be able to do some serious stashbusting this year, especially if I can make two or three strip quilts a month!

So what’s next? One of my other goals for the year was to develop my own style as a quilt artist. I got off to a pretty good start with “Winter Journey,” shown here.

"Winter Journey," my first AAQI Priority Quilt!

This quilt definitely was a stretch for me.  I had never done anything like this before.  Maybe that’s why I haven’t done another.  It did take a lot of time and effort.

But good stuff doesn’t come easy, does it?

So my new goal is to spend two or three mornings a week working on art quilts.  This includes dyeing fabric and playing around with new techniques.  I have some ideas that I want to explore.

I’ve also decided to join the Studio Art Quilt Associates.  According to their webpage, “SAQA is a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote the art quilt through education, exhibitions, professional development and documentation.”

I’d been tossing around the idea of joining, but kept putting it off because I didn’t think I was enough of an artist yet.  But Leni Weiner had a great post on her blog about why people should join SAQA, and she convinced me.  So I signed up earlier this evening.

I’m also thinking of entering Fabrications 2, a show open to quilt artists in the Upper Peninsula.  It’s being run in conjunction with a SAQA show, Points Of View, which will be on display this summer down in Escanaba.  Having never had the nerve to enter a show before, this is a big step for me!  So first, I need to make some quilts to enter, and second, we’ll see if I get through the jurying process!  Whatever happens, this is bound to be a learning experience.

Strip quilt made in quilt-as-you-go style

Here are the quilt pictures I promised yesterday. The first picture is the front of the quilt-as-you-go strip quilt I finished on Saturday. It came out pretty well, I think. It seemed like it took forever to make it though. I think I’ll save the quilt-as-you-go technique to join wider and longer strips together, instead of to join individual blocks.

Back of strip quilt

The back does look cute, though.  It could almost stand alone on its own as a quilt.  So this probably makes this quilt reversible, which is a handy thing for a baby quilt. This one will be donated to the local women’s shelter.

Diagonal strip quilt

The next quilt is a long over-due picture of the diagonal strip quilt I made for the ALS Hopes and Dreams Challenge. I really like the back of it. I saw some quilts for sale online that remind me of this quilt backing design.  They were going for an amazing price.  Maybe I should be focusing on quilt backing designs instead! 

Back of diagonal strip quilt

Now that this quilt is finally washed and dried, I’ll be packing it up tomorrow with my other two ALS quilts, and getting them mailed off.  About time, huh?

I finally got my two AAQI Priority Challenge Quilts in the mail today.  Now I can think about doing some more.

It got above freezing today, but it was still pretty cold outside.  My poor little hands got cold taking pictures of my quilts.  Just think, someday the snow will melt, and I won’t have to wear snowshoes for my quilt photography!

Spent most of the day sewing today.  I finished the long strips for my next quilt.  Tomorrow I’ll join them with sashing.  This time I’m going to dispense with binding by sewing the top, batting, and backing together as a sandwich.  Then I’ll turn it right side out, sew the opening closed, and machine quilt it after it’s turned.  I’ve done this in the past, and it works well.  Don’t know why I didn’t remember it til now.

So if all goes well, I may finish up another baby quilt for the women’s shelter tomorrow.

By the way, my city of Marquette, MI, WON the 2010 Dozen Distinctive Destination Contest!  This is really great news, and everyone here is pretty jazzed up about it.  Hopefully it will mean an increase in tourism for the area in the coming year.  There’s always something going on around here, even in the middle of winter!

Me in front of the ice castle in Eagle River, WI.

OK, which of these three things doesn’t belong? If you said outhouse races, you’re right!

How does any of this fit together? Read on to find out. This post is mostly non-quilting, so fair warning.

We now have a 24-foot boat sitting in our driveway. Cool, huh? Andrew has been diligently searching for a boat online, and he found one in St. Germain, WI, which is about three hours from here. Considering that he was looking at boats in downstate Michigan, Ohio, New York, and other far-flung locations, I was relieved that the trip to pick it up would be comparatively short.

We went to get the boat on Thursday. Of course, it took all day to drive down there and come back. But it was a pretty drive, one that we’ve made before on the way to Minneapolis.

On the way home, we stopped at Eagle River, WI, for some dinner.  While driving through town looking for a place to eat, we noticed what appeared to be an ice castle!  Of course, we had to check it out.  It’s not every day that you see something like this.

It was late in the afternoon, so the sun was at the perfect angle to light up the ice castle and make it glow.  It was COLD, but we had to walk all around it and take lots of pictures.

We rested up Friday in preparation for…

The first corporate sponsor! Here's Charmin's entry.

…the Trenary (MI) Outhouse Classic on Saturday.  Trenary is a little town of about 400 people about 30 miles south of Marquette.  To raise money for the town, they have outhouse races the last Saturday in February.  Believe it or not, people come from all over to see the outhouse races.  We saw license plates from Nebraska, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, as well as from Michigan.

Of course, the biggest news was that Charmin sponsored an outhouse in the race.  A major corporate sponsor, for the first time!

The other big news is that the outhouse races are now international, as well, with two racers from Japan who participated.

It was cold and windy, but the crowd was well-supplied with beer, along with hot coffee and hot chocolate.  Potty humor abounded, and poor taste was the order of the day.  A good time was had by all!

Have I actually managed to do any sewing lately?  Surprisingly enough, the answer is yes.  I finished  the quilt-as-you-go baby quilt yesterday, and today I started a new strip quilt.  So far I have two strips done, one that’s 9″ x 45″, and one that’s 5″ x 45″.  I’m going to make the strips different width, and then join them with sashing to finish up with a baby quilt about 36 inches wide. Quilt pictures will follow, hopefully tomorrow!

In the meantime, here’s a video from yesterday’s outhouse races.

Our house was built in the early ’50′s, so all of our electrical outlets downstairs were of the old ungrounded two-prong variety.  We wanted to upgrade the wiring so we could stop using those annoying little adapters to plug in stuff like computers and TVs.  Not to mention the safety issues, of course.

So the electrician was here all day yesterday and most of today.

We learned that whoever originally wired the house was very creative as far as circuits went.  One circuit in particular had the refrigerator, the coffeemaker, the microwave, AND the washing machine on it.  The electrician was amazed that I had never tripped the breaker, even though I regularly used three out of four of these appliances at the same time.  Another circuit runs all over the house, and took some detective work to figure it out.  All I can say is that this guy earned his money.  For a while I thought he might be a permanent guest, but he did manage to finish the job today.

So in between the electrician turning the power on and off and working all over the house, I did manage to work on the quilt-as-you-go strip quilt I started the other day.  I finished the blocks yesterday, and joined them today.

So what do I think of quilt-as-you-go?  Well, it’s definitely not a time-saver.  I had to resort to pinning to keep the quilt batting and backing from shifting when sewing down my strips.  Kinda fiddly.  But the blocks did look good when they were done.

What about joining them?  Easy, but mindless and time-consuming.  It takes five seams to join each block.  See this qayg tutorial for the details.  I thought I would NEVER get done sewing the 30 blocks into six rows of five each.  It does go faster when you’re sewing the rows together, though.

That said, though, I can see where this joining technique would be very handy when making larger quilts.  I think my next project will be made in panels, instead of individual blocks.  If I made four 10-inch wide panels that were 45 inches long, it would be a lot faster to join them instead of the individual blocks.  Perhaps like a Chinese coin pattern.   I could also piece blocks as I normally do, join them into segments, machine quilt the segments, and then join them, like the mile-a-minute quilts.

The upside:  I’m using up strips and making quilts to donate, too!  Stashbusting is a good way to use up old fabric that’s been hanging around far too long.

I have to say that the back of the quilt looks really cute, with the sashing outlining the individual blocks.  Pictures will follow in a day or two.

This is the green from mixing a little black into the yellow dye. It's really a much nicer-looking green, not this washed-out gray!

Here are the results of my dyeing escapade the other day. Putting the heating pad under the fabric did seem to help set the dye, as very little dye ran off when I washed and rinsed the fabric. I’m somewhat annoyed with my camera, as its not showing the colors correctly. Probably operator error!

These aren't as blotchy as they look in the picture; but the colors are pretty close to reality.

For some reason, my camera decided this was pink, but it's really red-brown instead!

This was my attempt at color mixing. These are pretty close to how they really look.

Hand-dyed fabric curing in cottage cheese containers

Here’s what I did this morning.  The green on the left is made from yellow dye with a little black mixed into it.  This was a tip from Melody Johnson from Fibermania.  If you’re not familiar with her work, go visit her blog.  I wanna be like her when I grow up!

More hand-dyed fabric

Playing around with low-water immersion dyeing was my objective this morning.  This is a dyeing process where the fabric is crammed into a small container, and the dye is poured over it.  The more the fabric is crumpled up, the more mottled it will will be.

Mostly I twisted the fabric, and then poured the dye solution over it.  I untwisted the fabric from time to time to see how it looked, and added more dye as needed, using an eyedropper.  Then I smushed the fabric around to blend the colors together.

When I was finished playing with it, I twisted it back up and put in into an empty cottage cheese container to cure.  To avoid having dark spots on the fabric from sitting in the excess dye, I poured any extra dye off, and used it to dye more fabric.

The fabric containers were slipped inside a plastic bag so they wouldn’t dry out while the fabric was curing.  Don’t know if it makes any difference or not, but it can’t hurt.  The basement is pretty chilly, so  the little containers of dyed fabric were kept warm and toasty on  a heating pad for most of today.  The warmth is supposed to help the dye react better with the fabric.

Batik-like design made with gel glue

This yellow fabric shows my attempt at batik using gel glue.  Now I need to paint it with some dye.  After it’s cured, then I wash the glue out, leaving the yellow designs.

The shapes are from a picture I took on the beach the other day.  It was warm enough for the snow to start melting, and the water made some neat designs in the sand.

This is such an amazing design.  It’s so graceful, and it just flows.  It makes me think of a tree with the leaves blowing in the breeze.

If you click on the picture of the sand, it’ll make it bigger so you can see the design better.

Design made by melting snow water in sand on the beach along Lake Superior

The best part about dyeing fabric is that no matter what happens, it’s a success!  It’s just so much fun to play around with the colors, and I’m learning something every time I do some dyeing.  I can see that there’s a bolt of white fabric in my future.  I’ve already used up about a third of what I bought at the fabric sale!

This is totally non-quilt related, but since the UP 200 Dog Sled Race is the biggest thing around here this weekend, I thought I’d let you see a little bit of what’s going on.

This race is 241 miles long, from Marquette to Grand Marais and back again.  The mushers leave on Friday night, and return to Marquette on Sunday morning.

Me in the background, with the dog sled mascot in front

Andrew took this shot this morning.  It was really pleasant out today, warm and sunny.  Last year was COLD and windy, with blowing snow, so this was a definite improvement!

Here’s a picture of the winner, Ryan Anderson, from Ray, MN.   This is the seventh time he’s run this race.  He came in second last year, and third the year before that.

Ryan Anderson, winner of the 2010 UP 200 Dog Sled Race

The first thing he did when he crossed the finish line was to pet every one of his dogs.  He certainly couldn’t have done it without them!

Ryan Anderson, winner of the UP 200, petting all his sled dogs after their 241-mile trip

We pretty much made a day of it, eating lunch at L’Attitude downtown, and then going down to the Welcome Center south of town to watch some more teams come in.

The video at the bottom is from You Tube.  It shows the second place winner, and has some shots of some of the dogs.  You’d think they’d be big huskies, but, surprisingly, they’re pretty small and skinny.  Hard to believe that these dogs just ran 241 miles.  They look as if they’re still raring to go!

All in all, this was a fun way to spend a pleasant winter’s day.  Tomorrow, I hope to get some fabric dyed and do some sewing!

Oh yeah, Marquette is leading the pack in the Dozen Distinctive Destinations voting!  Be sure to vote for Marquette, early and often! 

Cat House Block!

Just visited Bumble Bean‘s blog.  She has the cutest house block someone sent her with a sock monkey peeking out the window.  I love it!

Of course, not to be outdone, here’s my Cat House block.  It really is square.  I can’t seem to take a picture straight on for some reason.

There’s a story behind this.  Years ago when I lived in KY, I worked at the animal shelter, and also at the vet’s office.  Because I couldn’t resist a kitty in need, I wound up with seven cats!  The vet I worked for said I had the best little cat house in west KY.  So here’s to my kitty friends from many years ago!

The next two pictures are of my newest AAQI quilt!  Actually, I finished this one the day before yesterday.  This started out as a free piecing experiment.  I just sat down and started playing with scraps, sewing and cutting, and re-sewing.

AAQI Priority Quilt

Back of AAQI Priority Quilt

The finished quilt measures 9″ by 10.5″, and it’s machine quilted.

When I uploaded the pictures, it occurred to me that I need to come up with a name for it!  Any suggestions?

The Heartstrings Quilt Project is a group that makes and donates string quilts to local charitable organizations.  I joined because I’m definitely into string quilts right now!  For my first  Heartstrings project, I decided to try a quilt-as-you-go crib quilt to donate to the local women’s shelter.

First six quilt-as-you-go blocks

Ten-inch blocks seemed a little big for a crib quilt, so mine are seven inches instead.  I’ll need 30 blocks, which will hopefully result in a quilt that will be 35″ by 42″.

I thought it would be a total pain to cut out batting and backing squares, but it didn’t take very long to cut them out at all.

Here are the six blocks I finished this afternoon.  It’s pretty easy to sew the strips down to the batting and backing.  The blocks came out really well, and knowing that they’re already quilted is a nice plus.

Of course, they still have to be joined together, but that process doesn’t look too difficult.

Probably won’t get any sewing done tomorrow.  We need to go to the VA in Iron Mountain again, for a dental appointment, so that pretty much takes up the day.  Then in the evening, we’ll be going to see the start of the UP 200 Sled Dog Race.  Hey, we’ve gotta take advantage of all that snow!