On the Road Again

Writing this column today poses a special challenge as it's being entirely done on my phone as I sit in the lobby of the beautiful The Nines hotel downtown Portland, Oregon. The trip here was a birthday gift from my family. I arrived Thursday for the Modern Quilt Guild's SewDown. The original plan was to arrive a day and a half ahead of the event so a couple of friends and I could drive out to Astoria, Oregon to see the Columbia River meet the Pacific. 

I have quite a list of things I want to see, such as this particular river/ocean meet-up. Most of the things have no particular reasoning or logic behind them, other than that they have somehow become lodged in my mind as something I need to see/do/experience. The trip to Astoria was not meant to be, however, as the forecast changed drastically in the day or two preceding our flight and we arrived to find a very, very windy, snowy Portland. My friends had plenty of experience driving on snow, so we rented a car and explored the city. 

So excited to see even this little glimpse of Mt. Hood.

We are quilters, so our idea of hitting the hot spots is to find the best fabric stores. I will hold back on the details in this space, but let me say that Modern Domestic was wonderful! The details along with photos will be on my blog if you are interested. 

I need to emphasize that Portland is only slightly more experienced and prepared for snow and ice than are cities in Texas. A day ahead of our arrival, Portland television stations were warning of the impending "Snowmageddon" and people were frantically preparing to bunker in for the duration. 

Portland was beautiful and peaceful in its white blanket. Most of the motorized vehicles stayed home, so people were walking, cycling, and even cross-country-skiing around town. Even on the major thoroughfares and freeways, the vehicles were cautiously creeping along. 

As we ventured out Friday morning, I was able to cross one item off my list as the clouds lifted just enough so that Mount Hood could be seen in the distance. It was beautiful and entirely covered in snow. We drove through one neat, cute, bungalow-filled neighborhood after another until one of my friends asked, "is there an un-cute part of Portland?" We later found the un-cute area, so we know it exists. 

I was impressed by the number and variety of bridges around Portland. The city is bisected by Willamette River and borders the Columbia River, so bridges are very important. Apparently other people have also noted the distinctive bridges as fabric designer Violet Craft, who lives in the area, now has a fabric out with toile-like images of the bridges of Portland (Called "Bridgetown"). I NEED some of this fabric!

I found Portland to have a mellow, creative atmosphere. People have commented that it is much like Austin, and it is in many ways. Perhaps it was because of the snowy weather, but it did seem much calmer--less frenetic than Austin seems to be any more. I would highly recommend Portland as a destination should you have the opportunity to visit this part of the world. Check my blog for the quilty details and some photos then let me know what you think.

The Additional Quilty Details
The shops we visited: 
Modern Domestic: This shop offers a selection of modern-leaning quilt fabrics, interesting garment fabrics (especially knits), notions and tools (including those by Merchant & Mills), and patterns by independent pattern companies such as Collette , Wiksten, Sewn, and Deer and Doe. They also sell Bernina sewing machines and offer a variety of classes and open sew studios. 

Bolt Neighborhood Fabric Boutique: This is a small, but packed shop offering lots of modern quilt fabrics, garment fabrics, patterns from many, many independent companies, classes, a large variety of notions and accessories, and a friendly and helpful staff. 

Fabric Depot: This is kind of a must-see in Portland just because of the sheer size and variety. It is a warehouse-type store and has every kind of sewing-related item imaginable including garment, quilt, upholstery, and specialty fabrics; every sort of tool and notion imaginable, and even a wide selection of imported foods, candies, and snacks. There were signs everywhere declaring "25% Off Everything," but upon close inspection I found that the prices on almost everything were about 25% higher than every other fabric store. For even money, I'd rather shop at the smaller shops with better atmosphere and staff. 

Drygoods Design: This shop is actually in Seattle, but the owner, Kelli, set up a "pop-up" shop at the SewDown. She also made up kits for our classes for which she pre-cut all of our fabric to the instructor specifications--how nice!!! Those of us who elected to buy kits from Kelli could get on with our sewing without having to spend hours with rulers and rotary cutters in hand. Kelli brought a nice selection of fabrics, books, tools, notions, patterns, and other fun things such as notebooks, notecards, pens, and pencils to stock her shop. I ended up with a couple of books, some tools, and enough Liberty lawn to make myself a loop scarf. 

This little pincushion was the first thing I made with fabrics from Bunny's Designs and pattern from Austinite Kim Place

My Liberty loop scarf made with fabric from Drygoods Design

Blocks from Heather Jones' You+Me class in a variety of colors

Yet another Portland must-do: Voodoo Donuts

Blocks from Jaybird Quilts' Sidekick class

For the Love of Winter

Almost daily now I am getting phone calls and messages from my daughter about her distaste for winter. She thinks it is because she lived in South Texas a little too long--a place where a forecast of temperatures dipping below thirty-two degrees clears the grocery store shelves of bread and milk, and keeps all the schoolchildren inside during recess lest they succumb to hypothermia. When I was her age, I did not love winter as I do now. At that time I was living in a place where winters were perpetually cloudy and dark and that, along with the short days, caused significant depression for me. 

But now I live here in Spring Creek, where we have a good balance of grey, cloudy winter days and sunny, bright winter days. I cannot say winter is my favorite season, because autumn and spring are my favorites also. In one of these conversations with my daughter, I finally had to admit that I loathe summer. I have often said that when I am wealthy (not sure how or when this will occur), I will spend summers somewhere besides Texas. I could be persuaded to spend my summers high in the Davis Mountains, but that would be the only way I would stay in Texas. 

Just as I hit the return key to begin this paragraph, the sun came out from behind a bank of dark blue clouds and is shining brightly right into my eyes. I stood up to adjust the blinds and saw the most beautiful scene of the blue clouds in the background, the sun shining gold on the hayfield, and the light filtering through the mesh of bare tree branches. I love winter. I love the low angle of the light, the sunrises and sunsets with their impressionistic colors and patterns, the sculptural quality of bare trees, the warm colors of the dormant grasses contrasted with the cool colors of the sky and the clouds. I love the way the ice makes everything look like it is coated in glass and makes it sparkle in the sunlight.

My almost complete Kiki Mariko Rug from
 "Mason Dixon Knitting Knitting Outside the Lines"

I am a fiber/textile/sewing/knitting/quilting person, as you may have noticed. I love wool and I love quilts. There are projects that I have to put away when the weather warms up because it gets too hot to have any more fabric touching you that is absolutely necessary to maintain modesty. A few years ago I started knitting a wool rug. It is thick and heavy and quickly became so long that it had to sit on my lap, then it had to trail down my legs, then it hung to the floor. By late in the spring, I had to put it away for the season. As soon as we had that first cold weather in November, I got it back out and finished it. I will post a picture on my blog--it is beautiful. I quickly moved on to wool socks and wool cowls so I can take advantage of of wool-wearing season. This time of the year, I can be found every evening dressed in a flannel nightgown, sitting on my couch with one dog or another right beside me and a quilt over my lap, knitting away on something warm and snuggly. 

Yes, I am aware of the treachery of winter, particularly for people who live in snow country. I lived in South Dakota for awhile. And I am very aware of the disruptions winter weather can cause--my daughter is sending me pictures of the icy conditions through which she is driving to work this morning. But here on the ranch, winter is good. I hope you can find the beauty in it, too.

I love pecan orchards in the winter with their neat rows of trees and green winter grass. 

Like a Whole "Nother State

Way down below is the Pruett house where we stayed in the past.

A couple of years ago I wrote about spending some time in the Pruett house on a 90,000-acre ranch in the Davis Mountains of West Texas. We returned to the ranch this year, but this time we stayed in the main lodge as the outfitter and all of his hunters and guides were off for the Christmas and New Year holidays. 

I grew up in the Southeast where most people think that Texas is all hot, dry desert year-round. You cannot blame them for this misconception as that is the way it has been represented in movies and television shows. There is a new show about a female Texas Ranger that has been advertised and guess where it is filmed…..in Albuquerque. But I have found a remarkable number of people right here in Central Texas that have never been to far West Texas, or have only been along interstate from here to El Paso. If that is you, do yourself a favor and go visit the western part of your state. 

The ranch we visit is in the Davis Mountains. According to geologists, the Davis Mountains were formed by eruptions of the Trans-Pecos volcanic field. Anyone who is even slightly interested in geology—otherwise known as being a rock-hound—would surmise that these mountains are volcanic just from the looks of the landscape, particularly if you get up on top of one of the mountains and look across. Some of the contour looks like waves or ripples on the ocean, while others look as if they were pushed up from below. Many of the taller mountains on the ranch are made up of columns of red stone, which have broken away around the edges and sent house-size boulders tumbling down. The soil in the flats below the mountains is fine and powdery, and is a light grayish color like ash, which it likely is considering it is in a volcanic field. 

My son wishing he could find a way up
to that eagle nest on top of the rock.

Further west from the ranch, northwest of Fort Davis, the mountains are much higher and are bunched up, without the flats below and without the giant mesas that are found in the foothills. These mountains are covered in trees like piñon and ponderosa pines. The average altitude in the Davis Mountains is right at one mile, so the temperatures tend to be a cooler, especially at night. 

Some of the plants are the same as here like juniper (cedar), agarita, whitebrush, prickly pear, and tasajillo. The yuccas that grow wild tend to look like miniature palm trees with long trunks topped by a crown of blades. I found loads of blackfoot daisies in huge clumps all over the ranch. I would love to be there when they are blooming! There is one plant called Allthorn—because that is all it is. Seriously, you look at it and all you see is green thorns. 

Once you are that far west, you are in mule deer country. Once upon a time, you would also be in pronghorn antelope country, but their numbers are diminishing due to a parasite. There is the occasional elk in the area but I have not seen one with my own two eyes. I did see javelinas and aoudad sheep, and, unfortunately, some feral hogs. Near the springs that are on the ranch, we saw a nice flock of Rio Grande turkeys and we saw Blue Quail throughout the ranch. There is a quail feeder in the front yard of the lodge that is frequented by blue quail and a large flock of white-wing doves. I am told that the occasional Montezuma quail shows up so I watched it like a hawk, but never saw one. 

Of course there are lots of things to see and do in the area, such as swim at Balmorrhea, trying to see the Marfa lights, visiting old Fort Davis or the McDonald Observatory, or heading down to Big Bend. It’s enough for me just to get out and “be” in the Davis Mountains. I will post lots of pictures on my blog so you can share a bit of the experience. And if you are interested in booking a hunt on this beautiful place, send me an email and I will share his contact info with you. 

A little mule deer buck and the object of his "affection."

Cholla fruits

The aptly named allthorn

My son, Wade.

Beautiful West Texas sunrise.

 

Back to the Beginning

When I first started this column, I wanted to write about creativity, art, and aesthetic in everyday life. I have stayed loosely on that central theme, but have been moving too far away from it in recent months. Now it is time to re-focus, to make this a rifle with a fine-tuned scope instead of a shotgun with no choke.

One of the classes I took at the Houston Quilt Festival was on creativity. It makes perfect sense that anyone interested in fiber crafts would find it appealing to enhance or improve their creativity. What I have found, however, is that to improve your creativity is to improve everything about your life. Lately, I have come to know some folks who are members of twelve-step programs. Being an “inquiring mind,” I have asked lots of questions and even read part of AA’s “big book.” What I have found is that twelve-step programs have a couple of major components: One is getting to a place where you can live in the truth about yourself, your thoughts, the way the world works, and about other people; another is learning that you have to rely on a “higher power” in life as no one person has the wherewithal to manage everything alone. The programs tell you to define the higher power in whatever way is comfortable. I recognize that my higher power is God. The ultimate goal of a twelve-step program is to achieve serenity, which my computer defines as “the state of being calm, peaceful, and untroubled.” That sounds pretty good, does it not?

In the interest of carrying on the creativity enhancement I started in Houston, I pulled out a book I bought several years ago, The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. As I started reading and working through it, I began to realize that it is very similar to a twelve-step program. She even refers to the process of becoming an unblocked creative as “recovery”. Now, do not allow the word “artist” in the title of the book to throw you. I think most of us think of painters and sculptors and such when we hear the word “artist,” but there are many, many other types of artists in the world. Basically, we all have the opportunity and the capability to be artists…to do things in our lives creatively and artfully. Julia Cameron says that we were created by the Creator to create—creativity is God’s gift to us and using that gift to create is our gift back to God.

One of the keys of the creative life is attention. For example, one the of the greatest hurdles on the way to learning to draw is to learn to turn off what your conscious mind tells you and, instead, learn to draw exactly what your eyes perceive. Most of us go through the motions of life every day all caught up in our own minds and fail to pay attention to the reality around us. One creativity exercise I find helpful is to do some ordinary task, but to make a point of doing it with attention. I sometimes hang my laundry out instead of putting it the dryer. Believe me, this task is much more enjoyable when I am attentive to the sights of the trees and the grass, the sounds of the birds singing and the chickens clucking around me, the smell of the clean laundry and the country air, and the bending and stretching and the feel of the clothespins in my hands just like they felt in my grandmother’s hands a hundred years ago.

The more I am attentive to the details of my life, the better it all looks to me. I find myself saying prayers of gratitude throughout the day for when I am attentive, I see the abundance of good in my life and that puts me further down the road to serenity.  Attentiveness and focus on living life fully in the moment instead of constantly living in my head worrying about the future or rehashing the past helps me realize just how generous God has been to me. I hope you will give it a try, and I hope it leads you to a bit of serenity in your life, as well. 

Where Deer and Quilts Collide

This past week is where deer and quilts collide in my life. For almost all of the past ten years, I have been attending the International Quilt Festival in Houston. For all but one of those years, Quilt Festival is during the week preceding and the weekend of Opening Weekend of Deer Season. I capitalize that because it is a holiday at my house that is on par with Thanksgiving. So imagine being gone for a week leading up to Thanksgiving and returning late Wednesday night to find all of your visitors already present at your house. Men, you will not understand, but the mothers will.

Fortunately, the meal preparation for Opening Weekend is not as elaborate as it is for Thanksgiving. For many years we had a fish fry, but the past couple of years we have had a hamburger cookout. Every family or group brings some of the ingredients along with other goodies like dips and chips and desserts. Another advantage over Thanksgiving is that we have this dinner outside around the campfire. One of our hunters is a veteran firefighter with lots of experience working in the firehouse kitchen. Unfortunately, he is off elk hunting in Colorado this year, so I did not have his able assistance. But my friend Earleen Brister was here to help, thank goodness!!

Interspersed with all of this is the excitement of hunters going out and coming back in to report what they saw and/or what they shot. This year, no one on our ranch has shot anything so far, but the neighbors a couple of ranches over came by today with a really nice mature eleven-pointer and an ancient eight-pointer. My daughter and I went out Saturday afternoon and saw lots of deer, but nothing that we needed to shoot just now. I always enjoy just watching the animals and listening to the birds. My daughter and I also enjoyed the requisite nap just after settling in the blind—you know the one where you lean your head back and hang your mouth open?

Now for the Quilt Festival report—Earleen and I both took a week of classes and are back full of ideas for how to put our new information to use. After nearly forty years of wanting to learn shisha embroidery, I finally know how. I will post a picture of my first attempt on my blog, where you will be able to see how I got the hang of it as I went around the circle. Shisha embroidery is from India

My first attempt at shisha embroidery. 

and involves attaching tiny mirrors or reflective metals to cloth. For this class, we used large paillettes, which are similar to sequins. I also took classes in machine applique, a couple of machine quilting classes, one on painting shoes, and one creativity workshop.

As for the quilts on display, there is an obvious trend toward quilts that recreate photographs. The top winner was derived from a photograph of a display at the Dallas Arboretum of a boatful of Chihuly glass balls.  The artist managed to capture the illusion of translucent glass in fabric yielding a beautiful work of art. My favorite among the top winners was by Jane Sassaman, who is known for her stylized natural motifs. This year’s quilt represented plants, lizards, and insects in her back yard and was very colorful. The Houston Chronicle website has a slideshow of the highlights that I will link to on my blog, if you want to see these works of art for yourself.

So off I go, back to clean my rifle then get back to the sewing machine—my favorite time of year!! 

Kay's First Assignment Deconstructed

Because I could sense the rising panic in the Graceful Quilters' meeting yesterday, and because I have been trying to learn how to dissect shapes for quilt patterns, I decided to post the deconstruction of the first star block assigned to the group yesterday. I hope it helps y'all!

First, I drew the block on the computer and colored it in my selected color scheme:

In the process of doing this, I realized that this block is actually made up of nine smaller blocks:(all FINISHED sizes)

One 4-inch block for the center

Four 4-inch Four-Patch blocks in the corners

Four 4-inch Triangle-In-A-Square blocks for the star's rays

The center block and the four patch blocks are simple enough, but the triangle-in-a-square blocks are a little more challenging. I found and tried two ways to make them--using Tri-Rec rulers (which I already had on hand), and paper piecing. I figure not everyone has a set of Tri-Recs, so I'm going to show how I did the paper piecing.

First download and print the following two files MAKING SURE THAT ON YOUR PRINTING SCREEN YOU CHOOSE EITHER "NONE" OR 100% FOR THE SCALING:

Templates

4-inch block (print two of these as there are 2 blocks on each page)

Your pages will look like these:

Paper Foundations

Cutting Templates

The cutting templates are vital. They allow you to cut on-grain pieces of fabric that will be exactly the size and shape you will need for this block. I tried to work without them, to "freestyle," and it did not work.

Cut out your template shapes along the lines. Roughly cut out the paper foundations leaving some margin beyond the outer lines of the block.

At this point, you can cut some 5-6" strips of your fabrics to make cutting your template pieces a bit simpler. I, in my wisdom, cut 4.5" strips and that turned out to be a mistake. It was hard to line up my pieces of fabric since I had no margin for error, so cut your strips larger, if you want to cut strips. Note in the pictures below, my fabric isn't as large as the paper template. Yours should be about the same size as the template.

Now attach your center triangle fabric to the WRONG side of the paper foundation, holding it up the light to make sure the edges of your fabric extend at least 1/4" beyond all of the stitching lines.

Next, pin one of your side pieces on top of your center piece, matching up edges and making sure the straight grain of the fabric is going to end up on the outside edge (the more bias edge should be the one that is on the seam line). Either pin the corner fabric in place or hold it in place while you flip the whole assemble over and put it under your presser foot. Starting on the paper and using a smaller-than-normal stitch length (1.5 on my machine), sew along the stitching line right through the paper and both layers of fabric.

Fold the paper out of the way and trim the seam allowance to 1/4."

Then fold that piece out and either finger-press or press in press with a dry iron. Then repeat with the other corner piece. You will end up with this:

All that's left to do is to trim the excess fabric and paper along the outer lines (use a ruler and rotary cutter) and tear off the paper!

If you have done as I said and not as I did, your block will be perfectly square. I paper pieced one of these and used Tri-Recs for the rest:

For the rest of the block:

Make four Four-Patch blocks using 2.5" patches or strips for a block that is 4.5" unfinished. Here is a tutorial on strip-piecing Four-Patches.

For the center you need one more 4.5" (unfinished size) block. I chose to fussy cut a print that I had. The original pattern Kay gave us has this center block pieced out of four triangles. You decide!!

Here is my finished block:

A final bit of advice: make sure you line the four-patch blocks up the way you see them here, with one of the colored blocks in the corner next to the center. Kay and I both did this wrong and it doesn't look right. I re-did mine and still ended up with one turned the wrong way!! So I re-re-did it. Lay out your little blocks, check, double-check, then sew. Unless you want to spend a lot of time with your seam ripper. 

WIP Wednesday

For those who are not quilters, WIP stands for Works In Progress. I much prefer this over the other, not so nice, quilting acronym, UFO (UnFinished Objects). The Austin Modern Quilt Guild puts out a call for WIP reports every Wednesday, so here is mine for this week:

Of the many, many WIPs I have around the house right now, here are a few I have out and active currently--

The quilt top for my next Craftsy class, a Leah Day FMQ Fillers class.

Using up another of those little Moda Candies from QuiltCon! I want to make a sleeve for the two books next the patchwork. I'm trying to decide just how fancy I want this to be. I'm thinking I'll do a little quilting on the two patchwork panels, then make the gusset and closure out of natural canvas. Still working this one out in my head, obviously. 

See that leaf in the middle? That's all that stands between me and finishing this needle turn Hawaiian appliqué. I bought this kit at the Houston Festival last year. I think it may become a pillow.