Time Out for Strawberries

Stephanie and I picked these beauties on Saturday, and Steph turned them into 30-some jars of the most delicious jam. This winter, she and Josh will be able to smell fragrant strawberry fields every time they open a new jar - me too since I'll be stealing a few jars to take back to Florida with us.



--cds

Sidetracked

I don't really know how to bead properly (and all my books are guess-where), but I found this slightly creepy mermaid button and decided to try beading around her. Not too bad, I guess. Beading is very relaxing, I find.

Quilt viewing is on the agenda today. The Vermont Quilt Festival is in town. I'll get pictures of my favorites. --cds

When Worlds Almost Collide

My sixth grade teacher relied (a lot) on filmstrips as a teaching aid and freaked us all out one day during a science lesson by showing a film of the solar system imploding and Earth being blown to tiny bits after colliding with Mars. I was traumatized and certain that was going to occur any day. These mosaic spheres remind me of brightly colored planets, orbiting happily while maintaining a safe, courteous distance from each other. I'll do some quilting to give it a little definition and texture and will post it later. --cds

Babysitting and Browsing

At the moment I am babysitting sweet 7-week old Baby Max, son of friends of our kids. He is snoozing cozily on my bed after his bottle and some grandma-rocking. I keep wanting to cover up his wee arms and legs, but Max is having none of it.

I am a couple days behind posting my daily art-quilt doings. For all my complaining about palm tree motifs, look what happened here.



I actually kind of like this - I may fiddle around with it a bit more and quilt it up. It's still cold and cloudy here in Vermont - if it's 60 degrees, I'll eat my hat. --cds

Turquoise and Red

Just wanted to try out this color combo, so I made some lollypop flowers and played around with some of the stitches on my Bernina.




The back is pretty, too! Note to me: I need to come up with a red and white design for a quilt to go in my guest room.

Speaking of lollypop flowers, this iris is one of my "heirloom iris" - a progeny of my Dad's iris that he had been cultivating before he died - that's 25 years ago, my friends. And still pretty. --cds

Green and Blue

My new sofa is pear-green so I plopped this wonky-looking pear on the blue background and stitched in some pretty sparkly beads for fun.

I love greens and blues together. At least two rooms in our new house will be decorated with a version of this combo. I admit it's been great fun browsing for ideas on furnishing the Florida house, tho it's difficult to avoid the tropical themed/palm tree emblazoned everything (and what gives with the monkey-motif stuff? Ick). --cds

Hanging Out in Vermont

Though Florida will be our year-round residence, we are currently back in Vermont for the summer tending to some unfinished move-related business. This would be fine and dandy except that my stuff is in Florida and I am here. It's driving me crazy. I did bring along my sewing machine and some basic supplies, but a girl can't be expected to function normally when separated from her fabric stash. I mean, really.

Before we left I was happily hand-dyeing yards of cotton and I did bring a tote full of that, all fused up and ready to cut-and-paste, along with easily portable beads and embroidery threads. A while ago I had taken a couple of Laura Wasilowski classes at the Vermont Quilt Festival and fell for that color-rich/fusing technique. Here is my finished class sample - pix may be clicked upon for close-ups:



And so, in order to put a positive spin on this little hiatus from our real retirement, I'm planning to create a little something new each day using my tote full of colors. I have some ideas I want to fool around with so I'll be making little 12 x 12 inch experiments to keep me busy and not so cranky. Here is Day One:



I love the green strips - looks a little watercolor-y - but not so much the blues - those fabrics are too solid-colored to suit me. I do prefer the look of outlining flowers and other shapes - especially maybe with black? --cds