Trimming in the Perrenials

Mid-summer is a good time to control new growth in the formal perennial planting. Most of the flowers are in bloom and harvest is near for any wanted for drying.

Karen Johnson, our long-time landscaper, and one of her assistants, Clarence, tackle the job at hand. He fashions some bayberry, and she is trimming some spreading greenery. The west wall is made of timbers, and the area inside is a raised bed.





We have some mature Korean boxwood along the east boundary. Their rounded form trims beautifully, and Andre has almost completed this area.








Our pergola is covered by climbing roses and a late-blooming clementis. There are chairs and benches for a viewing spot here. The globe thistles at the left retain their blue color if picked before they open totally, and add to winter dried flower creations.

Lowell Quilt Festival - 5

Our last gallery visit was "The Fabrication of Imagination" at the All Arts Gallery.

This large "kimono-jacket" piece was embellished with many images.












This large canvas bag piece is titled "Excess Baggage."

Double click on the picture to read the writing on the outside of the bag.













I thought the mix of artificial decorations in this lovely garden was pretty neat. It was on our walk to the Tsongas Arena for the quilt show.









This sculpture is dedicated to the "mill girls" who worked in the factories in the city. The birds sitting on top of each statue are NOT part of the sculpture!

Lowell Quilt Festival - 4

Images 2009 is the main quilt show of the Lowell Quilt Festival, held in the Tsongas Arena. Our friend, Caris Burton, had two quilts in the show and won prizes for both.... Yea, Caris! Her quilt, Under the Finger Lakes Sun, won first prize for small traditional quilts.






This is Caris's "Tree of Life" quilt. It won 2nd prize for large traditional quilts, along with a Judge's Choice award!















These pictures are of Miho Takeuchi's jackets. Her work was part of the teachers' exhibit and featured several of her quilts and wearable art garments. She is a regular teacher of traditional Japanese Sashiko, and her work is in the New England Quilt Museum.

Sashiko is a very old form of hand sewing using a simple running stitch sewn in repeating or interlocking patterns. Sashiko is popular by itself or combined with patchwork and quilting.

Miho's patterns and kits can be purchased at the Museum or online through Studio Aika (www.designbyaika.com).

Lowell Quilt Festival - 3

The Whistler House Museum of Art accepted two of my quilts in their "Quiltscapes at the Whistler" exhibit. The largest piece on the left side of the doorway is my "Night and Day", and the largest piece on the right side is my "Jet Trails #8." I was very pleased with the way they looked with like-colored pieces.



My sister-in-law, Christi DeCamp, made a surprise visit to Lowell from her home in NH and joined us at the receptions at the Brush and Whistler. It was great to see her, and we had fun comparing art quilt exhibits with her experience with flower arranging art exhibits. The Whistler includes wonderful flower exhibits with the quilts, which seemed very appropriate.





This is one of the many views we had of the canals that go through the town.









There were lots of green space areas and many small gardens scattered along our walks between the exhibits.

Lowell Quilt Festival - 2

Nancy and I went to the reception at the Brush Gallery and had our picture taken in front of my "Blocks #5" quilt. It was lighted very nicely to show off the quilt, but not quite enough light to include us in the picture...













This is my friend, Pam Lowe, with her piece that is in the Brush exhibit. She came from Texas for the reception.









This is the Revolving Museum, with its lovely garden. You'll also notice tables and chairs in front of the fence. These are used by patrons of the Life Alive Urban Oasis & Organic Cafe that is in the next building.

Nancy and I tried their "fresh fantastic food" for lunch. They boast that their meals are super-fresh, 99.9% organic, 100% unprocessed and Beyond delicious. We both had terrific lunches and just wished they had a site in Rochester.




We loved the wire sculpture in their garden!

Lowell Quilt Festival

Nancy Hicks and I made a weekend trip to Lowell, MA, to attend the Quilt Festival, which is billed as a citywide celebration of quilts with over 500 quilts on display throughout the city. The venues include:

Images Quilt Show at the Tsongas Arena
Quiltscapes at the Whistler House Museum of Art
Art Quilts Lowell at the Brush Gallery
Fabrication of Imagination at the All Arts Gallery
Textile Revolution at the American Textile History Museum
Show and Tell at the Revolving Museum

And special exhibitions at:
The New England Quilt Museum
The Boott Cotton Mills Museum Gallery


The image for the poster shown above was done by Diane Phalen.



This is the back side of the New England Quilt Museum, with its painted "quilt" image.













The doors on the left side of the picture are for the entrance to the New England Quilt Museum. We loved the patterns and textures of the brick streets, but we wondered how any snowplowing is accomplished....









Friday night at the Museum we attended a lecture by Melody Crust, who discussed the tools and materials she uses for embellishing her quilts.

RAFA Show & Tell

The regular monthly meeting of the RAFA group (Rochester Area Fiber Artists) had its usual wonderful display of items during Show and Tell. Pat Berardi brought in this beautiful embroidered piece that her brother brought back for her from Syria.














Pat Farrell made this fish during a recent felting class with Deborah Pope.




Marcia Eygabroat created this quilt from a picture of her mother and father.















Donna Patrick showed us samples of the work she completed during a surface design class at QBL.

Linda Bachman created this quilt for an exhibit that her art quilt group in Florida is planning. The molas in quilt are some that Priscilla brought back from her recent trip to the San Blas Islands in Panama.

Linda also finished this quilt that she created from some hand-painted fabric.

This is a new piece that Caris Burton started at QBL.

Caren Betlinski worked on a portrait of her niece during her class with Marilyn Belford at QBL.

Bean Salad Canning

We have a very good crop of green and yellow string beans this year, so it's time to do some canning. Our three-bean salad is very popular and getting some jars of beans put away in the canning cupboard will get us started on increasing our bean inventory.

The cut beans yielded over 48 cups, and a few onions were cleaned and sliced.











The vegetables were blanched and then marinated in oil, vinegar, lemon juice, water, sugar and salt.











The canned salad base comes out of the boiling water bath which seals the jars. Other types of beans will be added to the mix at preparation time, along with more oil and vinegar dressing.

IQF at Long Beach

My "Blocks #3" quilt is in SAQA's Points of View traveling exhibit, which was recently on display at the International Quilt Festival at Long Beach.



Several of the Points of View pieces (including mine!) appear on the Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims website http://www.thequiltshow.com/os/blog.php/blog_id/2039 . Click on Long Beach International Quilt show.

It's the first of several slideshows on the quilts from IQA Long Beach. They include new artists and traditional Divas in this mix.

Blue Moons

A quilting saga.....

These are some blocks that I made 2 or 3 years ago that were the start of the "Night & Day" quilt.

I had started a second top with some more of the blocks, but never finished it.

I recently resurrected it and finished assembling it. Then I loaded it on the longarm quilting machine.










I started quilting it with Sulky 12 wt thread and liked the looks of the variegated colors. But the thread kept breaking and after 4 hours of fighting with it, I hadn't completed the first row!

I've had pretty good luck in the past with corrective measures such as changing the top and bobbin tensions, changing the tension on the fabric, re-threading, putting in a new needle, trying a different spool, etc.









But since nothing seemed to work and many of the thread tension adjustments resulted in loose thread on the back, it was time to give up!

We won't talk about how many hours it took to pick it out.....









A change in thread provided the solution!!

The 35 wt Valdani thread didn't break once -- WooHoo!!

The working title choices for this piece so far are Black & Blue Moons or Blue Moons.

56" w X 68"h