Spring has Sprung!

It was just a few short weeks ago that I was still belly-aching about the elusiveness of Spring in Iowa this year….well….it seems it finally decided to make an appearance! I got so excited by our one warm day last week, that I stopped on my way into the store on a milk call, and ended up picking up a dozen or so plants! They sat on my porch in flats for a few days, but I finally found the time to get them into containers Wednesday night.
Three varieties if sweet potato vine, two varieties of vinca vine, two colors of petunias, a gerber daisy, and a few bacopa plants. This next week will be my selection and planting of veggie plants! Who says you can’t garden when you live in an apartment?! I used this book which is full of great tips for low-maintenance gardening in large or small formats, containers or in the ground. I’d highly recommend any of Patricia Lanza’s gardening books.

The awesome “chair” planter came from a craftsman/artisan in Kentucky. I purchased it when I traveled through there in 2005, and hauled it back to Iowa in the hatchback of my VW Beetle along with all my other luggage and treasures. It’s a good thing I was travelling alone! I don’t have the maker’s name any longer–but I LOVE this piece!

Happy gardening, and Happy Spring!

My first batiks…

These three quilts hang above my desk at work. I made them from this book by Kumiko Sudo about ten years ago. They are the first thing I ever made with batiks, and I’ve been hooked ever since!
The first block is a morning glory, the center one is a purple coneflower. Each one has a different hand quilted background design done in DMC floss, and some embroidery. This was my first real attempt at embroidery stitches and applique.
This is the clematis block, and below is a detail of the hand quilting in this block.
And a detail of the coneflower:
I’ve done many quilt and applique projects since this one, but I’ll always be proud of this “first attempt”.

A Weekend of Stripping…

I spent part of my weekend stripping…not “at” a club–but working on a Strip Club quilt for a store sample for Quilt Junction. Above is the pattern I’m working on, its a batik quilt–LOVE THE BATIKS! Here is the 80 blocks I made all laid out on my quilt studio floor:
The border is a beautiful orange batik with designs in purple, lime, pink, and lots of other great shades of the rainbow. The backing is this pretty hot pink batik:
I managed to get all the ten rows sewed together before lights out last night:
Tonight I plan to find the time to complete the top. Possibly the quickest fastest I ever made–maybe because it has a deadline imposed by someone else!? Perhaps? I love the feeling of accomplishment of having something to show for your weekend/evening/freetime…

Spring Gardening

Have you ever wondered, “is this all there is?, or “what do I want to be when I grow-up?”, or thought “I wish I could go back, start over and choose a different path.” These are some of the questions I’ve been grappling with, and I have desires to find a way to utilize my talent and creativity in a “money-making” (translation: making a living) kind of way. I have great, creative ideas, but I always let fear and the details bog me down and talk me out of making any “real” change in my life.

Saturday I attended an open house/kick-off party for Tending Your Inner Garden, a program of introspective “soul-seeking” so-to-speak, that was developed by two “local” gals a few years ago. I met some fabulous people and am very excited about diving into this and exploring my inner longings, spirituality, and potential.

Tending Your Inner Garden is designed not to prescribe change, but to give you ways in which to access your own answers. Through journaling, meditation, time with nature, and reflection with others, it helps you develop and fine-tune a relationship with the voice within so you can create a life that reflects all of who you are. The program helps us to create those quiet times when you can listen to yourself and the natural world around you, times when the voice within can speak to you more clearly than you have ever heard it before.

Incidently, the open house was held at East Village Books, a great little independent bookstore, and someplace you must visit the next time you are in Des Moines!

Rick Rack Crazy

I spent last evening at my quilty friend, Toni’s house. We’re working on a project for the second quarterly contest through APQ, like the friendship pillows we made last month. I can’t show a finished project yet, but this is some of the yummy fabric and embellishments we’re playing with!
These are made primarily with Mary Engelbreit’s “Friends and Flowers” fabric line from Moda. By the way, we LOVE rick rack…can you tell? We had a lot of fun appliqueing, cutting, making strip sets, laughing, sharing our laments, and catching up…just what quilty friends are for, right?!
I love this little applique…can’t wait to post the finished products!

Back with a vengeance….

She is still alive…just without a camera for a few weeks and WAY too busy with work things. But I’m back and dedicated to being much more regular with the blog!

This week I received my Scrap Cabin Challenge package from my swap partner, Cathie in Australia. Look at the yummy fabric scraps she sent! Our tastes are very similar, we like the fresh, contemporary look of brights, large florals, and fun geometric designs. I love it all, Cathie! The swap required that we send at least a pound of usable fabric scraps to our swap partner to make these scrappy cabin blocks. Cathie is so wonderful, she went above and beyond and sent me this adorable cupcake, perfect for a girl on a diet like myself, and some of her handmade cards. The cake part of the cupcake is muslin with floral and rickrack icing in an adorable ceramic cup–Too Cute!
And these cards…how stinkin‘ cute is that zebra card?!? Sorry for the crappy photo, it doesn’t do them justice.
One of these days I’ll hopefully have some scrappy cabins to post to show you this “booty” in action! Thanks, Cathie! If you’d like to see some of the scrappy cabins that have already been made by more…productive, quilters…click here.