Patchwork Poncho

At last a use for the Guest Bed!

I finished the patchwork poncho just in time to have it go out of style! So once again I am out of it and proud of it. By Spring this might morph into an afghan, which it has a good start on already. And how many afghans have a built in neckline? An added bonus in my book.

Obviously I paid no attention to which skein of Noro Kureyon I dove into as I knit away, and since I designed this pattern myself, there was nothing to follow except the diagram I had sketched, to remind me of how many blocks were in the row, so I wouldn't just continue to knit willy nilly. However one must pay attention to this diagram, which I neglected to do twice, resulting in ripping out two squares.

Half way through I got that awful cold and put it down in favor of the pink diamond patch vest which was a quicky and sated my obsession while under the weather. Going back to the poncho, and suspecting the impending doom of the style, I forgot that I had instituted a slip stitch on the center decrease of each block, and went right back to the typical three stitch decrease. Duh! You will note the difference in the shots below.

Slip stitch decrease (K2 tog S1 K2tog TBL)

Regular three stitch decrease (S1k2tog psso)

Do I care? Not a bit, but of course I must admit it to you, for my one rule is that with you I am totally honest.

You will note in the first picture that two of the opposing corners are half squares and those will become sleeve ends or wristbands. I will then sew the poncho into a sort of bat wing sleeve and knit the wrist bands in the round, in garter stitch, and then I will pray for weather that is appropriate for this weight of passe poncho.

Now what will I knit next??

Feeling way behind

To start from where I left off...No I don't know anyone who actually voted for Alan Keyes, nor would I want to make friends with them, ick. But there were tons of lawn signs along the avenues here and the news said our county was the only one Keyes carried in IL. I started packing my bags right then but where to go?

Mexico!! ay ay ay.

Second, just as I was showing the girlfriends my all-done-but-the blocking of my Noro Kureyon Poncho, I read Manolo's blog and see at his shop this totebag denouncing the poncho.

Third, I had to leave my house early yesterday morning, before I could answer email and write in my blog and the day became so jam-packed with funstuff that I am way behind and now my husband is home on another of his vacations and that will make feeling lonely evaporate! Hurray...

I want you to know that I am writing you instead of listening to Car Talk, and working on my latest quilt idea, but geesh I must catch up.

1. Yesterday we had a meeting of the Chicago School of Fusing to discuss our super fantastic career opportunities and how we are going to amuse the world with our antics in the future. It was a meeting held at the home of Emily Parson, (see her blog link on the sidebar.) She created a lovely spa luncheon of salade nicoise and we brainstormed and chugged coffee and then all of it ended by noonish. What a great start to my day away from the studio. Laura gave us all a copy of her new super fantastic book, Fusing Fun and you must truly BUY IT. It is available from her website.

2. Emily lives in St. Charles IL (the farthest south end of the aforementioned valley) and it has the added attraction of having lots of nice antique shops where a gal like me can find the superfantastic bargains in silverplate that I have been desiring. I found 22 pieces to begin my romantic dinner with silver place settings fantasy that has been festering in my brain of late. Each piece was a whopping $1.60, so who could resist?
I may have to trash a few pieces that could not be polished to a gleam, but it is a good start.
Pictures will follow, but fear not, not much matches anything else. Martha would be proud.

Close enough when used by candlelight



I am working to remedy the disastrous effects of having two weddings with no thoughts of registering my china/silver/crystal patterns. Again, I am feeling way behind.
I had this ancient memory of my first wedding gifts, Melmac plates and Plastic drinking glasses. What does that say about my elegance?

Rushing home from antiqueing I discovered that Dave got off work early (three days early!) for the start of his vacation, so I immediately put him to work fixing the garage door opener which switches on and off at whim, creating a lovely racket opening and closing the door several times in a row. Spring must be near, as this happens whenever the weather reaches a melting temp.

I had in mind a quick kitchen clean, a spray of Pledge at the front door to make it seem as though I had recently dusted and a rested look when my guests arrived at 3 pm. This would be the interested-in-quilting gals that live in my little town that I had invited to visit my studio which never really got all that straightened out. But hey, this is how a REAL ARTIST lives, right? I am very good at posing as one...

At precisely 2:48 they arrived, so forget the Pledge spray, and I greeted Kaylie, her mom and her pal Lauren, the quilter wannabes. Very lovely girls, freshmen in the two local jr. colleges and the very smart to bring along Mom, in case I was a demented serial killer, or seducer of young virgins, as if there were any left...

Having swilled real coffee at Emily's I was in rapid fire mode and spent the next one and a half hours talking about my favorite topic, me, and showing them all there is to know about fusing and machine quilting and dyeing and the escape hatch finish. We quickly viewed the 40 or so quilts I still haven't put away since the last time I left home to teach and then I got out my Janome 7500 to perhaps entice Kayley to buy, since her machine doesn't have droppable feed dogs, making it nigh impossible to free motion quilt. She tried out her hand machine quilting and did very well, overcoming the fact that I had set up the machine on the kitchen counter and one had to stand to stitch. Amazing that the height did not hinder her.

A nice time was had by all and having been attributed celebrity status by these gals gave recompense to my ill fated achievement of only Honorable Stinkin' Mention at the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival.

That was not the end of my jam-packed day, by any means. Now it was time to set up the Romantic Dinner with Dave

Perfectly lovely long stemmed roses, denuded of all but six inches of stem, so that we could look into each other's eyes at dinner.

I had made a new tablecloth for our round table and had the new old silverplate polished and ready, and luckily had cooked our dinner the day before in unusual-for-me thinking ahead fashion.

I set out the Corelle, which will soon be replaced by real china, I hope, and the five pieces of unmatched flatware and Dave opened the wine and let it air and I microwaved our entree, green chili with quesadillas for him and green salad. So this is not a tres elegant meal, but did Dave care? No he made all the yummamente noises that would have accompanied anything Charlie Trotter or Julia would have dished up, and I finally relaxed. sigh.

We discussed what we would do on his vacation and slurped the whole bottle of wine and finished with two small scoops of ice cream still lingering from Valentine's Day. Then retreating to the couch we reveled in our cozy home and how lucky we really are. It was only 6:30 and I was about to conk out for the night, so I suggested a tiny cup of coffee to stimulate the remaining senses.

BIG MISTAKE.

Intermission.

Afterward, I like to watch Monk, and whatever L&O episode is playing on USA and so we retreated to the library, where I promptly fell asleep for the only two hours I would sleep the whole damn night.

Going to bed at 11pm and lying there waiting for the effects of the coffee to wear off, led me to designing quilts, new classes to teach, worrying about having enough art left in me to justify my existence, how far behind I am in everything I had planned to finish before Dave was back home to distract me, and how I really must start being serious about losing these four pounds before things get out of hand.

New Link

Dear Reader,
I have added a new link to my list just in time for the Oscar broadcast on Sunday. He is the Manolo the Super Fantastic Shoe Blogger. Manolo has the taste of the fashion and will amuse and enlighten you the reader, and encourage your increased use of the article the.
While you are visiting his many sites and fantasizing along with him over the David Hasselhoff, I will be working on making my studio presentable for visitors.

I have received an email from a gal who lives here in my small town of Cary IL, who is interested in becoming a quilter, and she has some girlfriends who are also interested. They are crafters, they say, but they like stuff that I like and they like my stuff. I am going to invite them to my house tomorrow and show them my stuff.
I always say that your work is your ambassador and it appeals to the sort of people who would like you and whom you would like. This will be the test.

I am always open to sharing my work and encouraging newbies. I am also delighted to connect with gals that live at this end of the valley. I live North and all my friends live South. I have to drive through the narrow traffic zone of Algonquin IL to visit my friends. They so hate this bottleneck that they find every excuse known to woman to avoid having to come to my house. I have to trick my friends into coming here by offering them elaborate gourmet lunches. Sometimes even that doesn't work. I know my friends love me, but only so far as they don't have to make that drive.
It would be nice to have friends close enough to walk to.

There is a house half way down the next block that has a large quilt hanging in its enclosed front porch. It is a traditional bed quilt, and I have considered knocking on the door and introducing myself.
"Hi, I'm a quilter and wonder if you are too, since you have a quilt hanging there on the south wall facing the blazing sun and getting more faded every minute that it hangs there." Hmm. Not a good approach.
How about, "Hi, I'm a quilter and see you have a quilt hanging there, uh, and I wonder if uh, you are interested in quilts that are not bed quilts?"
Geesh. How lame.
Or "Hi, I am a quilter looking for friends who live close enough to walk to."
Could I sound more desperate?

It's no wonder that I know no one in my neighborhood after living here for 16 years. I am the weirdest person that could possibly inhabit this town. I have no kids, so no connection with zillions of young families here, I am not going to any of the churches here, so I won't be meeting the flocks who attend, I don't have a dog, so there won't be any casual conversations at the park, I am a devoted Democrat living in the most conservative county in IL, the only one that actually had a majority for Alan Keyes, would you believe it?

I am lucky to have the girlfriends I have. And I am lucky to have you dear reader.

Painted Chair Collection

Fellow Artful Quilter Blogger Junott expressed an interest in the chair pictured earlier today, so here are some details of the piece in question.

Don't you love the dangling beads? They ring the perimeter of the seat.

Fruit chair

Here is another piece by the same Indiana Artist. I have misplaced her name and I swear I will spend the rest of the day searching through piles of stuff looking for it.

Detail of the fruit and stamped surfaces. I think the fruit may be made from polymer clay but it is really hard to tell. I know the stamps she used are from Impressmenow.com or Sherrill Kahn.

The best part is the peeled banana on the rungs. Note: I had to dust this first before I shot the picture.

Knowing I looooooove painted wooden objects, Frieda Anderson gave me this painted keepsake box for Christmas (or was it my birthday?) in 2003. It's red and I love it! Pictured next to it are balls made from strips of my hand dyed fabric. This is a long and involved story...

Frieda also gave me the small painted cat for my birthday in 2004 and it matches one I collected in San Diego. I painted the birdhouse which came from stock items at Michael's.

(shot in Mexico at the UPS store)

I found this chair in San Miguel de Allende MX and couldn't resist buying it. I took it to UPS and they wanted to charge me $80 USD to ship it home, so I decided to try to get it on the plane. I had seen lots of extra stuff coming on board on the way down to San Miguel and I had faith that I could get them to let me bring it on. Of course there was a discussion at the airport, en espanol, but I managed to look like I might cry if they wouldn't allow it and I got my way.

Seriously painted with tons of tiny fish. I only paid $37 USD for this delightful piece with all this time consuming work, which is criminal, no?

Dyeing for Fun and Profit

Silk Shantung dried and ready for washing out

I have been sequestered in the dye studio for the last three or five days, who can count? I needed to dye up some fabric for my March workshops and of course some to use in my own work. The piece above is for me. Sorry. And so is this one, below.

Silk Charmeuse. The side you are seeing here is the crepe side, the other side is satiny.

This is what the completed stash looks like. When the day's output is finished, I wash and iron it and put it in Rubbermaid containers to take with me next time I teach. I no longer sell my fabric online, so if you want to buy it, you'll have to wait til I come to a neighborhood near you. In March, it will be Wisconsin.

The other thing that has occupied my time is furniture rearranging. This is a constant hobby for myself and my husband. We either have too much furniture or not nearly enough. I find furniture buying a deadly curse. I cannot have too many shelves, or too many surfaces.

On the other hand, I can easily give away furniture that I have lost interest in. My brother, the bachelor is usually the recipient, and in our family we have an unspoken rule that furniture can always be returned if needed. When I visit his house it is like stepping back in time. The stuff I got while single in the late 70's is still thriving at Cary's. Glad I don't have it anymore.

Since Valentine's Day when I surprised Dave with a dinner in the living room, I decided to try and find a better table than the one I originally used, a card table from Target. I stopped at Pier One on my way to grocery shopping and found the perfect replacement below.

It is round with two drop leaves, as you can plainly see. When it is needed, we pull it to the now-empty center of the living room and set it with a nice tablecloth, candles, crystal and flowers. Then we dim the lights put on some romantic music and have a lovely dinner with actual conversation. This is so different from eating at the counter in the kitchen, watching old Law and Order reruns.

I have set up my laptop in the corner, and although it looks like a tight squeeze, it is really quite comfortable. The nice part is that the laptop now is safe from being knocked off the edge of the end table that used to hold it. And with a real chair and desk there is someplace for the whining Jet to put himself, while waiting for my lap to be available.




Jet awaiting the return of my lap.

Keiko and Friends

The web site for the Keiko and Friends has been updated. Please visit
http://artfabrik.com/gallerykeiko.htm to see the wonderful array of art work submitted.

The difference between art quilts and everything else

As a card carrying art quilter I feel that art quilts are a step away from the traditional bed quilt, in that they are meant to hang on the wall. This is an opinion. It is an opinion shared by all my girlfriends, thus proving its inherent truthfulness.

If an art piece hangs on the wall, it means that we aren’t interested in it being sturdy or washable. We don’t care if stuff is glued on. We don’t care if some of the materials involved in its construction don’t actually fall into the category of fabric. We don’t care about much except that it is ART.

So what is ART?

Art is something made by an artist, who knows what art is when she makes it, so don’t argue. If I say it’s art, then it is art. I am an artist and I have a stinkin’ diploma around here somewhere to prove it.

However there is a difference between good art and bad art. It is possible to make bad art even if you are a good artist. Sometimes you mean to make it bad, just for the fun of it. When you have bad-art-making-intentions, the finished product is then called tongue-in-cheek or satirical, thus making even the bad art, good art! Some people with good taste love the bad art, knowing it was made with a wink and a nudge. Some people with bad taste love the bad art because they don’t know any better and have no understanding of the perversity of the artist and her superior attitude to the people with the bad taste.


Sometimes the artist makes an artwork that is ugly. This means that the artist is not afraid of criticism. This means that the artist knows how to express herself more about life or pain or struggle than the average non-artist person. (note to self: Manolo the Shoeblogger is creeping into your writing voice).
This also means that the artist does not care that she is losing the audience’s interest and soon the only ones looking at her art are failed art history majors now employed by dull and boring art journals.
Thus the artist will die happy knowing that her art will be force fed to graduate art students and be the subject of some tiresome cocktail discussions between people who are trying to impress others as erudite, educated snobs, a very sad seduction effort.
But really, who gives a shit about ugly art? Only those who want to look like they know something that you don’t. And we all know that those people know nothing, but are easily tricked by the artist who is cunning enough to make ugly art. She is a smarty.

In the end, all the art is ending up being good. Even sweet sugary little quilts with hearts on them. Wink wink, nudge nudge.

Sugar Sugar

#11 Apple Blossom Time

10 x 11.75" Cotton and silk

OK I have a real confection going on here. Those sweet pastels were whistling for more attention and just for fun I went back to the studio and whipped up this treat for myself. When I found those white heart buttons I couldn't resist adding them, even though they are a teeny bit crafty. O I know, this is way overboard the cute meter, but once you let go and fall into the marshmallowy colors, how could anyone resist? I ask you, have I left out any whipped cream?

This is my final answer to the Friends of Keiko call for entries. It is due tomorrow and

Frieda and I are turning our entries in to Laura at Panera at 10:30 am. I am delighted to be ready, for a change.

New Works Round Two

#4 ~10x12"

#5 ~10X12"

#6 10.5 X 13.5

#6 detail

The Old Work that inspired #6, which got finished thanks to Diane's encouragement.

16.5x 17.5"

Detail showing painted fabric and hand dyed fabrics. The (acrylics) painted fabric is very stiff and each quilting stitch went pop pop pop. On a small piece like this it doesn't matter. But larger painted works are just so hard and stiff, so I quit doing that.

#7 12 x 7.25" Silk and cottons
This small piece got to me and I decided to make its layout into a larger work. I just finished quilting it this morning and is number #10. See it at the end of this post.

Detail of #7


I have a book called Paper Quilting and it is very inspiring and I often turn to it for guidance. The answers to getting simpler are in there! The author gathers up lots of paper people who are working with stitchery and collage and calls it 'quilting' so that's how I got a hold of the book. In essence it is really collage and all elegant simplicity, the work usually ending up framed as a painting.

One artist worked her magic in a grid, and that being old hat, I usually passed it by. But on this day, it looked all so brand new, so I decided to pull out all my sweetest pastels and take a day to play with the grid. I made a much larger piece than the one below, but it lacked focus, so the remedy was to cut away the distracting areas and make this the important part. I spent the afternoon and evening hand quilting and embroidering it and it feels like a bright Spring day to me. I have the leftover pieces and will make another one to keep.

#9 21 x 15.25"

Details of #9 showing schnibbles and stitchery (click to enlarge)

I don't often add all this embellishment to my work but the cheesecloth caught the eye of Deborah on a previous work and I made a mental note to play with it again later. It fairly makes the necessary statement in this piece. It is fused first, then cut, then pressed into service.

#10 32.5 x 23.25" Silks and Cottons

This one is dark and very light so the camera misses the dark edges. Please click to enlarge.

Quilting Detail

This was inspired by the layout of #7 and while I like it, I really didn't have the proper colors in my stash. Darn. I shall have to make it again after a dyeing day on Saturday. What I loved about #7 is the aqua green, cheetos orange, and turquoise in combination with a splash of violet. Yummamente.


Since I loathe bindings I have used the Escape Hatch Finish on #4-10.

This means, in short, fusing my tops to batting (Hobbs Heirloom Cotton, 80/20) and then cutting my backing fabric exactly the same size, or slightly smaller than my top. I fuse on a strip of Wonder-Under, about 2-3" wide and about 3/4 as wide as the top measurements of my quilt.

The strip of Wonder-Under is placed on the wrong side of the backing fabric and is positioned at the place where the rod pocket will eventually cover it. Then I cut a slit through this strip and the backing fabric, because I intend to turn the quilt right side out through this slit. Then I stitch all around the perimeter of the quilt, as you would when making a pillow.

At the corners of the quilt, I stitch two small stitches instead of coming to a right angle. See picture below. This prevents a wonky point and is a trick I learned years ago in the commercial world, when I must have made thousands of pillows.

Then I trim away the excess fabric and batting and the resulting corner is smoother and slightly rounded rather than peeky outty. You know what I mean!

Two stitches at the corners

Trimmed edges

Too busy quilting!

I am on a roll and have five or six new quilts about to be quilted. Woo Woo! So instead of reading my blog, do yourself a favor and read this speech which I got from a site who got it from another reader. It's so inspiring and makes me feel like speaking out.

Valentine's Dinner--Early

You've seen those long elegant dining room tables in movies, where the veddy rich Lord and Lady sit at opposite ends of the table and are served by butlers... the grandeur disguises the lack of intimacy in the couple's relationship. We have a large dining room table too, which seats eight and is way too big for an intimate dinner for two. Plus the dining room is downstairs and is pretty far away from our upstairs Winter kitchen.

I kept thinking about having a nice spot upstairs for dining that would be appropriate for special occasions where staying home would be favored over dining out. Finally I decided to scrounge around for small folding table and would set up my own 'fern bar' in our living room.

Sunday being the last day of Dave's vacation, and the day before Valentine's seemed like the appropriate date for an intimate dinner for two. He was out buying cables and stereo wires for the soon to be moved sound system downstairs, so I brought in the 'hidden in plain sight' (in the garage) table, ironed the tablecloth and set the the scene with candles, and flowers and stemware. I had already uncovered the grill, now that the snow has melted and the rain is coming down in buckets... and had seasoned the chops and made the salad and baked the sweet potatoes and chilled the wine and had the decadent ice cream waiting in the freezer.

After the feast

Too bad you can't hear Frank Sinatra singing love songs in the background.

Dave was way impressed and surprised and said that a setting like this required a heart to heart conversation. So we had another glass of wine and talked about his illness and he helped me understand how numb he feels and how he has lost his confidence and how his future seems so bleak. And getting that off his chest, he vowed not to be a downer and changed the subject.

His Parkinson's has worsened lately and the tremor is hard for him to control, and wears him out with the effort. Everything is done in slow motion and he also finds it difficult to speak, so I am very patient, trying to let him say what he needs to, without finishing his sentences. He is taking five pills three or four times a day and wading through all that brain medication makes me wonder how he can speak or move at all, let alone drive or work. I worry a lot. You may wonder why he had to tell me this, why I had to be told... He is normally a quiet guy and the tremor only comes on when he is in conversation or stressed. Since he spent nearly all week at the computer, researching and educating himself on the specifics of the stereo system he is aquiring, I just assumed he was doing fine...but in essence he lost himself in the research so that he wouldn't have to think about his declining ability. O, I get it now.

All of this goes to the fact that we live very quietly, each in our own little worlds, and unless one brings up the difficult to discuss subjects, it is easy to just put on blinders and pretend it doesn't exist. I may be wallowing in denial too. Both of us are helpless to the progression of this disease and wonder what new drugs will do, since some make it worse for some patients. He will be trying something new in a few weeks and there will be another period of adjustment for us.
I hope his new stereo arrives in the mail today, so he will have that distraction.

Our dinner and heart to heart made us feel closer and together in this thing called marriage. You can't buy that on a Valentine's card.

To clarify my finishing directions:

The Edges are just zigzagged. I call this the Ravioli Finish because it is similar to sealing the edges of a ravioli. The filling is batting in this case, lest there be any doubt.
I will go to any length to avoid binding a quilt.

Starting some small works

Here's what the studio table looks like before I begin. All of these scraps are already fused leftovers from larger works. I figure I will make a few small pieces to get back in the zone of working smaller, after having made several large works in a row last month.

The only parameters are that I stay within the 11" x14" range in order to enter the Keiko and Friends exhibit. However the finished piece needn't stay rectangular and needn't be that large either.

The deadline has thankfully been extended to February 18 th which gives me days to work without feeling rushed.

#1

I usually don't like to critique my own work on the blog, preferring to let you Dear Reader make up your own mind, but in this instance I am trying to show the progression that took place as my enthusiams outweighed my patience. This piece has some nice fabrics, and that extra touch of fused cheesecloth (blue stuff), but looks forced and not as cohesive as I would like.

#2

I was all excited by the fancy fabric with the stamped dots, from bubble wrap, that I dug up and just had to use. In combination with the negative fabrics left from cutting out dots, and the neat colors in the strip fused fabrics, I thought I was onto something. But then it all looks too contrived... What I am aiming for is that elusive "it all just falls together like butter" look. Easier said than done.

#3 By the time I got to this piece I was running on empty, and not happy with the first two pieces, I just grabbed up stuff that was already in units and plunked them down together and Voila! It worked! Ain't that something? This piece has fine color, balance of design elements, and a jaunty directional quality. Hmmph. It has the 'thing' that I was looking for in the other work. I am happy.

To finish all these pieces: They are fused to batting and the batting is cut slightly smaller than the top on all four sides. The edges of the top overlap and will be fused to the backing fabric which will then seal the edges and be trimmed to match the shape of the top. The pieces are then quilted and after the threads are trimmed, then the edges are finished with a zigzag stitch, and there will be no binding. This finish is different than I use on most of my other work and is one that I learned from Marcia Derse years ago. It is especially appropriate for the very loose qualities of this kind of improvisational quilt.

When it's not working...

You've gathered together the fabrics you want to use in the piece you will make today. They are in front of you, on your work surface or pinned to your wall and you wait for inspired direction.

Nothing.

What gives?

I've been there a million times. My worst-bad-habit is to try to make something work that hasn't a ghost of a chance of becoming wonderful. One can waste an entire day on that task and have Perfect Blahness for a product.

One must start with DAZZLING in order to end up with DAZZLING.
Duh.
Yeah, but....

What is DAZZLING? How can you expect me to use this good piece when I have no idea if my design idea is good enough to warrant it. Or worse, I have no idea where I am going with this design... I can't 'waste' this good fabric on a design experiment!!

We'll talk more about design another day. This is about color..

Dazzling is defined as really beautiful fabric, that you love upon seeing it, that looks wonderful alone and even better in combination with its opposite. Nothing short of gorgeous.

The fabric makes the quilt.

TRY making fabulous from gray flannel. Not gonna happen. Not in my world at least, and if you wanna prove me wrong go right ahead. I will be spending my time with wonderful color, and high quality fabric.

Contrast can bring excitement too. So many of us quilters have vast supplies of medium range values, and nothing in the deep dark range or very light to almost white range. And then there are the light mediums and the dark mediums, which confuse us into thinking we have a 'good enough' value range.

Years ago when I was a youth, I worked as a commercial artist and one of our mentors always reminded us that a good design works even without color, as in the black, white and gray mock-ups that we used. Now (if and or )when I sketch a design for a quilt, I draw in the values to define the design and that helps me remember the importance of using value as a compositional device.

Color Contrast: Simlutaneous contrast is when two colors that are opposites on the color wheel, aka compliments, are juxtaposed to provide that DAZZLE. I must confess that this is one of my favorite tricks. I love the effect of these brights colliding and making the viewer reach for the sunglasses! Some of the best combos are orange and turquoise, hot pink and kelly green, and red and green too. But it can even work to your advantage if you pale it down to something like buttercup yellow against pale lavender. You will still get the vibrations that cause the eye to blink.

Lately I have been in training to use limited color schemes. This is a big lesson for me since for the last ten or so years I have been busy using only one color scheme: all colors, all the time.
When you dye your own fabrics you can make whatever colors you want, and I wanted them all. In. One. Piece. However, I do admire the work of other artists and had to admit that using only some of the colors in a work had merit and so I am trying it.

Not everything I have tried has been a smashing delight.

But I am learning. I have had some success with earth tones, which was like pulling teeth for me, since no fuschia was included in this scheme. However an all earth toned quilt with no turquoise is like the Southwest without frijoles. So it is important to remember to include the spark to start the fire.

Another good color scheme for me is what I call the Frieda colors, orange, purple and Frieda Green, which is an olive-y kind of green. These are offshoots of the three primaries which were always my initial three perfect starters.

I have not had good success with using regular blue over turquoise as my basic blue. Something about midrange blue, just stops a piece dead. Royal however is a gem color and then you can combine that with emerald, ruby and topaz which again are offshoots of the primaries.

So here's an exercise to get one moving towards a solution: Search your stash for values, and make five piles. Light, light-mediums, mediums, dark-mediums and darks. I will bet you will be off to the quilt store for more values at each end.

A Visit to the Gardens

While it would have been nice to blink one's eyes and fly off to Japan to enjoy this garden,

or flit across the pond to enjoy Sissinghurst, we settled for a walk through Chicago's Botanic Gardens. After being a sick girl all week it was time to bask in the lush tropical greenhouses and smell, or try to smell the flowers that are blooming there.



A very fragrant Gardenia about to fully unfurl.

Lady Slipper Orchid

Hibiscus with wonderful red veining in the petals.

Sorry, I forgot to memorize the name of these.

Phaelanopsis Orchids.

After the walk we ate lunch at Panera, my fave and now I am off to get a new haircut, and become gorgeous again ! Except for the fever blister on my upper lip. Dang!