Three or More Tuesday - Angels

Three or More Things on Tuesday - what fun.  My Three or More is angels I have made - 

 Long ago I painted these wooden angels, floating about on clouds . . .

Three sweet angels made from vintage hankies and lace . . .

Wooden angels for your kitchen . . . or garden . . .

This angel, with painted wooden head and body and lacy skirt, sits atop our christmas tree some years.

Lacy Victorian lady angels, sweet as can be in their very lacy skirts.

As you can tell - I didn't make this angel - but it is the cutest angel donkey I've ever seen.  Can't you just see those shining angel wings?

Click here to visit many more wonderful Tuesday posts.

Mosaic Monday

Yesterday we drove down to the Tulip Festival in Skagit County - just a little south of here.  The sky was dull and overcast, like a very high fog, when we started out - but it got nicer as the day went on.  We stopped for burgers and salad and on the way out of the restaurant I heard someone say that they  had just come from the giant annual flea market at the fairgrounds - so off we went.  This is one of our favorites and we almost missed it.  Traffic was unbelievable - moving only inches with each light change - but finally we came to a spot where we could turn off the main street and zig zag over to the fairgrounds.  We parked close to the buildings that housed the flea market and had a grand time looking through tables and tables of wonderful stuff.  I'll show you my treasures another day. Then back in the car and off to see the tulips - we snuck out the back way and zipped down to the fields.

The flowers were the most amazing we've seen in all the time we've been going down to the festival.  We happened upon some fields that were not on the regular tour - brilliant colors - and the sun had come out so the flowers shone in the bright light.  I walked up and down taking photos - and stopped at a little shed to buy some yellow tulips. 

Pretties on the dining room table . . .

Thanks for stopping by to Tip Toe Through The Tulips with us . . .

A Few of My Favorite Things

What fun - stop over and see Laurie and more Favorite Things.  

These are some of my favorites this week - seems my favorite things change often.

My wonderful pedestal cake plate - a Christmas gift from our son and daughter-in-law. It is fillled with springtime cupcakes.

Deer and ducks in our yard - and they didn't seem to mind sharing the yard or the food.

Grandsons playing with Legos - and Grandsons are my all time favorite!

Woodpecker door knocker - Ben says it is a fun way to get Grammy to come to the door - I agree.

Old barns with wood silvered by the years - always a favorite!

Thanks for stopping by - see you next week!

Happy Easter

Happy Easter to all !  I hope your weather is sunny and bright - but if not - I wish you baskets full of happiness anyway.

Our family gathers today - those who are not far away in WV - or as the case may be this year - at DisneyWorld having a blast.  We will color eggs with Jahn and Ben - then hide and hunt for the eggs - most likely indoors this year - though some Easters we have had gorgeous weather here in NW WA.  Today it is soggy, rainy and quite chilly.  We will load the boys' baskets with all sorts of goodies and some fun toys.

 The Easter Cottage with the little bunny and her basket will be the centerpiece again this year.

Next is dinner - ham, fruit salad, potatoes, brocoli salad and of course deviled eggs. Ending with chocolate cupcakes - who could wish for anything more.

 Don's early Easter with his parents, grandfather, aunt and cousin . . .

I don't have any Easter photos of my - but lots of our kids - and of course Jahn and Ben . . .

Our kids - through the years, in their Easter finery!  I loved sewing new outfits every year.

 

Ben - hunting eggs - 2 years old . . .

 

Ben and Jahn - having a grand time in 2007 . . .

Easter at Jahn's house - 2008

Coloring eggs and having fun at Grammy and Grampy's new house - 2009.  Instead of baskets, Grampy bought the boys suitcases.

Coming soon - photos of today - and all the fun we had.

Happy Easter Bunny to you all!!!!!

A quilt every few days or so #20

This is a quilt that is not finished - and will be someday - I promise! It is our "Going to Washington" quilt. We moved to Washington in March 2001 to be here so we could participate in the preparations for Beccy and Jason's wedding in October. I sewed Beccy's dress and we helped plan and put on the wedding along with Jason's family.

I wanted to make a quilt to commerate moving to Washington. I started sketching ideas and making blocks. As I tell about each block, it is not necessarily in the order that the blocks were made.

This block is the centerpiece of the quilt - it has Mt. Baker in the background, Lummi Island and Bellingham Bay. Again flying geese, this time in a circle - I do love making flying geese.


This is a map of the Bellingham area, copied from a map atlas book. I even used similar colors to what is in a map book. I will eventually mark where Bellingham is and perhaps the names of each of the San Juan Islands. It is in one piece - but I took two photos fo it to get good close ups of the islands.





One of the borders will be embroidered wild flowers from Washington - I look for photos of wild flowers, or real flowers and make sketches and then embroider them. I plan for this flower border to encircle the entire quilt . . .

Close up of some of the embroidered wild flowers . . .

Of course any Washington quilt must have bald eagles and I paper pieced two of them - then decided that I didn't care for the sharpness. So I removed all the blue and kept just the eagle part - and appliqued it to blue sky fabric.

I made two of them - and appliqued them to a dead tree. I tried four times to get the right look with dark fabric, finally turning a black fabric to the wrong side and using the grey color for the dead tree - it came out the perfect color.

This is a partial layout - just an idea of how I might start putting the blocks together. . .

Next I started making Mariner's Compass blocks . . .

Many of them . . .

Many patterns, many designs . . .

This is the largest one - and has over 100 pieces - the smallest piece is about 1/2" triangle . . .

Then I decided that I can't use the Mariner's Compasses because they are all on a white background - and what I want is for them to float around the center of the quilt, so I have to remake them with a blue background that matches the background of the eagle block. . .

Most of the MC blocks are from Judy Neimeyer's books - wonderful instructions and patterns . . .

I thought that a rope border would be perfect for the last border - and I fiddled with Drunkard's Patch blocks until I got them to come out looking like a rope. I had to elongate part of the block and shorten other parts.

Close up of the rope border . . .

There will be more blocks - as soon as I think of them - ideas of Washington . . .

A quilt every few days or so #19

Years ago, when we were living in Wisconsin, we came across a quilt in the trunk of Don's aunt's car. It was used for covering stuff in the trunk - or wrapping breakables - just an old quilt the aunts made. We asked if we might have it and Aunt Mary replied - "oh you don't want that old thing". Oh yes we do!!!!! And so she gave it to us - wondering what we would want with such a piece of junk.

The fabrics are from the Civil War era - and we are guessing that the quilt was made in the late 1800s or very early 1900s. Don's aunts were sisters that never married. They inherited a portion of their parents' farm and received a pension from their brother (Don's grandfather), who ran the farm after their parents were no longer able to.


The quilt was very old and worn - some of the pieces had completely disintegrated from the dyes eating up the fabric. Dyes were often made with metals to get their color and the browns were the worst for destroying the fabric.

Great Aunt Ella, Don's grandfather, Frank and Great Aunt Clara - as young children . . .

Don with his great aunts Ella and Clara . . . they adored him . . .


Don with his grandfather - one of my all time favorite photographs . . .

Great Aunt Clara as a young woman (look at that waist and the high collar) . . .

Don's grandfather, as a young farmer. He wanted, more than anything, to go to college and become a teacher, but duty bound him to taking over the farm and supporting his parents and sisters. . .

Aunt Ella

The great aunts lived together in a house in town, and were quite eccentric. At one time they had a spat and decided to divide the house in two, putting a line of tape down the middle - and neither could enter the others one's half. The bathroom was on Clara's side of the house so Aunt Ella had to have a door built into the bathroom so she could go out her door and enter the bathroom through the new door.

Ella was a seamstress and made a small living at sewing clothes. For a week or two each season she would also go to her brother Frank's house and sew new clothes for his three daughters. One of the daughters (Don's Aunt Mary) tells the story of the yellow dresses that Ella made for them. All three girls received brand new yellow dresses. As one of the sisters outgrew the yellow dress it was handed down. So Aunt Mary had her yellow dress, then her sister Irene's dress (Don's mother) and finally her sister Dorothy's dress, She was the youngest girl, and she said by the time she had outgrown the last yellow dress she was so sick of yellow that she swore she would never wear that color dress again - and she never did.

Ella and Clara in their later years . . .

Clara once entered a contest to sell the most subscriptions to the local newspaper - the prize being a brand new car. The problem was, Clara did not know how to drive. But she persisted and sold the most subscriptions and won the car. She then took driving lessons and learned to drive her wonderful car.

Oh - I'm back now, from that jaunt down memory lane . . .

Click on the photo to enlarge and see the damage to the fabrics - we can no longer use the quilt - it is simply displayed from time to time in our home . . .

I love the quilt, the fabrics and the memories of Don's family and decided that I wanted to reproduce the quilt. I searched for three years for the pink fabric. I found the white with red pin dots after a two year search. It is a fabric that comes into fashion and then disappears for a while. When Beccy was about two I made her a dress from the white/red pin dot fabric.

I found the pink on a website for searching for old fabrics. A quilt shop had 4 yards of it in the back room - a discontinued fabric - and I bought all of it, at a very reasonable price. The other fabrics I bought from Civil War Reproductions - some I traded my hand painted fabrics for, with other quilters, until I had enough to make the quilt. I used Civil War Shirting reproductions for the light fabrics in the fly geese. I received many of the shirtings in trade with our dear friend Deb, who passed away recently. I love that I have her fabrics in the quilt.

When I started making the quilt I discovered that there were not the same number of flying geese in each strip. I counted each row and averaged the number of flying geese and stuck with that number. The old quilt had been hand pieced from fabrics that must have come from remnantsof clothes Ella made, and old worn out pajamas, dresses and aprons.

The quilting in the old quilt was a wide "V" - going up and down with the points of the flying geese, but not always hitting them squarely. Since my quilt had the same number of flying geese in each row I was able to hand quilt the wide "V" evenly. making it hit the tops of the flying geese in a nice pattern.

The old quilt on the left and the new quilt on the right (before it was bound). I think they came out suprisingly similar. The new quilt was a gift to Bec and Jason and Ben one Christmas and it is used and loved in their family.

Our sweet little Ben playing on the quilt . . .