Of the Wall Friday

I really like Off  the Wall Fridays!  Today she talked about taking a Skip Day with her daughter when she was in high school.  And Nina Marie took at Skip Day today!  And she posted the blogpost late today because of that!  LOL

So I am linking up to her Off the Wall post.  Go check out what the others are doing.....


 So I haven't worked on anything in the last two days because I have had Sawyer.  I pulled him in the wagon twice today and once yesterday.

I am so glad we kept that wagon here so we could roll him to all the important places a baby needs to be seen. Even if he is still in his pajama at 11 AM.





I can show you the progress I made on the Red Riding Hood and the Wolf quilt.   I got one more forest block made on Wednesday. 









It was the one in the middle top row.  The next one I need is the light polka dot background and the dark forest block in that bottom right corner.  



 I had to share this sent by my cousin today.  Her son is in his first year at the Naval Academy and he was at the Army-Navy game.  It makes you think.  These are the men who will be protecting our freedoms with their lives.  

 This past season I saw an amazing football game:

1. The player's hair fit under their helmets.

2.  No tattoos could be seen.

3.  There were no outlandish end zone celebrations.

4.  There was no taunting.

5.  Opposition players helped each other up after a play

6.  Footballs were not spiked or left for the referee to retrieve; they were handed to the referee.

7.  No one took a knee on the sideline.

8.   Players stood at attention during the playing of the national anthem.

9. It's great to watch an Army-Navy game.

Off The Wall Friday

I need to shout out to my friend Charlene.  She is going through a really bad time right now, and I wanted to let her know a lot of people are thinking of her.  Wishing her well.  HEY GIRLFRIEND!


I used to do OTWF every Friday.  Then the  flood happened.

I have tried to keep up with it for a while, and have done pretty well.  So here is a post dedicated to OTWF today.  Before it is over and Saturday dawns.

I am working on the Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf Quilt.  Remember Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs?

It is a paperpiecing beauty.  I really love the way it is turning out.

I need a couple more forest tree blocks.  To make it bigger I want to add some borders.


And just look at that awesome


wolf butt!  LOL


And in these borders I want to add some words.  Really catchy words.  I think they will say:

Broken down by side:

Hey There Little

Red Riding Hood

You Sure Are

Looking Good






I can't wait to start working on the words.



In other news.  I bought myself some presents today.

I think I will do a month on that face book and a couple quilts from the Southwest book.

Maybe combine them, wouldn't that be cool beans....

Off the Wall Friday - Cajun Camps

If you are looking to see who won my Blog Hop this week, please look at the post directly before this one at:

Two people I do not know - But who are now my best friends!

But for my Off the Wall post I want to share my work on the Cajun Camps. 

I just did a week long blog hop for Julie's Build A Barn book and tweaked the "barn" part to become Cajun Fishing Camps.  All good Cajuns here in Louisiana have somewherre they can get away and do some fishing.  Or hunting.  Or alligator jigging.  Just like the Duck Dynasty guys.

Camps in Cocodrie in Terrebonne Parish

Generally, a fishing camp is a bare bones structure that will
accommodate 2, 3 or 4 testosterone filled, bearded men armed with an array of barbs, sticks and firepower.  Sometimes there are bunks in a room or two, sometimes there is just a corner to throw down a couple of sleeping bags.


Some camps, however, are nicer than my house! 

From Bayou Ducks' page

 The first one I did was the duck blind. I put a duck on top.








My duck blind has a leaning cypress tree nearby so you can tie up your pirogue.  That is pronounced Pee-Roge with a long O.  But you have to watch out for the cypress knees, they can wedge your pirogue in and you will be stuck.

Watching out for snakes that fall from the trees is always important as well.  I always told Frank, the minute a snake comes in this boat, I am out of it.  Luckily it never happened.  Because logically, there are probably more snakes IN the water then the boat.




Most camps are sitting on pilings since they are in the swamp.  Much of the area below I-10 are alluvial soils and thus filled with water which creates swamps and low areas.

If you drive between my house and Charlene's house in Lafayette, LA you will have to cross the Atchafalaya Swamp. (Remember the serial killer who was dumping bodies in Whiskey Bay?  That is the Atchafalaya.)  But most of the Cajuns back in there are good people.



This camp started out as my houseboat block.  I was never happy with it.  I need to make a flat bottomed boathouse.

So now it is a taller camp.   But you really don't need much floorspace.  Just somewhere to toss your sleeping bag and clean your catch.

The grey roof is tin, so it will need to be quilted with ripples!




The block I did today  is interesting.  I can tell you how I made it.



I found this great tree fabric, we don't really have huge fir trees here in Louisiana, but the fabric is cool.








I cut a square of muslin and am going to use it for a base upon which to build my structure.


And I found a fat quarter of woodgrain fabric I have been hoarding saving.  It was tough, but I used it.
 



I cut the woodgrain and a second darker piece to add some interested to the boards.

My glue stick was useful in helping the strips to stay in play while I worked. 


I laid out the boards in a pleasing fashion.  When I quilt it I will sew down each board and add some work on the wood grains.






 All the pieces of the block itself are cut out and ready to be sewn together.


Things always look better with some appropriate seam-age!




Here are the four Cajun Camps together.  Of course there will be more camps.  I am thinking to add some things like flying geese in between the blocks.  And do some paperpieceing of some things like an alligator and maybe a pelican block.  But not a lion or a penguin! LOL

I used Julie's book to help me work through the basic construction, you can brainstorm so many different things you can do with her techinques.  Or you can make barns!

I am linking up with Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday, and you can head over there and see what others are working on as well.

Off the Wall Friday

 I constructed a duck.

And put it on top of the duck blind.







And gave it a cypress tree to hide in.  I hope they really don't choot any ducks!

I am making a quilt of Cajun Camps in the style of Julie's Build A Barn book.




In other news, I have a new fountain.  And........

A new fish.  Actually there are two new fishys!  A total of 28 cents at the pet shop.



 Off The Wall Friday

I am linking up with Nina Marie's Off the Wall Friday.  She is making a Monet and there are lots of others making stuff of all kinds.  Go check it out.

Finding Inspiration Even With Those You Don't Like

"Find a group of people who challenge you and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, it will change your life."

Now THAT is an inspiring statement.  I especially like it because I first saw it posted on Facebook by my friend Tracy, who most certainly inspires me with her ability to put together tiny little scraps of fabric (like I throw away) and get beautiful creations.  She does mosaic collages in fabric.

Interestingly, the quote came from a person I dislike intensely.  Amy Poehler.  I don't like her humor, her politics, the way she presents herself, they way she puts down people who don't have the same opinion as hers.  The hatred she expresses publicly for people who don't espouse her beliefs is unconscionable.

This is what I started with

I have a problem with people (generally in Hollywood) who think that their opinions carry greater weight, or even should be announced because they can stand up in a crowd and yell them out loud.  Last I looked, we still live in America and we all are entitled to our opinions without being put down. 

But I digress........

Inspiration.  I like what she said about it.  And Tracy and I are both members of the Fiber Group that so often provides me with wonderful inspiration and encouragement. 

As I have said before, the theme word for my Fiber Art Group in March is Inspiration.  Yesterday I worked on the project for the next meeting, my Zen Lady.  So while Frank was out in the rain making money for more quilting toys, I was blocking working on my Lady. 

I washed the vintage textiles I want to use (and hung them on the line in the rain.  At 5 pm we had had 3 inches already) ) and I printed out the Argentinian version of a love song that will be included in there as well.  Somewhere.  It is not looking anything like the vision in my head.  And even that is getting faint now.

Vintage textile piece

I saw a post somewhere on Pinterest where a ZenTangle/Zen Doodle artist worked on Fabric, so I want to try that in this piece as well.

What it looks like right now

I like what I do, flipping between quilts and fiber art.  Between Modern and Traditional even.  It keeps my mind fresh, keeps repetition from boring me and makes my work ever interesting.

And it keeps my work space really cluttered because I see everything that could possibly be ART in all the leavings of QUILTING........

I will be linking up with Nina Marie's Off the Wall posts.  One of my resolutions this year was to post to Nina-Marie's Wall more often.   Definitely head over to see what others are working on as well.

Breaking The Rules For Off The Wall Friday

One of my resolutions this year was to play with Nina-Marie more often with her Off The Wall Posts. 

She is an incredible artist.  And when she started her Off the Wall connections I was really excited about being able to connect with some other great artists and quilters as well.

Her post this week is about Breaking The Rules.  In Your Art.  (Not by speeding and flipping off the officer and landing in jail!)  You need to read it. 

So here is my Rule Breaking piece and its story.

I started it maybe 8 years ago in a class by a local quilter named Sherry.  I really like Sherry, who sometimes pushes the envelope herself.  But she never really really breaks out.  One of the things she does is takes interesting quilts and designs them as miniatures.  Her work is impeccable. 

Sherry was doing some radical (for Baton Rouge anyway) work with the Angle Play templates.  And I was way ready to move out of the old ways and into some new and exciting stuff.   She took me for a few steps into that journey!

The Angle Play blocks are interesting, but they are so labor intensive!  You have to have the right template, on the right piece of fabric at the right angle and in the right universe.  So many rules.

And I did not use the traditionally accepted fabrics.  In fact, I even cut  up a skirt that i had made for Carrie that she hated and never wore!  It is the flowers to the left here.  Psychedelic!

The blocks from the class sat around for a while hoping for more blocks to join them.  When that seemed unlikely, at some point in the timeline they got put together into a center and an inner border.  And I found a neat little batik print that  framed the whole thing.

Then further down the timeline, I finally chose a backing.  So now it relocated to the dining room where the long arm resides. That is one way to move it out of the quilt room!

So when I had a wild hair to quilt something, I wanted a simple piece.  I grabbed the Angle Play Stars and snapped it on the frame.  (Love those Red Snappers!)

And I stared at it.  Nothing.

I ended up with a straight line uneven quilting all the way across the quilt.  When I took it off the frame last night, I found it still needed something.  

So I pt it back on in the opposite direction this morning.  I like it now.

In anyone else's hands, it would be gotten curves to offset the straight angular blocks; the thread would have blended with the pieces; and it would have precisely matched to make sure each line was perpendicular every seam.

Well, you know me!  I broke those rules! 

And I have named it Breaking Bad!

Off the Wall Friday

Linking up with the Off the Wall Friday gang at  (Click here to see creativity at its best!)

I have my Fiber Group next week.  I am trying to figure out how to bind it so I am in the "thinking" phase.

The Challenge Theme was "curves".  When I was at QuiltCon in February with Patty the Quilt Lady, we came across a booth that had some fabulous screens for screen printing.  I have not had a chance to us them yet, so I pulled them out.


Of course, I broke some of the rules.

I had a bottle of Inkodye which is sunlight reactive.  It starts out milky creamy white, and turns out to be, in this case, blue.  The amount of sunlight depends on the darkness of the print.  I just left it out hanging because the first afternoon I put it out there was no sun.

Of course I didn't consider the sun when I decided to do this.

I love the colors of dark blue and beige together.  I pulled out some of Frank's old dockers and used them in block colors.  I added some circles of metal that came from a belt full of them I picked up at The Purple Cow one afternoon for 99 Cents.  I also added some sample squares from a pile of stuff Carrie brought to me when they cleaned out their sample books.  These are linen pieces and so lovely.



When my hair dryer died I took it apart.  I knew those pieces would come in handy one day!  


 I used a firm pellon to give it some firmness as an art piece.   But now I need to decide how to bind it.  

I like it.  Do you?

Off the Wall Friday

Linking up with the Off the Wall Friday gang at  (Click here to see creativity at its best!)

I have my Fiber Group next week.  I am trying to figure out how to bind it so I am in the "thinking" phase.

The Challenge Theme was "curves".  When I was at QuiltCon in February with Patty the Quilt Lady, we came across a booth that had some fabulous screens for screen printing.  I have not had a chance to us them yet, so I pulled them out.


Of course, I broke some of the rules.

I had a bottle of Inkodye which is sunlight reactive.  It starts out milky creamy white, and turns out to be, in this case, blue.  The amount of sunlight depends on the darkness of the print.  I just left it out hanging because the first afternoon I put it out there was no sun.

Of course I didn't consider the sun when I decided to do this.

I love the colors of dark blue and beige together.  I pulled out some of Frank's old dockers and used them in block colors.  I added some circles of metal that came from a belt full of them I picked up at The Purple Cow one afternoon for 99 Cents.  I also added some sample squares from a pile of stuff Carrie brought to me when they cleaned out their sample books.  These are linen pieces and so lovely.



When my hair dryer died I took it apart.  I knew those pieces would come in handy one day!  


 I used a firm pellon to give it some firmness as an art piece.   But now I need to decide how to bind it.  

I like it.  Do you?

Designing Modern Quilts - I Am Going to Be Rich and Famous

I m going to link to Nina Marie's Off the Wall post.  go see what a lot of other people are doing creatively this week! I love her birdhouses and lilies piece.  It is amazing.

I have been very interested in watching a friend of mine design modern quilt.  He doesn't make them all, but some he does.  And I have been talking to several of my blogging friends and my art quilting friends, Carrie and my quilting friends about design and design elements.

I have decided to take an online class from Jane Dunnewold about Elements of Composition.  She teaches art at a University in San Antonio (I think it is SA) and is a painter and a quilter and an artist.

That hasn't started yet, but i am getting stoked!

On my own, with encouragement from my Modern Friend of Paragraph 1, I have been playing with several programs today and made this design from one of my photos.

I hope you are mightily impressed........I am!














I was able to create a simple block, and when it went together I could play with it to change the colors and orientation of the blocks.  Bingo.

Loving it!