Candace the Therapy Dog and A Bit of Good Fortune

My house looked like this December, a year ago in 2017.  This fairly rare snowfall lasted all day long.  Here in Baton Rouge we have snow about every 6 or 8 years.

The Basset Boyz were totally amazed at the white stuff.








Today the beaver was in my next door neighbor's yard munching down on some acorns.  The tree there is a huge oak.  I odd to have a beaver rambling around here.  We are used to opossums and rabbits and armadillos.





At the hospice today, Rodney's son Chad brought Candace Marie, his Certified Therapy Dog.  Chad and Candy work with Autistic kids.  She is able to calm them.


He brought her here to visit his dad, who is struggling to breathe since he is in what they call Transition.  I didn't read the book they gave Diane, but I imagine they mean between life and death.








I did have about an hour or so this morning to work on The Good Fortune Mystery quilt.  I chose the oranges, and then stripped them.

I made about half of the needed pieces.  Since Bonnie requested about 3 times the amount of orange I used, I am thinking that there will be another use for the color.  

I will spend some time tomorrow at Hospice with Diane and Rodney again.  I am hoping for peace and calm.  We spoke today of letting go.  That is the tough part.

I am in LOVE with Orange

My friend Lori told me once you go Minkie, you won't go back.  I always envisioned it to be stretchy and hard to work with.  But she assured me it was not.

One of her quilts that won at the Gulf States Quilt Asso (GSQA) Show earlier this year to the Modern Guild meeting last month.  And I got to feel the weight and heft of her quilt.

It was wonderful and I made a mental note to try it.

Click on the pictures to supersize them.

When Frank and  were at Hobby Lobby the other day I saw  some incredible ORANGE Minkie.

And bought a yard and a half with my 40% off coupon.

I quilted the Orange Tabby quilt today with the luscious orange minkie on the back.

Don't you love the orange scissors with the orange quilt?







Figuring that minkie would not take close quilting I used an open sweeping meander pattern.  And the bonus for that was that it finished up quickly.

It was easy to load and not stretchy at all.  I felt the needle drag with the deeper pile, but all I needed was an adjustment to the tension on the upper side.





I guess I could have also changed the tension on the bobbin since I

use a Towa gauge.  But usually I can fix the tension with the upper thread guide.



Some people talked about the shedding but I really didn't find that there was much of anything on my floor when I finished putting it on the frame or back in the sewing room when I was fooling with the fabric getting it ready.

I used a brown bit of fabric to bind it with.  I like the way the darker brown framed the entire quilt.  It closed it in visually and I think that is what was needed after I drew the eyes WAY out with that wild light border.






This time I chose to do a machine finished binding.  And boy did it go quickly!  I have attempted

machine bindings before and failed miserably.  To help with the folding of the binding over the edge,  I decided to glue the entire binding down before I sewed the top seam.

Much better!  Not perfect, mind you, I had to slow the machine down since I tend to have a speed demon approach.









The trick is using washable glue if you do this.  I put the glue on the binding, folded it over and then ironed it down.





When I finished I went around my yard, my house and my neighbor's yard finding interesting and fun ways to take quilt photos!

Orange quilts are a blast, I don't know why I waited so long to make one!

This one is, of course, Orange Tabbys are the New Black Cats.!

EcoBundle 1 Reveal

 (I don't know what happened to my post.....I posted pics and all this morning!)  Oh well, lets try again.

After tumbling in the dryer for a while last night, they slept together in the dryer.  It was not planned to happen, but I forgot to get them out.

So this is what they look like in the morning......which by the way is better than I look in the morning.

I think I need to do this in two posts.  So look for both of them.

This is silk, remember.

Bundle 1 - with the orange slices.

 Look at the colors!

 And the lines from the wrapping!

 And the orange slices!

 And the re-bar rusting!

Hre is the whole piece.

52 Photos - Orange - Gallery 24

For Gallery 24 Bella chose "orange" with a warning against pumpkins.  I walked around for two whole days wondering where in the world I was going to find orange!  Here we are in the midst of Halloween and no pumpkins on deck.

I realized at some point that the headlights on Frank's car have red sidelights, but mine has orange!  BINGO!

We are repainting the house wood, we have vinyl siding on most of it.  The front porch is in direct line of the setting sun every day.  It beats down on the wood and shutters without regard to the shadows we have attempted to throw in its way.  So we repaint often.  But this year I wanted a new door and new colors.

So here is the preparation for my new black door!  No orange there but I did snap a picture of the cactus.  He is in an orange pot.  We got this little guy when he was a wee lad and Carrie was in grammar school.  He is now a long long guy and hangs over his pot.  He lives on the front porch in conditions that resemble the desert from whence he came because we never remember to water him!

And you don't need to really wonder why he is a he and not a she, do you?


Check out some other "orange" sights at 52 Photos

Ok, I need help making this decision

I thought the orange would work, because it really brings out the orange in the quilt center.  It brought the small star background immediately to my eye, when they had been "absorbed" by the movement in the quilt background with no border at all.

Then I thought the blue would work because it actually tamed the movement in the border by focusing on the blue in the quilt.  It gave the blue a reason for being in the quilt center.

Honestly, when I pulled the fabric from my stash I did not think it would be this blazingly bright.  It iw a bit unsettling for me, who deals mostly in darker, more subdued fabrics.  My usual brights are those of the primary color wheel! 

 These are off the chart!

So which one do you like best? 

Frank, who actually has some eye for placement and color, really likes the orange. 

glen

The UFO Challenge at Patchwork Place and Design wall 1-3-11

Judy asked us to list our UFOs we wanted to work on # 1 through 12.  I put 2 in each month because I have sooooooo many I wanted to get a number of them done this year.

She chooses a number at the first of every month, this January 1st she chose # 6.  In my list that was the Orange Snowball Mystery and the Outhouse Blocks.  Both perfect choices because the Mystery is due next Thursday and the Outhouse blocks will be perfect for a wild and modern quilt in the Inspiration Challenge.  (I may get nothing done this year but challenges, but hey.....)

I spent a few hours this afternoon and tonight working on my Orange Snowball Mystery and got the center put together.   I put the blue one on the design wall and laid the orange blocks over the blue blocks to make placement and turning easier.  It was a challenge to get it all laid out correctly when I did the blue one.

Tomorrow I should have some time to work on the snowballs on the outside edge.  They are all put together, they just need to be sewn in strips and attached to the inner border that needs to be put on.  Aside from nothing being equal in size and no block being the correct size, it went together fairly quickly this afternoon.  I had most of the work done on the pieces from the months of keeping up with the mystery.  The blue snowball mystery will have to go to the quilt meeting with no backing or quilting. 

Inner border will be the orange and the snowballs will be the light with the fossil fern surrounding them.  It will be bright!

glen