A New Assortment

Hello everyone...here is some news from this home front...a welcome visitor:

I decided to concentrate on my grandson's quilt because he will be visiting soon, but in the meantime finished this felted piece:

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I saw these 2 arimatsu pieces on Glennis' site, and could not resist them, thinking I would cut into them for my grandson's quilt, but it is hard to do, they are so beautiful as is:

And then, as I've been absorbing ideas from Jude's classes and learning techniques, I suddenly came up with a new plan for my grandson's quilt.  In the ongoing Magic Diaries class, Jude talks  about design/theme etc., in a way that encourages us to use what we like of her sharings to cultivate our own pathway through the thickets of life.

I've discovered that I love sewing little squares together by hand to make 9-patches.  Most of this fabric comes from my trip to Mt. Lassen, which was in hiding the entire weekend...I found a little quilt store that was closed.  I peered into the window and suddenly the owner appeared and invited me in.  I gravitated toward the red (L's favorite color) checks and here we are.

The main theme of this quilt is to introduce my grandson to his ancestors from the maternal branch of my side of his family.  Now that I have a structure for this, I have a better idea of how to construct squares around the other photographs, which are all different sizes, in order to unify the over-all look of it. (I hope!)

So it's a new beginning with lots of room for development.

That's all for now...

Agnes, after life...

Hello everyone.  Good heavens, it's been almost a month since my last post.  I've been mulling things over a lot, keeping busy, and changing gears a little.

First in the news department...my little dog Agnes, who died at the end of February, sigh, is pictured on the cover of the magazine Quilting Arts, the June-July issue.  My friends from the Central Valley who gave Agnes to me, have a cousin, Joan Sowada, who came over one day to photograph Agnes and then constructed the fabric picture of her that's featured in this issue of the magazine.  It perfectly captures one of Agnes'  'looks' and her funny little under-slung jaw, full of kindness and determination.

And here is a little felted piece I made of my little pal, may she rest in peace:

Well, I've wanted to post these as part of a farewell to her, and I was going to put in some examples of moving on (part of which is writing a book about her...she has quite a story), but actually there is still a lot of emotion going on and it might be a better idea to take a walk, get some coffee, you know...

That's all for now, but I'll probably be back sooner...