Quilt and Embroidery

 

Incorporating embroidery onto simple patching and bright color.

My Spring Garden

 Spring garden of April 14th. 

It looks much different now. The irises really bloomed and they are a lovely purple/black. The roses are amazing also. This is the first year of real rose exhuberance. The non-climbing one is showing some yellow leaves already in the interior if the plant. Why, why? I guess I'll spray for fungus? It is to early for bugs I think.

Hoopty or Hooptie

Either way I love the word!

More Home Improvements

Here is the wall paper mural in the entry. It is faded and torn on both sides but I can't bring myself to remove it.

Home Improvements

House projects have taken up much of my time this winter. When all the work was done on the house and I could actually CLEAN again I had a burst of energy and painted the entry way. It turned out pretty much as I thought -- or maybe hoped - - it would. There is a picture of the ceiling here also. We have a new (to us) light fixture and need to take the electrical risk and hang it.

Another Pallette, another motif

Full Quilt Image

Here is that other, more autumnal, pallette I'm drawn to that includes yellow, golds and oranges. I also like the leaf shape. I like the in and out skwiggles when I draw it and I like the variations in shape that all, in the end mean leaf. Then the leaves make me think of tree and the roots trees have under the ground (more skwiggles) and the outdoors and nature. All comforting beauty and associations.

Detail

Detail

"Composed" sunbursts

Here are more variations on the sunburst, sunflower theme. These are not in the calendar format. They are "composed" on the quilt plane. The sunburst is there but there are also independant spikes and triangle shapes. Flying geese is another favorite pattern. Plus these both have spirals and nested rings. Great quilts.

What about the colors? I do love bright colors on black and where there are sunburst shapes there is yellow, gold and orange. I like these colors popping agains the black and the blues but I also like them blending with browns and taupes and khaki-influenced greens.

Classics

It occurs to me that I also like the classic quilt format, and irregular variations on it, more than I actually think I do. By the classic format I mean the sort of calendar layout -- design elements in a regular or irregular grid. The two quilts below are examples of each. It is important to me to know what I return to as pleasing over and over again because I do like so many different kinds of fiber things that sometimes I can't make a choice about what direction I want to go in when I'm designing a project,

Favorites

These are some favorites from today. This one is faces and descriptive words.

Detail

Detail

Detail

Detail

I seem to like quilts with women's faces on them.

The Quilt Fest of New Jersey 2007

Spent the day at the quilt show. I didn't buy any fabric. I've been out of my sewing room so long I feel like I need to get reacquainted with what I have but I took lots of pictures! The quilts were beautiful of course and I came home with my head spinning with ideas as usual. I did buy some thread.

This particular quilt was wonderful. I came back to it many times. It is a round robin. A group of eight cut up the Renoir painting The Boating Party into eight pieces and worked on their portions individually, not seeing each other's work until all the parts were completed and assembled sort of.

One of the neat things about it is that the pieces aren't joined together but are little mini quilts, finished all the way around that just hang next to each other like a puzzle. The results are really spectacular. Everyone's technique and materials were different. Some used cottons some "fashion fabrics," satins and beads. There was traditional applique and free motion quilting and embroidery. All the interpretations were consistently "realistic." It did receive a ribbon.

The OPAC Sucks

What more is there to say?

Tokyo International Quilt Festival

Tokyo International Quilt Festival
Originally uploaded by movinghands.

Beautiful pictures. It is great to see them here since I can't go there!

Snow in Philadelphia

It snowed today. Not in that obsessive, East Coast-Nor'easter way that scares people but slowly, lazily, drifting in spirals to the ground. That hardly ever happens here and I had forgotten how it can be delightful. The flakes fill up the space around you and make you aware that it is there.

Too busy

I've been to busy to blog. Good things that have happened:

• I took a nine patch class and at least settled on the fabric. I think I've cut and sewed enough nine patch units for 2 quilts.


• The elections! The House AND the Senate! It gives me hope.


• We have tile on the bathroom floor.


• Tommorrow is Friday

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Pumpkin Cheesecake

I know it is two recipes in a row but it was just so good - and seasonally appropriate!

Pumpkin Cheesecake with Bourbon Spiked Cream
Recipe courtesy Emeril Lagasse, 2000 and Jen W.

1 1/2 cups vanilla wafers, crushed into crumbs
1 cup ground pecan pieces
1 stick melted butter
2 pounds cream cheese, softened and cubed
1 cup light brown sugar
6 eggs
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
Pinch salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups pumpkin puree
2 cups sweetened whipped cream
Dash bourbon
1 cup semisweet chocolate sauce, warm, recipe follows

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Combine the crumbs, ground pecans and the butter together. Mix well and press into a 12-inch spring-form pan. In a food processor, with the metal blade, mix the cream cheese until smooth. Add the brown sugar and blend. Add the eggs 1 at a time to thoroughly incorporate into the cheese mixture. Add the heavy cream. Add the flour, salt, cinnamon and vanilla and blend until smooth. Add the mashed pumpkin and blend until smooth.
Pour into the prepared pan. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until the cake is set. Remove from the oven and with a knife loosen the sides from the pan. This will prevent the cake from splitting down the center. Completely cool the cake before cutting.

Combine the whipped cream and bourbon together, blend well. Garnish each piece of cake with the Bourbon Whipped Cream and a drizzle of chocolate sauce.


Chocolate Sauce:
3/4 cup half-and-half
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 pound semisweet chocolate chips
1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Combine the half-and-half and butter in a small heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Heat the mixture until a thin paper-like skin appears on the top. Do not boil. Add the chocolate and vanilla and stir until the chocolate melts and the mixture is smooth. Remove from the heat and let cool.
Yield: 1 1/2 cups

Butternut Squash Apple Cider Soup from the Culinary Institue of America

This is the best soup I've ever had! Its enough to feed a whole restaurant. Soon I will experiment with reducing the recipe to serve only 6 or 8. I'll probably simplify it also. I don't see myself peeling squash when I can buy lovely frozen squash...

Ingredients:
Butternut Squash 9lbs
Onions 1 lb
Carrots 1 lb
Water to cover by 4 inches
Honey 1/2 cup
Ground Cinnamon 1/2 cup
Whole Butter 3 lbs
Salt to taste

Garnishes

Small diced butternut squash, cooked 2 cups
Pumpkin oil as needed (I have no idea what this is)
Reduced apple cider glaze as needed in a squirt bottle
Toasted pumpkin seeds 1 cup

Directions:
Peel and slice the squash. Reserve. Sweat the onions in a small amount of vegetable oil. Add the squash, carrots and water. Simmer until tender.

Puree in a blender until completely smooth. Add the honey and spices. Mix in the butter. Season with the salt.

Prepare garnishes.

Number Of Servings: many, many

More Hudson Valley Pictures

A view of the river from the Wilderstein property and the house, a wooden Queen Anne Victorian, even more amazing inside.

 

The very romantic ruined carriage house.  www.wilderstein.org

Favorite passage from Sleepy Hollow

His stronghold was situated on the banks of the Hudson, in one of those green, sheltered, fertile nooks, in which the Dutch farmers are so fond of nestling. A great elm-tree spread its broad branches over it; at the foot of which bubbled up a spring of the softest and sweetest water, in a little well, formed of a barrel; and then stole sparkling away through the grass, to a neighboring brook, that bubbled along among alders and dwarf willows. Hard by the farmhouse was a vast barn, that might have served for a church; every window and crevice of which seemed bursting forth with the treasures of the farm; the flail was busily resounding within it from morning to night; swallows and martins skimmed twittering about the eaves; and rows of pigeons, some with one eye turned up, as if watching the weather, some with their heads under their wings, or buried in their bosoms, and others swelling, and cooing, and bowing about their dames, were enjoying the sunshine on the roof. Sleek unwieldy porkers were grunting in the repose and abundance of their pens; whence sallied forth, now and then, troops of sucking pigs, as if to snuff the air. A stately squadron of snowy geese were riding in an adjoining pond, convoying whole fleets of ducks; regiments of turkeys were gobbling through the farmyard, and guinea fowls fretting about it, like ill-tempered housewives, with their peevish discontented cry.
www.bartelby.net
www.gutenberg.org

Rhinebeck

DGF and I visited Rhinebeck this past weekend. The weather was exquisite in a manner that made me think of Washington Irving's prose in Sleepy Hollow.

"It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day, the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet."

As a matter of fact it was a weekend devoted largely to history. We walked through houses built by wealthy American families during the Gilded Age and some of the cemetaries in which they now abide. The Vanderbilt home was well preserved but offered only a faint and distance glimpse of the people who had lived there. The tour guide worked hard, and he was sincere, knowledgable and entertaining but in the end it was hard to imagine anyone every living in the building. It was a walk through a memorial.

We also visited Wilderstein, a glorious wooden Queen Anne Victorian in the wilderness as I think the name implies. The last member of the family died about 10 years ago on the eve of her 100th birthday. Apparently the family never threw anything away and the house is filled with a century and a half of clothing, books, art, bric-a-brac, furniture and photos. Of course that made it seem that the occupants had just left the room.

We also looked at several once very grand homes now in ruin. That is something I haven't seen very often excepting some natural disaster.