Design Wall Monday--Matching Up the Mats and Storm Damage

 Design Wall Monday--see more great quilting projects on Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts blog. 

All the pieced mats I showed last time are now matched up with a backing. 

It is so good to use up backing cutoffs and partial fat quarters for this job. 

Some more backings.  I will rummage through the leftover batting box first for suitable chunks. These will be stitched and turned, and minimally quilted. 

These blocks from the last scrappy play are now assembled.  Pondering the next step, borders. Maybe some little star blocks would be charming.

Grant and I went to the Ventura Harbor  last week to check out the recent surf/storm damage and see the sunset. 

It was very windy and cold.  This is called Kiddie beach as it is within our manmade harbor's protective jetties.  What a mess!

On the south side of the jetty there was a lot more damage.  You can see where the surf carved away a lot of sand. Tons of debris everywhere.

 

The waves even came up over the jetty! There was some standing water on a few of the big boulders. 

The sunset was gorgeous behind the Channel Islands.  We met up with our daughter for dinner at a favorite local fish taco place downtown, and stopped at the ice cream parlor too.  It was nice to get out of the house. 

Sewtopia Palm Springs Part 3

Sorry for the break between posts! Sewtopia Palm Springs outings on Day 1 ended with a visit to the Palm Springs Art Museum.  We had a little trouble getting in to the museum--there was apparently a miscommunication about payment and we had to wait about 25 minutes before it was sorted out.  There were lots of great art pieces--I'll just share a few. 

The San Jacinto Mountains looked very quilt-like in this very wide and narrow painting. 

Interesting bio for this 1960 painting. 

I left the bit of the museum floor to show how large the Pueblo painting was.  Love the colors of this painting. 

There were also sculptures. 

One could not exactly tell what this was at first glance, though I did have an idea before reading the bio. 

Can you see the horse now?

Upstairs were lots of modern art pieces including one of my favorites...

A very large sculpture by Alexander Calder. 

I don't really see a lizard, but I liked the shapes!  It would be fun to see this in motion. Okay, just one more to share...

This huge basket sculpture was made from an usual group of materials. 

Crushed aluminum cans mounted on a satellite dish!

 

There were many more pieces of art I enjoyed--and there was also a turn through the museum store--but later I learned from my sister that I missed the basement treasures, including glass art by Dale Chihuly.  Oh well!  

Finally we returned to the hotel and at last entered the sewing room for some actual sewing.  I started with my main sewing project, Sidewalk Chalk (pattern by Meghan Buchanan), sewing together all the HRT pieces before calling it a night. 

The next morning we had buffet breakfast in the conference center and then got back to sewing.  It was great to have a design wall close by and I slowly filled it up with the blocks over the hours. 

It was slow going to keep track of my different fabrics versus the pattern colors for each block, but I managed to get them all done.  then I made my task longer by sewing each of the block pieces  together individually, but I wanted to be sure of my placements!  

 I ended Friday night with the individual rows sewn and packed them away to assemble into a top at home. 

One more post to finish off Sewtopia 2022--and share the destination for Sewtopia 2024!

Sewtopia Palm Springs--Part 2

Sewtopia Palm Springs started off Thursday 11/3 with checking in to the large conference center, which we had all to ourselves. We picked out lanyard colors for nametags, got our Sewtopia goodie bags, and found our assigned tables.  My sister, sister-in-law and I were all together, and we met our fourth tablemate soon after.  Then we piled onto the bus for several outings that were all on Palm Canyon Drive, the same as our hotel.  There are no quilt shops to speak of in Palm Springs, so they got creative and took us first to Moorten Botanical Garden, a family owned desert native garden and nursery.  The son of the founders--who looked to be in his 80s--presented a short background history and some anecdotes related to his parents and the many artifacts around the area. He was very knowledgeable about the plants, and entertaining, too. 

This wagon disintegrated decades ago beneath this large ocotillo. 

Agave and cholla cactus among large pieces of ancient petrified wood found in the desert. 

Lava flow and native cacti. The founders went on many forays for plants in the Southwest and into Mexico. 

Moortens' Spanish style house looking lovely through the huge cacti and palms. 

I really liked this species of cacti---Totem Pole cactus. Very old Saguaro towered behind. 

This unusual hummingbird was hanging around the old wagon and resistors on a wire. It was hard to get a closeup...

 

See his purple beard?  Very pretty hummer, among many that were flitting around.  

We then got back on the bus to the main retail district where there were lots of quirky shops and plenty of places to eat.  

I was curious why they kept the long beards on these palm trees. They are trimmed off here!

It was Pride Week but we were there before the weekend parade, so it was busy but not crowded.

I had to take a shot of this pillow in the restaurant we where we ate lunch.  I had the most delicious crab chowder there, and my sister and sister-in-law also had great meals. 

The last stop was the modern art museum.  I'll share that in the next post, as this is getting too long. 

Birthdays and Shopping, Sewing

Last of August, hard to believe the month has finally come to an end!  It is a very full one for our family, three birthdays, the last two celebrated together.  Our son and his son have birthdays a week apart, so they celebrated them together last weekend. Here's Dane with his sack, hunting for toy dinosaurs hidden around the yard, with his younger cousin watching with his other Grandma and Aunties. 

Mama hid a lot of toy dinos in the flowerbeds, there was even digging needed.  The boys all had a great time on the hunt. Pin the tail on the Dino, there in the background on the house, was popular as well.  

Here's Dane looking pensive before singing and cake being served.  I didn't get any photos of him smiling, but plenty of video.  Just after he got his mini bundt cake, he pretended to let a plastic dino toy take the first bite, so cute. 

And here's the adult birthday celebrator, Nick, hanging out with his nephews and sisters.  It was a fun party and great to be able to get together for pizza and cake, presents and family time. 

Daughter Elaine finally found a spot to squeeze me in for a haircut and color--much needed /overdue.  I went downtown early and did some thrift store shopping. I was sad to see that my favorite Salvation Army thrift store closed or moved, but there were plenty of other shops. Of course I always look for fabric and most of the shops did have some. One nicely packaged trio of cuts was $1.99 and I snapped it up. 

This Egyptian print was just over a yard of fabric, very nice quality and unwashed.

Being that well-aged, it is even 45" wide. I've never heard of this company, though.  The other two conversation prints were over two yards each. 

Asian tigers in a rich  print...

and Asian figures and flowers on the other.  These also appear never to have been washed.  They will make great backings.  

Some sewing did happen recently, more work on the bookshelf quilt. 

I decided to add more detail to the bookends I made a couple of weeks ago, aiming for a "brass" detail at the base.  I also grouped two books in a tilted block setting. 

Directions are from the Fabric at Work Bookshelf Quilt Pattern.  

I was happy with the way these turned out.  Lots more sewing to do and detail decisions to be made!  

Ventura County Fair 2022

Hi, I'm still here, just haven't had much to blog about sewing-wise, as I haven't turned on my machine in awhile. Hubby and I chose the last concert night to attend our local Fair.  Parking was awful as usual but I was smart and headed for the furthest rows, where the earlier attendees might have already exited, and was rewarded by a nice, close slot.  Hubby does not walk distances very well, due to chronic back issues, so we stopped frequently so he could sit down for a few minutes.  We headed to the Home Arts building after eating some fish tacos for dinner. I went inside while Grant enjoyed a beer.

It was a pretty sad showing overall for Home Arts for the first Fair after the pandemic, which I attribute mostly to the change in submitting entries to ONLY online, but lots of guild members won ribbons.  

Lots of variety.  As usual, the lighting in this building is terrible, and I wish they had hung more quilts from the ceiling where you could see the entire quilt. 

There was a good variety to enjoy, both modern and traditional.  

Judy got ribbons for all her entries.  She hand quilts most of her quilts. 

I like this pretty bee quilt. Love the pollen on the bee's leg :)

Cute embroidered pillow and knitting.

Christmas beauties.  Love the big star and cardinal quilt, and the cabin in the woods with Santa.

Chris is another guild member who did well.  First on this small geometric...

..and on a really large quilt.  We had a class for this a couple of years ago and mine remains unfinished.  I really like Chris's setting. 

More beachy items in a booth. The seagulls in the quilt on the floor are cute. 

There was plenty of cross-stitch and embroidery too. This is so pretty and obviously took many hours of needle and thread time. 

The Jar embroidery quilt caught my eye, as I had entered a quilt with the top left embroidery design a few years ago!

Cute Easter themed stitcheries. 

Loved the colors in this sweet heart wallhanging.

We had a little time to wander around before the concert.  The usual beautiful landscaping and garden and animal exhibits were thin and the whole place looked bare.  Hope next year is better.  We made our way to the Grandstand for the concert as the sun was setting. 

I captured not one, but TWO different sunflares in the clouds.  

The second was faint, but still visible. 

We were far away from the top fans at the foot of the concert stage, but had a great view on the large screen.  The sunset seemed to last forever. 

Wider scene showing the crowd.  Lots of great music and we enjoyed the 1 hour show, free with Fair Entry.  The rodeo took over the Grandstand Arena for the rest of the Fair Days. 

We enjoyed our time but missed a lot of our favorite vendors and exhibits that were absent.  Hopefully next year's Fair will be further recovered and more popular than ever.  I will definitely enter something next year!