More Hexagons

Given my fascination with hexagons in quilts, I had to purchase this triangle ruler when I saw Denise demonstrating it to another customer at the Creative Cloth Closet in Canon City. I can picture all kinds of possibilities using this ruler. To start out I dug a set of Christmas fabric fat quarters from my stash and cut out enough triangles to make four place mats. The fabric under the ruler is the one I chose to back the mats.

Here is my progress so far. In order to fit them on my narrow design door, to photograph them, I overlapped the mats. I plan to use fuseable batting to sandwich the mats and then use gold thread satin stitch to embellish the seams and finish the edges. I'll do anything to get away from putting on binding.

More Photo Fun

I've been busy taxiing Mandy and Amber around (as you can see they are not children any longer) and have 5 of the 6 giant 9 patches done for greatgrandson Brendon's quilt, but haven't found a suitable fabric for the lattice stripes locally. I've done some searching online but haven't found just the right yellow fabric yet. I had hoped to match the yellow center block fabric, but I'm afraid it isn't available any longer. I have to travel to La Junta on some business for my Mom and will stop at The Stitcher's Garden in Pueblo to see what they have in stock.

I've had a couple of days when the fall weather, colors and clouds (and rainbows) got me excited about taking photos again. I am seriously researching for a camera that will do more of what I want; as much as I love my little Canon Elph, I'm afraid I've outgrown it. I need more pixels and quite a bit of optical zoom. I love the results that I've seen from digital single lens reflex cameras, but they seem a little complicated for where I am at this point. I think I will probably work my way up by going with a Canon Power Shot until I outgrow that.

I always love the look of the mown hay in windrows to dry it so it can be bailed and stacked. The red tractor was perfect with the red woodbine leaves and green hay.

[Be sure to click on the photos to enlarge them so you can see the details better.]

Aren't these red stems and purple berries on the woodbine (also known as Virginia Creeper) great against the still green leaves?

The grass hay, and sometimes alfalfa, grows well on the lowlands between the Arkansas River and the dry prairie bluffs. I am very drawn to the lush green areas in dry climates. The contrast is visually exciting and also makes for good birdwatching. Here we have numerous native plants and grasses, as well as red Woodbine, growing in front of cattails in a wet section along the fence next to the road.

Here is a natural garden with a sculptural weathered stump in the fenceline gate corner of the pasture where the hay was being mowed. The white flowers are some type of wild aster that my brother and I have always called Ironweed because when we tried to break off branches for bouquets for Mom, the stems were too tough to break. Now I know I have to cut them with garden shears. I'd love to get a clump of this native plant growing in my mini prairie.

A rainbow in an ominous black cloud that was full of rumbling and lightning and dropped copious amounts of water on us for about 10 minutes.

Fabric and Color and Pattern, Oh Yes!

Here are the rugs, towels, washcloths, and fabrics that I've put together for our vintage camper.


I still need to find turquoise kitchen towels, and pot holders; turquoise is evidently not "in" for kitchens currently, at least, not at the local WalMart. I need to visit the Pueblo Target to see what colors they have.


The turquoise and brown fabrics were from the July fat quarters bundle, and the minute I saw them I knew they were just what the camper needed. However, Denise of the Canon City Creative Cloth Closet has been sending out lots of e-mails about new fabrics coming in, so I had to stop by and look and them, and Voila!, a turquoise fabric with colorful southwestern style lizards all over it, which adds the needed Pop to the scheme. Before I received the vintage style fabrics, I had considered doing a Southwestern theme, so now I have melded the retro and the Southwestern.


That all over diaper pattern fabric is what most of the curtains will be made from; and I'm just certain that at some time my Granny had curtains, made from a similar pattern, in her kitchen. Every time I look at it I get deja vu shivers.


The mattress on the permanent bed, in the camper, is also vintage, in that it is a three quarter size, rather than twin or double. Have you tried to find sheets for a three quarter mattress lately. The few places I've found online want a fistful of dollars for their scarce bedding. Since we will be using our sleeping bags, instead of regular bedding, I am going to find a heavy duty tan fabric and make my own fitted mattress cover (slip cover) for the mattress, and have pillow cases made from the various turquoise fabrics to brighten it up. I get the main bed and Joe uses the bed that is made by dropping the table top down into the bench seats. We are too old and large to share that very narrow three quarter bed.


I suppose that when we take our vintage camper for it's maiden camping trip, with us anyway, over the Labor Day weekend, we should take along some bottles of champaign to christen it with; my idea of the best way to christen it, is to drink the champaign. Too bad our local Abbey Winery does not make a champaign.


While looking at the new bolts of fabric at Denise's, I found these on a table in the back classroom space; they hadn't made it to the shelves up front yet. They stopped me dead in my tracks. I have a major thing for Art Deco design, and these are a very modern take on Art Deco in scrumptious rich colors. The purple on the left side is not nearly that dark in person. I don't know what I'm going to do with these, but I've been thinking that I need to find a quilting pattern that looks kind of Art Deco. Maybe something with the Drunkard's Path circles and squares would work.

Here are the fat eighths of Moda's Prairie Paisley, that I mentioned in the previous post, for a quilt for my bed.


You really need to click on these photos to enlarge them to see the colors and patterns better.
















It was sunny and hot (94 degrees) again today; our monsoon rains seem to be over for the year, and when I went out to set the sprinklers on the grass in front of the house, I saw several butterflies gathering nectar from the Butterfly Bushes, in the western shrub border that I planted to screen our place from the neighbors. I really wanted to get a photo of one of them with their wings open to show the brilliant orange color, but they only opened them when they were flying, and I couldn't photograph them when they were moving so fast. I've also got a couple of Rose of Sharon bushes and some old fashioned Sweet Rocket blooming now, and there are always butterflies and hummingbirds enjoying them. There are also a couple of old fashioned rose bushes in this border, but they bloom earlier in the summer. The old roses only bloom for a while in the late Spring or early Summer, unlike the modern roses, that bloom all summer long. I would like to get some climbing roses along the front fence that will bloom all summer. I also crave at least one of the fantastic, eye catching big, bright, hardy Hibiscus that I see blooming
now in some yards in Canon City. It is amazing to me that these tropical looking flowers can survive our winters, but the hardy ones can.


If I had the space and money, I suppose I'd have a botanical garden of my own with an integrated arboretum. Every plant I see, I want. I'll have one of those, and one of those....well maybe one in each color...

Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head

Miraculous! We have had rain and cool temps for three, count them, three days in a row. It has drizzled, thundered, lightninged, and/or downpoured on top of the monsoon rains that we received last week. After the hot, miserably dry spring and summer we've had, this is fantastic! No more dust, shriveled and burned vegetation, not to mention dehydrated skin and hair. The world looks washed, and sparkley. No more red flag fire warning days with smoke hazing the sky. And even though the prairie never greened up in the spring, we now see a shade of green spreading over the hills and gullies; and when the 90 degree temps return later in the week, I am sure the green prairie grass will leap out of the moist earth.


The prairie grasses and flowers have adapted to our hot, dry climate by going into "hibernation"
(actually, animals hibernate and plants do something else, but I can't come up with the proper word at this particular time) during our periodic droughts, ready to spring back into life when the moisture finally returns. The average moisture received here is 12 inches a year, so you can imagine how dry it gets during a drought year. Prairie species have to be tough!


My garden is refreshed and so am I. I even went out during one of the brief dry spells in the early afternoon, fed the birds, and pulled some gigantic weeds that were trying to take over the herb garden, until Joe shooed me back indoors before I could wear myself out. Noone can pull just one! Those deep roots pull out of the moist soil so easily and satisfactorilly (I'm not sure that's really a word, but I tend to like speaking colloquially, even if I have to invent the colloquialisms.)

We are enjoying the vegetables from our garden, they taste good as well as looking good. I chopped up zuchinni, eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, garlic from the garden with purchased onion, and made my version of Ratatouille; grated cucumbers into herb flavored yoghurt; and sprinkled celery salt onto juicy sliced tomatoes for meals this weak. Home grown tomatoes actually taste like tomatoes and, as Joe puts it, they don't crunch when you bite them, like what they sell as tomatoes at the grocery stores.



I actually started sewing the new retro curtains for our vintage camper/trailer this evening and found some light and dark turquoise towel sets, while shopping this afternoon, that go with the curtain fabric perfectly. When I sat down at the sewing machine, I was even able to remember how to use the poor neglected thing.


I'm also contemplating making a quilt for my bed using the bundle of Moda's Prairie Paisley fabrics that I purchased from Grandma's Attic Quilting. Since I love both paisley (Persian Pickles) and the prairie, I was intrigued from the time I read that they were coming out with the Prairie Paisley patterns and was overjoyed, when I saw the photos of the fabrics, to find that they were in the shades of blue that I adore. I am very fond of the blue English country floral comforter I've had for ages, but it is beginning to show signs of use by me and my cats. I'm afraid that one more trip to the laundry will shred it.

You Can't Keep A Good Granny Down

Our month long heat wave finally gave way to 3 days of cooler, wet, Monsoon here in Florence. It helps me and my dry, suffering garden feel better. I managed to walk around Toad Haven, without falling down,with the help of my gorgeous Aspen walking stick, handmade for me by granddaughter Mandy. I took lots of photos and even got to pick some ripe tomatoes, eggplant, squash, cucumbers and lettuces. The Romaine lettuce was great as the base of a lemon- dill tuna salad.


Thanks to Dave and Carl, the yardmen who I finally gave up and hired to help me when I couldn't get out to the garden this past month, the worst of the weeds and elm seedlings are gone and I can sit and admire and enjoy the garden without feeling overwhelmed by the work that needed to be done.


It's wonderful to be happy and hopeful again instead of so beat down as I have been. Hopefully, this weak, shaky body will be able to come back from the terrible punishment it has had, due to medication side effects, the past 15 months. I have lost 30 pounds and my clothes are beginning to hang on me. Ain't it Wonderful! Now only 65 more pounds to go. It is much easier now, to not want to gobble the junk I had been stuffing down. I think I was craving more energy and, somehow, thought that more food would help. Of course, it didn't.

I even managed to drive to Canon City today to shop at the health food store and City Market for a few things, and drove home the back way and took lots more photos of the refreshed countrside and the fantastic monsoon thunderheads in the sky. By the time I got home and carried the 2 bags of groceries in, I was shaking and had to collapse to recuperate a while, but it was worth it.

Before the "you know what" hit the fan in early July, Joe and I purchased a vintage, small travel trailer from a neighbor. It is so old it actually has real wood paneling, instead of pressed board or
plastic. Outside it is white with a retro turquoise band around it. June's fat quarters packet of the month from Grandma's Attic Quilting consisted of lovely retro looking turquoise, brown and
cream prints that I thought would be perfect as curtains and pillows for a refurbished camper, so I ordered enough to replace the odds and ends that the fisherman who owned it before scrounged up to cover the windows. Now I have to get Joe to tear out the hideous orange shag carpet and put down something more suitable. As soon as I feel up to sewing again, I will turn that little camper into the cutest thing you've ever seen. [The camper was where I was sleeping the night I had the first mini stroke; and I reveled in the luxury of a bed instead of a camp cot in a tent, even though it wasn't very attractive, yet.]

Maybe we will be able to go camping in the mountains with some of our kids over Labor Day weekend. It's wonderful to be human again, even if tottering!

The first landscape is of a great thunderhead building over Pikes Peak with Castle Rock (next to the Arkansas River) in the foreground. This photo was taken from the back road into Florence from Canon City.

The second landscape is of Florence, down in the River valley, behind the Southfield Coal Mine sign. This bluff has been mined out underneath the ground. We no longer have an active coal mine in the area because the cost of underground mining is prohibitive and we don't want open pits. Wyoming can have all the open pit coal mines they want out in all that empty land. For 150 years good quality coal has been mined in this area and we still have retired miners with Black Lung disease.

You really need to click these landscapes, to enlarge them, to really get an idea of what you are looking at.

The not so great side of the August Monsoons is that there is quite a bit of flash flooding and lightning along the whole front range corridor. On Wednesday, lightning hit the 90 year old steeple of the Catholic Cathedral in Pueblo and started a fire. They are now in the process of determining whether it can be repaired or will have to be removed. I'm hoping they can save it as it is a beautiful, historic feature of Pueblo.