Valentines Day Flowers

My husband has found the key to my flower preferences and also the key to lasting appreciation. He buys me orchids. I have always preferred living flowers rather than the cut variety and with the orchids they last a very long time. I have a rather large orchid collection, (Fay knows, she helped me gather them in when she was here and we were having a surprise freeze.) Orchids thrive off of neglect I think, because I really don't do too much with them. There's a baker's rack in my kitchen where they stay for the winter, and then when summer comes they all go outside to spend the time under the trees in the shade. Thanks to my good husband, they do get watered automatically for 30 minutes everyday and I'm sure they are thankful to him for that, because otherwise the water would be sparse. (We're on a private well system for those concerned about our drought and water restrictions.)

Sorry for the rather dark picture, but the others had terrible shadows and I was busy with other projects, so not enough time to photograph them again at this point.

The purple one to the left is one of the new ones that he gave me this Valentines, well actually a week before. It is one just like one that continuously bloomed for almost 2 years, it had flowers the entire time. He was very happy to get his money's worth out of that one. The small yellow ones are 2 of the ten that my mom bought me two years ago at the Southern Spring Show that comes to Charlotte every year. Ten small orchids that didn't even have pots. Just picked out and put into paper bags as I remember. I came home and potted them up myself and have watched them carefully. Now after only two years they are blooming. There is a third one that is getting ready to bloom, purple it looks like. The other big orchid on the right is a repeat bloomer. Don gave that to me for some previous occasion and it's blooming again. It's always a big deal for me to have an orchid bloom again. And especially this much. It's yellow with magenda strips so it gives it a peach color. Very nice. Plus, now my husband gets the appreciation for his thoughtfulness all over again. So much better than cut flowers.

Then also for this valentines he gave me this as well.

It too is an orchid, Cymbidium I think it's called. Very showy, but the blooms don't usually last as long as the others. I took it outside to photograph in natural light.

Surface Design Group Challenge

WARNING: Lots of Quilting Details below. If you're not a quilter, just look at the pictures and skip most of the writing.

I belong to a local Surface Design Group and last year our challenge was to pick a random paint chip from a bag and make an 8 1/2" x 11" piece based on or featuring this color. We could pick two and of course I did.

The first color I picked was called "Blackberry Harvest" a very dark purple.

The second color was called "Tutti Frutti" a very pink pink.

I immediately knew that I'd dye up the fabric I needed and do a value gradation with it.

I did that back in the summer, and then I had to let the fabric age (not really, but it sounds good.) The pieces were due on January 20th and I was cutting and making the two pieces on January 19th.

Here's what I came up with.

This first one is called "Tutti Frutti Bubbles"

I cut strips from the gradation fabrics (very pale pink to a very dark pink and about 7 or 8 shades in between). I pieced them together and then sliced them up in the other directions, shifted the strips and pieced those together to get one inch square checker board grid. I was going to sew circles all over it to make something that resembled bubbles, but it was very boring looking and also not wide enough, it was suppose to be 8 1/2" wide, but all I has was 7 inches and anything I tried to come up with just looked like it was slapped on to make it wider, an afterthought. So I did something very daring for me, I drew circles on my checkered board and cut out the circles of various sizes. Then I attached those to a darker boarder with applique zig zag. I was then much happier with that result. I gave it a whimsy type quilting stitch (on the advice from my friend Sarah Ann Smith who says stippling can be boring, great advice Sarah!) It worked for this piece do not do the stippling! I may add beeds eventually when I get more time. But the overall effect was to make the view think of a Tutti Frutti Bubblegum or Ice Cream, a sort of Soda Shop type feel.

Here's the second piece, "Frozen Blackberry Harvest" The name comes from the fact that while I was working on this piece the day before it was due the temperture here in the south was rapidly dropping and it was snowing all day (nothing was sticking.) A southern treat I learned from my husband is to pick blackberries in the summer, wash them up and add a little sugar and then freeze them. Then later sometime, they are taken out of the freezer and milk is added. The concoction is stirred together to make a frozen blackberry treat, a sort of ice cream stuff.

This was fused pieced in a Melody Johnson style. Fusible web is first applied to the whole piece of fabric and the paper is removed. (Wonder Under is the best for this process.) Then I cut up the fabric into curved pieces and overlapped them just a little to keep them together. This is all fused to the batting. I used all seven of my gradations values for this piece.

So I got the pieces done and turned in! Yeah for me!!! We're scanning each person's piece and printing them out to each have a book of the whole challenge project.

Next year we're doing a different challenge, this time the piece is something that relates to the theme, "Farfetched" and we're suppose to make one 5x7 piece for each person in the group. If I plan on getting this done my July 31st. Now that's "Farfetched!"

Yikes It's Been a While!

Wow! It's been a while since I posted anything here. Sorry, but it's been busy around here. I didn't promise to be regular about it anyway.

One of the activities that's taken a very high priority is the opportunity to take care of my granddaughter every once in a while. She's walking and talking and lots of fun. She's only 13 months old, but she amazes me each time I see her with her new discoveries.

Everytime she sees me she signs "dog" She loves to go feed my dog, a Springer Spaniel.

So here she is busy at work, our future CEO of some big company shuffling and sorting papers.

Faith is very please with her work for the day. She gets paid with cheese bits or grapefruit slices, not a bad rate!

I know that's plenty of grandchild pictures for one post, but it's been a while and just be thankful I haven't posted play by play pictures of Christmas.