Random rosy colors

I can't bear to have that black quilt in the last post at the top of a blog called Sherrie Loves Color, so I've pulled some pretty rosy shots that I've taken recently.

My quilter friend Janet was rosy and cheerful from the tips of her cool brocade shoes to her lush beaded necklace last week when we were staffing the tables at a quilt shop hop.

This luscious pink fabric was dyed by Andrea, the quilter friend who hosted our dye fest that I blogged about here: http://sherriequilt.blogspot.com/2012/06/we-dyed-laughing.html

My favorite flowers are in the pink-purple-orange range, so my camera is always zooming in on them:

The ones above and below are from our yard this month.

These vivid pink and yellow ones are in Victoria, B.C.

And last but not least, a dusky sunset with billowy clouds over Gig Harbor:

Have a colorful day!

Accepted!



"Winter Closing In," by Sherrie Spangler

I just got word that "Winter Closing In" was accepted into the Peninsula Art League's annual show! "Rainy Day" got the reject letter, but that's OK because that one has some design problems.

I hadn't entered this show before because I thought they were mainly interested in paintings, but the theme this year -- "Outside of Your Comfort Zone" -- just cried out for a piece about the dark Northwest winters. If you're interested in seeing how I made it, I blogged about that here: http://sherriequilt.blogspot.com/2012/05/leaving-my-comfort-zone.html

The show opens Aug. 9 at the Gig Harbor Civic Center. Hope to see some of you there!

Have a colorful day

More wishes for Judi

Origami cranes that someone made for Judi
with wishes for a return of good health.

Last month (http://sherriequilt.blogspot.com/2012/05/prayers-for-judi.html)  I asked you to send up prayers, thoughts, meditations for my good friend and quilt artist, Judi, who faces a serious health issue. Soon after that, her medical team came up with a plan and she's now on her way from Oregon to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota for more testing and treatment. She'll probably be there six weeks, then will face more decisions. So I'm asking again for your thoughts and prayers for Judi.

Thanks to all of you who responded -- the e-mails and comments here poured in, and I forwarded each and every one on to Judi.

I visited Judi a few weeks ago -- she's the tall one
and that's her studio with a work in progress.

Summer colors and quilts

Today's garden bouquet and a quilt I made in 2006.

Happy Summer Solstice!

I picked a bouquet from our yard today, including lupine, wild geraniums, carnations, lady's mantle, and dandelions, to show what's blooming on this first day of summer. The colors match this quilt that I titled "Spring." When I made it in the Midwest those were the spring colors. Here, it could be titled "Summer."

Detail of woven quilt.

This next quilt is the one I blogged about here under "Color Therapy": http://sherriequilt.blogspot.com/2012/06/color-therapy.html I haven't titled it yet, but it reminds me of grasses in the wind or eelgrass swirling in the water. Last night I shifted the rectangles around a little, added some scraps of sheer painted silk organza and gold mesh and quilted it with gold thread.

My latest quilt, finished last night.

Today dawned bright and sunny! But we need to get out and appreciate it intensively, because as the headline says: "Summer Here Today, Gone Friday." Sigh. If you click on the picture you can read the sad details.

Today's Tacoma News Tribune

Here are a few other shots to show what's going on at our house on the solstice:

Today's view from our deck
of the Olympic Mountains and BLUE SKY!

Rhodie leaves in the backyard.

Farmer Dave's veggie garden in front of the house.

OK, so the pie cherries aren't from today, but they're so bright that I had to include them. Julia was making a cherry pie for Father's Day.

Have a colorful solstice!

Book club necklaces

Barb's fair trade necklace reminds me of the sea.


So I was sitting in a cafe yesterday with my book club, discussing "The Snow Child" by Eowyn Ivey, and I couldn't stop looking at the three necklaces at my end of the table. I wanted to put them on the blog but didn't have my camera, so Judi snapped them with her phone and e-mailed them to me.

Sharon is an artist; I believe she made her necklace.

The fabulousness of Judi's necklaces is lost in this image. The long one has pink crocheted netting around the lighter balls, and the other balls are comic strip images. Judi made the shorter sparkly necklace.

I always say, "A woman with an interesting necklace is an interesting woman." (And a man with an interesting necklace is even better.) You can see that our book club definitely isn't a bunch of bookish prudes!

Have a colorful day

At home in the woods

Julia's self portrait in Mt. Rainier National Park.

Since I'm in travelogue mode, I thought I'd report on my daughter's backpacking trip to Mt. Rainier and give you a little taste of wilderness camping through her photos. She's been backpacking since she was a toddler (with a cute little pink backpack), but this was her first solo trip. She just got back yesterday and said she wished she could've stayed longer.

She LOVED the peace and solitude

Here's her long shot of Mt. Rainier. Below are some of the trail choices.

And here is her private little campsite, where she stayed for three nights.

Home Sweet Home

She took this book, "At Home In the Woods" by Vena and Bradford Angier, which I read when I was about her age. (I just saw that a used paperback version is offered on Amazon for almost $43. I bought mine new for $1.95 about 30 years ago.)

She used her cooking pot lid as a mirror to take her photo.

And here's the kitchen setup. She even labeled the bag with which day's meal it contained, an organizational tip she learned from her dad on long canoe trips.

When she's not cooking or eating, the food is hung high up on the bear pole. She didn't see any bears, just deer and birds.

More photos of her "home in the woods."

She calls the photos of herself gazing out at the wilderness her "Jerry Derbyshire self portraits," for our late friend Jerry http://www.geoarts.net/, who was a fantastic nature photographer. He died the year after Julia was born, but she knows his photographs from his books and this self portrait he took in Scotland that we have hanging at home.

Jerry Derbyshire's self portrait in Scotland.

Julia's self portrait in Mt. Rainier.

Have a peaceful day

We dyed laughing

Vibrant fabric from our dyefest.

My new art quilt group -- STITCH -- had a dyefest yesterday on a little island off the coast of Washington accessible only by boat. We laughed, dyed, ate, dyed, lounged and laughed.

We saw WHALES and RAINBOWS!

Linda loved the dye buckets.

The day started dark and early on the ferry, where we saw two Orca whales swimming in the distance. That little black speck in the water to the lower left of center is one of them just going under. If you click on the photo you might be able to see it better:

Orca whale going under near Tacoma.

Our ferry stopped at Ketron Island, below, where we wondered how long this old ferry had been listing at the dock. Ketron's population is 17, according to the 2010 census.

Moving along, the weather was getting more threatening:

When we got to Anderson Island, our hostess and dye leader, Andrea, had tables and supplies set up on her back deck overlooking the South Puget Sound. Before we dove in, she showed us some of the gorgeous fabric she has dyed:

Results of dying white-on-white cotton fabric.
The ink in the designs acts as a resist,
allowing the designs to stand out against the dyed background.

Andrea's Twisted Log Cabin block with some of her color gradations.

For this striking quilt top, Andrea dyed white fabric
with black ferns in a green gradation.

Then she took us outside and showed us how to prepare the dye buckets for two color runs: greenish yellow-blue and yellowy orange-red.

Pat took her job seriously ...

... Linda didn't.

Barbara coordinated her purple shirt, gloves and glasses.

That's Andrea, Lois, Carol and Pat agitating the fabric.

Relaxing after our potluck lunch
while the dye does its thing in the buckets.

My fabric ready to go home and be rinsed.

I promised you a rainbow, and as we were packing up to leave, Mother Nature spread her own dye across the sky in a beautiful colored arc. We couldn't have planned a better ending to a fabulous workshop.

Thanks STITCHers!

Thank you Andrea!

Some of my fabric after washing and drying.

Have a colorful day!