Challenge quilt

I finally got inspired to do a new quilt. All it took was a challenge from the quilt guild that I just joined. They give each new member a fat quarter of "uninspiring" fabric and challenge us to make a small quilt with it.

This is my fabric and I didn't find it uninspiring! I don't like the maroon colored background, but I decided I could just cut out the flowers and use them in a bouquet.

So I backed a bunch of flowers -- and a bunny and a fish -- with Steam-a-Seam 2 and then arranged them in a yellow vase (because I yellow is so cheerful). This next photo shows how I collaged black/white prints for the background. Then I sewed down some green rick rack stems and started arranging the flowers. When I was satisfied, I ironed them to make the fusing permanent and now I'm doing free-motion quilting.

In other news, my grand bunnies just turned four and my daughter threw them a little birthday party. She raised them from the time they were born after rescuing their pregnant parents from under a truck in the rain. They were obviously pet rabbits, but their owners didn't want them back. I got to hold the babies when they were just newborns -- so tiny, still with their eyes closed. They've grown into the most lovable, soft, affectionate bunnies who are litter trained and live in her living room.

Have a colorful day

I can hear!

I can hear you now!

These are my new hearing aids, all snug in their charging port. I got them Tuesday and I love them! My problem was a severe loss of clarity way more than loss of volume, so now voices don't sound so muddled. They had their ultimate test the very next day at book club, which is really more a dining and yakking club. Nine very talkative ladies and multiple simultaneous conversations usually had me totally befuddled. But this time I could follow everything!

Here we are with our Kentucky Derby hats, practicing for watching the race next week. Beth even baked a Derby pie, which was decadent, and brownies. I brought chicken enchiladas verde, which has nothing to do with the Kentucky Derby.

My neighborhood walks this week have been solid gold, literally. The palo verde trees are blooming in great drifts of yellow all over town, and yellow prickly pear flowers are also popping.

Maybe that's why I was drawn to this yellow fabric for the start of a new quilt. That's a vase and a few stems. I'll show you the rest in the next post.

Have a colorful day

Boyce Thompson Arboretum

 

I went to the most amazing arboretum yesterday -- the Boyce Thompson Arboretum way north of Tucson out in the middle of the "desert" by the Superstition Mountains.

I went with three friends who were looking perky despite getting up at dawn for the one and a half hour drive to get there when it opened before it got too hot.

It's enormous! It covers 372 acres of upland Sonoran Desert with almost five miles of trails. See the little people on the dirt trail to the left? It's Arizona's largest and oldest (founded in 1924) botanical garden.

Every view was worthy of a postcard, and some looked like beautiful paintings. The prickly pear cactuses, like the one below, were bursting into blooms of pink, red, purple and yellow.

The arboretum has collections of desert plants from the United States, Mexico, Australia, Madagascar, India, China, Japan, Israel, South America, the Middle East, Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Arabian Peninsula. All told, there are 4,025 taxa and 20,000 plants.

It sure doesn't look like a desert, does it?

The tall orange blooms are aloes.

An iris garden included many colors of flowers.

Walking through the palm oasis was like entering a cathedral with its hushed, cool, filtered light.

And so many big trees for a desert!

The creamy colored blooms above and below are on yuccas, the same as the one I have in my backyard that just started to send out its flower stalk.

These pink prickly pear flowers are about to explode, and so are the orange ones on the barrel cactus.

The founder, copper baron William Boyce Thompson, built an enormous house on top of the rocks overlooking his estate with an elevator taking visitors down to the gardens. I didn't get a good picture of his mansion, but here's a little rock house that was on the property before in became an arboretum and even before Arizona became a state. Now it's used to dry herbs from the nearby herb garden.

And of course there was food involved, but I forgot to get pictures. After lunch outside at a smokehouse/barbecue joint near the arboretum we started the long ride home. That's when one of the ladies -- bless her heart -- mentioned a new ice cream place we'd pass toward the end of the trip! So of course we had to stop there, where we ate our ice cream from Licks at a patio table in a cute little courtyard in Catalina. It was a wonderful day.

Have a colorful day

Books and baskets

 

These past two days have been all about books and baskets (and bargains). 

Yesterday AND today I went to the Friends of Oro Valley Library's spring book sale where I scooped up all of these books plus a CD for $30! That's six big cookbooks, three Southwest nature books, a Southwest travel book, a humor book for women, three cozy mysteries by one of my favorite cozy authors (Ellie Alexander) and a CD of music from the Grand Canyon.

Then today I attended a free lecture on native Southwest baskets by American Indian crafts expert Terry DeWald. He explained the history and artistry of antique and contemporary baskets from our region and had a big selection for sale. I couldn't afford the baskets, but his talk was really interesting.

The large vessel above is a wine bowl, which holds wine made from saguaro cactus fruit. The basket is passed around for shared drinking in spiritual ceremonies.

The next basket that he's holding is a Man In the Maze pattern and was made by a Pima Indian. The design represents a person's journey through life, with the twists and turns representing choices that make the person more understanding and stronger.

He was very knowledgeable about the plants used to weave the baskets, including willow, yucca, cat's claw, bear grass and many more. I didn't take notes, but he also explained how the plants are prepared and what the designs mean. He's known many of the basket makers since the 1970s when he began collecting. It was fascinating, and the skills shown were amazing. Such intricate details and such artistry.

Unfortunately, he said traditional basket making is a dying art because the artists can only make about $1 an hour for their labor while they could make many times that much flipping burgers at a fast-food chain.

This two-foot tall "olla" (water or food carrier), is an early Apache basket from 1890-1900. It was priced at $12,000, a bit out of my reach but a joy to look at.

The talk was on the patio at the National Parks Store in Oro Valley on a beautiful day. I snapped this picture of the spring plants in front of the parking lot. 

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Out of the basket, onto the couches!

I was rummaging around under my craft table yesterday looking for something else when I came across a big basket of jelly roll quilts and a few others that I had made over the years and then forgotten about! I decided they needed to see the light of day, so now they're draped over my couches and a rocking chair.

This the first jelly roll quilt that I ever made, 11 years ago. I made it during a quilt retreat where one of the speakers got us all excited about making Jelly Roll 1600 quilts and then sold us jelly rolls so we could jump right in. (If you sew all the strips in a jelly roll end to end, they are 1600 inches long. Google it for construction details.) 

Normally I don't use such subdued colors, but I liked it better than her other jelly rolls. Note that I "zinged" it up a little with some dashes of orange batik. (They look brown in the photo because the lighting was poor.) It's sort of appropriate that I made it in the Northwest, with its soft, watery colors.

But most of them are as bright and cheerful as the desert flowers that I took pictures of on this morning's hike. I made these ones in Sedona when we used to go there every year for the month of March to hike. I would bring my machine and a jelly roll and sew them in my down time. Jelly rolls became my vacation projects.

Desert marigold

Cactus flowers

Clover?

Here are some links to other pictures of the jelly roll quilts in my blog:

blue-and-yellow-and-jelly-roll-quilt.html

color-to-rescue.html

stitch-pulling-out-pink.html

rolling-out-color.html

Not all the quilts in the basket were jelly rolls. Here's one that I had totally forgotten about making. It's also from my Northwest days, hence the sea glass greens and soft shades. It'll live on my couch for awhile in front of the lemon pottery that picks up its yellows.

Fairy duster

And I made this one since I moved to Tucson. It's another couch quilt. I guess what really pulls all these pieces together is that I never intended for them to hang on the wall, like all my other quilts. So they're my only quilts without have hanging sleeves. And that's a wrap!

Have a colorful day