Yosemite Quilt

Well, I have the sky done on the Yosemite quilt. I am now ready to add the mountains, and then I will take a picture of it, and post it. I had a time with ironing the fabrics - I had to ask my QuiltArt list for help in getting out all the wrinkles, and it turned out the best idea was for me to try using water with some white vinegar poured into it, and spritzed onto the fabric, and it worked! Nothing else worked as good. My fabrics came out as they off the bolt. Only softer. But that was a LOT of (gag gag) ironing. I have to make some half-square triangles now to fit the mountains against the sky, so I will probably do that first, and then fill in the mountains. One of my mountains has a shaded side, so it will be done with darker grays than the rest. I am excited to get to a place to do the mountains, because once the mountains are done, I only have the trees/forest-y part of the quilt to do and the rushing stream to do.

July 30, 2010

Good Morning! I did some more ironing yesterday, and took a break and called a friend of mine. She suggested I take my fabric down to the dry cleaners and see if they would press it in their mangle, for cheap. So I just got back from there. HA! They charge $4.00 plus some for each piece of fabric, and I counted my fabric as it went into the bag I carried in, and I had 50+ pieces of cloth! So it is back to the ironing board for me! And now I know I can press about 4-5 pieces of cloth before I run out of water in my reservoir, so I'll be refilling that a lot. I'll have to buy several bottles of distilled water for just my iron. We have to buy it anyway, because we have one dog that has to drink distilled water only, for his bladder stones - to help prevent them - he has had two surgeries to remove them, and we've gone (knock on wood) a year now without any surgery so we are doing good. I take Sweetpea to the vet every 6 months and they do an ultrasound on his bladder to be sure he isn't forming any stones, and he is on a special diet (S/O from Hill's) to help prevent them, but he has to drink distilled water. And since we have 6 dogs, we can't keep a separate water dish for just him - none of them would understand that, so we have to give them a big water bowl and keep it filled with distilled water all the time.

But back to fabric and fun things. I got my Collage Lab book at Books-a-Million night before last, and now I don't know if I want to do the lessons in the book online in the group or just on my own. I am a member of the group who is doing each lesson, and helping each other through it. So I don't know whether to post that I now have my book, and what lesson are we on, or just go ahead and start at the beginning and do them one day at a time. Or every other day. Like I said last post, I am on a deadline with this Yosemite quilt. It has to be done by Oct. 8th, or I am in big trouble. So part of me wants to just work on the quilt until it is done, and THEN jump into the collage book, and do it on my own. I also have the book ArtEffects and there are labs to do in it, also, that look interesting. So I think I will take this time to look after the Yosemite quilt for now, getting it done, and then start the collage lab and the arteffects book for later. Yep, that is what I am going to do. So I'm off to start the ironing. I have a lawn and leaf bag for the fabric to sit in, and I pull out a piece of fabric, and iron it, and then set it in its color pile, and then get the next piece of fabric and do the same. Soon it will all be done, and then it is time to slice and dice. Bwaahaahaa. (sounds scary to me!)

July 28th, 2010

Good Morning! Got started yesterday with ironing the fabric for my dad's Yosemite Quilt. It is to be done in "watercolor" style, and I have a copy of a photo he took of his favorite scene of Yosemite, and I have laid a grid over it and copied the grid onto the enlarged photo, so that I can see what fabrics to put where. The finished quilt will be roughly 50"x 36". Today is more ironing to do, and then I can start slicing and dicing the fabric into 2" squares, making the finished squares
1 1/4" square. I have a gridded background of interfacing to pin the fabrics to, and I hope I have enough "rocky" colored grays to make El Capitan and Half-Dome. I need to finish the quilt by Oct 8th, because I am flying out to California to see my dad and his wife on Oct. 9th-16th, and I want to bring this wall-hanging out with me to them. I sure hope it turns out to be as beautiful as I think it will.
I'll be posting pictures of the quilt in progress as I go along, so you can see it in its various stages. I have procrastinated about doing this quilt for so long, but now I have a deadline I have set for myself, and I WILL get it done in time.
Since this is my first post on a new blog, I'll introduce myself with my picture, and just a tad of history. I was an art major in college, and only took up quilting about 8 years ago. I also make jewelry, ATCs, altered journals, and I paint. My DH and I have one daughter, married, and they have an 8 month old son who is our delight. I have Parkinson's Disease, so doing small work is difficult for me, because I have hand tremors that I can't seem to stop. I'm on medication for the Parkinson's Disease, but so far it also has not been able to stop the hand tremors.
Now here is a picture of me and one of our 6 dogs, Darcy, who is my special dog. He is a Pomeranian.