Hard to believe it came together so well....

It is hard for even me to grasp that in August the blocks in this project had been abandoned for years in a basket in a closet (meant to be used on a jacket) and the beaded pieces had been abandoned in a box under the bed for years.(meant to be used for a mantle display about "Bird Fair".  I'm in the final stages of assembling the pages and here's a close up look at them.

The combined  projects are now a commemorative piece about the "Bird Fair" that the Dept. of Wildlife held one weekend each spring in our garden and drew huge crowds.  I just need to do the narrative to add to the pages.  It's all in a scrapbook so it will not take too long to edit and condense but I want to wait until I get new cartridges for my printer before I print them..I  will use the same technique I used for the narrative in the sheep book.

I really can't believe it!!

Near the end of August I posted about this series of beaded birds I started in 2009 and abandoned to a box under the bed... there were these four and two more partially finished and one  unfinished.




If I hadn't broken my arm they would have gone into eternity unfinished,  But since these small pieces were the only thing I could handle with my cast arm... I decided to try to  finish the unfinished two and assemble them..  and I did.... not as neatly beaded  as those  before but I finished.

I still had three weeks to go with the cast so I started on the unfinished robin piece....

I colored the cloth background so any little gaps in the beading are not so noticeable and there a lot of gappies.....





This is how far I have gotten working in small areas for very short periods of time..  Since I have still another week left before the cast comes off, I will be close enough to being done that I will keep going.

Name that feather!!!

When I first began walking in my forest I started collecting the interesting feathers I would find...I have a vase of them sitting on the fire place mantel.  Most were easy to identify but others took some sleuthing by us.

The other day I found this feather in the garden and a specific bird did not come to mind readily.  So I went to one of my favorite sites... Feather Atlas ..
 (  https://www.fws.gov/lab/featheratlas/   )  When you want to identify an unknown feather, you click on "Identify Feather." That  opens a tool allowing you to classify your feather by color, pattern, and other optional characters, and then run a search for feathers with similar characteristics.  It is amazing and we quickly knew our feather was from a juvenile mourning dove. 

We have a lot of wild turkeys in the forest and their feather patterns differ widely on various parts of their body and are so beautiful... But my favorite feather to find is from a red-shafted Northern Flicker which we have year round.














They are aptly named because their wing feathers do indeed have a red shaft.







When their wings are spread the red shaft make a great visual design.




And speaking of birds.....bald eagles nest in the trees near the lodge in Alaska.  I thoroughly enjoy watching them if I visit in the summer.  Especially seeing the young wobble about getting up enough courage for their first flight.  My daughter in law took this great shot just recently of one sitting on the post of their deck.. If you look very closely you can barely  see Mt Iliamna and Mt. Redoubt across the inlet..

Stencils and bird feeder

After I did the blog on funky furniture Shirlee Fassell sent me this photo of a table she painted a while back.  It is almost the exact same style as the one I've chosen to paint...  I'm anxious to start mine but it will be a couple weeks down the road and there are just so many things that HAVE to be done and just when I think I'm catching up, something else happens to rise to the top of the list.  Today the frame rotted out on the chicken house door and it collapsed.. It was old when we bought the place 37 years ago so I shouldn't be surprised...but it just wasn't on my list for this week and it will take most of the day tomorrow to repair it.

But while I'm working I can still think about funky furniture.  I have always wanted to try something like this which is all  done with stencils.  I used a few stencils on my door and other things but it was hard to find some on this small scale.











But I did find some at this Etsy site:  Iris Mishly and ordered them... They said allow up to 28 days for delivery because they came from Israel but they were here in less than a week.  They had a lot to choose from and I chose mostly borders..  I want to use some on my table... There were so many that it was hard to choose.  Most of her stuff is for using polymer clay but the stencil selection is  delightful...

Most of last Friday was devoted to rebuilding DH's favorite bird feeder which was looking like this.  If you followed last winter you will remember the wild turkeys trying to get the seed put out for the songbirds.  Saturday was DH's 83rd birthday and I wanted to surprise him.












So using wood from the old barn and lots and lots of screws it ended up like this and hopefully stand up to the turkeys this winter.  Every part   was reinforced heavily.

Decisive I'm not!!!!

I had prepared these three bird patterns to do in gold for my next three CQJP.  I thought long and hard about which I wanted to do first.  It was going to definitely be between the owl and the swallow.  I finally decided on the swallow.... definitely...

 

And what did I do first?... the baby birds...The nest is the star here so it got all the beads and sequins, etc. and I will add more when I actually put it on the block.. I chose this lace but need to paint it gold yet.  I experimented with lots of gold threads, etc but what turned out to be a surprise material that worked well as a filler was narrow strips of gold tulle.





And how did this come about.  Well I had some stitchers here on Saturday and I traced the baby birds on some blocks for them to do and I put a big selection of various texture in cording, threads, etc. in the middle of the table.  Their task was to be momma birds for the day and build a nest for their babies.  Since they were doing this I decided I would work on mine also....in gold. They had a fun day being momma birds.

Yesterday I rested a while on the front porch and watched a white-crowned sparrow flying in and out of a juniper building its nest....

Two more patterns....owl and baby birds

I'm going to stitch the gold images for the April, May and June CQJP2016 blocks all at once.   It is just as easy to do three as do one when I have all the gold stuff out. 

Besides the swallow, I especially wanted to do a barn owl... I just love them and have one in my forest that I occasionally get to see.  I always watch because they roost so quietly in a tree that I can easily just pass by without seeing it.

I used the same procedure as I did for the swallow.  I gathered pictures and found something I liked in each.  Lower right was my favorite because its eyes were open and alert.  Its head is turned as if it has spied something.  But I liked the wing lower left because of the great detail on the feathers.  Upper right showed the beautiful detail on the breast feathers and upper left had good detail on the branch and feet.


So I put them all together and this is my pattern. 

The third pattern is baby birds which will be a real challenge to have gold baby birds show up in a gold nest.  But I have just had this urge to use gold threads etc. to build a nest....and it is that season after all.  It may not work but I have to give it a try...nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I will post cleaner copies of these later.  Kathy Shaw has volunteered to put them in her Adobe Illustrator and clean them up for me.   I am so grateful to her for offering... Big hugs for Kathy Shaw.

Getting back on track...................

For those who weren't following or can't remember, my inspiration was this sampler I stitched when my husband and I were married in 1976.  I wanted to do a CQ to commemorate our 40th which is coming up this fall.  It was a difficult piece to carry about and in the last months of caring for my mother it was set aside.









I had this vintage tablecloth which had this lovely crocheted border but the linen in the center was stained and had hole.  So I decided  to cover it with a  foundation for this piece using vintage hankies..

I had gotten this far with it before I got sidetracked.  Two bluebirds morphed into 8 bluebirds.  I still have the charms and beads to add and lots of foliage to finish. But the end is in sight.

I had wanted from the beginning to back it with a soft blue moiré taffeta which proved almost  impossible to find.  When I visited Susie W in January 2015 we scoured the garment district and fabric stores with no luck.  I did find a piece of blue silk the right color but I had my heart set on the taffeta.  I finally found a piece on line and used the silk on the corset blocks...

The camera greatly exaggerates the pattern of the moiré.  It is really very subtle.  I had wanted to add some SRE in the indentation in the sides but again it is awkward to work on with a hoop and difficult to carry about at this stage of completion.

So I pinned the piece to the taffeta and basted around the indentation. I used the quilter tape so I didn't have to mark a line where to baste.  I did put a tailor's tack on one corner of the quilt and taffeta so when I reapply the quilt it will fit correctly..

When I remove the quilt I have the basted area marked and it will be easy to put in a hoop, carry about and add just a touch of SRE.  I would really like to have it finished and enter it in the fair this fall.  I have never entered a piece in the fair but this has special memories with every stitch...  Happy Valentine's Day...

An owl came to visit!!!

As I was passing the kitchen window at dusk I was literally stunned to see a great horned owl only feet away in the maple tree right outside the kitchen window..   I was trying to get these pictures through the kitchen window and, besides the fact it was getting so dark so fast, the sunset was reflecting in the glass. 

I lightened  one picture and you can see it turned its head and stared right at me

I love owls and often see them hunting if I walk at dusk.  Having one this close was so special.

 
 
When I was sorting projects the other day I ran across this sampler from Sharon Boggins' class.  I have always loved it and want to do something special with it....BUT WHAT?  Recently I was gifted this purple blanket binding and lovely velvet ribbon..  Maybe that will inspire me.

And then I have baskets of RR blocks just waiting...

More American songbirds from the Singer series.

I just finished a few more birds in the series of American song birds put out on advertising cards by Singer Sewing Machines around the turn of the century. There were 14 birds in the series and some I will probably not do again as I tend to only paint birds from my garden...

All  buttons are hand painted by me and there are no transfers. They are meant for decorative or collective purposes and are not washable.. Each finished button received several coats of an acyrilic sealer to protect them. They are lovely on needlework and made into jewelry

Hummingbird wars and a tale of a little wren...

When we went to Quinn's resort last summer we ate in a long glassed-in porch.  The whole length was hummingbird feeders every few feet and each had 6-12 hummers feeding. When I put a feeder out there is always a dominant male who drives others away and this is common behavior so I knew the people at Quinn's knew something I needed to know.  So I went on Google and found this article  with advice on dealing with hummingbird wars.

Now according to hummingbird expert Bob Sargent, the way to attract more hummingbirds is to put out more feeders.  And rather than separate them  they should be clustered together.  When the birds all feed in a central area at numerous feeders, a dominant bird cannot hog a feeder. According Sargent   “The feeding and fighting sounds of many hummers at feeders will attract more and more hummers into your feeding area.”

Bob and Martha Sargent  maintain as many as 75 feeders in roughly a 30’ x 30’ area.  He suggests clustering feeders in close proximity to each other and using as many feeders as you can afford and maintain.  So this year I now have 4 feeders close together and will be adding 3 more when they arrive from Amazon this week.  I will keep you posted on the results.

Now the tale of my little wren.   Last year I had my first wren nest here and I fell in love.  The wren is the Sophie Tucker of birds..  This tiny bird throws back it head and belts out an incredible song.  So I was prepared.  I had cleaned out the old wren house and added a new one.  Lately we saw nesting activity at both houses and a wren was building a nest in the swallow house.  I am thinking that I have three nesting wrens..

Well maybe not!!!  It seems that it is the duty of the male wren to build the nest.  BUT it is not only his duty to build one nest, he must build several nests and the female only chooses one to lay her eggs.  I think this is rather much to put on the more little guy.  After building all those nests it is a wonder he still has enough energy to perform his manly duties...

The parrot next door - post #1494

I finished the monochromatic block in the CQI wool RR. It is the last one and the only one where I was not pressed for time so I enjoyed doing it up right. Don't miss the red-eyed tree frog button (lower right) that I painted for it.  

My best advice to stitchers who are uncertain about color choice is you will ALWAYS be successful if you do either one of two things... 1. Use a very limited palette such as above  or 2.  Use EVERY color.

My closest neighbor is 1/4 mile from me and his  ex wife had 3-4 fluffy little white dogs who barked all the time...  She moved out last fall and when spring came and he would have his door open I could hear a barking dog.  So one day I saw him on the road and asked him if he had gotten a dog or if his wife had moved back... He informed me that neither had happened.  He had a parrot who had learned to bark like those dogs when he was excited.  Mystery solved.

I have no active stitching project in progress although I could drag out the peacock piece or finish the cottage piece for Judith Montano's class.  I could even tune up some of my old RR pieces.  But I'm waiting for the next Diva block to arrive (Nikki's) and am using the time to paint with my new toy  (more next post.)

 

 

Secret work on August unveiled!

 

I did the August page in Pam Kellogg's calendar which has just been released.  It had to be done in secret months ago.  It was hard for me to work on something and not share it on the blog.  I wanted intense color for the heat of summer.  Since it will hopefully be seen from a distance I also want something bold and visible.  But now it can be shared with everyone.  Bold enough????

The flowers were large silk white daisies which I disassembled, dyed with alcohol inks, rough cut the petals, stacked and beaded.  But what I was really happy with were the seams on it... Every one of them went into my seam book and will be used again on the jacket.

Progress, my plan and Morris

I can see the end of  critters in sight and hope to have the majority of them  done next week and I do have a plan...  All the critters are done with single thread DMC floss.  I always have two critters going at once.. I just love the woodpecker.    All get their feet and beaks when appliqued.  When I started using single threads it seemed like it would take forever but now I love it...  In fact when I use two threads for seams it feels so bulky...

Plan:  I will start in earnest on the seams on the beck panel..  and it has a LOT of seams and will probably take most of September to finish...  Then I will have most of October to do the beading, extra stitching, and assembly...  I will probably be stitching right up until I leave.

 

No matter where I'm working Morris is beside me...  He barely raises his head when I go to get coffee or food, but if I pick up my little jambox speaker (for Pandora) he hops right up because he knows we are changing work sites.  I adore my dog...