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September 14, 2013
Hello all, Mary Ellen here. It’s been a long time since I’ve posted. I’ve been dealing with some health issues for my mom. She had a stroke this summer and has been in the hospital, rehab and a nursing home. We are now moving her back home (2 hours from here) with full time aides. That has consumed whatever “extra” time I have had this summer. Here’s hoping that with her at home, and good help from the aides, that things will get into a groove soon. Our guild seminar starts next week Wednesday. Still have room in most of the classes (check our guild website in the sidebar) so you still can join the fun. It’s going to be great-you shouldn’t miss it! You definitely can come hear our national guest, Pat Sloan, give her lecture/trunk show on Wednesday evening. (7:00 p.m. at the Buffalo Niagara Heritage Village) The […]
August 28, 2013
Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Are you all set for the new year to begin? After all my years of being involved with education, I still think of September as the start of the new year. Shortly after I retired, I ran into a colleague who also was a former student of mine in Wegman’s. At some point in the conversation, he asked me “Does it seem odd not to be teaching?” Don’t get me wrong, I loved being a teacher but, truthfully, I do not miss it. But here is my answer to him: “This is the first September in about 60 years that I have not been going back to school. That does seem a bit odd.” I’ve been retired for a few years now, and it still seems a bit odd not to be returning to a classroom. It takes me about the amount of time my […]
August 23, 2013
Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Still cogitating on those modern quilt ideas. Got an e-mail today from Craftsy.com about a Joe Cunningham class called Pattern Free Quiltmaking. Hmm… Went over to have a look. Signed up for it. I have always been a rule bender. Not so much a rule breaker, just a bender. I never, even as a kid, wanted to blindly follow rules unless I could see the point. (I have a terrible time with speed limits!) I think this is caused by the other hemisphere of my mathematical, analytical brain wanting equal time. This appears in my quilting from time to time, as it does in all of the other parts of my life. Sometimes the perfectionist geometer is in charge wanting perfect points, symmetrical layouts, and precision in the measurements. Other times not so much. Love to create with random width selvage strips, like to make […]
August 22, 2013
Hello all Mary Ellen here. Since our guild meeting last week with the “modern” visitors, I’ve been looking at my latest magazines and blog subscriptions through a different lens. I’ve been thinking, as I shared in an earlier post about the show and share projects at that meeting, that many “standard” or traditional projects have a modern look, or could easily be modified to look “modern” with just minor tweaking. This link to a “tweak” of Dresden Plates, one of my favorite blocks, illustrates my point well I think. Before you click on the link get a mental image of a dresden plate block. I’ll bet it’s a fairly “traditional” image you have in mind. Now click on the link to the modern dresdens. Whole new look, but still very recognizable as a dresden. Cool beans, I think. Modern Dresdens: click here. Still gathering celebrants in our 40,000 visits party. […]
August 16, 2013
Hello all, Mary Ellen here again. We had a very nice presentation by the WNY chapter of the Modern Quilting Guild at our regular guild meeting last evening. Many of us had some of our questions about “modern” quilting cleared up for us. Those of us who consider ourselves to be “traditional” quilters have more in common with the “modern” girls than we might have thought. Several of the quilts that they brought along to share didn’t look “modern” to me at all. Some of the fabrics used looked like repros to me more than brand new designs, which is not to say that others of the fabrics did not have a really fresh new look to them. The use of solids in many of their quilts reminded me, and perhaps many of the others in attendance, of the days of old (now I’m really aging myself) when solids and […]
August 8, 2013
Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Not too long ago I mentioned quilter Joe Cunningham in a few posts (search for Joe if you didn’t see those posts). We also have been mentioning modern quilting quite a bit of late. Today I came across a posting at the Generation X blog (August 7 posting) interviewing Joe. There is an upswing in the interest in hand made work, and in many of the “traditional” quilting patterns. Will hand quilting be the next “new” thing? Read Joe’s thoughts on this, from his 34 year history as a hand quilter. Click here. We’re coming down to the wire for our fall seminar. Please sign up soon to join us in the fun. All classes still have spaces.
August 1, 2013
Hello all, ME again. After finding yesterday’s link to the “dispatchwork” completely by accident, I decided to see what else I could find about this urban art. First after examining the map carefully, I noticed that there are some spots not awfully far from us. Not requiring a passport anyway! Perhaps if you are visiting Troy, NY or Albany, you might come across these bright spots. Secondly here’s a link to the background story. click here Thirdly I’ve been mulling over “vandalism vs art”. Recently in the Buffalo News a graffiti tagger was shown serving his community service sentence, given for his repeated spray painting of public spaces. I’m trying to decide where the line is between destructive “art” (as the taggers call it), and this sort of Lego art. How far could an artist go before becoming a vandal? Finally I wonder if more of this sort of “harmless” […]
July 31, 2013
Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Do you know what yarn-bombing is? I’ve never seen a yarn-bomb “in person” but have viewed many posts about them in my internet travels. Yarn-bombing is the placement of knitted works in surprising urban settings. For example, putting a knitted sweater on a fire hydrant along a busy street. Just introduces a pop of color into an otherwise gray environment. Maybe one would call it knitted graffiti? But somehow I don’t find “yarn-bombing” to be damaging to another’s property. After all if the owner or caretaker of the property doesn’t want it, the yarn-bomb is quite easily removed. Disagree? Personally I would love to come across one of these installations of yarn-art. That brings me to a loosely tied group called “Dispatchwork”. They install Lego art in surprising places. Again it doesn’t seem to be vandalism in my scope, but you might disagree. I think […]
July 30, 2013
Hi everyone, time to get out of summer lull and get blogging again! 🙂 It is mind-boggling to me how in the summer, when days are longer and all that, I seem to have less time for everything? When I say “everything”, I guess I sub-consciously mean quilting, sewing…all that kind of favorite fun, he…he… Does that happen to you? I know we all spend more time outside, tend to our gardens…but still, I always think I should have more time? As I said, mind-boggling. Speaking of garden – this was definitely the year for roses? Mine were just exploding everywhere and making me so happy! I guess the years of protecting them, feeding them, cleaning them from pest do pay out sometimes… “Forth of July” is one of my favorite rose and I think it will make me do a red and white quilt one of these days – […]
July 30, 2013
Hello all, Mary Ellen again. Before I retired it would really frost me to start to see “back to school” ads in July. The summer isn’t even half over yet! Now I don’t mind at all because some of my best quilting supplies are bought in the back to school aisles. Probably my number one supply purchased at this time of year-in quantity-is Elmer’s washable school glue. I buy both the glue sticks and the liquid glue. It allows me to avoid pinning in many projects, and actually has increased my accuracy. The most frequent use of the glue is for “basting” my bindings to the back of the quilt before I sew them down by machine. When I first learned to stitch a binding on completely by machine, I was not happy with the way the back would look. Despite my best efforts at pinning or basting in the […]