Creative Crones of studioQ Are Back!

     Actually the studioQ gals never left...I kind of left them for awhile.  But I am happy to report they are well and creative.  I went to a meeting last week for the first time in about four months and found they can carry on without me!!
     I think I wrote about our new challenge a few months back, but to refresh...a member takes a turn picking out a picture they like and then going to a paint store and picking out  4-8 color chips they think define the colors in their picture.  Then they give each member the same chips and we have to go home and create a quilt or work of art of some kind with those colors.  A couple of our group work better with paper and found objects than with fabric which is ok with all.
      When I started, I decided to journal each month with the picture that inspired, the color chips, and the fabrics I pulled from my stash to use. So far, this is what we have done.

My Journal

Challenge #1-Color chips on Left/ fabric on right-fish from picture

My quilt for  #1

and Challenge #2:

The Picture from Bethany 

My journal entry-again chips on the left and fabric on the right.  Bethany told us we could use black or white.

My Quilt for # 2- I want to do some heavy duty quilting on it.

Challenge #3 from Beth:

Picture taken by Beth's daughter-close up of dew on a flower!

My journal entry-chips-left/fabric-right

My quilt for #3

And Challenge #4 by Lynn:

I haven't put these into my journal yet. Lynn had just returned from a trip to Scotland and was influenced by the Cairns piled around so she presented her chips to us as such!  Clever girl!  But these are the fabrics I have chosen to work with...am eager to get going on a quilt with them..I have my idea just need the time to do it.

Creative Crones of studioQ-December Meeting

Today, my studioQ art group met....we usually meet on the last Monday of the month, but since the last Monday of November was the Monday after Thanksgiving and the last Monday of December is New Year's Eve, we decided to combine the two months into one meeting...today.

My Challenge Block - "Wish Upon a Star"

Our challenge for this month 12 X 12  was "Wish Upon a Star".  I chose to use a paper pieced pattern for my challenge.  And somewhere years ago, I had started to collect Star patterned fabric....so this was a perfect opportunity to use of some of it...and I probably have enough left to make a couple dozen quilts!!!!  I need to quilt and embellish the block to finish it.

Beth's Challenge "......Star"

Kay's Challenge "...Star"..the top-wool applique; bottom- done with her handdyes from our last meeting

Rhonda's very abstract  ".....Star"

Lynn did a journal page for her "....Star" challenge

Three or four years ago, one of our members had started a "Block of the Month".  She got the center finished then decided she didn't want to finish the rest...so we all took a block, were going to get it finished, sell it and use the money to go to lunch!!!  It took all this time to get the blocks completed...I have had it for several months to put together, then pass on to another crone who does embroidery, and then our long arm quilter will do the quilting...someone will add the binding and off we got to "market"!!

Here it is on my design wall!

A Team Effort!!1

Br-r-r-r-r-!!!!

Texas is NOT supposed to be this cold!! As I mentioned before, the Fort Worth Stock Show is going on.  It runs through the coming Saturday; and there is almost always at least one week when the weather is just terrible!  This is the week...on Saturday when we were there it was 80 degrees..today it is barely 20 degrees with ice every where.

And it is Super Bowl Week...Oh, the hype!!!  The Packers and the Steelers are in town with all their fans who probably think we Texans are real pansies because this kind of weather is right up their alley!  It is too bad that the weather will curtail some of the planned activities though as I know a lot of time, money and effort have gone into them....not that I planned to take part...I am more of a passive observer of the festivities!!!

My kaleidoscope: "Totem" 

My studioQ group met yesterday...when the weather was still nice!  What a creative bunch of ladies!  And my kaleidoscope quilt was pieced enough to show. Here are some of the various works from some of the gals:

The front of Beth's journal...we are encouraging each other to keep a journal of ideas.

Bethany has been experimenting with stamping with fruits and veggies...this is her Mushroom print.

Susan had several things to show...this is a mini made from leftover scraps.

And Heather showed one of her quilts from her Nancy Crow class.

Needless to say, I have not gotten out of the house today, so all the activities that I had planned to do this week are dwindling...not that I am complaining!  I love staying home and now have an excuse to do so!  In fact, I am pretty sure I am going nowhere tomorrow either!!

Rainy Day in July!

"The secret to staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly and lie about your age" Lucille Ball

     I had collected several "humorous" little quotes to pass on to my friends as they age...so thought I would share a few with my blog friends!  (I think Lucille Ball just blew her advice...be honest and lie in the same sentence!)

     We have been experiencing the greatest weather for June/July in Texas!  We have been having rain and temperatures in the 80's.  Not so bad considering we have already had 100+ temps earlier in the summer!  And on the county road which runs right by my house, we have been eating dust or mud for the past four months.  Today, the road guys have been resurfacing it!!  Oh, the little pleasures of life!!

     Our granddaughter celebrated a very significant birthday Sunday so we were all at her house helping her celebrate!!  I cannot believe that baby girl is really 16!!!

      Monday, my art group, studioQ met and had lunch as well as our usual activities...show and tell, etc.  For lunch the hostess suggested something different...we were all to bring a food that started with the letter "P"!  It is surprising how many foods to begin with the letter P...we ended up with quite a feast..we had pulled pork on potato rolls, pimento cheese with pecans on pumpernickel bread, pineapple fruit salads, pickles, peanut butter balls, pecan muffins, pasta salads, peach pie and peach cobbler...and more I am sure!

Where Nancy lives there are deer everywhere.  These three fawns were right outside her window with their

mama.

Anne brought her Kindel Book bag which she had made out of fabric painted at another meeting at my house a couple of years ago. And Heather showed us one of the quilts she did at a Nancy Crow workshop. And Nancy showed her "recipe" quilt, all finished!

.

Heather has a couple of box turtles living in her garden.  "Charlie" had suffered a terrible attack by a racoon and lost a leg.  He had been recouperating in her bathtub...I had this "turtle" pattern for ever so made up a little memento of the occassion for her.  My husband carved the toy turtle a wooden leg!!  She was very surprised!

Busy Week!

"Atheism is a Non-prophet organization!"

Our "studioQ" group met at Heather's Monday, this is Pam showing us an old book with some neat embroidery/embellishments from the '70's, but very much like some of the things we are doing today....the old adage.."what goes around, comes around"..proven true again!  Then Bethany had a beautiful baby quilt she is doing for a friend.

Beth showed a small quilt top she is doing with scraps and Susan had made her "Yin/Yang" purse with some fabric she had gotten at the Bear Creek Quilt Show.

Wendy had a top she made from a class she recently took and Heather had several pieces that she had hand-dyed using techinques for blocking out color from a workshop she had taken.  This was one of my favorites!

It was a beautiful day at Heather's so we ate lunch outside.  They have a beautiful yard! And this was the anniversary of our third year to be organized so we had to celebrate with a little of the bubbly!

Monday evening was my granddauthter, Kathleen's Confirmation and I very was proud to be her sponser!  There were 63 of the kids being confirmed, but it moved along pretty smoothly and we were home by 9:00.

Can you guess what Kathleen is saying to me????

Then tomorrow night we are going to the Cook Hospital Volunteer Appreciation Dinner and Saturday off with friends to Waco to see woodwork and have lunch.

Finally, It is Spring!

" A Day without sunshine is like....Night!"

I found a bunch of "quotes" in the Senior News that I found pretty funny so a few of those will be my quotes for awhile.

The weather has finally decided to be nice..today was in the 70's...all the trees are really budding out and getting green.  We planted geraniums yesterday and hope they will not become deer fodder. Dick has his tomato crop going, and the plants have actually survived a couple of mild frosts.

Saturday we went out with friends to dinner and to a concert at the Bass.  The concert was "Route 66: A Medley of Songs Honoring the first four lane hiway from Chicago to Los Angeles".  Very fun and I love the architecture of the Bass...just one more reason why Fort Worth is such a special city.  We don't go "downtown" very often, being out here in the country, so it was really nice to se so much activity...people enjoying themselves every where!

I finally got all of the Donation Quilt 2010 finished and off to the quilter.  Here is a pic of the back on my living room floor!  I tried to use up a lot of the left over donated fabric; all left for me now is to make the label and sleeve to be able to hang it for display.  I will use the leftover blocks to make a smaller top to give away to those who donated time and fabric...but that won' have to be ready until next fall....last year we had the drawing at the Christmas party and that was kind of fun.

Today, the last Monday of the month, was the meeting of my art bee...studioQ.  Nine of the thirteen met here at my house.  Our activity this time was to bring something to share...an idea, a technique, an article from a magazine or book, etc.  We first had our Show and Tell...our recipe ingredient this time was polka dots or something mysterious.  I didn't get mine done except for the drawing of it, but several did.  I don't know how many more ingredients we have yet to do because the person who has the remaining ideas wasn't here today, so we don't yet know what we will be doing for next time.  Here are a few of the quilt tops shown today.

This is Susan's recipe quilt.

Sue showed the start of a free motion thread embellishing.

Nancy showed her latest blocks and flowers.

Heather had gone to a class on working with various elements.

Now that I am through with the Donation Quilt, I am going to get busy on doing stuff for ME!  I have nothing started for the show as yet...time's awastin'!

Today Is NOT Saturday!

" Words are a form of action, capable of influencing change."  Ingrid Bengis

This has been a crazy day...it has felt like Saturday all day long!!  So tomorrow, I will have two Saturdays this week!  Yesterday, we played poker at our friends' house...drove through a terrible storm to get there, but had a great time as usual once we were there.  And I came out OK....I didn't win, I didn't lose!  I broke even!  Then we drove home in light rain and a little fog.

This morning we woke up to no power...our electricity was off...which meant no heat, no hot coffee, no lights......and probably worst of all...no running water!  One of the perils of living in the country...we are on a well and when the power is off we have no pump running.  Then when the power did come on, we discovered that sometime in the night or early morning the refrigerator had died....permanently! So we crammed everything into our little auxilary fridge and freezer, putting some items on the stair well up to the attic (the temperature is low enough that it is pretty darn chilly out there!)  Then took off to Loew's to get a new fridge...which will be delivered on Sunday.

We then made an executive decision to not have our "after the rodeo" dinner at our house..the power had been just too unpredictable and no refrigerator...so we are going to still do all the cooking and haul it all up to Marti's house to go there after the rodeo...great way to celebrate her birthday by having her host the party!!

Therefore, instead of spending the afternoon playing with my monoprinting, I have been cooking and getting everything ready to take to Fort Worth tomorrow.

My studioQ meeting isn't until Monday so I hope to get a chance on Sunday to practice what I hope to show the gals.  In the meantime, while getting everything out of the dead fridge, I had set my gelatin block out and had forgotten to put it away....about five hours later...I discovered it was beginning to get a little soggy and melty.  I now have it back in a fridge, hopefully it will stiffen back up by the time I want to use it.  I think to use it for monoprinting may be a short session of no more than an hour or so!  We shall see!!

Looking Kind of Wintery!

 This is what we woke up to this morning!  What a surprise!  Very pretty, big flakes of snow fell for about three hours, then the sun came out briefly and it all went away...that is the kind of snowstorm we like!  It is forcast to snow more later on in the week; this is kind of early for Texas!

And I shot a deer from my kitchen window yesterday!  (with my camera). This is probably the culprit who has been eating my flowers!  and she was having such a good time, she forgot that day time had come!!  Usually we don't see deer much after dawn..this was about 9:00 AM.

Thanksgiving week is over and all the company and  most of the food is gone...we had such a great time with all.  My daughter Andrea is also a quilter so she went with me to my StudioQ meeting Monday.  Our "recipe" ingredient this time was "Time".  I made an hour glass out of fabric and clear plastic, filling it with rice,  to go with my blocks on games...I may even complete a quilt of that nature with all of them sometime!

Another fun thing we did this past weekend was to go to Blue Mesa with all the family for their brunch.  I still had not used my birthday coupon from them so it was a good time to go.  Surprisingly, they were not just swamped...at least not at 10:00 when we went.  Usually there are long lines...I guess everyone was still full from Thanksgiving.  If you live in the Ft Worth area, you can go to the restaurant website http://www.bluemesa.com/  and sign up for their Chilihead Club.  They will send you a coupon on your birthday for a free brunch, and you will get monthly coupons for various items on their menu.  Blue Mesa is our favorite Mexican restaurant!!!  The cuisine is more New Mexico rather than Tex-mex.