Russ's Slope

You are right, Cheryl.  I should post some pictures of our slope in bloom.  With the current heat wave, I thought I had better get out my camera and document all the color before the warmth wilts the flowers and causes the weeds to bolt.

This first shot is from our deck, looking down toward the little stream, which really isn't very visible.

 You can see the yellow butterfly bush on the left, what's left of many of the day lilies (I think they are a little past prime) and then a pale purple butterfly bush on the right.
This next shot shows a deep purple butterfly bush and a spirea that is just past it's white bloom.

 Here's a close up of one of the flower spikes from that butterfly bush.

And some shots of some of the day lilies.  Aren't they spectacular?

I ventured down to the edge of the creek to get this view of the house looking up the slope.  The slope is a good 45 degree angle, but we had a walkway built this spring which makes it much easier for me to get up and down.

While down there, I got this nice shot of the blue hydrangeas surrounded by brown-eyed susans and the daisies that are just starting to open.
                        
 You can see we have a large yellow butterfly bush and brilliant red flowers (cardinal flowers?) and I even found some salmon gladiolas, just to the left of that yellow butterfly bush.

And here are a few more pictures that I will let speak for themselves!

Happy summer!

What I Did at Symposium!

Last Thursday I headed off to the North Carolina Quilt Symposium with several of my friends.  This was a totally new experience for me and it turned out to be pretty much perfect in every way!

NCQS is an annual event and it rotates to different sites around the state.  I had been sort of aware of it for a couple of years, but this year our local quilt guild voted to host Symposium in a few years (I think 2018) and I thought that since this year's Symposium was being held at the relatively close Western Carolina University I had better go and see what it was all about.

Fortunately 3 of my bee buddies and several others from our guild attended as well.

Here are several of us posing on campus.  It's dusk, so the photo really doesn't do the campus justice.  It's a real pretty campus, surrounded by mountain views.  The brick building you can see behind us is the dining hall we ate in and we were housed in another very new modern dormitory adjacent to it.  Both buildings faced the "quad" and if you could see where the bench is facing, you would see a nice fountain and to it's left, in front of the Student Center where the quilt show was held is an impressive clock tower.

Symposium was accompanied by the Smoky Mountain Quilters Guild show and vendor mall.

I had registered as early as I could and was delighted to be enrolled in the two full day courses that were my first picks.  All day Friday I spent in Gail Garber's "The Goose Is Loose" class.  Here is an example of the kind of work she does... these free form flying geese, the pointy border on to top (she calls them pointy dudes), the pieced triangles in the borders (10,000 pyramids), and the funky trees.  

We learned how to "draft" all of these with the goal of coming up with our own design and then transferring that to foundation paper-piecing segments.  Here is what I accomplished:

                                      
 I know it doesn't look like much, but I did paper-piece one of those trees that is part of the design I drafted.  Since then, I have pretty much decided that I am not going to continue with this design, but I will start from scratch with something new... hopefully fairly soon while this is still fresh in my mind.
My all day Saturday class was with Susan Edmonson who does "Flower Doodles," and that was a lot of fun.  We used wax pastels... kind of like soft crayons... and textile medium to paint our central flower.  Then we surrounded it with funky borders and lastly we started thread painting our design.  I started with the leaves and stem, since the stem extending into the borders did not exist.  That is painted on with thread and the fused leaves are also held down with some thread at this point.

 This will be an easy project to finish and I hope that I will be hand sewing the binding at my bee meeting this Thursday.
I also mentioned that there was a vendor mall, so I brought a small sashiko panel I had embroidered this winter to see if I could find some complimentary fabrics.  I think I did pretty well!  Of course, I don't really know what it will be, but having some fabrics to play with brings me a little closer to finishing that project.

 I also bought a few threads and other little notions I needed for my classes and I got this little panel featuring North Carolina.  It's only 6 inches by 7 inches.  But some of you may know that I have a collection of North Carolina plates, post cards and other touristy stuff, so I thought I could make this into a throw pillow or something like that.

I came home from Symposium with my head swimming with new ideas, great memories of a pleasant few days spent with new and old friends, and a renewed appreciation for my temperpedic mattress!

Neighborhood Bomber Strikes Again!

Our neighborhood yarn bomber, Barbara, is at it again!  This time she decorated the stop sign at the entrance, or rather the exit, to our development.

Here's her handiwork:

I had to stand on my tip toes and extend my arms to get this photo.  I can see my reflection in the sign... perhaps you can see it, too.  My hands, holding the camera, are just under the "T."  That's due to the fact that if I had taken the picture at eye level, the cute little leaves would be hidden against the foliage in the background.  I wanted to be sure they were visible, because they really are darn cute!

I wondered how she had gotten those leaves to stick out so nicely.  So here are a couple closeups so you can see the technique.

This one, taken from the back, shows the wire attaching the wired leaf to the pole.  Pretty clever, huh?

It used to be just another "stop" sign, but now it brings a smile to my face every time I see it.  Thanks, Barb!