Fun Day Trip

Yesterday, on a beautiful summer day, we traveled about an hour and a half way to Chestnut Hill, TN. On a previous trip home from Gatlinburg we happened to be routed past the Bush Bean factory, but had arrived too late in the day to tour the museum, store, and most importantly to eat at the cafe there.  So we put it "on the list" of places that we needed to go back to.  Yesterday was the day!

First of all, it was a beautiful drive through the mountains to get there. Chestnut Hill is near the lake area that was created by a TVA dam project to capture water from the French Broad River for the production of electricity, part of the history of the area that we learned about from the bean museum.

There were several nice photo ops outside the museum which sits on the site of A. J. Bush's general store.  This photo shows the old Bush homestead over my left shoulder and part of the bean canning factory over my right shoulder.

 I posed in the old blue truck with Jay Bush and Duke... all of these are featured in the Bush advertising and they humorously help tell the story of the family and the business in the museum.  (Just in case it's not obvious, they are flat board cutouts.)

                                      

And here's Russ with the dog and Jay:

I'm sure I took a picture of Russ with the blue truck, but I couldn't find it on my photo stream, so you will have to settle for a nice picture of the truck.  It's a beauty.

                                       

We were greeted at the door of the general store by one of the many friendly docents and directed to the auditorium to watch two interesting films.  The first gave a nice overview of the family history and how the original A. J. Bush went from being a teacher and general store owner to contracting with Stokley to can tomatoes.  Within a few years he bought the cannery from Stokley and they canned a variety of items, including sauerkraut, before settling on becoming bean experts.  The film also gave a nice "factory tour" to show all the steps and technology being used in the cannery today.  Then there was a short, funny video, starring Jay and Duke, outlining the history of outdoor grilling.  Chuckling, we left the auditorium and toured the museum.  It was remarkably interesting.  There was more family history and some interesting archival photos of the early cannery.  You could step on a scale and see your weight in beans.  There was information, very nicely displayed about beans around the world.  You could view 1950's TV commercials as well as get a preview of the newest commercials being planned for the Bush company.  You could easily spend an hour or more and not see or do all the interactive, up-to-date displays.  I guess I didn't take many pictures in the museum... I always wonder if it's allowed.  

I did take a photo of this quilt, made in the 1800's by Sallie Bush's grandmother.  It's an Irish Chain which was a popular design of the time.  It was one of several textiles that was on display.

In the advertising, Duke, a talking dog, is always trying to "spill the beans" about the family's secret recipe for their original beans.  (It actually was based on a family recipe they say.)  Anyway, as you leave, they show the book containing the recipe being protected by fake laser lights.

Oh, darn, I don't have time to upload that photo, but you'll have to take my word for it, it was clever!

And of course, we had to eat at the cafe.  Here's the local catfish:

And we saved room for pinto bean pie!

Onesie Hexies

A year or so ago, our quilt guild had a "tag sale."  I succumbed to buying this bag of preprinted 1/2 inch hexagons (inklingo.com) for $3.  

Obviously the seller had participated in an exchange and the bag contained at least 1,800 hexagons, nine of each color and 200 different fabrics.  I had been doing an English paper piecing project at the time, using 3/4 inch hexagons, and had seen a tutorial about using the inklingo printed hexagons, which are connected with a running stitch and without being basted on a template.  

I had no idea what I would ever use these little scraps for, but they were just dazzling to look at.

Driving to Maine to meet my new grandchildren left me scrambling for some hand work to bring along and I thought of the hexies.

During the two day car trip, I made this assortment of hexagon flowers.

Here they are all pressed and ready to have the basting removed.

I have to admit, at first I felt like I was all thumbs, trying to connect these little hexagons, especially with the movement of the car, but after a while I got the hang of it.  I do think this is a nice way to do paperless Engish paper piecing and I would like to try it with bigger hexagons.

Then I sewed them onto little onesies.

And here's my granddaughter modeling one!

Pretty cute! 

Now, what am I going to do with the remaining 1765 hexagons?

Garden Art... and a cute coincidence!

Our travels last week brought us to Plattsburgh for a few days.  Since we were staying with Barb, I was delighted to find this nice piece of garden art at the Hendersonville Garden Festival the weekend before we traveled to serve as a hostess gift.  Barb has nice summer gardens and blue is her favorite color, so I thought this glass and china flower would be a perfect addition to her yard.  I loved the petals on the milk glass larger dish and the electric blue of the custard dish that formed the center of the flower.  I figured it was a real unique gift... certainly one of a kind!

When Barb saw us carrying in the piece of rebar that serves as a stem, she said, "You have your early birthday present upstairs... and it requires a rebar, too!"

So, here's my birthday present:

Barb picked a very similar flower for me!  She knows I'm fond of sunflowers and yellow, so this combination suggested that.  She also painted the rebar green, which is a nice touch.  This little guy is actually six layers of china and glass.  The wind will not carry this away!

 Here it is in it's temporary location between the rosemary and the chives.
While on the topic of yard art, here are a few other things I found in Barb's garden.

It took a lot of drinking, but her bottle tree is in full bloom.  I'm not sure if the wine was all that great, I think it was selected based on the color of the bottle!

Here are two shots of her hummingbird feeder that was made by a North Carolina artist... a past birthday/hostess gift:

 

 And a spoon flower, which I believe Barb bought on one of her North Carolina trips.

 Here is an early birthday gift I bought at Maggie's friend Elizabeth's garden center in Plattsburgh.  (Cook and Gardener, a must stop if you are up that way!)
It's not the greatest picture because it is taken with a backdrop of clouds, but it's a nice rainbow glass wind chime which hangs from a planter tree attached to one of our deck posts.  I love the frosted glass in all those shades of color and so far, I find the gentle tinkling of the chimes pleasant.
Next to it on another "branch" is a twirly copper butterfly shaped wind ornament that I bought last year in Santa Barbara.

 It's a great time of year to be outdoor doing some garden decorating!

Ambling at the Arboretum

This morning we did a 10K walk at the NC Arboretum with a group we belong to, the Asheville Amblers.  We've done this walk before and it really is my favorite time of year to explore the grounds.  I took a few pictures, so I thought I would share a few with you.

Well, I just learned that I can download lots of pictures at once.  I chose 14 to share with just a few comments.

Russ and I had our pictures taken in the native azalea repository.  We learned that 17 of the 18 species of native azaleas are represented in this area of the arboretum.  The 18th specie only exists in California because it requires a different climate.

I was wearing a cap the same color as the flame azaleas behind me, but you can't really see the color of my cap, but the bush behind me was brilliant!

Some of the walk was along Bent Creek... that is just to the right of this shot of bracket fungus growing on an old stump.

 Here's a shot of the walkers up ahead.  Russ is the man on the left.  I kept stopping to take pictures and then I'd get behind and have to hurry and catch up and then something else would beg to be photographed and I was behind again.  Sometimes on these walks I can be on the slow side, but this time it was really the fact that I was stopping to take pictures.  I just love the fresh spring green foliage!

I have taken some courses on identifying spring wildflowers, but it's been a few years, so I really need to brush up on names.  I believe this is a May Apple.  The upper leaf that I'm grasping is like and umbrella, but if you lift it up you get rewarded with a sweet little flower dangling just underneath.

And I've seen these things along the Blue Ridge Parkway.  They look like corn cobs, but I'm not sure of the name... maybe Indian corn?

Again I had to move some other foliage to get a picture of this guy, but if you look closely, it's Jack-in-a-pulpit.

                                                    Baby pine cones?

 I can't have spring go by without taking a few dogwood pictures.  This is a nice variation with it's pale green pointy blossoms.

A lot of the containers were planted with anemones.  They are a pretty flower I don't see very often, in spring pastels of pink and purple.

This pretty foliage was in the bonsai garden.  Just look at that pretty color combination.  The beige stones, the copper, lime and grass green plants...

 And the quilt garden was planted all in pansies and you could really see the pattern, though I don't know the name of this square.  Cheryl, if you read this, you probably could educate me about this.

And finally, some more dogwood, the blossoms forming a stripe across my photo.

This is just a small sample of some of the things we saw today.  I hope you enjoyed seeing some of my photos!  It was a beautiful spring morning and perfect conditions for our walk.

STRAWBERRIES!

We are happily into strawberry season here in North Carolina.

Well, technically, most of our "local" strawberries actually come from just over the border in South Carolina.  This time of year you see lots of makeshift roadside stands show up.  Usually there is a truck and a tarp and some kind of a table with buckets of strawberries for sale.  We bought our first container full last weekend, and we are down to the last few.

The buckets hold 3.75 quarts of berries.  I apologize for the fact that these berries are getting a little dull looking from spending the week in the refrigerator, but I have since cleaned and consumed some of them and they are still very tasty!

Several years ago I bought a hanging basket of strawberry plants at the Farmers Market.  Late in the summer, when I thought the plants were pretty much dead, I just set it in the garden and the plants sent out runners and now there is a corner of our garden (between the chives and the birdbath) that is overrun with healthy, blossoming strawberry plants!  We do harvest a berry or two from here when we notice them, but mostly the birds enjoy them.

Each year Quilt Guild members are invited to make a quilt block to be given to the outgoing president as a recognition for taking on the job of leadership for the year.  Last year's president requested "food related" blocks in primary colors.  Her goal is to make her quilt and donate it to MANNA, the local food pantry that distributes food to the needy in our area.  In addition to her work with the Asheville Quilt Guild, she also sits on the MANNA board.  Likely the quilt will decorate an office or conference room at MANNA headquarters.  

Inspired by strawberry season, I decided to put strawberries on my block.  Here it is:

It measures 9 inches, as all the blocks will measure 8 1/2 inches in the final quilt.  I modified a free motif that came my way this week in a blog from Lark Books.  I had to enlarge the motif by 3.5X and then added a third strawberry to help fill my space.  I stenciled the berries, leaves and blossom and used fabric paint on white cotton.  I then embroidered the stems, seeds, branch and major vein on each leaf and some highlights on the blossom. 

 I think it is a simple and sweet block for Janie's quilt!

TWENTY

The Quilt Alliance (QuiltAlliance.org) is celebrating it's 20th anniversary this year, so the theme of their  small quilt competition is "TWENTY," and the little quilts measure 20 x 20 inches.

This is the fourth year that I have participated in this fund raising activity.  The collection of submitted quilts travels to several large quilt shows and then each of the quilts will be auctioned off on Ebay to raise money for the Alliance's programs to document, preserve and share quilts and their stories.

My plan was to celebrate the theme by showing 20 marbles tumbling out of a canning jar.  When my quilt was pretty far along, I realized that I really needed to add a second marble jar to balance my design.  So this is my little quilt, "MARBLES."

The theme can be interpreted rather broadly, so the fact that I have too many marbles does not pose a problem!

I used fused organza to create the semi-transparent canning jars.  And fussy cut and embroidered the marbles from two of my background fabrics.  I was pleased with the effect.

I was also part of another submission, a group effort called "Time for Tea."  Several of us have been talking about making a slice quilt and this seemed the perfect opportunity.  There were actually 6 of us involved.  Cheryl offered to locate an image and give four of us a quarter of the image to creatively recreate.  After considerable research for an appropriate image, Cheryl consulted her friend Dorry in Virginia.  Dorry arranged some china (traditional 20th anniversary gift) and some hot cross buns (XX being the Roman numeral for 20) and took the photo.  Cheryl then cut the photo into four vertical slices and presented Susan, Alice, Christina and me with a 5 x 20 inch portion without sharing the total image with any of us.  The idea was for us to work independently and reproduce our slice the way we wanted, but to be mindful of the placement, as the slices needed to be able to be put together again for a recognizable finished product.

So this is what each of us were working from.  I'm sorry I don't have the original photo, but you get the idea.  A table set up outside on a deck with a checked table cloth, a mug and tea pot, and African violet, and a plate with hot cross buns.

And here is our little quilt!

It was great fun to be part of this whole process.  We were encouraged to be creative in our interpretation of the table cloth, and I think it's very charming to see the variations that all seem to work together nicely. As Cheryl pointed out, it almost makes the plate look transparent.   

Susan did the first slice and she happened to pick a table cloth fabric that had yellow in it without knowing that two other portions of the picture had that yellow theme.  Alice did the second slice and it's amazing how nicely the leaves of the violet mesh.  Susan's are a little flatter and Alice's have a bit more depth.  Alice stuffed the appliquéd frosting and raisins on the hot cross buns and actually found that gradient brown fabric that give the buns their three dimensional look.  I used fabric paint to create my checkerboard fabric and my challenge was to recreate the darling lemon pig mug that Dorry used in her photo.  I was actually told I could change the shape of the mug or image on it, but that I should keep it yellow.  Cheryl had several "lemon" fabrics and I was able to fussy cut a lemon and turn it into a pig and it comes pretty darn close to the original.  Christina did the final slice.  It's hard to tell from this photo, but she added a button to top off the tea pot and fancied up the table cloth with some decorative lacy stitching.

Cheryl connected the four pieces and did the quilting.  Alice bound the quilt.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my "TWENTY" quilts!

Orchids!

Since I had some nice photos from the annual orchid show at the NC Arboretum this weekend, I decided I had better do a blog post.  

The best thing about the weekend was that my family was here... and here they are:

Now, as for the orchids, I will just share a few pictures for your enjoyment.  

It's pretty hard to pick a favorite.  I'm always amazed at the variety of size, color and shapes!