Andrew and Katie's Day

Pictures from the wedding last week - I needed to crop and lighten a couple of them (the flash was too far away) - that's what took me all week -

Here's a picture where the subjects are smiling!
Roger's son-in-law Del and Daughter Jen who made the trip from Kansas, Dad and Mom.


I took a couple of Joanna making a toast to her new DIL and family. Although the toast had moments of poignancy and sadness, I like this picture because the expression on her face is welcoming and joyous.


I mostly left the bride and groom shots to the professional photographer, but did get this one that includes the cake and flowers at the reception - as well as capturing some of the happiness and joy we all felt.



And these people look happy too! (brother Roger with Laurie)

Silk

These photos are from one of the classes I took at the quilt show in Chicago last week, Maggie Backman of the Silk Experience was the instructor.


In the photo above, my classemates are dying small pieces of silk in plastic baggies. The fiber reactive dye is called "Colorhues" (available from the Silk Experience http://www.silkthings.com and other sources.) I'm really disappointed they don't have photos of some of the things they've done with the dye on the website - the colors are so brilliant and the way they react with silk is like magic.


Here is a close up from the first shot showing how brilliant the color is - she would have been one of the first to dip her fabric into that batch of dye.




Above, you can see the same group and some of the bright colors - and some results below. This appears to be some of the silk dupioni, having been dyed and overdyed using at least two colors.

And these are my little pieces - the pink is the same dupioni - I only had it in the dye for a few seconds and after it was well used by other dyers. And I didn't dampen the piece first before crumpling it up and putting it in the baggie, so there are areas with no color. The smaller green piece was dyed after the larger one, then overdyed with blue. It's a smoother weave than the dupioni which, due to its inherent characteristics, really takes on the color with a lot of variation.


The whole process was painless and took only seconds. You can see we are not wearing gloves. I can imagine dying more pieces, putting them into a simple quilt and adding beautiful quilting for texture.

Biltmore Flowers

We went to the Biltmore Estate this afternoon to see the annual flower show and to see four rooms in the mansion that have just been recently restored and opened to the public for the first time.  Here are a few flower shots from the garden.

Turkey Fights & Dogwoods

We had a little ruckus next to our house this morning. It seems that two rival gangs of young males turkeys were strutting and fanning their tails to get the attention of some females.

The two male gangs got in each other's faces and started exchanging insults.

As expected a big NOISY fight broke out that lasted several minutes as the males were flying at each other trying to beat each other up with their wings.

After they wore each other out, the males went on about their business and these females continued grazing their way up our slope seemingly unimpressed by the whole display. They like this area where we just planted three new pines trees.

We also threw in some pictures of our Dogwoods in bloom. These three were planted last fall and you can see the three new pines up at the top of the picture. We're hoping the pines grow nice and tall and block the view of the neighbors' house from our deck.

Landscaping Photos for Cheryl

Cheryl is out of town today, so here are some pictures for her of how the stepping stones and some of the planting turned out.

This little piggy...

I couldn't title this entry The Tale of Three Little Pigs, because although only three show in this photo, there were four. The fourth is hiding in the straw to the left - exhausted.


Our landscaper is back this week to do some additional work for us - including putting in a stone pathway through the area in back of the house, and installing steps to facilitate getting around - particularly when walking outside with Lu or watering the plants we had them install last year. So the pigs? The landscaper's family stopped by having just picked them up, on the way home just a little ways up Reems Creek road from us. The pigs were not happy riding in the back of the truck, squealed and fought with each other the whole ride from the Swannanoa area up our driveway.

This is some of the landscaping work the crew did this morning so far -

A Christmas quilt

I quilted this for Ann Weber the designer, last fall. Norris' mother, sister and brother-in-law saw the quilt on the machine and really loved it. Ann's design did a great job showcasing the beautiful fabrics by Red Rooster. The quilt and the fabric line are called Forever Christmas. They have posted the quilt now on their website -

http://www.redroosterfabrics.com/content7385.html

and they put my name right on the web page, as well as the pattern, which shows the full quilt, so finally I can post pictures that show the quilting. Because Ann did not have a lot of time between receiving the fabrics and needing to get the quilt back to the manufacturer for the quilt market in Houston, she picked the fastest way to get it quilted - an "edge to edge" - pantograph pattern by Lisa Calle called Oh My Feathers.



This is the back of the quilt.