A few months ago I read about Anne Lemanski and her stitched paper sculptures in Fiberarts magazine. You can see a lot of it on her web site here. I have been fascinated by creating 3-dimensional stitched work for a long time. I have shown a lot of my stuffed birds on this blog. Years ago I made a whole series of stuffed animals. I looked at Anne Lemanski's work and loved the very precise seaming she creates to give dimension to her animals and wondered how one even begins to create something like that.

It seemed like I ...

Yesterday morning I headed out to meet my friend for our morning walk and was feeling a little lazy and unmotivated and, well, just not that into the idea of the morning walk. When I arrived at our meeting place Paula emerged from her car with a sly grin and a look in her eye. "Terry, I just passed some great-looking garage sales on my way over here—think we ought to check them out?" Without a second thought we were off.

Three hours later and about $8.00 poorer, I headed home with my loot. Paula did pretty well ...

One of my talents is finding 4-leaf clovers. They are lucky, you know.

Summertime, Maplewood Street, Pocatello, Idaho. A long time ago. I would roll out of bed, pull on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, and slip my brown, calloused feet into a pair of rubber sandals and pad into the kitchen. I'd pour out a bowl of Grapenuts, splash a little milk over the top and crunch, crunch, crunch my way through it, sitting on the back steps of the little house where we lived. Already, I could hear the high-pitched trill of summertime insects and ...

It seems like my fallback blog post is to take my camera out and wander around the yard until I see something interesting. I am falling back on those fallbacks lately because I am not doing a lot creatively at the moment. I am taking a break and focusing on other things. The other night at our High Fiber Diet meeting we were talking about creativity and Gerrie referenced a terrific blog post from Jane Dunnewold earlier this week. One of the things she mentioned is the importance of taking a break occasionally to renew your creative spirit.



You might ...

There are a thousand dots in my illustration. That is how many posts I have written on this blog as of today. 1000. It blows my mind. It has been nearly 5 years that I have been doing this, so that averages out at about 200 per year. I know a lot of bloggers write every single day. Some more than once a day, so my thousand isn't that big a deal in general terms, but it is a big deal to me.

I have been trying to think of something special to write or do or show to ...

When I was growing up, we had in our house, a small carved wooden figure of a fat guy throwing his hands in the air and smiling broadly. He was only about 6" tall and moved from place to place, usually sitting on an end table in the living room. My mother called him "Ho Tai" and told me she and Dad had bought him on their honeymoon as he was purported to bring luck to a household. I'm sure he didn't cost much. Somewhere along the line our family Pekingese got hold of him and chewed off ...

It has been a pretty amazing week in several ways. Maybe you don't remember, but the first 3 months of this year were incredibly busy and focused for me. I had obligations and I had deadlines and opportunities so I really put a lot of time in during those months. This week I am seeing some of the fruits of all that labor.

A couple days ago this little book arrived on my doorstep.


My quilt "What's left behind" was juried into a show called Beneath the Surface, which will first show at the International Quilt Festival in ...

Is it green, or is it blue, or is it greenish, blueish, grayish? Maybe dirty turquoise. Maybe a variety of teal, which it seems can be either green or blue. Celadon?  What do you call it?

While I am crazy about warm, rich colors, somehow this group of foggy, cool tones always seems to speak to me. And it always seems the perfect color to pair with my very favorite rich, earthy red.

I think our flowers are at their best right now. I mean today! I walked outside this morning and found the lilies in bloom, and everything else looking wonderful. This area, pictured, is right in the middle of the front yard, where it used to be lawn. As Ray was digging up sod to make the pathways and the patio area, he piled it here to make a little hill. He covered the sod with layers of newspaper, then a thick layer of mulch and started planting things. He had brought a lot of starts and plants from our old ...

What's wrong with this picture?

Many, many years ago we got this house sign as a Christmas gift from the realtor who sold us the house we were living in at the time. Her business card is still taped to the back with "Merry Christmas!" written across one corner. We planned to put it up, but I don't think we ever did. Nor did we put it on either of the two houses after that one. We planned to, but never got around to it. It traveled around with us in a box. Then Ray found it several ...

This post is partly for my ever tolerant husband, who hasn't even asked why there is a saucer full of used teabags accumulating next to the sink.

I am saving them for the paper. Last fall I took a class from Laura Cater-Woods. She uses tea bag paper for collage. The paper from used tea bags is nicely stained and aged looking. Unfortunately we drink mostly herb tea and it does not add as much color as real tea, but it still has some charm. They are drying out in the saucer. I discovered that they are much easier ...

Lots of sewing advice comments on yesterday's post! Yes, I was probably dumb not to have washed the red duck before I sewed the cushions. It did cross my mind and I just got impatient and trusting. Okay. I know better than that and yes, I will wash the teal linen before I cut into it. And check it for stains and other goobers. No, I will not make a muslin. I'm like Del. If I had to make a muslin before I made clothing I would never make clothing. It is a very simple, unstructured pattern and ...

Last month I cleaned up all the wooden outdoor furniture and stained it all a similar color. It was amazing to me how much better everything looked, so I decided to sew new cushion covers for the front porch glider. I bought some heavy cotton duck in my favorite dark, earthy red and whipped them up yesterday. It wasn't until I had finished them that I noticed a large stain on one, apparently on the fabric when I bought it. What a pain. I decided to wash it before spraying both cushions with Scotch Guard, in the hope that ...

 A couple of months ago our renters called to say that the door knob on the front door was broken. You may remember that when we moved a couple of years ago we were unable to sell our 1914 house. We have had it rented to four lovely young women since then. Anyway, the doorknob was "broken," whatever that meant. Worn out was what it meant, pretty much. You may be able to see that the hole through the square shaft has become far larger than it should be, through wear. There were other issues that I didn't thoroughly ...

Today is reveal day for the 12 x 12 group. This round in our color/colour play series is Purple and Yellow. You will be amazed at how many ways these colors were used! Here's mine:

The details are on the 12 x 12 blog.

I started making birds way back at the end of 2007.  I made more. Then I started selling them on eBay. Then Pokey Bolton asked me to submit an article and pattern for a Quilting Arts special magazine called Quilt Festival Quilt Scene. Then she asked me to tape a segment for Quilting Arts TV and show how they are made. Now, as part of the promotion for the TV show, Quilting Arts TV has published the pattern on their web site. You can print it out for free and make your own birds, if you want to. Just go ...

Last night the windows were open and I could hear the frogs singing and smell the smells of grass and fir and earth. I looked out the window and could see my batik lantern glowing at the bend in the pathway. We walked out to stand in the darkness, look up at the trees and sky and feel that summer is finally here. Something about a summer night, moon and stars, frogs and crickets and softly swishing evergreens high above. It connects you with every human who ever stood in the dark, taking in a summer night.



When I turned ...

Having been a sewer for years and years, I have had a variety of pincushions, including several of the classic red tomatoes. I once made myself a pincushion in a sake cup, which finally fell off the table and broke. I have needlepointed a pincushion and had one of those magnetic pincushions. Pincushions get ratty after awhile, except for the magnetic ones, but I just didn't like reaching into that mass of  poke-y pins.

My bad habit is that I end up sticking needles into my pincushions. The ones that have no thread quickly disappear into the innards of ...

Summer has finally arrived in Portland and I am very happy about that, but geez, it is nearly the end of June. I feel like we lost out on June this year. It is usually about the best month of the year, but not this year. The good news is that while it was raining and blowing and raining, and, did I mention that it rained?, well all that time things were growing and now the sun is out and it is gloriously warm and all is green and blooming.

This is the front garden and it is looking so ...

Here is the Baños quilt finished. There are many things I like about it, some I don't. I took a lot of liberties with the original photograph, leaving out a lot of details that were distracting and moving things (like the gate) to improve the composition. I also added the figure of the man passing by. He was not in the original photo, but in another photo. I simplified the background considerably. All this was fine. When I am working from a photo I feel no obligation to copy it exactly. It is simply a starting point. What I ...

I found this lovely paper parasol in my grandmother's house, when she died. I have no idea where it is from, when it was made, why my grandmother had it. But I brought it home because it was so lovely. It resides in a basket of umbrellas near my front door. I have never figured out a way to display it. The paper part is a bit faded, but the design is very graphic and a favorite combination of indigo blue, white and orange-red. The bamboo handle has intricate little designs on it. I can't tell if they ...