Lemon Tree Tales

Life on the Prairie

It's been six months since we've moved to Cheyenne and life on the prairie. So far it's been pretty interesting. We've experienced winter and quite a few snowstorms. Ah and the super strong wind. Then a very short spring turned into summer. We've had hot days as well as summer thunderstorms. Oddly enough there hasn't been that much wind but I'm told that it'll return in the fall. And of course how could we forget the invasion of the moths, which are starting their return trip now. 

What we've learned thus far is that we really enjoy living in the rural countryside. On any given day we may see rabbits, hares, prairie dogs, antelope (which are really prong-horns, neither deer nor antelope), pygmy goats (but I think that the few weeks we saw them they had escaped their barn because they've been gone ever since), chickens, horses, ponies, mules and donkeys. In fact these are our closest neighbors and we see them almost every day.

 

 

There's two horses (geldings), a female mule, and a gelded donkey. The mule really likes Fearghus and Fiona. She follows us in her pasture when we go on our walks. Occasionally I'll bring Fearghus up to her to sniff noses. Fiona on the other hand doesn't really want anything to do with them. Sometimes she barks when she sees our equine friends.

The beauty of the prairie is quite different than that of California. There are areas where it feels like you're alone in the world with nothing but sky. And the sky changes quite a bit. Some days it's nothing but blue and other days there's lots of clouds. Because we're in the country and few buildings to obstruct the horizon we can see stars and distant thunderstorms. It's pretty amazing to see the lightning strikes light up the clouds on the horizon. And when we have rainstorms sometimes we're lucky to get rainbows too.

I stopped the car by the side of the road on the way home one day to take this picture. This is across a field .. not sure whether the farmer grows alfafa or some other type of grain. 

What Steve and I love to look at the most are the incredible sunsets. If we decide to get a permanent home here we want to have one with lots of windows so that we can enjoy the prairie sunsets. Here's just one of them.

See what I mean about the gorgeous sky?

Yes, it's been quite different living here in Wyoming than in California but its beauty has been a delight to behold.

EDIT: Oh my goodness I totally forgot the cattle ... lots and lots of cows out here because of all the large ranches.

Quilt Shows and Longarm Machines

When I went to the Rocky Mountain Quilt Show a few weekends ago, I attended two lecture/demonstrations by Linda Taylor, the author of The Ultimate Guide to Longarm Machine Quilting and the genius behind The Quilting School - online video classes for longarm quilting. The first class was an overview of basic use of pantographs and loading a quilt top. She loaded hers with pins and used all the bars but other than that I was a bit surprised to see that I had learned all this info by renting time at Jukebox Quilts. Fortunately I did learn a lot of new things in the second class. Right now I think that I'd benefit from just more rental time than another class, at least until I get more machine time under my belt. Yes, I was a geek and had Linda sign my copy of the book. She was a lot of fun to listen to, especially when she was telling stories of different quilts she had quilted for clients over the years. She and her quilters have over 15000 quilts made. Wow! So she's seen just about everything and has figured out efficient ways to get them done. She's definitely earned her "Longarmed and Dangerous" apron that she wears at classes.

Then just this past weekend my local quilt guild, the Cheyenne Heritage Quilters, had a quilt show. Sadly I didn't have anything to hang in the show but I will next year. Since I'm still very new to town and don't know a lot of people I volunteered to help set up the show on Wednesday. I brought our trusty stepladder and a willing hand. After setting up vendor tables, quilt stands and half of the quilts, I enjoyed lunch with a few of the other volunteers. That's when it was discovered that I've been renting time on the Gammill. Well it turns out that Kelly at Jukebox Quilts was going to be at the show demonstrating her machines and needed helpers. On Saturday I spent half the day helping out, telling people about her rental program and taking turns with the smaller hand-guided machine. It was lots of fun and every time I helped out it reinforced what I had already learned. It also was an opportunity for Steve to come and see what I've been working on. He thought it was a pretty industrial and heavy duty machine. At the same time a local quilting couple were there so Steve spent some time speaking with the husband about the machine. I don't think that Steve will want to quilt but it was good for him to speak with another gadget guy about it.

For a smaller area I've been to quite a few quilty events recently. I do miss dolls sometimes but I think that I found an outlet for that too. On Friday I found out about a small quilt shop in the town of Berthould, CO called the Laughing Ladies. They had quite a few dolls made up in displays. Turns out that a local lady teaches doll-making and was there working on her Treasures of the Gypsy doll. She said that there's a doll club in Denver that meets once a month and that I should check it out. I was also invited to come any Friday to the quilt shop for sewing time to work on my dolls. I tell you, quilters and dollmakers are just the friendliest people. Slowly I'll make friends. It just won't be an overnight thing.

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2013 Hoffman Challenge Entries

Two weekends ago I attended the Rocky Mountain Quilt Festival in Loveland, CO. What's especially nice about this quilt show is that they show almost all of the Hoffman Fabric Challenge entries including quilts, accessories, clothing and dolls. It's amazing to see all of them at one time. I took just a few pictures of the ones I found very interesting.

Quite a few people thought of Egypt when presented with the peacock themed fabric. 

 

Enchantment by Joy Torelli

 

The Mantle of Isis by Nancy Staton

 

Quilt Like an Egyptian by Nikki Hill (this one is really amazing and looks just like a papyrus scroll)

 

And a doll, Unwrapped Queen of the Nile by Michaleen Munrow 

 

Obviously there were peacocks galore, here's just a couple:

 

Aureus Pavus by Dawn Sykes

 

Peacock's Complaint by Shelly Dahl

 

And then there were the ones I liked for a variety of reasons, mainly because something caught my eye:

 

 

  by Sally Fly

 

Portraits from Nature by Cheri Kincaid

 

Moon Dreams by Mary Sue Suit

 

The Quilter by Bonnie Ward (this was so whimsical)

 

The Garden Fairy by Gail Sexton

 

New Mexico '54 by Susan Baca

 

Singing the Blues by Doris Goins (my favorite simply because of the colors and pattern)

 

A few of the other dolls, accessories and clothing in the background:

 

And the most expressive doll, She Sang ... It's Over by Arley Berryhill who won the Sulky Award

 

It's hard to see the dolls at the exhibit because they're so far away on a table, but if you go to Deanna Hogan's site she has most of the entries listed there. I'll post a few more of the non-Hoffman quilts that I saw at the show but for the most part I spent my time in two longarm demonstration/lectures by Linda Taylor. More on that later.

Remaking a swap quilt

I often make wonderful quilts for swaps and then feel sad when they've left the house on their journey to their new homes. I keep saying to myself that I should remake one to keep for our house. Well finally I'm doing just that. Remember the last quilt that I did, the Aurora Borealis one here?

 

 

I've drafted a new version of it for our home. This time it'll be horizontal, not vertical and about double the size. I've also drafted two flying geese ribbons that will entwine with each other. So far I'm only at the NY beauty stage. I've drafted a new one and have sewn two so far. It's not as easy as it seems to draft one. I keep having to redraw the triangles because they're not evenly balanced. In the end it'll be worth the effort since all of the quilt will be something that I designed ... no NY beauties from elsewhere. That's probably overkill but it makes me feel good to do it.

Lots and lots of pattern pieces with 1/4" seam allowances added. Of course these will be paper pieced. This time I'm setting the sewing machine stitch to 1.5 so that it'll be much easier to rip the paper off afterwards.

 

 

I'm going with black/white neutrals with an accent of chartreuse and a deep magenta/purple instead of using tones of red/orange/pink. We'll see how it turns out this way. It's slow going but I want to take my time. Can you believe that once it's finished this will be the first quilt that's for our house?! I'm pretty excited about it. Next will come the decision of whether to hang it above the bed or put it in the living room. Hmm, somehow I can see it above the bed with a large oversized flying geese quilt on the bed. Wouldn't that be nice and graphic? Or perhaps a mariner's compass quilt?

Vintage Quilts at Tractor Show

When we went to Bird City, KS for the Antique Engine and Tractor Show I spent some time speaking with a very nice lady, Dee Dorsch, who had a quilt exhibit there. Quite a few of the quilts are owned by her and others were donated to the tractor show. Here's just a few of them.

An Amish styled Square in a Diamond ... Mrs. Dorsch bought this as an ugly yarn tied quilt in 1992 for the princely sum of $26. She carefully ripped out the bright orange acrylic yarn and did some research on the quilt design. She then replaced some shredded fabrics with reproductions (the green border is one of them.) After that she and her husband spent several months hand-quilting the top so that it would be more true to its original intent. I think it's gorgeous.

 

An example of a Temperance quilt ... the ladies' signatures are supposed to be signed with the glass turned upside down. Only one lady embroidered her name correctly (in the bottom row on the left) but it was pieced so that the glass is right side up. 

 

This next quilt had a nice story of being passed down from the maker, Irene Troutt, to her daughter-in-law who passed it on to her sister who then bequeathed it to her son who then donated it to the tractor show in Bird City. The tag called it Endless Chain but I've also seen a few modern variations of this pattern. It's a great scrap quilt design.

 

Another great design:

 

This quilt was pieced and quilted by Mrs. Dorsch's mother who originally gave the top to her daughter as a Christmas present while she attended college. Mrs. Dorsch said that at the time quilting wasn't something she wanted to do but fortunately her mother decided to finish it for her. She's since found scraps of this quilt and is paper-piecing a smaller quilt to accompany the original one.

 

In a display cabinet were pieces of feedsack (very large weave fabric, strong and with large holes where the cord held the bags together) along with sugar sacks that women would bleach to use for embroidered squares in quilts.

 

There were other quilts but I liked these ones the best. Mrs. Dorsch was such a sweet lady and spent some time talking about her love of collecting vintage quilt tops. I especially liked her story about how women would send their husbands to the general store with requests to buy specific bags of flour or chicken feed, etc so that they could sew up blouses or dresses for the family. My father often told me how he was teased in kindergarden because he had to wear feedsack shirts. Of course nowadays men pay good money to buy Liberty of London's beautiful floral calico inspired print shirts.

The final bit of quilt inspiration is the stained glass window that is in the little outbuilding that houses the quilt exhibit. All in all a very nice addition to the tractor show.

 

So always keep your eyes open because you never know when you'll run across some quilt history.

Bird City KS Antique Tractor and Engine Show

Last weekend Steve and I took the dogs and RVed to Bird City, KS to meet up with his brother and father at the Antique Tractor and Engine Show. My BIL is in charge of getting a 1909 Avery steam powered engine tractor up and running for the show. He and my FIL worked all through the night fixing it up since it sits all year in an outbuilding just waiting for this one weekend every year. It was pretty amazing to see.

The Levin men in front of the 1909 Avery

 

I loved the bulldog mascot on the front of the engine:

 

My BIL stoking the engine. Apparently it has to have wood burning to get the engine hot enough to burn the coal.

 

During the tractor pull Steve helped my BIL drive it. The engine is so tall that you need one person on each side of it to see ahead. Of course one drawback to a steam engine is that the drivers get coated in coal dust. Steve's hat will never be quite as clean as it once was.

 

The Levin family riding the Avery (I jumped on after they finished the tractor pull ... it was a bouncy ride)

 

We saw a steam powered calliope during the parade, pulled by a John Deere tractor:

 

Sometimes you just need more power ... a double engined tractor:

 

And my favorite tractor of the show simply because it was small and turquoise:

 

There were lots of activities ... a demonstration of a tractor powered sawmill (quite dangerous since it was an open saw blade, not OSHA compliant that's for sure), a museum of antiques, a quilt exhibit (pics later), tractor pulls complete with a sled that the audience were encouraged to jump on to add weight to the tractors, a horse drawn stagecoach, and of course the company of family (our niece and her boyfriend drove in the same day that we did). As always that was the best part. The dogs weren't as thrilled since they couldn't run around. Fiona did catch a frog and tried to shake it and eat it. Apparently the frog must have tasted funny because she spit it out and stuck her tongue out.

We stayed one night and left the next evening. It was only a six hour drive in the RV and definitely worth checking it out. My BIL and FIL have been going for years and I've heard about it for a long time. If you're ever in the area you should make a detour and marvel at what farmers drove throughout the decades.

Bikini Log Cabin Blocks

Finally, I'm finished with all 22 of the bikini machine embroidered applique log cabin quilt blocks for the summer block swap on the APQS forum. (Wow, wasn't that a mouthful?!) We were given a few small fabric scraps that we could use in our blocks plus one turquoise fabric that needed to be in each block. I used these for the bikini tops and bottoms except for three blocks that got a turquoise strip instead. Once I started sewing on the strips I realized that I was constructing them in a courthouse steps manner instead of a traditional log cabin order. They're going into the mail tomorrow ... in a couple weeks I'll get back 22 different blocks. What fun!