I inspired myself with my last post.

I talked of my quilt and my plans for the music room, and by the the time I published the post I was ready to stain the floors and paint the room.

So now it is empty and I am on hands and knees with wire brushes, razor scrapers, scrub brushes and Goof-Off prepping the concrete for staining.

Fingers crossed for smooth sailing….

I’ll post the results next week.

Wonky Squares is done

It is now finished, quilted and washed. I made it for a twin bed we have in our office/ music room. It really goes perfect for what I have planned in here.

We removed the carpets from the floor… if you ever read my blog a year or so ago you would know the story of all my flooring… needless to say it is all slowly going away and being changed out.

So anyhow, as of now the floor is just plain concrete slab, The walls are boring white…

My plan is to use the dark earthy colors from this quilt ( and they are earthy, my photo is capturing a lot of light) mainly a deep purple color to stain my concrete floor. I will do it like I did in the Master bath, a simple design with a translucent brown over coat. We bought a few more guitar hangers so now we have 5 guitars on the walls, more on the floor stands… keyboards, amps all sorts of stuff. I want to make the room masculine, and for it to have a musical/ creative vibe. I’d like to paint 3 walls in one color and the fourth wall a dark color, make some heavy curtains with a sheer golden curtain behind so gusts and musicians can block out the light and just shut themselves in. My concern with wall colors is this is a small room, and dark will probably make it appear smaller… perhaps the dark color will be the one wall and a lighter color on the other three… I don’t know.

This quilt picks up the colors of a couple of the guitars, like the midnight blue. the golden yellow… my whole color scheme is based n this quilt. I need help choosing wall colors, I always pick odd colors that are just to much to handle…. anyone want to help ?

I think I will make a nice floor carpet to go with this quilt and the overall room theme, I am really leaning toward deep maroons and purples and gold's… just think about it makes me want to go fabric shopping.

Mexican Artists, I thank you.

I just got home a few days ago from Cabo San Lucas Mexico and I am inspired. While Cabo was a blast, with fantastic food friendly people and an ocean to die for. What really got my inner muse inspired was a small town to the north called Todos Santos.

Todos Santos is a smaller quit town with an artistic vibe. There where art galleries and vendors not unlike Cabo but the art was so superior, the ceramics of fishes, geckos, dishes of every sort, the skeletal Catrina’s with their flowers and veils, glittered day of the dead art, inlaid urns … lordy I wish I had taken more photo’s. below is just a snippet of the beauty you can see there and around Mexico.

After immersing myself into this place for the last two weeks my muse has found me yet again. Today I sat in my Hot 100 degree garage and cut and embossed tin cans… made paper clay, painted and made a huge art mess in my kitchen.

Up on the left you can see a little of the paper mache Catrina’s I am working on… Oh I am super excited, now I have an excuse to use lots of glitter and sequins!! Oh how I love sparkles.

On the right you can see the tin art for my patio wall I am making. I plan to also make some birds and a mermaid…

Below is the near finished pieces, all they need now is a wire to hang from.

Cabo Here we come!

I'm totally excited… we will be in Cabo San Lucas this time next week. I am so very excited

To make things even better I found not one but 2 fabric stores near my rental. One within walking distance, OMG what will I buy.. what will I make???

Don’t yet know, stay tuned to see….

Now I’m off to work on a tan so I don’t get scorched down there. And yes I know it is not wise to lay out. No need to inform me of that. I do wear sunscreen, so keep all helpful advise to yourself.

Cheers,

Cytel

The Grandpa Bertal Tomato

The story goes something like this.... When I find a more accurate account I shall edit.

Anyone who ever played the game telephone knows how a story changes through its many telling's and the 1930’s where a LONG time ago.

Near the end of the Great Depression My grandparents and another family had one car among about 9 people, they loaded it up and set out for the Great Northwest from somewhere near Nebraska. They took turn riding in the car on the car and walking beside the car.

Grandpa Bertal carried with him some special tomato seeds and when they settled in Bonners Ferry, Idaho he planted them, and shared the seeds with others. The tomato’s story was at that time, not told to his kids. Perhaps they ate them for years not knowing he carried them and found them special enough to save and share.

Well Grandpa died in the late 80's I believe, and our family had not seen these tomatoes since long before that... he either never mentioned this story of bringing them and he also grew to old for gardening. So the tomato's were no longer known to my family.

Last year My mom had her 40th high school reunion up in Bonners Ferry, while there she met a nursery man, who was so pleased to see a relative of ol' Bertal. He told her the story as he knew it of these special tomatoes and gave her a few precious seeds.

She shared with me a few of these and of the nine I planted 3 came up.

What I find interesting about this tomato versus other varieties is the leaves. They are very wide and fairly smooth. I have yet to eat one but as you can see from the photo, I have 2 growing and more to come…

I would love to know if this is a regular known Heirloom, for certainly it must be an heirloom if he saved the seeds from his farm back in the 1930’s. Or is it one of the many, that may have died off if not for the seed savers of the world.

I will of course save my seeds like a good steward of the earth would do….

Crazy Quilt and Fabric Painting.

Idle hands are the devils instrument.

My hands are never idle, I always am doing something, and generally it is a sewing or fiber related project.

This week I have been busy painting some fun little motifs to crazy quilt upon. It started last week when I received a lovely note from a dear friend with a hand made little card. I have not written or called my friend in ages so I decided to make her a nice little post card with a UFO ( un-finished object) I had laying around for the last year.

Last year I painted this beetle and did a little patchwork quilting around it, started the embroidery then buried it in a pile of things I "would get back to."


Here is the finished postcard it is about 4"x 5" or so, and I sewed heavy paper to the back and wrote a note to send. I imagine it will be a nice surprise in the mailbox instead of a bill or a pile of junk mail.

I was so happy with my results I broke into my newest fabrics Moda Cross Weaves, very similar to Kaffe Fasset shot cottons. The warp and the weft are different colors or shades of colors and it gives the fabrics a homespun, earthy feel.





















I broke out my paints and painted up a few designs. My least favorite was the seahorse, so I figured I would take the bull by the horns and start the embroidery with that one.
I decided to try some new and more difficult stitches, this one to the left is a weave across two threads, I am doing it in segments to create coral.
In this photo you can clearly see the warp and weft of the cross woven fabric as well, I really like it.




I am really pleased with the seahorse so far, while I thought it was blah at first I found lots of inspiration and an feeling really good with the results so far. I still have a more fauna and flora I want to add, more kelp and seaweed, perhaps a sea flower or a fish.... not sure yet

For a larger view just click the pictures.




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WIP Modern Patchwork

Funky, Folksy and functional... a patchwork table topper from my leftover parts of a much larger project.

Still Working on it, I have been hand stitching and embroidering every inch of it. The texture is just what I was going for. The backside is an added bonus, because it is as interesting as the front and there are no knots or stay strings showing. So it is reversible.


My inspiration started here on The Silly Boo Dilly site. I am drawn to all her quilts and patchwork creations. Then I began to investigate the techniques that she is inspired by such as Japanese Boro and found a whole new source of ideas and things to ponder in my own future work.

I am also drawn to the quilting style of Gee's Bend, which is a utilitarian quilting style using old work clothes and used fabrics as not to waste anything. It is also visually striking, wonky, modern and to me, very interesting.