November Cornucopia

 

November has zoomed on by like it usually does, so here's a wrap-up cornucopia post of all the online things I consumed and enjoyed that I think are worth passing on and sharing with you.

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To help with the holiday-time busy-ness, sign up for the free Mindful Mending, 10 days of free meditations and poetry from Jane Dunnewold.

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I'm gathering fabrics to try out the Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt, Indigo Way. Time to use all those indigos that I have. 

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Helen Godden's quilt, My Australia, an amazingly huge (22'wide x 5' high) and beautiful dye painted whole cloth piece was displayed at the Houston Quilt Festival in November.  this post has a lot of great closeups of the quilting and painting.

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This looks like a fascinating book about dyes, dye history, etc. In Pursuit of Colour: From Fungi to Fossil Fuels: Uncovering the Origins of the World's Most Famous Dyes by Lauren MacDonald.

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I know you need a dance break at this point, so put on this retro disco love-fest of a Tiny Desk Concert featuring Nile Rodgers and CHIC and thank me later.

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Podcast to listen to: Season 2 of Grapevine, it explains so much.

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If you haven't yet, watch The Gilded Age on HBO. Just for the costumes and set design alone. The story and acting is wonderful too. And occasionally some stitching.

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I knew a lot of this already, but this article on Fall Leaf Color really helps put it all together.

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Wandering Wednesday: Berkeley Rose Garden

 

Last weekend, we headed up to Oakland to visit our daughter and celebrate my DH's birthday. DD suggested we go walk around the Berkeley Rose Garden. So up to the hills of Berkeley we drove. It was a real treat to have all four of us in the car together. A real blast from the past!

I hadn't been to the rose garden in a very long while, and we luckily arrived a bit before sunset.

Truly gorgeous. So relaxing and removed from the hustle and bustle of the city. DD said when she first moved up to Oakland she used to drive up here to relax.

The rose garden is pretty well kept up, and easy to get around, but there are a lot of stairs.

The pathways are pretty wide so the roses have a little room to spread.

Awww, I like this.

My favorite rose picture of the trip. This variety had a little bouquet at the end of each stem.

Some of these color combinations were surprising. I was also surprised that so many of the rose bushes were still blooming. 

An almost fluorescent red here!

If I could move somewhere, it would be to this neighborhood. Then I could volunteer as a rosarian to help take care of the roses.

I really like the construction of the steep hillside amphitheater, rows upon rows of roses.

Big, blowsy, floppy, opened-up with a luscious scent.

The sunset was pretty red, so red that my two kids look like they're red-haired instead of brown.

Back To It

After many days away from my studio due to all the Thanksgiving busy-ness, I'm finally back in front of my sewing machine. I got to work right away on the June column of the Temperature quilt. Mostly because I need to use my design wall.

It's going together pretty quickly.

For our visitor's sake, I took off all the covers of the couch pillows to wash them and hopefully help with limiting the amount of pet hair. I realized I had some repairs to do for the Jawbreaker and Lucky Charm pillows. These have been out on the couches since 2020, and they've beenwashed a couple times, but there were some big issues on the edges. The woven upholstery fabric I used for the back of the pillows had given way and raveled in several places. That took a while to re-stitch, but it will be worth it to have these last longer. 

**Reminder to self: Next time I make a pillow with this time of fabric remind me to use a French Seam.

I was never terribly happy with the lap over non-closure I'd done on the back so I added some rectangles of velcro.

And for a personal big win, I remembered to select the correct sew-in version, not the stick-on one.

Now they're going into the wash.

 

Thanksgiving Report

 

The Thanksgiving Table before picture. We pulled out the extra leaf to make it longer, polished it up, got out the decorations and china.

I spent so much time ironing the napkins and table cloth. Regretting the choice of 100% cotton the whole time but still loving how it tuns out on the table. Next time I'm putting it in the dryer on the steam setting first. 

DS and Korben greeting my parents as they arrived. They hadn't been over since before Covid so it was a big deal.

Here's the three of us, picture credit to mom. My mom gave us these Thanksgiving aprons from a charity that she reports, one a year until we had three. She was pretty thrilled that we were wearing them. The blue thing on the wall is a NanoLeaf which responds to noise/music/etc.

This was the one and only food picture I took unfortunately, but that turkey was awesome. Diestel Farms never fails us.

My SIL's family joined us too and brought their dog, Ginger along. She had a good time running around with Meg chasing the cats. 

The End

Hope your day was great too!

Thankful So Thankful

 

Full of thankfulness today. And soon we will be full of turkey and all the trimmings too of course. 

I'm thankful for so many things, and I was going to do a big long list, but instead I'm going to say:

 I'm Thankful For All Of It

The good, the bad, and the ugly. The sublime, the heartbreak and all the in-between.

Hope that you have a good day whether celebrating Thanksgiving or not. 

Tree Colors

I love driving around this time of year spotting the many varieties of Japanese Maple trees that people have planted in their yards. The variety of colors is always surprising, deep yellows, brilliant orange, sparkling reds. We find that ours changes a lot from year to year. I guess it depends a lot upon the temperature, the amount of water, and of course the soil composition. Around here, thanks to the redwoods we're usually on the acidic side of things. 

The tree as seen from my studio window (don't mind the dead palm fronds in the way, it just glows, especially in the foggy sun.

I couldn't help compare the color of our tree this year to some of the rusty reds I've dyed lately.

I like how different the tree looks when it's foggy or cloudy.

These fabrics really do echo the colors on the tree.

I tried taking a picture of the tree from the same spot every day or few days and plan to put them together into a little short video. More on that later.

These fabrics really do echo the colors on the tree.

I like this closeup of the wet leaves. Shows the variation of color within each leaf.

 

Best Besties Box

My surprise Pink Door subscription box arrived with a whole bunch of colorful fun stuff based around Tula Pink's Besties fabric line. Fat quarters of solids and a package of beautiful ribbons too. It's a surprise because I forget that I'm subscribed to receive one, that's on me. Just like I forget the end of movies so I can watch them again, I guess I like being surprised.

These are really pretty together. It's going to be hard to break up the package and wash them.

The solids are really nice too.

Some of the other fun stuff included: a By Annie bag pattern and blue zipper, a sparkly key chain and shiny sticker, some cute best friend labels, a pieced heart quilt pattern and a make your swatches kit.

 

The Wearable Portion

For the wearables portion of the endless dyeing content:I took some pictures of the linen/rayon that I dyed to use for the lining of my Y.E.S. coat as it was hanging up to dry the rest of the way. It's somewhat wrinkly and a bit damp from the dryer. Shoot, now that I write this, I'm realizing that I should have ironed it while it was damp.

The black pin stripe shows up nicely.

I got some good mottling and variation.

A teensy bit of red/pink splitting but not too bad overall for this sort of dye.

I also dyed this mock turtleneck tunic for myself. It has one diagonal seam (with one odd pocket) and a floaty hem. I like it, but I may overdue it.

A close up of the odd pocket.

And a shot of the tank tops and bamboo socks I also dyed. I'm all set now for dyed clothes I think.
 

2 Hits 2 Misses

 

Here are the 2 yards of Cotton Couture that I also dyed. Three of them are attempts at matching some Temperature Quilt colors. The brown one is an older mixed dye that I had in my dye box, Palomino Gold from Dharma Trading. It's quite a nice brown, but as I've now learned in class, a lot of these dyes have reds that can be problematic.

See those spots and streaks of fuchsia? That was in the dye mixture, and that one dye is harder to dissolve completely in solution, so it can streak and spot very unpredictably. Thus the lesson on how to get to a brown that you like, without using the more tempermental reds. I'm going to over dye this one to hide the ickiness of those red spots and streaks.

Yet again another beautiful pinkish purple, but not even close to the 25-30° color. These are all of my attempts to get close in one photo. Nice colors, sure, but not *that* color.

Finally got close enough for the 71-75° range. 

Here are the greens I dyed to get there.

And another close enough color match for the navy, 46-50° range. I really like the mottling I got on these one, I used a much smaller container.

Here are all the lovely blues I dyed on my way to getting there.