Monday, March 16, 2009

Tables and boxes

Hello, hello, it's good to be back! I had a great time in California visiting my family, but came back to a loooong class I needed to maintain my professional license, and then we had to get ready for some work that's being done on our house. I hardly got to any blogs, but am starting to catch up.

Look at this wonderful woodwork!
Years ago my dad made a set of small folding tables (like TV tables) with a tumbling block pattern. They are absolutely gorgeous! I photographed them while visiting my mother. If you look carefully, you'll see that the wood grains go three different ways -- one each for the top and two sides of the block -- to give it a 3D look.
This photo is a little truer in color than the top one (the finish just glows in real life), and it also shows what I find a fascinating feature of my dad's piecing. The grains are consistent, but the shades of wood vary randomly, so a top or a side might be darker or lighter. This makes the tumbling blocks fade into 6-pointed stars in some places. In a book I once saw a quilt titled "Tumbling Blocks with Emerging Stars," and that's just what this is. What a great look! You may have to let your eyes relax a little to see the effect in the photo, but I think it does come across in the lower one if you give it a chance.
This, alas, is most definitely not a great look. We had to clear out a good part of the downstairs for the work that's being done on the house, and the remaining part is all junked up with the stuff. Of course, we had four big bookcases in the two rooms where most of the work is being done... Guess I should view this as an opportunity to clean things out!

Good to be back, hope you all are doing well.

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Acres of quilts

Saturday was Project Linus Make A Blanket Day in our area. There was a big gathering about an hour from here, but in our local area, 15 of us pieced 10 tops and got 8 others underway!
Isn't this awesome? We laid all the tops of this type together, and I climbed on a chair and took this photo (doesn't show nearly all the tops!).
One corner of the layout had a top of Sesame Street and coordinated character prints. Gives a very different look.
We made another Illini (orange and blue) string quilt, and also started on one with dotted green stripes.
I am off tomorrow for California to see DD#1, my mother, my brother and sister-in-law, and two nieces and their families. Fun! I hope you all have a great week, and I'll be in touch when I return.