Hubby's Flourishing Palms

Hubby is a chef. Well, he's my resident chef. The man absorbs TV's food channel and then comes up with his own creative twists for preparing typical foods. Occasionally I'm his sous chef. I always have kitchen duty.

This is a from-scratch 14" pizza he made: homemade crust (healthy, with whole wheat flour and flaxseed), ground pork sausage, and fresh toppings, including my favorite, cilantro.

Bless his flourishing palms. 

Back to Quilt-y Stuff

I've been working on my Snowflake Medallion quilt (SnoMed, for short) for several weeks now. This is back-basted hand applique, and I'm enjoying every moment... lots of moments... working on it while listening to audiobooks. I have listened to several books including the "Shop on Blossom Street" (about knitting) series. Now I'm on book three, "Eclipse" of the "Twilight" vampire/werewolf series by Stephanie Meyer. What entertaining listening, even if the series was written for teens. I loved the Harry Potter series too.

Anyway, I'm tickled to have finished the center medallion. I cut that background piece to a 21-1/2" square per the instructions, and added the first triangle border. So far, so good.

Next, in the white triangles created by the addition of the first border, there's more applique.

Here I've pencil-outlined the shapes on the back of the fabric.

You can see this may be a bit of a challenge to applique as one of the motifs covers several seams.

Still, I'm very much liking the design, and I think it will be even prettier when the piecing includes the aqua- and teal-colored prints I've selected.

Oh, and did you notice the perfectly round, one centimeter purple circles in the daisy center? Those are thanks to a gem of a friend, the ingenious and talented Down Under Di. She's also making SnoMed, and took the time to write a lovely blog tutorial for making tiny, perfect circles using sequins (of all things!). Be sure to check it out.

With flourishing palms,

Windy Iowa

On Saturday, while driving on Interstate 80, from western Iowa back to central Iowa, we were surprised to see how many wind turbines - 102 of them! - dot the hilly landscape near Walnut, Iowa, in Pottawattamie County.

An Iowa Energy website states: "Iowa is the third largest producer of wind energy behind California and Texas."

Who knew!?

These photos don't adequately convey how huge these turbines are.

• The tower is 275 feet (83 meters) tall.
• Each rotor is 115 feet (35 meters) long.

That means that from the ground to the top of a rotor is 390 feet...longer than an *American football field which is 360 feet (109 meters).

*I say "American" in deference to my Aussie friends who know footy. A footy field is 135 to 185 meters long.

In any case, they're big! And where they're located is the windiest place in Iowa. 

And here you thought it was me...

Flourishing Iowa

Hubby has always wanted to visit the Loess Hills (pronounced "Luss") in western Iowa. It's a 200-mile track of land running roughly north to south along the Missouri River valley.

Since he's the birthday boy, we took off, spending two days and an overnight in the Pisgah, Preparation Canyon (learned it's closed due to 2008 tornado damage), and Mondamin Units. The area is about two hours west of us.

It's odd to think that we've visited Australia and driven Victoria's Great Ocean Road, and we're at home in Iowa visiting places we've never been. We have beautiful vistas in our own state!

Our cabin in the woods (no running water) was at Loess Hills Hideaway. While I enjoyed being here, appreciating the absolute quiet - well, except for the birds - and I entertained myself with bird sightings, this wasn't birthday boy's cup of tea. Then, when it began raining at 2 a.m., being here became less fun.

Our gravel road drive back to highway 183 gave us lovely morning views.

Below: From the Missouri River valley, looking back toward the Loess Hills, and a newly-emerging, healthy crop of Iowa corn.

Wild game was quite evident. Deer, turkey vultures.... 

...and guinea hens.

This little town - and I mean little - Orson, Iowa has a sense of humor. Below the population 11 sign it says: "Despite the high cost of living, it's extremely popular."

Also in Orson is this abandoned, one-room schoolhouse used from 1905 to 1953.

I managed to do some quilting too. I blind-stitched down a binding to finish a Stitchin' Mission quilt, and stopped at a quilt shop, Prairie Star Quilts in Elkhorn, Iowa. Don't you have to buy fabric when you're traveling?

T-Shirt Quilt

A friend and former Stitchin' Mission student, asked if I might be able to finish a t-shirt quilt she'd started for her daughter's high school graduation. Kim had already fused interfacing to the t-shirts and cut them out. Sashing was cut out too.

So for the past couple days, machine-quilting was set aside to piece this t-shirt and batiks 62" X 74" quilt top, piece a backing, and prepare binding.

Though the nine t-shirts made a square quilt, a rectangle quilt was desired. With Kim's permission, I played with the layout. I cut up an extra block of an orange tie-dyed t-shirt to make cornerstones. From my own stash I added the lavender sashing and border, and orange border.

Using my sewing machine alphabet, I embroidered this...

Happy graduation day, KayLynn, Valley High School class of 2009!

More Machine Quilting

It's a machine-quilting extravaganza! As I've mentioned, once I get started machine-quilting, I keep going until I'm caught up. Three quilts have been basted for several months...full of every single size-one safety-pin I own! It's time to get these babies quilted.

Back in February I pieced and basted Bonnie Hunter's "String X" available on her website: www.Quiltville.com. I love that the pattern used up so many scraps of bright kid-prints that I collected....discarded by students in Stitchin' Mission classes.

I'm using two rings from my set of 12, 1/2"-wide lucite rings to draw circles - sorta like the Target store bullseye logo - with a washout marker. I'm getting good practice at free-motion quilting a smooth circle! 

And BTW, that set of lucite rings is one of the best quilting purchases I've ever made. I use them often.

Since I generally try to follow the basic quilting "rule" (or strong suggestion) that for geometric piecing, the quilt pattern should be curves, between the circles I'm quilting another wavy design. I first drew this shape onto parchment paper and then cut it from template plastic.

Just stitchin' away...