One Block Art wearable art

Here's a vest made by Darla Beverage of Gray, TN.  Though the vest is lovely, the lady herself is even lovelier.

One Block Art Again

The star quilt was made by Lori Pulaski.  She is in the Air Force and pilots those big tankers that refuel planes in flight.  One of our military heroes.

 

More One Block Art

I have to do something while the iron heats up, so here are a couple more quilts.  Both of these are by Lucy Terry from Johnson City, TN.  Don't you love the way she offsets the design and breaks into the border?  Of course it helps a tad when you have a Ph. D. in textiles.

Lucy, your edumacashun ain't been wasted. (sic to the nth?)

Enjoy!

One Block Art: It's an addiction!

  I finished my One Block Art Cross and it looks amazingly like the Electric Quilt image you see on the right.

I started this idea for a class in the late 90's when a friend gave me some watercolor squares and I was looking for an idea of how to use them that wasn't watercolor, if that makes any sense.

Plus, the squares were already cut, and you know how labor intensive that can be!  And how much we like being able to just jump right into a project.

Oh, and I am too cheap to throw some things away.  But mostly too cheap to throw away fabric because I work scrappy. I've made a bazillion blocks and have been amazed at what others have done in classes.  Here are a few:

The piece with the incorporated black border was made by Ann Moore from Kingsport, TN, the the one with the red border was made by Eloise Kominek of Johnson City, TN.

Aren't these terrific?  More student work to come.  I'm stitching on a Christmas project today.  You can see what it looks like in my very first blog post.

Granny's got a brand new ride

After being married for a zillion years, I finally goofed and learned to do something that I'd avoided for years by professing ignorance (easier done than said). 

I've also practiced wedded faithfulness. 

But that can only work for so long.  

I learned to mow the grass. 

I've fallen in love with Mr. John Deere.

Yessiree.  Green and yellow make me tingly all over.

We've got a very hilly acre or so to mow.  That means, dang it, that there are slopey, hilly dirt things outside in the yard that are just covered with grass.   On a riding mower, you can have more fun with them than you can on the Wild Mouse at the fair, and when you fall off, the hospital is much closer.  And you don't have to fill in an incident report or worry about suing the fairgrounds.   Much less complicated.

I can have all the fun of the outdoors just, well, outdoors.  Even without liquor and guns.

And provide great entertainment for my sweetie as I run laps here and there giggling and screaming.  Giggling when I get up some downhill speed and screaming when I get some tilty action.  That's so much better than, say,  cleaning toilets because my sweetie doesn't find watching me do that demonstrates any entertainment value.  But if he'd watch closer he might get some educational value out of it, if you catch my drift.

A kid on a go cart could have even more fun.  Heywaitaminute, maybe I shouldn't say that because it might give the grandkids some ideas.  

Lemme think about that for a minute.  Excuse me.

Okay.  I'm back.  The go cart idea is a great one and I can write about it because the grandkids aren't old enough to read yet.  Or at least they don't have internet privileges yet.  

Okay, the scent of gasoline is out of my nostrils.  Time to go spritz with some estrogen and Chanel and turn back into a southern lady.  Maybe that Title needs to be in Caps.  

Southern Lady.  

Gracious,  using caps looks so much more genteel and prissy, doncha think?

Mimi

Southern Lady.  Yeah. Right.

Channel Ambition and Fun with Paisley and Ronstadt

Working on quilts in my studio is greatly enhanced by cacophonous music, particularly the songs by Brad Paisley and Linda Ronstadt.  Call me crazy, call me an aging baby boomer or say my taste in music is just plain dated (and don't do it when I can reach you) , but it's great to listen to songs with words that you can clearly discern and are not SHOUTED to the point of excruciating distortion.

So if anyone looks in my studio window and sees me "juking" about the room and singing loudly and off-key to the tunes being emitted from my computer, just relax.  It isn't that I have taken psychotropic/hallucinogenic drugs, it's just that this 50-something babe knows how to get her groove on.

 

Thinking of Daddy

Earlier today, I was stacking some quilts as I was readying for a speaking engagement that will take place in a couple of weeks.  One of the quilts in the pile is a very old one made of rectangles of wool in very masculine, dark colors.

I was told that the rectangles of wool are tailor samples used by my grandfather, Claude Milton Jackson, Sr., who, for some period of time, had a store named "Jackson's Cheap Dry Goods".  It was located in Chester, Georgia in the last part of the 1800's and the first of the 1900's.  He would show customers the samples and he'd order suits for them.  

Wonder when he stopped being a merchant and turned to teaching.  He was a teacher when he met and fell in love with my grandmother, one of his students.  The rascal.

Anyway, the quilt rectangles are sewn together and trimmed in bright briar stitching that is done by hand.  For years I thought my grandmother had made it, but was later told that one of their house servants made it.  huh.

I think of Daddy when I see this wonderful quilt and since he died, I guess I grieve a little too....happy and sad thoughts.  Gawd.  I loved my Daddy. And that love stays constant. There have been so many times that I really have needed to see and talk to him in the 20 years he's been gone.  

Soon after he died I dreamed that I answered the door and found him standing there and he looked at me, smiled, and said, "I'm all right, sweetheart." 

That helped somehow.

With Father's Day approaching, our thoughts naturally turn to our fathers.  If you still have yours, hold him and tell you that you love him. And give him a chance to tell you that he loves you.  If you don't still have him, try to remember that when Daddies love us, the love doesn't vanish when they are gone. 

Happy Father's Day, Daddy.  I love you.