Garden Medallion & Kaffe's Bordered Diamonds Quilt

"Garden Medallion" quilt design by Bloomin' Workshop.  Photographed in one of my favorite areas - Fremont!  Kit from Gathering Fabric in Woodinville, Washington.  I pieced this in March 2013.  Love love love this quilt.  

"Bordered Diamonds" by Kaffe Fassett  

Photographed outside Peets in Fremont*

In October 2012 I attended a Kaffe Fassett / Brandon Mably workshop at Island Quilter on Vashon Island, Washington.  It was an all-day class where we cut fabric, talked about color, arranged fabric, and met other quilters.  Lots of fun but very stressful as well.  I don't like big groups of people.

This quilt is my result of that workshop - I expanded and made it square as a back for the Garden Medallion Quilt.  Jupiter fabric was used for the binding.

*Peets Coffee and Tea -  many fond memories of visiting this coffeehouse with my dear sister-in-law who used to work on the same block.  Isn't the fence divine?

Just an update...

I've been moderately busy... nothing out of the ordinary, just day-to-day life.

Last Thursday I did take the girls and we went down to the Seattle Asian Art Museum to see the "Garden and Cosmos" exhibit. It was beautiful and interesting and inspiring... everything that I love in art. The girls, hmm, not so interested. It is a large exhibit and while they did behave well they were more interested in the handsets to walk around and listen to the docent recording. Yes, that is educational, but it doesn't mean that they looked at the paintings for very long.

Victoria is doing a report on Mongolia for our homeschool World Geography Fair. It was originally supposed to be tonight but due to the snow is postponed until next month. She picked Mongolia, by the way. :)

Friday in the afternoon I drove down to Maple Valley to meet up with Denise, the wonder organizer, and pick up a van full of rubber stamps and craft stuff to list on eBay. I'm about 30% through. There's a lot of stamps!

I did get out on Sunday and plant more bulbs. I had two bags of fall bulbs that I put in the back yard. My plan last fall was to rip out the old weed block, remulch, split my hostas from the front yard and put some in the back, and add some evergreens along the fence. Unfortunately, I didn't get around to any of that - my yard was lucky it got any bulbs in the ground at all. So Sunday I went out and ripped out the old weed block, shoveled the mulch smooth again, and planted those last fall bulbs. I also had some new bulbs I bought at Costco on Saturday - giant canna lilies that went in the front yard so we'll see how those look. Should be fun!

MOHAI today...

This morning we headed down to the MOHAI in Seattle to meet up with some other homeschoolers for a field trip day. Most of the Seattle-area museums are free on the first Thursday of the month. It is a great opportunity to rotate through the museums and we usually time them so we catch the traveling exhibits. Unfortunately, they were changing over from one exhibit to another so it didn't take that long for us to go through the museum. I've read all the signs and the children like to play on the interactive exhibits. Brad did read signs and watched the movie about the Seattle fire.

We had lunch in the frigid lake air and then walked on the bridges through Marsh and Foster islands at the base of the 520 bridge. We made it over to the arboretum side but turned back rather than continue on - people were really cold!

The history fair is coming up and Victoria picked "Mongolia" as the country she wants to do a report on. We stopped at the library and she picked out a few books, a DVD, and two cookbooks all about Mongolia. I was really impressed with the selection there without having to reserve (and bring in) any books. Right now she's watching the Ghengis Khan movie.

I picked up the The Fine Art of Kimono Embroidery that had come in on interlibrary loan. What a gorgeous book! So many times they just show the kimono with no explanation and it's hard to see the detail because it's so far away. This one shows the kimono, then on most there is a close up detailing so you can see her detailed stitching. At the very end there is a key that lists the techniques used in each piece. It's very grand.

Most of the pieces in the Kimono Embroidery book were inspired by The Tale of Genji, a Japanese novel written hundreds of years ago. I'll confess I'd never heard of this book, but after seeing the pieces inspired by it I'll be reading the book!

Ok, Ghengis Khan movie is over so we're off to the post office to mail tax information to the accountant!

I'm still here...

Winter has settled in over the Seattle area. Rain, rain, more rain. This has been a very wet summer, fall, and hey, winter is looking like a lot of rain!

I've been busy listing stuff on eBay:

http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/burgundyelephant

There is a professional organizer in the area. She calls me when she has needlework to sell for her clients and usually I swing by and pick it up. This last batch, she had to deliver, as it wouldn't have fit in my van. So, some is listed and more is coming.

The children are doing very well, albeit Travis is coming down with something. He started sounding wheezy on Wednesday afternoon, that night wasn't the best, last night was pretty bad, so tonight will probably be terrible. The third night of croup is always the worst but then they get better. He's such a healthy child aside from RSV as a baby and the yearly croup.

Victoria is keeping up with her lessons and both girls have settled into ballet. Madeline has a new swim teacher and she's wonderful - hopefully she'll pass trout sometime this year! She's been in level three for over a year now.

I have gotten some stuff done around the house. I fixed the patch on the back wall and Brad hung the curtains. I bought a new hook rack for the red bathroom and Brad hung it. We don't have a towel rack in there now but we never used it - this way they can hang their robes and it will look nice. I also painted all the baseboards and touched up the paint but it already needs to be touched up again.

We've been listening to Alice in Wonderland and now Through the Looking Glass. We just finished Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. It was very cute and OH MY it actually taught Victoria why she shouldn't talk back. I was amazed, as that wasn't my intention behind reading the book! Victoria finished reading the Harry Potter series last night. She was thrilled and was laughing out loud at the ending. Up next for her "fun reading" is Madeline L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time series, which I'd picked up at Costco. I've been reading voraciously the last few weeks to get away from the weather. I read the Sookie Stackhouse Dead Until Dark series, Twilight and Breaking Dawn, a bunch of romance novels (whoo whoo) and am now reading The Root of Wild Madder, which is about the persian rug industry. There are rug dealers in downtown Seattle so after I finish that one I'm going to take Victoria down there and look at them closely now that I know more about them.

Yesterday we went to the Burke Museum at University of Washington. The girls had a great time and it was a lot of fun. Lots of homeschoolers there. Since Travis is ill he stayed home with Brad. The girls helped work on a button blanket and put together wildlife puzzles, aside from looking at all the exhibits.

I haven't been stitching lately - I need to finish my stocking and I have a few things that need finishing. Off I go!