I know you want to see the pretty pictures, but I have to tell you the good news. We have another couple interested in our house!! Let the bidding begin. Tomorrow, the first couple comes for a look see. I’m not sure when the other two will show up – soon I hope. Keeping a clean studio is very difficult for me.

Today was the art group critique – actually, show and tell. I don’t think we do enough critiquing; probably because the group has gotten a little large.

First of all, those of us who made postcards for the raffle quilt showed those. They look great together and I think we can come up with something cool.

Here is some of the treat we saw:

This is Jeanie Becker’s Kimonos. The photo does not do it justice because it is encrusted with Swarovsky crystals.

Marjorie, who is one of our most gifted artist showed these three gems. The first one was done in a Charlotte Yde class. It is so fabulous. The surface design on this is just luscious.

This quilt is a play on the Shoo Fly traditional block; it is fused, however.

A value study.

Cathy was in Sue Benner’s class with me at Art Quilt Tahoe. She has done a better job than I of finishing her work!!

Fused frames:

Leftover frames:

Landscape:

Fused curved piecing.

That’s all folks. Hope you enjoyed the show.

Birthday stuff: Mr. C wants to thank all of you who wished him a happy birthday. We had a nice day. Lisa came up and we celebrated both birthdays by having dinner at The Farmhouse Inn in Forestville. A very bucolic spot in the Russian River Wine Country. Lisa is always running into someone she knows. This time it was the waitress who used to live in SF. She comped us champagne for the birthdays. We had a wonderful dinner and desserts with candles.

I love to wish people a hippo birdy instead of happy birthday so I made these postcards:

Design class homework: Tomorrow the Pointless Sisters meet after a hiatus of two months. In the afternoon we will continue with a class with Marilyn Felber. She gave us a handout with this traditional block and the structure or grid for the block:

Our challenge was to make a single block using all you know of balance, unity, variety, focus, line, color, value, contrast, pattern, texture, style, emotional impact, and general visual interest.

Well, you all know that when I saw all those points, I nearly had a heart attack! But I am committed so I forged ahead (waiting until the last minute, of course!).

When I looked at the grid this is what jumped out at me. I wanted to avoid as many triangles as possible.

I was thumbing through one of the handouts Marilyn gave us and noticed this:

Right away, I knew I was more attracted to the Japanese division of space. So I decided to use the x shape, but offset it. We were allowed to do as little or as much of the grid as we wanted. Instead of doing precision piecing, I decided to do precision fusing, a la Robbi Eklow. Here is the block that I did:

Well, it is not all that precise. I thought – this is a kiss, now I need a hug. So I made another block:

Our other challenge was to build a house and place it in some context – your ideal place, vacation place, a memory, etc. Well, I was running out of time and Sunset Magazine came with an article about the best new places to live. There was a photo of colorful houses in a row in Tucson and it became my inspiration for a very, quick and dirty house setting. It is not stitched; just collaged on the batting. It is all I have time for.

The studio is a mess, and I have to be gone all day tomorrow, and the prospective buyers are coming Wednesday morning so I better get busy and clean up.

Today is the day that Mr. C came into the world and made lots of people happy. Who couldn’t love a kid with a face like this?

He was an exceptional young man:

Catching fish for the family so they wouldn’t starve:

Digging them out from the blizzard of "52 (notice the stylin’ jacket!):

Always the snappy dresser:

As

a husband, he is a great travel companion:

Super grandpa:

A dog’s best friend:

And mine, too! (This was taken on one of our anniversaries. I had a picnic delivered to the house as a surprise.)

Happy birthday, Mr. C. You are the best thing that ever happened to me, even though I don’t say it enough, always remember this and that I love  you. (Wouldn’t it be grand if we could still fit into those clothes?)

I have a few things to talk about; you can skim through and skip the boring stuff, if  you want.

Vineyard Postcard: The 12 X 18 inch vineyard postcard is done. It was difficult to quilt because we were asked not to add a backing. It was to be finished with just batting and the top. I wanted to do some extensive thread work and it just didn’t want to go through the machine smoothly. I figured that if I put stabilizer on it, I would still have something too thick for the end result which is to be collaged to a quilted backing. We were also told not to finish the edges. So here it is:

Selling the House: The Realtor with the clients who might be interested  in our house came and previewed it on Wednesday and thought it would be a good fit. They apparently are quite wealthy (his words) and own several homes. They are In Palm Desert and coming back to the area early next week and will come to look at the house on Wednesday. Hope this works out and that they don’t need to move in before April 1 – our target date to move.

Guild Meeting:  Thursday was guild program meeting. The very talented Marcia Stein lectured and showed her quilts. Afterwards, Janet and I went out to lunch and then I got my hair cut. That makes me laugh because it has grown out quite a bit and several people at guild told me how much they like it!!

Dirty Work: I hate housework. I love to do things that mess up a house – like cooking and quilting. I used to have cleaning help, but when Mr. C retired, he said he didn’t want to deal with cleaning people coming in and he would do it. Well, as you can imagine; this has not been a good arrangement. We are now paying the price. Today, I tackled the ovens. I have an electric convection wall oven. This one is a no-brainer; press clean and press start and three hours later – a clean oven. I did do the racks with oven cleaner. The other oven is in a six-burner, stainless steel Dynasty gas range. I do my messiest cooking in there. So I had to use the dreaded oven cleaner. It looks pretty good.

While I tackled the ovens, Mr. C pressure washed the front walk and drive-way and the patios in the back. Yesterday, he took all the extra stuff from the house to a storage unit. We laugh when we look around at our bare house. Mr. C says it looks like we bought a big house and then couldn’t afford to furnish it!

Political Rant:  Thanks to list mom, Diane, for taking care of the political rant post for me. She has an excellent post about the increasing incursions on our civil rights.

In the Mail: My bag of stuff buddy, Linda Cline, sent me this postcard.

When we did the bag o’ stuff challenge on the Quiltart list, I received her bag and made the Technicolor Sunflowers quilt for her. She wrote an article for American Quilter about the challenge, and I believe it is in the latest issue. So I will have another one of my creations in a publication – yeah! – Thanks, Linda. And thanks for the beautiful card.

To Do: My next activity will be to watch the Book of Daniel. Love the show: those are my peeps!! Tomorrow, I want to get caught up with some homework for my Pointless Sister’s class and perhaps continue the next Color and Composition exercise. Mr. C is out of town again. He will be back tomorrow night. His birthday is Sunday and he told me I was not to post any pictures of him. Do you think I will listen to him? I have some really cute pictures of him when he was a kid in Indiana.

Yesterday, after a week of purging and cleaning, our Realtor arrived with his house staging expert, Francine. OMG! I hardly recognize my own home. We have relocated several pieces of furniture to the garage which will go into a storage unit. Much of our art work has been relocated or banished. She really like most of my quilts, but some I have been asked to take down and possibly display in the studio.  Here is what is gone: a lovely game table and four chairs from the living room, three bar stools from the kitchen/breakfast room, the desk in the hallway, a side table in the bedroom and she wanted us to remove the credenza in the breakfast room, but we balked at that. It is very heavy and very functional – I really need it. We have to remove all of our personal family photos. She says "We want it to look like a model home and it will pay off in several thousands of dollars!" So we have to accomplish all of the transformations by late next week so that they can film for the virtual tour which will be available on line or on a free cd that prospects can pick up at our house.

Now, here is the kicker. Today the Realtor called and said that he has a weekly breakfast meeting with other Realtors and they exchange listings and try to match up with buyers. He thinks he has a buyer for our house at full price. I am so hoping that this works out. He worked out a deal like this for our assoc. priest at church.

Anyway, I have some quilting work to do. So tonight, I messed things up in my studio a little. I talked my art quilt into making a raffle art quilt for the guild; there will also be a traditional quilt. We decided to do Postcards from Sonoma County with viticulture, vineyards and wineries as our subjects. We will make postcards that measure 12 inches by 18 inches and choose a few to be collaged on a background. So I feel vested in this and want to get mine done by next week. I started mine in Sue Benner’s class. I felt it needed a focal point so I added a building in the background and a hot air balloon. The balloon is not fused down and does not have the basket yet. But here is a photo of what I have done tonight. It has no quilting done. It is still just fused.

I’m off to bed. Have to get up early and clean up my mess and get ready for the preview. Wish us luck!