Frais Bourrage - Ooh La La

Crushed strawberries ready to be made into jam.

Making jam is a hot, fast-paced job. Having your area set up before beginning is essential.

Jars and lids ready to be sterilized.

Sixteen jars of beautiful strawberry jam!

All planned activity went by the wayside today when my DH decided we needed to make strawberry jam. We'd frozen lots of the fruit last year - still uneaten. Jam seemed the logical solution.

Plans went awry when we couldn't find enough jars. Earlier this year I'd gone on a rampage giving tons of things to our church for a yard sale. Among the plunder - most of our canning jars. We also couldn't find our ancient waterbath canner or our largest stainless steel pan - the one almost too big for any burner on our stove. Also lost, our jar lifter - essential when dealing with boiling hot liquids!

We finally found enough jars and made do with a large LeCreuset pan for the strawberries. It proved a little small when the jam came to a boil, but we caught it just in time. We ended up using the bottoms of a 35 year old pressure canner and an equally old Charleston rice cooker for the waterbath.

When I was a kid, it was very typical for midwestern farm families to have a canning set-up in their basements - with at least a sink and a stove. We also had a refrigerator and two chest freezers.

My parents canned and froze produce from their huge garden all summer for as long as I can remember, giving our family of six enough food to last through the winter and into the spring. Seeing the long shelves where Ball jars full of colorful peaches, green beans, tomatoes, beets, pickles and many other foods were stored is still one of my favorite childhood memories.

Making Progress and Search for Fabric

Border blocks.

Anyone have this fabric? The polka dots look as if they've been finger-painted on and are just slightly smaller than a dime.

Shown are a few of the just completed wedding quilt border blocks. I wanted to use as many different fabrics as possible, and chose many shades, tones and types of blues, oranges, greens and yellows. My plan was to use a wonderful polka dot fabric as the first border, but do not have enough. When I bought the fabric I just bought a yard to add to my dot collection - isn't that always the way? I'm fairly certain it is a 2001 P&B called Graphics although I just bought it this April. An all-day search on the net and calls to quilt shops for more yielded nothing. Anyone out there have a yard or so they'd be willing to sell me? LMK.

Note added Friday afternoon: I have a piece of the same design but in white with black polka dots. The selvedge reads: Graphics by P&B Textiles 100% Cotton Copyright 2001 It is definitely not a batik but a printed cotton. It's much more evident on the white/black than black/blue.

Click on photos for a closer view.

Creative Exercise

A Warholized photo created on Flickr. I think the automated color choices are really horrible!

Since no two Warhols are the same, I attempted a reshuffle and then PhotoShop with equally bad colors. I do like the center black and white and the top center blue, however.

I was less displeased with the image created in PhotoShop, but think it needs a ton more contrast.

Credit for original photo: Suzie Guerrant avocadophoto.com

Since my stitching fell through today, I decided to play once more on Flickr. I Warholized a photo of my son taken by his wife Suzie on a trip to the Linville Gorge. The colors assigned by the program were really horrible, imho. So I then went into PhotoShop and tried to get an image less jarring by using different adjustments. The results were awful once more. My final decision was to desaturate the color. I should have ramped up the contrast first, but this will do for tonight.

Light at the End of the Tunnel Continued

I finished the last of the 44 blocks last night. Yes!!! Most of today was spent working on the border layout. I soon decided this was not the day to be in the studio trying to create. My mojo just wasn't working. What began as a fun auditioning process of additional border fabrics soon became an exercise in frustration. The solution should have been obvious from the beginning: I need more fabric. So it's off to Mary Jo's in the morning to find a substitute for the originally chosen polka dot, since I ran out of it. It's amazing how much better I felt once I decided I didn't have to continue struggling with something which just wasn't working.

Light at the End of the Tunnel

I'm down to the last eight border blocks for the wedding quilt! Although I'd planned to be finished by now, I've run out of lots of blue and orange fabrics and am having to scrounge through my stash. This is a very scrappy quilt, so I'm using as many different fabrics as possible. And each block takes me 30 minutes to sew, after I've chosen the cloth. Additionally, I do not have an orange the right value for the second border - another roadblock.

My DH took pity on me after seeing the pix I took of the rubbing plates yesterday and will reshoot them for me. And yes - I did know to take them out of the plastic bags first but I was in a rush and losing the light. So.............

Such Fun!

Four sets of the rubbing plates found through an educational supply catalog.
My apologies for the reflection of the packaging. I'll try to reshoot later.
Click on the photos to get a closer view.

When my nephew and his family were here recently, we went to Discovery Place - a science museum in Charlotte. The little girls had a great time exploring in one area where I found several interactive dinosaur rubbing plates. I wanted to buy my own but alas, the gift shop did not carry them.

My nephew's wife found not only the dinosaur plates but several other sets while browsing through an education supply catalog. Thanks, Lisa! The sets and the number of plates in each are: bugs (6), leaves (16), flowers (16), insects (16) , ocean fish (6), flowers (16) and dinosaurs(6). The bug set has each creature in a setting such as flowers or leaves, while the insect set has no ornamentation.

The plates are recommended for ages 5+ and come with fun text such as: Learning about insects has never been so exciting! I can't wait to try them. I really could have used the plates several years ago when I created a quilt entitled "The Fly - Ode to Jeff Goldblum."

The Fly - Ode to Jeff Goldblum
22" x 21"
Commercial along with repurposed, hand-dyed and overdyed fabrics, rubber stamping, embroidery and photo transfer. Silk screened fly fabric from Friday Fabrics.

Detail #1


Detail #2

Subversion Anyone?

Whew! That was a close one. While several of my family/friends think I'm an extreme left-wing activist (only most of the time), I thought for a moment yesterday that Rupert Murdoch had taken over the blogosphere. My blog (and apparently thousands of others) were charged with being spam blogs and were locked. Blogger wrote that, after an investigation, they hoped my blog would be unlocked within TWENTY DAYS!!!! Are they kidding me?!?!? Twenty days is a lifetime in blog land. I did check with members of Quiltart, an internet group, and received lots of responses from those who were likewise hit. Seems the groups most largely targeted were artists and politicos. Oh...........now I know what happened. I used the words Andy Warhol and Velvet Underground in yesterday's post. Oh my. How scary is that?

Pretending to be Andy Warhol

Look what fun you can have with a regular photograph! I feel like I could join the Velvet Underground.

One goal I have for the summer is to become a lot more skilled at PhotoShop. Tomorrow is August 1 and I haven't even opened my book! But we have been traveling so I'll use that as a flimsy excuse.

I had run across a couple of cool features on Flickr just before we left for MN, so decided to try them last night. Although I never could get Mosaic to upload, I did transfer a photo into a very cool Andy Warhol look-alike. To try this yourself, go to: http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/

A Love of Trains

Matthew spotted this hobo art on a box car near the National Railroad Museum and Hall of Fame in Hamlet NC.

Here he looks out a doorway of the famed Norfolk and Western 611 steam engine.

Great Smokey Mountain Railroad in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Dillsboro NC.

Photo Credit: Bill Guerrant - About 1991

My DH began taking our son on train rides when he was very young. They've ridden behind some very well-known vintage and/or now retired engines all over the southeast. Matthew fell in love with all things train related, read everything he could find about them, subscribed to Model Railroader magazine for years, joined a railroading club and of course had model train setups - both HO and a G-scale LGB. His knowledge was vast, especially for a little kid. His letter pointing out an error on an engine identification was published by the editors of Modern RR! No one knew he was only 10 at the time.

In addition to developing a love for seeing and riding trains, Matthew also loved to draw and photograph them. Lately he's been scanning old negatives from his files and posting the pictures on an internet site. Please permit me a little shameless brag here: He began about two weeks ago and has already had over 800 hits on some of his photos! To view them, go to:

http://www.railpictures.net/showphotos.php?userid=28734

or click on Great Train Photos in my links list in the right sidebar.

Today in the Studio

I had barely enough of a wonderful polka dot fabric for the first border on the wedding quilt. Click on the picture for a closer view.

My time in the studio was brief, as I spent most of the day PhotoShopping Minnesota pictures, making folders and burning DVDs. But I did manage to get the first border onto the New York Beauty. I wish I had purchased more than one yard from Randy's Quilt Shop in Greensboro but alas, it is all gone. Why are my favorite fabrics always polka dots?

I took the piece to Greensboro yesterday and put it on the kids' bed. I've decided the quilt needs one more border before the outer pieced blocks are sewn on. I have not found the perfect fabric in my stash, so will have to make a trip to Mary Jo's. I have to be very disciplined when I go to Gastonia (Mary Jo's location) as the temptations there are great: Hobby Lobby, Marshall's, a couple of good thrift shops, Michael's and lots more - not to mention Tony's Ice Cream Parlor on Franklin Blvd. Yipes!

Birthday Celebration

We spent yesterday afternoon with Matthew, presenting him with several small birthday gifts along with the always appreciated coin. Matthew and Suzie, we and several of their friends gathered for a delicious dinner at Pho Hien Vuong in Greensboro that evening. The food and conversation were great. A bit later, Suzie's brother Rob and his new puppy Luna (sorry, I forgot to get a shot of the little fuzz ball) came by the house to join in the festivities.

As always, our visit was much too short but wonderful. A few moments from the day are pictured below.

The Happy Birthday crowd:
Shawn, Matthew, Suzie, Dave, Riley, Rachel, William, Ellen and Jen.

Rob, Suzie, Matthew

Birthday Boy and Darby
We're always amazed at how docile and gentle Darby is, despite her size as a Great Dane. Matthew says she's "All bark."

Matthew and Suzie avocadophoto.wordpress.com were in Buffalo NY for a wedding shoot recently. This great pic of the photographers was taken by Suzie's Uncle Dan July 12 but I wanted to include it here.

Photo Credit: Dan Stalter

Matthew's Magical Birthday

The first time ever I saw your face - July 29, 1979

Today is our son's birthday. He is 29 on the 29th. We'll join him, Suzie and friends in a few hours for a wonderful celebration at his favorite Vietnamese restaurant.

Happy Birthday, Matthew!!!!!
Love you forever - Mom and Pops.