Sunday, March 27, 2016

Rosita's Wedding Ring Quilt : The Odyssey Begins


My Aunt Rosita died last November.   She and my mom got me into quilting in 2004.  There's been a tradition in the family of the older generation of womenfolk offering a quilt at weddings (or sometime thereafter).  Rosita has a lot of grand children who are starting to get married now.  One wedding is set for August 2016.  The family knew she had started this Wedding Ring Quilt for that wedding, but it remained unfinished when Rosita got sick.  So her son asked my mom and me to finish it in time for the wedding ...

My first response was : What the?   Do they have any idea how difficult The Wedding Ring pattern is?  It's not for a beginner!  Then I remembered, I'm not a beginner any more.  I've been sewing for 40+ years now.  The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do it ...  Hence, this is my 2016 Challenge.

Rosita had a Go-Cut Machine on which she cut out the fabric pieces.  We'll see how that goes ...  Supposedly, that should help the pieces not to distort.


The photo above shows the blocks she had assembled before she got sick -- on the design wall.

She has several more "footballs" already together.  The question is : Do I cut out more Xes to make it bigger, or do I just go with what she's got.  It won't be a bed quilt, but something much smaller -- and still something to remember Rosita by.  All of the pieces are scraps from her long and productive quilting career.

Unca Ray gave me her old Designer I Viking sewing machine, too.  That was good timing, as my old one bit the dust at about the same time.   It's an honor to have it -- as I know some of what Rosita's produced on it through the years.  She was best known for her embroidery.  At holidays, and birthdays, anniversaries, she would embroider a card for us.  Lots of stitches on that machine already!

My New Light iPhone Case



I decided I needed a new iPhone case (yeah, the old one suddenly looked pretty "junior high").  So I thought it would be neat to use one of my own creations.  In 2015, I picked "Light" as my One Word.  It worked so well, I didn't want to give it up this year.  So I'm keeping it a while longer ...

Enter SnapMade. For a reasonable price (about $17 delivered), I have a one-of-a-kind case for my iPhone.  Maybe now I'll actually carry it around with me?

Maybe this will be the kick-in-the-pants to start my own Society6 or RedBubble or even a SnapMade shop to Liberate a bit more of my art?  This could be the year ...

Friday, March 04, 2016

Simple Pleasures in a Bowl of Cherries



Still getting used to PSE14.  Last night I spent way too much time trying to tie in my old plugins for Topaz and RadLab.  I finally got it figured out and had to try it out.  Here are the results.

Here's the recipe :



Layer 1) Background image - Original
Layer 2) Texture #3 from Sirius SDZ from Texture Pack 11
               Texture masked off of the bowl of cherries
Layer 3) RadLab : POS Lens - Divine Light - Iron Mouse - Fuzzy Navel
Layer 4) Copy Layer 3 - Topaz Impression -  Georgia O'Keefe 61%
Layer 5) Text - Zapfino Regular Font in Overlay Blend Mode
Layer 6) Copy Layer 5

That's all there is to it!