23 posts tagged “flowers”

To those who thought I may have dropped off the face of the earth.... I really think I did!!! It has been over 2 months since my last post. I didn't even have time to keep up with much of my email or anything.

Since last checking in, I finally have found life outside the greenhouses and much prefer to keep things that way.  So much for part time..... The job did help me get the money to attend QSDS a few weeks ago, and QBL next month. The month of May and first part of June were filled with just about every day at the greenhouses. Thankfully, the worst is over, and I am hoping that more of the flowers and plants will still sell there. It was super stressful, making all the purchasing decisions for someone else. Also scary was being the only one who knew what needed to be done. Good thing for fast learners, I still have a bit of teaching to do before working out of that job, but next year, I will not "live" in a greenhouse again.

Well, here we are a month from my last post. I have felt like the greenhouse job has sucked me away from everything else. There are now plants in 3 greenhouses- all types of annuals and perennials, and even a few veggie plants (many more arriving this week). Quilt wise, I have not done too much, even after a quilt retreat. The first week of planting our new babies in the greenhouses really took it's toll on my body and brain. I had been feeling really lucky as far as the fibro goes, but that ended with a major crash last week. After spending 4 more hours than planned at the greenhouses the Monday after my retreat, I spent most of Tuesday in bed.  I kind of felt like our cats- pretty lazy- here is a photo of my Baby Cat sleeping on a pillow on the couch. I thought she was going to fall off. The rest of the week was spent in the greenhouses.

I should have taken photos by now, but have not used my camera down there, yet. I do have to take it with me so I can get some shots of some of the blooming plants. There are beautiful Aquilegia (Columbine) flowers in blue, pink and white that are calling to be photographed.  The photo below is of a Bog Lily in my indoor pond that bloomed a week ago. The flowers look like huge, white spiders (missing a couple legs).

The greenhouse startup is so different from when we owned the business. We used to start most of our own seeds, and divide and take cuttings of many other plants. This season, things are being started from basically nothing- no equipment, plants, seeds, or enough time. We are starting from rooted cuttings, pre-started plants, and seedlings in plugs. It's like Christmas, opening all the boxes- some with tiny baby plants tumbled out of their trays (I really think FedEx and UPS bowl with the boxes). Some babies come in blooming. One tray of violas were 1" tall with full sized blooms- I love pansies and Violas!! Some of the plants we purchased were half grown to use in hanging baskets, and planters to be ready for Mother's day in less than a month. The other big worry is how many people will come, since the business was closed for over a year. Lots of stress!!

Back to quilts..... I did accomplish a little at my retreat, I did a piece for the FFFC Recycled challenge, and did some samples for a class I will be teaching late this month. I also got an idea for a larger piece on the last full day, and had to be sure I took photos and scribbled ideas in my notebook for when I can get back to it.

This is the Challenge quilt. Made from scraps found in our treasure pile we have at every retreat. Everyone brings scrap strips, chunks, and pieces of fabrics they won't use, and we hunt for the perfect treasures for projects in the pile. In this, there is a piece of a blanket binding, batik strip, a bit of flannel, and assorted other fabrics, including the light green fabric with the little sheep on it. I stitched the background pieces with decorative stitches, then added some sparkle tulle in blue and green (only new items- from Wal-Mart remnant bin). There are some thread and fabric snips trapped under more tulle, and then the flowers in the foreground were added. These are made from candy wrappers. Hershey Kisses, Dove eggs, and a Cadbury Egg. I love chocolate (bet you never guessed :) ), and found that it really slows down the eating process when you want to keep the wrappers intact. The flower petals and leaves are all wrappers backed with Wonder Under and fused on. The stems are from a plastic, raffia like stuff that was on a package I received. I also added some painted dryer sheets, and a brown paper towel I used to dry my hands one day. Amazing what can be done with next to nothing new. I also made 2 5" square pieces, below. They also have the candy wrappers for petals and leaves, with more scraps, paper toweling and dryer sheet used. These were fun to put together, I even made a red flower from the red part of  the egg wrapper, and used the chick, too. Here is a photo of what I had on my design wall before I had to pack things up. I am not sure just how it will end, but finally an idea began to gell by the end of the retreat. I really felt ripped off by my body, I had to take naps each day, and my brain still was mush most of the time.

Well, back to things greenhouse- opening day is May 1, with grand opening with all the splash is May 10. Wow, time is really flying and I am really having to tell myself not to over do, and to delegate. I just need a few more bodies to delegate to, though.

Until next time...... hopefully with greenhouse photos.

It's amazing how fast 3 weeks can fly by!! Just after posting 3 weeks ago, I was hired by the new owners of our former greenhouse. They are starting things all over due to our failure over a year ago, and most of the equipment, etc. was sold off. The new owners have transformed the storage barn into a gift shop- big change, there will be a flower shop in the main garage building, and some of the greenhouses will be full of plants again. Much of my time has been spent pouring over plant catalogs and availability lists and planning what will be needed to get things going again.

Ken and I did take a couple days off to spend a day at the Philadelphia Flower Show. We live just under 4 hours from there, and Ken's daughter lives in Philly now. We were able to see all of our granddaughters, while seeing the flowers, and stayed over night before coming home. It's been a while since we've seen the girls-  the two youngest aren't very little any more. It was a very long day, with the ride down, then walking through the show till it ended that night. Here are a few pictures.

This was a great display- I'd love my back yard to look like this... A girl can dream

Here is a photo of a display that used a tuba for a water fountain, the rest of the brass section was used for another fountain. The theme was based on New Orleans and Jazz.

I still feel like I am trying to crawl out of a hole, but I am slowly getting back to quilting more. I am only a month late with this quilt. I have done this for the FFFC group. Last month's challenge was to depict your home or dream home, or other architecture, along with showing perspective in a quilt. The idea is to have a piece done in a week. I really only worked on this less than a week, but it took a long time to get in the frame of mind needed to actually do it.

This shows the first steps I took in creating "My Dream House". I certainly was not going to do a quilt based on our trailer- not very inspirational. I used a house that is actually worse than the thing I live in as inspiration. The house in the photo is located on the road we live on. I drive by it quite often, and sometimes have wondered what it must have looked like many, many years ago. Being the flower nut I am, of course, the weeds in the photo were going to become beautiful flower beds. I used an enlargement of the photo to trace the main parts of the house, as shown above. I used a piece of my painted fabric for the sky.

Well I finally finished my Flower Power Challenge, and ended up with 2 quilts. In my previous post, I showed a couple photos of flowers and what I had done with them so far. Labor Day Monday, I got into the quilting groove and stayed there for a few days, and ended up finishing both quilts. The first one used the layout of flower photos from the previous post. I had originally wanted to use my sunprints with the photos, but they didn't look right together, so I ended up doing one quilt with the photos, and one quilt with sunprints. I decided to use fused crazy patch in both, so I started the day by making new fabric from scraps and bits from past year's projects.

Above are photos of the process of making my crazy patch fabric. I have been fusing directly to batting in the past, and satin stitch seaming the pieces, but did not want to do the seaming that way, so I fused the pieces to a piece of Wonder Under backing paper. When I apply the fusible to large pieces of fabric, I keep the backing paper after I remove it, it has many uses. Here I am using leftover pieces of different fabrics in whites, creams, beiges, and pale colors. All fabrics have the Wonder Under fusible on them. I cut the pieces into random slices, and start fusing them to the backing paper. (be sure to only use teflon sheet, parchment, or fusible backing paper, so it will peel off when done) I used my new Clover Mini Iron II this time. It worked quite well, it fused enough to keep things where I wanted them, while saving electricity and not heating up the room like my 1500 watt regular iron does (not what you want to do for hours on a hot summer day). I overlapped each piece over it's neighbors for a secure "seam", and layed them down randomly, trying not to have the same fabric side by side, until the paper was covered (it takes a long time). When done, I used my regular iron to be sure all the pieces were fused very well to each other.

Well, It's been a super busy summer, and it is coming to an end too fast.  I have definitely found that 7 shows and 1 family reunion in 8 weeks is too much. After almost a week since my last show, I am beginning to try to catch up on things.

One project I need to work on is my piece for the "Flower Power" quiltart challenge. We each took a "test" that told us what flower we are, and are making a quilt to represent that flower. I came out an Echinacea. I have always grown them at the greenhouses, but only 2 years ago, started to put them into my home gardens. The most common color for these are shades of pink to rosy purple and  white, thus the common name- Purple Coneflower. Now days, there are new and fun colors. This was a stretch for me, they now are available in shades of apricot, yellow, orange, deep magenta and more. These are colors that I have not allowed into my gardens very much. The great thing about the orange shades is that they all have undertones of purple, or lavender to purple petal backs. Thanks to the self seeding of my purple and white ones, I have a range of shades from pale pink to rosy purple. The others I have are apricot, orange, and lavender with white speckled leaves.

I took photos of each one of them as they began to bloom, and got good shots of all except for the white (it seems to really attract bugs that ate the petals off), and the double flowered one that bloomed during a weekend away, and began to fade by the time I returned.

My first thought was to use the photos in some way in the quilt. I also spent a couple afternoons

painting and printing some fabrics I thought would also work. A photo of my "summer paint studio" is here. It is amazing how you can make a weedy garden and planters look great by cropping out the bad parts at the right angle. I usually keep my home out of pictures, but you get to see part of it. My show canopy works great for the shade I need to work under beside the front door, then I take the fabric on my boards to the paint table in the sun. I keep my paint supplies in the plastic drawer unit, and the work "table" is a 6' wire closet shelf attatched to the wall at the back and supported in the front by a pair of 3' shelves on each end. (one advantage of no siding- no worries of paint splatters on it or screws into it- but it is ugly)

Here are the sunprint panels I ended up with. I was trying to include all the flower colors in the paint. These may look muddier than they are in person. I like the apricot and purple tones that showed up. I also used some super sparkle paint, so they have some shimmer. I found that if I cut apart the Echinacea flowers, I could place them to look like they do in the garden , as viewed from the

side.
Here is a piece of salted fabric that I did using the same colors as the sunprints. It doesn't look like it in these photos, but Sunprint 1 has the same coloring as this piece. I like what the salt did on this, along with some running without blending of the colors. This photo may be a tad bright.

This is a photo of an Echinacea relative- Rudbeckia Herbstonne, or Autumn Sun. I used petals from a few of these flowers in the sunprint panels.  The blue flowers are from a Caryopteris or Blue Mist shrub. I like the yellow against the bright blue in the garden.  I'm amazed that the shrub is blooming because it  got knocked over by deer during the winter-  It's a bit crooked at the base, but  not noticed now.

Here is one possible layout of the photos I printed onto fabric. I used cotton for this piece. As you can see by the photo's name, it is the 3rd layout I did on the design wall and photographed. I am finding this helps me a lot since I can't get far enough away from the wall to see it at a distance. I have been using the camera more and more as a tool this year. It has helped me to make a lot of creative decisions. I'm not sure exactly what will be in the spaces between the photos, maybe more of my fused crazy patch in ivories and whites. I'll post more as it continues in the process. I was originally going to use the sunprints and/or salted fabric above with the photos, but they don't look great together.

Ok, these are a few Echinacea flowers past their prime for good photos, but I took them for a reason. The left photo is of the variety Double Decker. You can see where the extra petals came out from the cone center of the flower- real neat! I just didn't get a good photo when in bloom while I was away.

My original idea for these photos was to use them in another piece with birds in it- probably Goldfinches, which love the ripened seeds of these flowers. Good thing we don't live in town or near the road, I don't keep these deadheaded so the birds can have the seeds. Looks a bit messy, but seeing happy birds here is worth it.

Well, back to the above photos..... After putting them into my photo program, I began playing around a bit, and stumbled on some really interesting things. I used the outline feature in the program, and the result was something that got more ideas flowing.

See the top 2 right photos here, This is what happened after I played with them, and printed them onto fabric. I also did the same thing with the other photos of good flowers that I had. The resulting colors and "coloring book" feel to them I think will work with the fabrics I painted. Not sure where I will end up, but I will keep you posted.  Now to find some more Wonder Under  to get more fabric ready for the printer.

Final photo for this post. I took this this morning as the fog was rising from the Susquehanna. Towanda is completely blanketed, and you can see just the very top of one mountain. The fog was even hiding the far trees a bit. I also wished I had better zoom in this camera, there is a flock of geese in the far field just past the gap in the hedge row. This may be inspiration for another "Blue Skies" type piece, for which I used the view from here as it's inspiration. "Blue Skies"