So what name do I give this quilt? Why Dapper Dan of course.
I have to relearn how to quilt FMQ,, since I’m not fighting with the quilt keeping it in place!
I had fun with the quilting. I tried to make a cohesive spiral behind the boy, it’s a little wonky, but fine for free hand. I did use my walking foot, which created the drop on the fabric, I do need to wash this, so it might just pucker up a little more.
Just the boy.
Close up of the head and the swirls in the background.
The legs and the more angular quilting on the bottom.
Boy and girl together. I’m not sure why the girl is slightly smaller. I like that behind her I have a diamond and behind the boy I have the spiral. I also rounded the corners on her quilt and left the corners on the boy quilt square.
Side by side. I am hoping that some friend either has a baby or a grand baby. I have no one in mind for these yet. I’m sure someone will claim these soon. I have to say, I feel the boy colors are much more vibrant, I wish I had used stronger colors for the girl. Live and learn.
Artistic shot that isn’t all that artistic.
I’m so glad I had these labels printed up at Spoonflower. I even left some room for a baby’s name.
So, did I love this project? No, I’m not sorry to have made these, but no, I won’t make anymore. I know, the irregularities are part of the design, but I like a little more accuracy. That is a lot of work to create what sort of looks like cross stitch. I know that some very happy baby will get these at some point.
I have my Red and White to quilt, but I’m going to wait a bit, like a few days. I want to think carefully about how I will quilt it. These two I sort of thought of the diamond and swirl and then just used filler, I think I want to plan out the red and white a little more.
You probably have seen some of the Stuffed animals I’ve made, two cats, a fox, and these are the only ones from Pauline at Funky Friends Factory. A few months ago I found out that Teressa Coates would be teaching a class at Sewing Arts Center. I immediately signed up. I’ve known Teressa for a while, she is the teacher for Shannon Fabrics, they make the wonderful Cuddle fabric.
Here we have the cat as caticorn and the fox made out of cuddle.
Julie bought a lot of cuddle for the shop, so we had a lot to choose from. Yes, I bought more fabric and will probably get even more… First step, enlarge the pattern, in this case, 120%, it makes it easier to work with the cuddle. Then we traced the pattern with a sharpie, using these heavy washers as pattern weights, I need to get some. These two fabrics are left over from my cat.
Yes indeed! I was determined to make a pink elephant. Yes this is a term for being so drunk one sees dancing pink elephants. Even Disney used this reference in Dumbo. (the original, something tells me that didn’t do this in the new release). Well, now in my house, one doesn’t need any alcohol to see a pink elephant.
I have to say I am impressed with the workshop space at Sewing Arts, there were nine students, we each had our own table and a very nice Bernina sewing machine. I didn’t take pictures while I was assembling the elephant. Well, except this one, when the head was finished. Pauline is very smart, she has you start with the head – in every one of her patterns. That way you see the personality of what you are creating and don’t get discouraged. Yes, I used the seam ripper, putting the body together had some challenges.
A limp elephant.
And here is Teressa holding him up. At this point she reminded me that I had to poke out his tusks.
All stuffed, just waiting for the final hand sewing up his back. One of the wonderful things about cuddle, aside from being so soft, is that you can’t see the seams at all.
And here he is!
Side by side with Teressa’s more traditional grey elephant.
Of course we took a picture each holding our own elephants.
Then Hillary finished hers. I couldn’t stay till the very end, so I didn’t see the other elephants. There were many colors, from grey, orange, green. I’m sure they all are great.
So why am I calling this pink elephant a he? Well, because once we got home, I introduced him to a Liberty Mouse that a friend brought me from London. So the elephant is now Ganesha and that is now a rat, the vehicle that Ganesha travels with.
I so want to make the lamb and the monkeys, but first I have a squirrel and a mouse to make.
Since I brought my nice camera, I felt the need to take it out and get some of those pictures that a good camera provides.
The water spilling onto the sand.
That water, from a different angle.
The small bubbles that form.
A small rock, forming a very small tide pool.
Yes, I do find rocks to be fascinating.
There is a small area of real tide pools. Well also manmade, but much bigger rocks.
How clear is this water? I love that the camera caught the movement of the water, even though it is very clear.
These two pictures of the shells I took with my phone. I think the better camera would have shown the iridescence that you simply can’t see here.
Green algae. As you can see, sandbags were used here.
Seaweed.
The wonderful quiet part of vacation. This beach is amazing, loved walking along it. What I will miss most about this location. Meanwhile, grandkids are off at summer camp and still having a great vacation.
If these dinosaur/scifi like creatures give you the heebee-geebees, then don’t read this post.
Club Med maintains a nice size group of iguanas. They come out every evening. You’d think they’d be used to people, but they scurry away whenever people come down the path.
Luckily there are so many, that some will stand still long enough to let people take their pictures
Are these the same variety? I think so. It appears that the young ones are greener in color. Like other reptiles they shed skin, someone showed us a piece of skin he literally removed from the back of one of them. They actually are quite docile, which is why I saw one as a pet in downtown LA.
Here is one posing.
There are three in this picture, can you find the third? Looking at these I see how the image of the dragon came to be, or Godzilla.
Granddaddy!
Iguanas are basically herbivores, so although they look like dragons it’s fruit they like. This is how they keep them here, every day someone comes by with all the fruit leftovers and the feeding frenzy starts.
Can you get any more primeval? Seeing this mass of lizards I’m thinking they are finishing off another animal. but no, it’s just fruit.
Some people love scaley things, I’m fascinated, but love? No.
Fighting over a morsel. As you can see, these are very well fed healthy creatures. It was a nice addition to Club Med to have them there.
In the words of my granddaughter, our trip to Club Med in Ixtapa was the best. She is right.
We went there 28 years ago. That’s me, with Erez and Elk.
Erez grew up, Aytan is probably around the same age his father was then.
On the flight out, Aytan got to check out the cockpit, does he look like a happy kid? No worries, they didn’t let him stay there to actually fly the plane.
Then we arrived in paradise. The resort in a cove with a small island that blocks most of the wind and waves. So the water is warm, calm and delightful. One of the few places where I enjoy going into the Pacific Ocean. The beaches in Cabo aren’t great and the water is colder. Although the water in Puerto Vallarta is warm, the beaches aren’t great. Hawaii has good beaches, but a 3 hour vs. 5 hour flight…
There were photographers on staff taking a lot of pictures, Shira was a favorite subject. I got plenty of my own.
This post is mostly us, there will be others. I did bring my nice camera, but only took it out occasionally.
This is the view from our room, can you see how hazy and blurry it is. That is because it was extremely hot and humid. Took me a few days to adjust. My camera wasn’t very happy either. So I didn’t take it out much. Certainly not if I thought I’d be sitting by the beach. The humidity is bad enough, I didn’t want and involved.
The bathtub, um, I mean the pool was nice for the kids. There were two side by side, a baby pool and the larger one that was maybe 4′.
Best thing I bought there was this pool ring. Aytan figured out that he could use it in the ocean, (sorry, not pictures), which was really great because he isn’t really swimming yet and that afforded him so much freedom. Oh and all the guys ended up getting Club Med Swim shirts.
Shira had a blast!
So did Aytan! With all his issues, there were concerns, but he did amazingly well. I have to commend the Kid Club, Tuki-Tuki. They were incredible! The kids usually spent the mornings with us and the afternoons in the club. They handled Aytan very well. He even loved going in the evening to the kid club events.
Having Shira participate in a song and dance performance is expected. We loved the fact that Aytan went and danced as well. Nothing better than seeing my grandson improve, grow and develop. He really had a great time.
Because the grandkids did so well, their parents had an amazing time as well. They were able to do their own thing as well as just revel in how well the kids were doing. It was a much deserved vacation for them. While there they got some very good news about Aytan and his schooling for next year. Fighting the system tooth and nail for over five years is paying off.
I love how the camera caught Shira the second she let go of the arrow. You can even see it in flight. And this was on my phone camera!
Aside from a great location, Club Med does an incredible job. The food was fresh, very tasty and a little too plentiful… we all over ate. The GOs, which is what the staff is called are amazing. Often they would sit with us at a meal so we got a chance to meet people from all over. There was a group of college students from a Hotel management school in Montreal, they are all going to go far. There were people from Australia, all over Mexico and Haiti. Sure they are trained to be welcoming, but they embrace it gladly. I was super impressed with the kids councilors, every week a new batch of kids, every day different kids show up and yet they managed them all so well.
I know how blessed I am in my life. I am grateful for everything and am so glad we could take our kids and grandkids on this amazing adventure.
I’m not knitting as much as I used to, which is sort of funny. One of my quilting friends has no sewing mojo and is knitting like crazy! But I did finish the shawl I was knitting out of my Chilean merino yarn.
I sort of adapted the pattern because, the pattern called for sport weight yarn and I was knitting with bulky. Also, it was yarn chicken the whole way since I had no idea how much I needed. I’m happy to say I won, without much left over.
Then the shawl fell off the fence, so I took a picture where it lay.
Then I went all creative. My hibiscus has shared at least twice as many blooms this year than any year in the past! Thank you winter rains!
My selfie stick died, my arms aren’t quite long enough. I’d have to set up the tripod to get an image from the back.
OK, that is a little better, I think you get a better idea of the shawl. And now, it will live in a drawer for months, probably until December. This is very warm wool and it’s gotten hot. Sure I’ll wear a shawl when it’s cool, but this time of year – linen, not heavy wool.
My Slimline Daylight arrived!! Here we go, an image in natural daylight, no lights on.
Compare and contrast! Look how bright this is!
Now, I need to start working on quilting the boy quilt!
Look at all this space! It is wonderful, no drag on the quilt, it really does make quilting much easier.
I used the quilting stitch to enhance the design. Especially adding some ‘lace’ at the bottom of the skirt.
While putting this quilt together, I realized that the bow just doesn’t stand out enough, but I didn’t want to remake it. Leaving it completely unquilted does help.
The girl is done, now to figure out the background.
My design wall is upstairs, so I still check out block placement on the floor… but it is nice to pin something up and step away. One thing I noticed, when quilting the feather I was filling them in. I forgot to fill in one feather and it looks so much better, it pops out from the background – duh!
So I went back and ripped out the internal stitches. Also, how cool is mirror image?
Here you can see better how the feathers pop more. Yes, after taking this picture I went back and removed some more stitches. The only ruler work was setting up the diamond. The background grid is done freehand, no need to work with rulers.
This isn’t an art quilt, at some point I’ll give it to a baby girl. So with the binding I used a decorative stitch. It sort of echos what I did on the bottom of the skirt – win!
Just a closer look.
The back, I named her Sassy Girl. Now someone needs to have a baby girl…
Pershing Square gets a lot of activity these days. Last weekend they had dog adoption event. Makes sense since there are so many dog owners downtown.
Maybe it doesn’t make sense, if there are so many dog owners, they don’t need more dogs…
I think the images of the dogs that I got were with their owners, not being adopted. I did see the tent with dogs, but I didn’t go take pictures. Is this what I call the Hush puppy dog??? Remember that shoe company?
Look at this beauty, love those spots.
This isn’t a dog! No, not a dog, also not up for adoption. I think his owner just wanted to take him out in the sun and show him off. Also, does he care about the stuffed toy? Probably not. Oh, he’s an iguana.
She was petting him like a dog. I guess those nails as well as the tip of his tail are really sharp cuz he has nail protectors.
I can totally see how an iguana or other large lizard would be the perfect model for dragons. My goodness all those textures, I wish I had spent more time studying this guy.
See what I mean, not a lot of people. Meanwhile, the contstruction on the lot next to the Title Guarantee building is almost complete. It’s not as tall as I though. It does wrap around the Title Guarantee and the side facing Hill St isn’t as tall. It has been interesting watching it be built.
I went to a local cactus show and sale. I find cacti and succulents to be such interesting plants. They aren’t necessarily the easiest to grow, which is why I really enjoy a good show.
Lets start with the show, everything about these has to be perfect, the container, if there are stones, how they are arranged and of course the more unique the better. I don’t think there is any grating going on here, I may be wrong. Talk about a sport! That term means a one of a kind unique variation. I have never seen anything like this.
Sorry about the rock in the background, it does interfere with the plant. I was sort of in a rush and was just snapping pictures on the phone. This is definitely a graft.
This won an award. I guess if you know cacti well you can really see which ones stand out. Can you tell that I really love color?
Not just color, also texture. I’m pretty sure this is a graft as well.
I love the barrels, this one is just so unusual.
Both color and texture here. You know that cacti are the basis for all the weirdness in SciFi movies. they really do look like aliens . I don’t think the yellow one is grafted, which means it’s not a sport. Nature abhors sports – they can’t survive on their own, which is why they have to be grafted on a very healthy base that can support them.
These two are in the twisted category. What was really cool was that outside among the vendors, look what I found:
How cool is this one! Almost as good as the show piece. BTW, 420, that is the price, in dollars. When these plants are your passion, you pay.
The rest of the images were plants for sale. Many have name tags, or they are in simple plastic pots.
I call these guys plaid barrels. The first time I ever saw one was at my Son in law’s dads house. They have the most amazing succulent garden. Some standard, a lot of unusual plants.
Don’t mess with this one. Maybe the thorns aren’t sharp, but I didn’t want to find out.
Both of these fascinate me, the dark bulbs of course, but look at the one behind, it’s a barrel with a tall hairy shaft.
As forbidding and thorny as cacti can be, the flowers are often so delicate. I think there is a lesson there, about being tenacious with the ability to be soft.
I bought these two for my son in law, he has the succulent bug. Most of what he has is pretty standard, so I wanted to get something unique. These two are small they will grow, actually in the next picture you will see how big the front one can get.
I like that the vendor will sell a large expensive plant for those who have no patience, as well as a smaller one, that Yoch can nurture and watch it grow.
