quilting

My Wife’s “Insanity Revisited”

May 17, 2010

“Insanity Revisited” is actually the name of Karen’s second “Dear Jane” quilt. She still has a couple more rows to complete and the scalloped blocks around the outside.

Dear Jane quilts are based on a Civil War era quilt made by Vermont resident Jane A. Stickle.

A Dear Jane has 169 blocks, each with a unique pattern and has a total of about 5,600 pieces.

The original quilt was finished in 1863, during the American civil war. It is in the Bennington Museum in Bennington, Vermont, and is on display every September and October.

Karen’s first Dear Jane was named “Insanity.”

The lower quilt picture is the original 1863 quilt by Jane Stickle.

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On the road again — in Colorado

August 30, 2009

My anticipated “weekend” away from work is being extended by a planned 3 week vacation.

We are currently camped at a KOA in La Junta, Colorado. Yesterday, we camped at Sandy Cove Corps of Engineers campground on Canton Lake in Oklahoma.

Tomorrow we will be traveling on for a week in the Rocky Mountain National Park area. We’ll be camped in the park for four days. When we reserved our campsite for the park, there was nothing available for the Labor Day weekend, so we made reservations at the Estes Park KOA. We prefer to have spots reserved for holiday weekends rather than trying to find a campsite when there will likely be a lot of other people camping.

After Labor Day, though, we shouldn’t have any trouble finding a place to camp.

We will be traveling on Labor Day, though…, and will probably be traveling I40, which brings back memories of another Labor Day on I40.

In 2001, we were headed from Steamboat Springs to Estes Park and decided to go by way of Golden to see a quilt exhibit. We didn’t even think about the fact that there would be heavy, heavy traffic heading from the mountains back to the cities.

We ended up in a traffic jam backed up for miles.

Fortunately, this time, we’ll be heading away from the cities, going west.

Here are a few photos from yesterday at Canton Lake:

Canton Lake, Oklahoma, from Sandy Cove
sunflower at Canton Lake, Oklahoma - Sandy Cove Core of Engineers campground and beach
The following “drawing” of boys at play in Lake Canton was rendered from a photograph using Corel Paintshop Pro Photo X2.
A drawing rendered from a photo of boys at play in Lake Canton, Oklahoma
jet ski on Lake Canton in glare of setting sun, Oklahoma

While I will be “off-line” and away fro the internet until Friday, there will continue to be daily posts that have been “pre-published.”

I plan to have more photos to share later in the week.

This post is being simultaneously published on Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About.

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Karen’s doing a give-away on her blog

July 6, 2009

If you are a quilter, check out my wife’s blog, Quilts….etc.

Karen is currently hosting the first give-away that she’s done on her blog.

There will be two winners.

Each winner will get a package of strong acrylic templates from Marti Michell. These templates are made strong enough so that you can use a rotary cutter to cut around them — no need to trace around them and cut with scissors unless you want to.

See Karen’s blog for details!

day 33

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My Wife’s Insanity

January 28, 2008

Karen calls one of her quilt projects Insanity. The quilt uses patterns from a book called “Dear Jane” and is based on the civil war quilt of a New England lady by the name of Jane Stickles. Every block in the main body of the quilt has a unique design as does every colored triangle shaped block in the borders and the four corner blocks. To this point, the quilt has 4,253 pieces and, when done, will probably be over 5,000. On February 23, she will have been working on this project on and off for three years. Insanity!

Karen blogs occasionally at Quilts…etc.

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Karen’s Quilting

July 19, 2007

Quilting is something that Karen really loves. In the photo above, she is demonstrating her quilting at the Historic Arkansas Museum in May 2007. The quilting frame she is using was purchased specifically for use in our camper when we are traveling.

Karen has been able to sell some of her quilts through the museum store at the Historic Arkansas Museum in Little Rock. Since she does hand quilting, it takes a bit of time to complete. Still, some of the quilts have traveled much far than we are ever likely to. As I understand it, one is in Austria, another in China, and a third was taken to South Africa as a gift for some foundation or organization.

The baby quilt below was purchased recently and we think that it is going to be used in an Aspen, Colorado raffle or auction fund raiser for cancer research. (Click on the image to see a larger version)