Nostalgia, Fabric Question and A Quilt

My youngest son Eric is a teacher and he is teaching his grade eight class how to dance in gym class. Sounds really weird to me, but whatever. He emailed me on Friday to ask me to suggest some dances and to find some youtube dance how-tos. I came across this one by Chubby Checker - the Twist. Ahhhh, what great fun it was and Chubby was so nice. (mind you, I was just a little girl when this came out.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjQwfkQj6e4&feature=related

Remember American Bandstand where you got to see the young music artists? Of course, who could forget, there was that voting on the new tunes. "I'd give it an 8 because it was easy to dance to." 
****Sorry to all my readers who didn't grow up with American Bandstand. 


Now on to a fabric question.

Why is it that there are those times when you just NEED to have a colour of fabric and it just isn't there. Not in the stash and not in the quilt stores.
Brown has been in short supply in my stash and today, while we were out doing errands, I happened to see something that sparked an idea. It had to do with a brown background, the rest of the fabrics I had. Since we were in the neighbourhood, I decided to stop in at my closest quilt shop. It's not that big but they do have quite a variety. EXCEPT, there was no brown. I wanted something dark (close to black) and something that read solid brown. Nope, they had nothing. I struck up a conversation with the lady who was working there and we lamented the fact that colours go in waves. 
I remember years ago when I first started quilting (1980) and, because there was nothing else available, I bought a lot of polycottons. I still have them because they are solids and I love the colours. I disliked all the little floral calicoes that were available. I still prefer solids or those fabrics that read as a solid. I am not a cotton snob and mix cottons with polycottons if the fabrics work for what I am doing.

 

 These are some of my favourite colours. The greens vary from yellowy green to lime green and even the dark greens are not consistent in what dye colours are mixed in. Taking your fabrics and putting them all together in colours shows you that they are not all created the same.

These were the beginnings of a quilt I started last year. You will note that some of the purples have red in them and others have blue.  

I have used a lot of greens lately in what I've been working on.

 This quilt was made in 2008 and this photo is from Christmas of that year (obviously.)

I made this quilt for Maili. It was just going to be a really small mini quilt with leaves (the lower right of the quilt with the off-white leaves) but I came across some of her school work and the central panel of this quilt is a depiction (or rather my rendition) of one of her projects for her Bachelor of Landscape Architecture degree.

I don't think it makes much sense for a layman to try to figure out but basically, there is a water feature (pond) in the middle with seating surrounded by a walkway with grass, flowers and trees. The leaf in the upper right was a freebie paper pieced design of an aspen leaf I got from the internet and the three paper pieced leaves on the left are my own design. I had two fabrics that I auditioned for the  border and when it came time to decide on which one to use, I prevailed upon my youngest son and got his opinion (he was the only one home at the time.) He liked the one I ended up using and I admit that it was a perfect choice. The other fabric was darker and was just bland. This one added to the landscape architecture theme.

YouTube and his and her aprons

Just sitting here checking out my blog buddies and listening to Marco Antonio Solis on YouTube.  It's raining so its indoor activities today. Cleaning floors, sewing, you get the picture... Youngest son Eric, left this morning to visit big sis Laila. He is on the plane to BC as I write this and won't touch down for another two hours. He took with him the little housewarming gift of the wonky houses quilt and the following two aprons. My daughter and her husband have birthdays in August and she requested aprons. All their stuff is in storage until the 10th or 11th of August while they, with the help of Eric, take down wallpaper, paint and lay new flooring. Oh yeah,and cut the grass, make trips to the dump and generally clean up their new 'old' home. I helped Eric stuff his huge bag (looked like a big sports bag) and close the zipper. I had repaired it since some of the seams had come apart after little sis used it. I was shown one hole but found two more areas where the seams were splitting and so, when I saw how much trouble Eric was having closing the zipper, I prayed that the bag and its contents all got to BC safely. On top were these two aprons.

I took shots of fabric when my daughter requested 'countrified' fabrics. His apron, being modelled by Eric last night, is a blue gingham that I thought was blue and black but it's really two shades of blue.
The fabric in this apron that Maili is modelling is heavier than quilting cotton - but not as heavy as twill or duck. The colour is a check in peach and pink.
And this last apron that Ayla found in the cupboard is years old. It is a gift I made for Father's Day as a barbecue apron. All the little ones signed their names at the time (I think someone signed Ayla's or helped her form her letters.) Anyway, as you can see it has been used - although not lately and features a 3-D hot dog and hamburger. I loved making it with all the things we like on our dogs and burgers - mustard and relish on the dog and a tomato (or ketchup) and an onion on the burger. All fabrics were cotton polyester or whatever was in my stash at the time. The onion was embroidered and the relish was just raw-edge applique (tacked.) Way ahead of my time with that. On second inspection, I wrote most of their names on it - so it is really old!!

Niagara Falls and finishes

As I was nodding off to sleep, I was thinking of my new header photo. It brought the Three Stooges to mind. If you remember them, then perhaps you may remember "Niagara Falls...Slowly I turned, step by step, inch by inch...."
So, I decided to see if there was a youtube on it and here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yJBhzMWJCc

I liked Curly best of all - the original one that's in this clip.
I wonder if Niagara Falls is still the Honeymoon Capital of the World???

On a different note, little one (youngest child, youngest daughter) just found out that she passed her real estate exam. I guess she is now officially a real estate agent. It was a trying time for her since it took her forever to get through (pass) with part two (there's three parts to being a bona fide real estate agent.)
Daughter-in-law finished her masters program last Friday and so she can officially read for pleasure now. (It's a good feeling - honest, been there, done that last year.)