More non-pastel :-)

I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays. I had a great Christmas, and the biggest news of all was learning that I am going to become a Grandma in 2009! This put all sorts of "baby" thoughts into my head, and one of those thoughts was that I had to make a baby quilt.

To give a little background, I have always loved quilts, and made my first one (not a very good one either, since I had no clue what I was doing) back in 1978 when my own son was born. For years thereafter I made many quilts. It was my own form of artistic outlet at the time. I'd always been drawn to the arts but steered clear of fine arts for years. My sister is a wonderful and gifted artist, and I never felt I could measure up to her artistically. So quilts were my outlet. 

But quilts take a lot of time and effort, even the simplest of them, and I slowly backed away from them, and finally decided that some form of fine art was *really* what I wanted, and it was for me alone, not a competition with my sister. And once I found pastels in 2005 I knew I had found my niche.

But a BABY just needs quilts! The baby's other grandmother has also recently taken up quilting, so surely the baby needs something from both grandmas? So what to do? Well people who have seen my art know that I'm a colorist. I love bright and vibrant colors. I was discussing ideas for the quilt with a friend. She was saying that supposedly sharp contrasts of black and white were the first things babies made out. Maybe so, but who wanted to make a black and white quilt for a baby? Not a colorist like me, heheheh. So she then said that next they were attracted to very bright primary colors. Now that was more like it. Bright primary colors I could do, LOL. What I *didn't* feel like doing was a quilt done in the typical baby colors that we refer to, oddly enough, as "pastels". 

I still have a giant stash of fabric from the days when I did quilt, so felt there was no need to buy more at the store. Surely I had fabrics I could make a quilt from? I pulled out some likelys and noodled around with design for a bit, and finally ended up piecing together the top seen above. Now to actually start quilting it. 

Of course my son and daughter-in-law may not even like it. Maybe the colors will be too wild for them! I did use a namby-pamby fabric for the backing, just in case. LOL.  Heck, if they don't I'll just keep it for myself. I'll make them another baby quilt. I probably will anyway. I have lots of ideas. Maybe the baby will get three or four quilts!

Happy New Year everyone.

And Now for Something Completely Different

Okay, it's not pastel! But one thing I like to do every year is make my own Christmas wreath. I have a big yew shrub in my front yard and I try to keep it from growing too tall. So every spring I trim the top down to be level with my porch railing, but it puts up new shoots all summer long. So every December I trim off all the new shoots, and then make them into a wreath!

I have a wire frame, which I use year after year. This year I went on a "Conifer ID Walk" at the Van Vleck Estate with my friend Karen. There were tons of pine cones and holly leaves and things just lying on the ground, so  I picked a few up, and added them to my wreath! My big expense were the three birds I bought this year, about $2.50 each at AC Moore. 

And I think it's a fine wreath, and all my own. I don't think I could like it more if I'd spent $65 to take the wreath-making workshop at Van Vleck!