An Intergenerational UFO

Quilt blocks started by my grandmother more than 50 years ago provided entertainment for our New Year's weekend family gathering. My mother, 86 years old and still actively quilting, helped me and daughter Angela arrange them on the design wall.


Daughter Angela and Jerrod have been visiting from Austin, TX, over the holidays. My SIL Judy gave Angela a package of unfinished quilt blocks as a present.

These blocks were started back in the fifties and sixties by my grandmother in southern Utah. She used many fabrics from her scrapbag so some pieces date back to the twenties and thirties. All the diamond stars are sewed together, but only about half of them have the background set in squares and triangles hand stitched.

We arranged them on the design wall, added blue sashing, and sat down together to hand stitch enough blocks to complete the top.

I have always avoided learning quilting handwork, but finally my grandmother who has been gone since 1976, was guiding me and my daughter to learn the fun of setting in background squares. We only needed to do one block apiece to have enough. Then there are about 24 more stars which will be made into 2 twin size tops in the future. Angela took the almost completed top back to Texas along with some yellow border fabric and a wool bat contributed by my mom. We'll work on it again next time we get together.

Snowdrifts around town

Drifts across Bohemian Hiway one block south of our house.
Digging out at the main entrance of the school.
Front of Tyndall Good Samaritan Center
Main Street Piles in front of A & A Gallery

Small town Christmas Snow

Make a Smilebox greeting

Christmas Blizzard 2009

We are enjoying a rare vacation as the result of a three day blizzard. We will know it's over when the snow plow opens our driveway. Pictures of the weather can't really do it justice--it's mostly a white-out with single digit temps and 40 mph winds.

Vintage Santa Visits Art & Antique Gallery

Remember when patterns were a quarter?

A couple years ago I was given a collection of dress patterns. It turned out that they were part of a costumer's collection from SD University theatre dept.

Mostly Simplicity and McCalls, but some Vogue, Butterick, and then about 10 patterns for actual classical costumes. One dates back to before 1920. Then a few from the thirties and forties. Twenty or so from the fifties. About 10 that I remember sewing for myself in the sixties and seventies.

There are 6 crates of patterns all together. It is great fun to look back at the illustrations on the envelopes and relive the hippie fashions of my college days. Vogue designs cost $ . 75 three times as much as Simplicity. There is even a pattern for gloves so you can match your ensemble.

I go to a lot of sales and auctions (or did before I got on the internet). These cards were in with a lot of postcards collected in Mexico, Cuba, and overseas. The man had traveled extensively and had many souvenirs from Japan, China, etc, all from the early days of the 1900's. I enjoy postcards so much and have about 300 early valentines, christmas cards, new year's card, birthday card, joke cards. I have always planned to use them in art work when I can find a good transfer method. Thank goodness for scanners and printers. Technology finally caught up with my dreams. The little town I live in has few supplies and I have to rely on my ingenuity.

A friend needs a graduation present. She has earned her Master of Social Work and works with chronically homeless people. Something special is in order and so it is a kind of a special occasion card for a very special person who looks beyond the surface. She won't be put off by the subject matter or its sadness. So I have built my first canvas book using transfer images, acrylic paint, handmade papers, and various embellishments.

The images can be enlarged to see details in the text. Please be advised that they may be disturbing to victorian sensibilities. You know who you are. Don't go there.

The bordello beauties piece transports us to the turn of the century and women's realities. Even in the wholesome prairie midwest, young women with illegitimate children were dowried into marriage by their fathers who were religious leaders in their communities. It happened in my family. There is nothing new under the sun and the world has been filled with misery since the beginnings of time. It is for us to make a difference one day and one person at a time.