penny-studionotes-2

I'm easing myself back into the studio, playing with scraps of color for a baby quilt.  I'm working from this pattern from American Patchwork & Quilting .  Who wouldn't like a reminder of the pleasure of a new box of crayons? American Patchwork & Quilting, Supplement to an issue sometime in the last year--sorry, no date given on the pages The pattern calls for piecing together 2.5" strips of assorted fabrics, but I wanted to use the variety in my scraps, some of which weren't that wide.  I think the results look fine.  I kept the crayons the size in the pattern (cut at 5" x 40", plus the crayon tip cut at 5"), but made just six and turned them vertical, to make a smaller quilt.  I haven't sewn the crayons together yet.  Here they are in rainbow order:  Not sure I like the red and orange next to each other.  Here I've moved the red over to the right side: But I think I like it even better this way:  primaries (red/yellow/blue) on the l...

I generally limit this blog to posts about my work in the studio, but it's a convenient place to archive some photos and reflections on a recent trip to the Grand Canyon.  Feel free to stop reading here if you're not interested! Twenty years ago, David, Jeremy, and I went on a 4-day white-water rafting trip on the Lower Salmon River in Idaho.  We really enjoyed the trip, and were very impressed with O.A.R.S, the company that ran it.  The guides recommended that we think about doing their trip down the Grand Canyon some day--the ultimate in river trips.  It's been in the back of our minds ever since, but we never got around to it.   Then a couple of years ago, we thought of taking a trip to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary plus our retirements.  Our first thought was to go to Paris, a favorite place of ours since the mid-1970s when we did dissertation research there.  But then we thought of the Grand Canyon.  Paris we could do even if we had ...