I Like #118

Welcome to another week of things to like!

1.  I like my blackberries!  I put netting over them this year (in a fairly haphazard manner), and I think it's going to work.  I have only two bushes but they have a nice amount of fruit on them.  I don't think it's enough to make jam or cobbler but definitely enough to eat and enjoy.  I went to a church party last night where we spent lots of time talking about how everyone nets their blackberries so I have some good ideas for next year!  Mine are mostly not ripe yet, but I picked (and ate!) the very first ripe one yesterday.

2. I like my flowers!  I planted marigolds and zinnias from seed this year and it's been so fun to watch them grow.  I assume there will be more blossoms as we go, but these are the first!  The marigolds are growing in old laundry detergent buckets, but hey- that's what I had!

3.  I like Magee!  Magee is an old (fairly sick) kitty I housesat for over the weekend.  He's not much for snuggles but he has a good strong loud meow, and likes to be scritched on the head and chin.  His people were worried about him eating, but he scarfed down tuna like mad.  My pups are fine; having lots of fun, but I just forgot to take any pictures of them this week.

4. I finally got to blog about the banner I finished for my sister;  I think it turned out lovely.  It feels very in keeping with my other illuminated mansucrtipt style pieces.  Check out the posts here and here.

5.  I did a lot of enjoyable knitting while housesitting and flying on my trip, so soon I hope to be able to share some of my recent knitting projects as soon as I get them blocked!  I've really been enjoying knitting lately.

I hope everyone has a good week!  Click over to LeeAnnas for more things to like!

MES banner: Finished!

A couple of days ago I started sharing the story of the banner I recently finished for the Montessori elementary school my sister's kids went to.  Here's the finished piece, it has wire inserted into an extra channel on the back so that the top doesn't flop forward when it's hung from a banner pole (the round top edge was tricky to plan for).  I love the way it turned out-  I think the pitchers are my favorite, they're made out of a silk velvet I hand dyed a long time ago.   I also love the way the feathers fill out the edge, they look nicer than a lot of my feathers do!

MES Banner, c. Shannon Conley, 2019, Photo Mike Cox

The whole banner is very small, 30" x 20" because we wanted it to be easily carried by a kindergartner (or younger).  So when it came time to mount, I didn't want a giant heavy flagpole, and I thought it should be a little shorter than a traditional flagpole to so it didn't look so teeny on a giant pole.  Unfortunately, pre-made stands for skinnier poles are hard to come by (or really cheesy looking), so I bought a 3/4 inch dowel for the pole and made my own stand from some chunks of wood from Lowes.  It turned out light enough to carry and stable enough as well.

I finished it in time for each of the kindergartners to get to carry into chapel one week, and Alex carried it for Kindergarten graduation.  Apparently they all loved carrying it, and it's received positive reviews from adults at the church and school as well.  It was a lovely project to work on and I hope it proves meaningful to the school for many years in the future.

Banner for MES: New Quilt!

Several months ago (that's generous- I'm very behind on blogging) my sister commissioned me to make a banner to give as a gift to her son's Montessori pre-school.  Alex (my nephew) was in Kindergarten this past year and it was his last year at the school.  Because the school is associated with an Episcopal parish church, the kids go to chapel every week and she thought it would be nice to have a banner for them to carry in.  It has been a really great school for both Anna and Alex.

Around Thanksgiving, I went to the school and met with the school director.  She talked to me about the school and it's history (this was their 50th anniversary year) and approach.  I walked through all the classrooms and through the church sanctuary, and she let me take lots of pictures.  I wanted to design something that felt like it fit in with the ethos and vibe and aesthetic of the school. 

In touring around the school classrooms, I kept noticing this cross on in-classroom altars as well as the nifty liturgical calendar.  And the tree image (the picture on the right is a plaque in one of the rooms I think labeling the parts of the tree) made me think of growth and roots creating a strong foundation.

And within the church itself, I was really drawn to both the stained glass and their Stations of the Cross.  I thought the rounded, romanesque shape and almost icon-like style was very interesting.

One design struggle is that I wanted the banner to feel like a banner for the school (take a look here if you want to see them) admittedly a Christian school) as opposed to a church.  I've done enough religious/liturgical quilts that my design sense sort of falls back on that naturally.  After talking some more with my sister, I learned that a Montessori education has five different areas, Practical Life, Sensorial, Language, Mathematics, and Culture. 

I decided on a tree for the central imagery with one branch for each area, with the cross on the trunk and the liturgical calendar in the background.  The design mockup is below on the left.  The plant represents Culture (which includes science, botany, geography, etc.), The MES 50 represent language and mathematics, respectively and were chosen to honor the 50th anniversary of the school (which goes by MES).  The pitchers represent practical life, which includes things like food preparation, washing, manners, care of the environment etc.  Finally the binomial cube represents Sensorial.  The sensorial category is designed to help refine the senses and includes refining motor skills, developing coordination, and the ability to order and classify objects.  I suppose technically the binomial cube probably belongs to mathematics, but it's the most "Montessori" thing I remember from my years in Montessori school (which I loved) so I figured it'd be ok.

Unfortunately, once I finished piecing the border, I realized that it was backwards (you can see the backwards version in this picture) with the liturgical calendar rotating counter-clockwise.  I was super mad, but decided to save the first one and use it in one of my projects and piece on for the banner going the correct direction. 

This was the top all finished,  the trunk of the tree is some sort of thick fake suede, it has a really great texture (though my sewing machine DID NOT like quilting it).  The branches are two different  gold fabrics on top of a sequined gold mesh, so in person there's a nice amount of depth of color.  The border is pieced with a variety of different silks, polyesters, suedes, and velvets, including some hand-dyes, so it also has lots of sheen and depth in person.

I had the back printed at spoonflower, it has the school prayer, all the label information, the school logo, and handprints of the kindergarteners that are graduating and leaving the school this year.   It was nice to have all that on the back, but tricky to get it straight and centered on the back of the quilt prior to quilting/squaring up.

And unfortunately, I had one of these.  Alas.  I hate this-it seems to happen to me more often than not, the backing gets tucked up underneath and I wind up having to pick out a ton of quilting.  And this was miserable to pick out-  it was clear monofilament on the back on a shiny polyester which snagged terribly, and velvet on the front which was so deep you could hardly get down to the stitches.  Yuck!

Come back Wednesday and I'll share pictures of the finished quilt!

I Like #117

Well!  I'm back!  For any of you following along, I was out for two weeks on a hiking touring trip to Scotland with a good friend from graduate school.  We hiked the West Highland Way which runs from Glasgow to Fort William- a hiking distance of 96 miles we spread over 8 days.  Each night we stayed in a different bed and breakfast along the way.  We really lucked out with only two really rainy days, one hiking and one later on the touring end of our trip, and all in all it was a wonderful experience with fabulous hiking.  Since getting back it's been work and catching up and a summertime cold, so all the things to like this week are from the trip!  I know other people's vacation photos aren't ever quite so much fun as one's own, so I've tried not to have too many!  It's also wonderful to be back though- I missed my pups, and my shower, and my mattress, and my washing machine.

The first hiking day through low hills and fields.  Lots of stone walls and sheep.  It was the perfect time to see lambs, tons of them-- so cute frolicking through the fields.  Playing and aggravating their mamas.

View of Loch Lomond from atop Conic Hill.

The wildflowers were just exquisite- all different kinds, but giant giant fields of blooming bluebells.  I've never seen fields of flowers in the mountains like this before.

For some reason this picture of my Grandpa with his pups accidentally got selected when I was uploading and I thought I'd leave it-  he's definitely awesome and a good thing to like. :)

These were someone's pet guinea pigs we met at a campground while hiking.  They were huge for guinea pigs.  Super cute.  Also there were tons of dogs hiking the WHW with their people, so fun to see them over and over.  All so well-behaved and friendly!

The yellow scotch broom or gorse or whatever you call it was in full bloom too and everywhere.  Such a strong bright yellow in the sort of muted tones of the Highlands.  Really remarkable.

These slugs were pretty common along the way and since they aren't the ones eating my dahlias at home (ARGHH) I was able to appreciate them.

Tons of ferns in the mountains in the Highlands.  So beautiful and different from dry western mountains in the US.

The sore feet statue at the end!  This was of course after we'd showered and recovered a bit.  The lady in red is Andrea, a friend we met up with along the way, almost every night.  Fun to have trail friends!

Then a visit to the Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides.  We rented a car and driving it was very very stressful, but Mull was a beautiful island.  This is the town of Tobermory.

Then a day trip to the Isle of Staffa and the most amazing basalt columnar formations.  These are naturally occurring formations, but feel almost temple like in their shape and grandeur.  Really cool.

And a last short visit to the Treshnish Isles where there are billions of puffins and other see birds!  I have so many puffin pictures, it was hard to pick just one!

We also found a couple of good knitting shops in Edinburgh, so that was fun and crafty too.  I hope everyone had a good week here,  head over to Lee Anna's for more things to like!

I like #116

Someday this space will be filled with more arty goodness and tales of my quilts, but for know just another week of things to like.

Last Thursday night I actually remembered to go to the monthly Fiber Artists of Oklahoma meeting.  The guest was young local kirigami artist and painter Malcom Zachariah (@lakshwadeep on instagram).  He brought some of his small pieces and gave a lovely talk about papercutting.  He followed up with a little demo and then we got to dive in!  He makes lots of animals, and walked us through creating some.  The top two pics are one of his abstract pieces while the bottom two are a a bird and a stegasaurus I cut during the event.  It was really fun and freeing.  Definitely check out his work.

 My flowers are all too little to be blooming, but one of my generic bushes has flowers on it!  I don't think I've ever seen flowers on it before (or possibly just not noticed), but I was so excited!  They're pretty and white!  I'm not sure what kind of bush this is, but it makes me happy it's blooming.

I had to take a break from my office the other day so I took a stroll around campus.  It was really a beautiful spring day, and I loved the view of the big round water feature (it's a bit hard to see but is that dark low thing in the middle).  It makes such a pleasant sound as it bubbles everywhere (even though it is a campus hot point due to costs associated with maintaining it).

We're having the baby shower at work today for the lady whose quilt I showed last week or the week before.  I made another cake and thank goodness this time Blue didn't try any.  I was going for sheep, but I think they look a bit more like albino lions.  Oh well.  Also, I had some leftover yellow frosting I'd frozen from the last cake-- this is what happens if you accidentally over microwave while thawing.  It was this crystallized explosion.  Weird.

Tomorrow morning I leave on a trip to Scotland.  My nephew has discovered Flat Stanley,  a paper cut out carrier who travels the world, and he asked me if I would take a Flat Stanley on my trip.  Here she is, all neon and rainbow, ready to have her picture taken traveling throughout the highlands!  Obviously any Flat Stanley traveling with me was going to be brightly colored. Wish me luck everyone, I hope my knees don't collapse!

I'll most likely be out the next couple of weeks, but I'll see you guys in June.  For now, click on over to LeeAnna's for more positivity!