I Like #171

I turned 40 last week and my parents, sister, and the kids came to spend the long weekend with me.  It was really the very very best adult birthday I've ever had.  It was so wonderful to have my family here with me, such a blessing.  We didn't go anywhere or do anything exciting, but just being all together was great.  We stayed at home and ate/cooked delicious food, baked tasty treats, played lawn games (when it wasn't a million degrees), did craft projects, did a few home improvement projects, played board games, did sparklers, and had squirt gun fights. 

It started on Thursday when Becky and my folks arrived with a balloon and honking and sign bearing parade.  The kids made this fantastic sparkly pink sign they put on the camper, and now I have it in my garage.  Becky put up all kinds of fun decorations in my house too. I think they ran out of space for "is"  So sweet.

Becky brought me a tasty homemade birthday cake, and when we'd finished that, I made a cake and the kids decorated it for Fourth of July.

Mom helped everyone to make pom pom animals.  This is Alex's mouse.

The pups got lots of extra snuggles and were sad the last couple of days to be back in a one-person household.

Mom brought a game called ladder ball, you toss these things that are two balls connected by a short rope at a ladder thing.  You get points for looping it around the ladder. I am completely terrible at this game.  Mom is great.  Becky is great. The kids are pretty good.  But I'm terrible.  Dad was also pretty terrible but I was just really glad that we got him to play at all. 

One of my birthday presents was this teddy bear from my sister.  She's been making them for all our family members using shirts from my two grandfathers who have passed away.  Each bear also gets a unique "accessory",  my bear got a kite.  That's particularly special because flying kites was something we used to do with my Grandpa Wilbur.  The kite is even more fun because on the back of it is a grandmother's flower garden block stitched by my great-great-grandmother.

My great-great grandmother (my grandpa Kit's grandmother) was named Mollie Mae McBride Kittrell and my sister is named after her.  She was born in 1856 and although I never knew her (obviously) I do have a couple of pictures.  In the second one, my grandfather is the youngest little baby there.  She left a partially pieced grandmother's flower garden quilt that my mother finished several years ago, and some of the fabrics from it were from clothes my grandpa wore (and remembered) from when he was a little boy.  Really special. 

There was a box of her extra fabrics and extra flowers that didn't go into the final quilt, and my mom brought those to us this past weekend.  My sister kept one to include on my bear, but most of the loose flower blocks are now in my studio.  Hopefully I'll be able to incorporate them into an art quilt sometime in future.  One of the other things that was in the box of her piecing was this partially stitched sunbonnet sue.  I was so excited to see it,  it's just so hard to imagine having something an ancestor was working on around sometime around the turn of the last century.  Fantastic.  I'm not sure what I'll do with Sue yet,  but I'll finish her somehow and incorporate her into a project.  It's such a privilege to have so much family history, and so many well-labeled photographs.  

It's been a really great week here, of course everything is getting nutty with the virus again so I'm definitely staying at home and it's sort of empty now that people have left, but it was great to have such a bright week amid what's been a pretty crazy few months.  I hope you are all hanging in there; click on over to LeeAnna's for more things to like this week!

I Like #170

I was camping last week, and of course this week I'm way behind posting,  but better late than never!

Lots to like this week.  We were able to stay away from people on our camping trip and enjoyed being outside together.  My folks are here now to celebrate my birthday with me, and I'm excited by that too.

The badlands were beautiful.  All the visitors centers were closed, but we stopped and got a picture in front of the sign anyway.  It reminded me of Bryce Canyon NP, only more washed out in color. 

These two were taken right before sunrise.

The caves at Wind Cave NP and Jewel Cave NM were both closed (As well as visitors centers), but that meant we got great hiking at those places too and no people.  The best thing about Wind Cave was the prairie dogs.  Hundreds and hundreds all over the place.   And there were so many beautiful wildflowers blooming, tons of which were completely new to me.  Really unexpectedly gorgeous.  Unfortunately we got a few ticks, but mostly on my dad who wandered off the trail to take some pictures.  We got them all off, but you always worry that there's one still hitching a ride somewhere....

We hiked a couple of days in Custer State Park and that was lovely too.  All in all a wonderful trip.  This cool giant bug landed on my dad!  Of course he was trying to get us to brush it off, but we all had to take a picture first.

And I came home to snuggly pups super excited to see me and fantastic flowers.  I was weeding the flower bed when I got back and found these funny black sphere-filled bowl things.   They were in the flower beds down in the dirt and were pretty small but all over.  Does anyone know what they are?

  I've also been happy to see more people around here wearing masks, I hope that trend will continue.  I hope everyone is hanging in there and finding things to like!  Click over to LeeAnna's for more goodness!

Polar Dendrogram Quilt: Finished

I blogged last week about my new quilt depicting a polar dendrogram, a biological tree of life.  I had so much fun with this, using large pieces of some of my fun prints and hand dyed fabrics, and with lots of room in the background for quilting.  The binding is half teal half pink silk, which is not a fun material to bind with, but that's life.

Tree of Life: Polar Dendrogram, c. Shannon Conley, 2020, 56" x 52", photo: Mike Cox

The outer ring of quilting mimics the shapes in the dendrogram.  It meant tons of thread burying, because there was a stop/start for each new shape, but I love the effect.

I love the way this turned out.  A pretty traditional quilt for me but filled with fun bright colors and cool quilting.

New Quilt: Polar Dendrogram

I've always been fascinated with tree of life quilts and tree of life imagery.  I love family trees and living imagery.  I put a tree of life into my own garden of Eden (it was filled with all of Darwin's different types of finches) into my Eucharistic Prayer C: Convergence quilt which was an exploration of the intertwined nature of science, evolution, and faith, but I've never done a specific tree of life quilt.

When I saw that Science and Math Quilts was one of the special exhibits at this year's International Quilt Festival in Houston, I knew I had to make something.  Of course I've made many science quilts before but none were big enough (Houston wanted something at least 50x50).  I decided to finally make a tree of life quilt, and the science theme led me to dendrograms!  

Dendrograms are used most broadly for hierarchical clustering, that is, to classify the relatedness of objects and the time or distance between different objects. They come in both linear and polar (circular) forms, but the basic idea is the same.  Dendrograms are widely used in biology, for example, in evolutionary trees to identify how closely species are related and how far back in time different groups diverged, or to classify genes or cell types.  They are quite literally "trees of life".  You can see an example of a polar dendrogram below.    Dendrograms are a great way to look at how closely related items are.

I drew a dendrogram in Adobe Illustrator,  it follows the organizational rules for dendrograms but doesn't plot any particular organisms or genes. 

My background was some pale pink (I think) jacquard weave fabric.  If you look closely,  you may be able to see the roses that are woven into it.  I painted it teal and green, and then set the pattern on top of my dendrogram pattern.

I decided to construct this like a mosaic, with the lines of the dendrogram represented by the grout lines between pieces, and each central shape cut out of a different fabric.  It was a great chance to use some of my cool hand printed/painted fabrics as well as other fun fabrics from my stash.  All the fabrics are silk or polyester, or other shiny fabrics.

Here you can see them as I was cutting and laying out each shape.  The paper pattern is visible underneath to help me line things up.

The pieces are all fused down; unfortunately, the background fabric wasn't super iron resistant, and I melted a big obvious hole in it.  More annoyingly, since the background was hand painted, I despaired of getting anything to patch it with that would match.  I finally wound up being able to trim off small pieces from the edge and using those to patch the hole, but I was lucky that the fabric I painted was a little bigger than I needed the final quilt to be.  You can see the patch in the final quilt if you look really closely, but it's largely invisible. I was so aggravated though!!!

Here's the whole thing basted for quilting,  the backing fabric is some sort of super bright floral print polyester satin stuff,  kind of like what you'd use for a frilly twirly skirt.  It's not really something I'd use for anything else, but it makes a fine backing.

Come back on Monday to see the final quilt!

x

I Like #169

Welcome to another week of things to like.

My dahlias are doing well so far.  Two more new ones bloomed this week, this pretty pink pom pom (I love those tightly curled petals), and the big purple and white dinner plate below.  I hope they make it through the heat of the summer!  

Anna is with me this week and she is such a blessing!  She was watering my plants the other day and I saw her through the window dancing and singing with the spray hose.

I've been teaching her to play the Settlers of Catan card game, it's one of my favorites and Becky loves it too.  Anna is doing fantastic, she really seems to enjoy it and I'm so glad.  We'll probably play another round tonight!

I love using up old stamps;  these were from the 1973 supplement and they made me smile; stamps about the postal service!  Thanks to the postal service, I'm so grateful to continue receiving my mail and packages!!

This one made me giggle, by 1973, electronics had progressed a ton, but in the 45 years since then, wowza!

Becky adopted a new rat from the university and she (the rat) stayed with me last weekend.  She's super sweet and you can see her there peeking out from under her green minky blanket.

I hope everyone is hanging in there!  Click over to Lee Anna's for more things to like!