Celtic Design

A couple of months ago, I attended a class at Country Stitches taught by Kathy Richardson. She taught techniques in creating designs for embroidery sewing machines. Using some basic pieces, I created this design and stitched it out. This is a trial, but I will use it as dust cover for my machine. If I were going to create table napkins or use this design again, there are some alterations to the pattern I would make: 1) re-space the four fans making the inner circle - thee is a slight gap in the left horizontal line; 2) use two tones for the flowers to show some variance between the buds and flowers. In this piece, some of the flowers were stitched out in green.
In my current software, I am not able to edit the stitches. I hope to rectify that soon!

Welcome

Noel Ward says:

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Up North

During our Quilting Weekend in Tawas City several years ago, we found the Cotton Patch Quilt Shoppe in East Tawas, Michigan. Two very interesting things about this quilt shop:

1. They had an incredible inventory of fabric, supplies and patterns for being in such an out-of-the-way location

2. On display (one of those, "My God, I need to make that!" quilts) were the blocks from the Northern Woods quilt featuring moose, deer, fish and other northern woods themes.

We spend quite a bit of time in the shop looking and talking to the owner. She is able to keep such a wonderfully supplied shop in such a remote location because the bulk of her business is internet sales. She had a "back room" where local women were employed to cut fabric into packets that are sold with patterns.

O, Tannenbaum

When we moved into our house in July, 1976, while others were celebrating the bi-centennial,we were celebrating the joys of being first-time homeowners. Although the lot is loaded with trees, the most charming one is the smoke tree The American Smoketree (Cotinus obovatus, syn. Rhus cotinoides). It provides gentle shade in the summer, has been battered by baseball bats through the years and currently houses a small pine tree growing in its mid-section. Because of its proximity to the Consumer's Energy lines, the tree must be either radically altered or removed. We have chosen to remove it and plant another in another section of the yard. The one nice thing about the current location is that it prevents us from spying on our neighbors living room and vice-versa!

In 1978, Beth Ann Bochenek was born, Her dad and poppa, to honor her birth (680 grams soaking wet), planted a pine tree [Eastern White Pine (Pinus strobus)]. This tree has also been identified by CE as "problematic." Nearly half of one side of the tree will need to be removed. Although the ortho"tree"dic surgeon has told us they can remove only "half," it just doesn't seem safe to leave it standing. It will also come down this month.