Spring!

 

This beautiful collection of Ukrainian eggs by Carolyn Trout is the perfect harbinger of Spring!  Hope your celebration is splendid and joyful. 

 

Oliver and I are sorting through my sewing room and finding interesting things, and missing what we are really seeking.  Things seem to disappear easily in there, and we look for an hour at most, then move on.  They will surface some day.

 

The birds have returned, snow is receding like large slow glaciers melting, a house fly came to life in the window sill today and gave Oliver a good chase.  Signs of life are everywhere, spring is definitely arriving.

 

 

"Twilight Feathers" ~ Detail

 

Scraps and samples from the quilt above were found in a bottom drawer.  We vaguely remembered this one as a Pilgrim and Roy Challenge Auction quilt for the National Quilt Museum several years ago.  I finish these quilts and ship them in days, still hot from the machine, so it's no wonder they are forgotten quickly.  I hope whoever owns it still is enjoying it.  I'm working on a small one for the November Celebrity Invitational AAQI auction, just beginning to quilt a bit now and then as my thumb and wrist improve. 

 

I am so pleased many of you are trying the recent tutorial on Celtic Bubbles and having success!  My email is dianequilter@sbcglobal.net if you have photos to share.  Working on this design should not only give you something new for your quilting repertoire, but help improve the quality of your quilting, more even stitches, better control, better spacing, better everything. 

 

Happy Spring, and keep quilting!  Your work gets better every day.....

Diane

 

More Eggs

More Eggs! 

 

I thought I’d share some more Ukrainian eggs with you, from Carolyn Trout.  Above, a sample of her work, as well as below.  Carolyn explains the process:

“This is a hobby for me. I do not sell eggs, but I do give them away as gifts, to charity auctions, etc. I’ve been doing this for about 30 years, more or less. These eggs are Pysanky, Ukrainian Easter eggs. The process is a wax resist process, exactly like batik, only on egg shells instead of on fabric. They are not painted, but dyed.

The process requires successive steps of drawing with hot beeswax on the egg shell and then dyeing in increasingly dark colors, until the final color, after which all the wax is melted off to reveal the pattern underneath.  I’m not Ukrainian by birth or culture, but I do use many of the traditional patterns, some of which are thousands of years old. If you Google ‘pysanky’ or ‘pysanka’ (the singular form) you will find tons and tons of information. I learned to do this when my husband gave me a kit for Christmas many years ago. He had no idea that he was starting an obsession and that he was going to lose his wife to the siren call of the dyed egg.”

Happy Spring everyone; enjoy the eggs.

Diane