Busy---Busy
July 5, 2009
I've had a very busy spring and summer so far trying to stay caught up with the quilt shows, gardening, the lawn, customer quilts, cleaning cabins for my husbands customers, and trying to keep the house clean and free of yuck. It barely leaves me any free time for fishing and quilting for me. I hope to have more time to post after the Hayward Piecemakers Quilt Show the end of July. I have a couple of friends that have nagged about my not posting regularly. I'm not comfortable with journalling and this is the same thing. I'll try to be better later.
Posted at: 09:31 AM | 1 Comment | Add Comment | Permalink
Playing at Stephanie's and the benefits of having great friends
February 25, 2009
I just returned home from a 3 day play date with my friend Stephanie Forsyth from Roseville MN. WOW! Did we have fun. We did a little tweeking in her studio with a few found objects and created some display spaces for her many beautiful art quilts, and even found the time to test out my Shiva Sticks. I came home with 11 pieces to make into little art quilts, with several nagging at me to get on the ball and get them quilted. What fun we had.
If you want the whole story, please check out Stephanie's blog. She is an awesome blogger and adds super good pictures. Here's her site. http://stephanieforsyth.blogspot.com/
One of Stephanie's art quilts is being used as a technique sample for The Quilt Show inline. What a cool way to be acknowledged .
Here is a picture of one of the pieces I did at Steph's. She had made this design of a sand dollar and I loved it so much, she let me make one too. I added dragonflies to mine. We made this using a freezer paper template that we cut out.
Tomorrow I'll add more pictures now that I have figured...
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Posted at: 06:39 PM | 1 Comment | Add Comment | Permalink
Fishing and Quilting
February 10, 2009
This is the time of year that I start to enjoy winter. My husband has a seasonal depression disorder and becomes tolerable to live with every year at this time. This means a bit of ice fishing which gets me out of the basement and away from the customer quilts. With the weather warming up a bit, it's not a bitter cold hardship getting on the lake. The panfish were actually biting and we had a couple of great days laughing at our silliness of missing the bites more than setting the hook.
I got a lot finished during my brief vacation, and now have been getting lots of customer quilts finished. Just when I thought I was almost caught up, I received 10 new quilts in 2 days this past week. Yikes. I think everyone was saving them up. My siamese Honey thinks it's great cause I'm down in the workroom making noises and she sleeps soundly when the machine is running. When it's too quiet, she gets a bit vocal and bossy.
The fishing may be finished since it rained the past couple of days. Lot's of water on the lakes to the point that the Birkie Ski...
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Posted at: 09:41 PM | 0 Comments | Add Comment | Permalink
Vacation is almost over
January 12, 2009
My self imposed vacation is almost over. I went ice fishing in the frozen north of MN for 6 days. Glad those shacks are heated, and the cabins are comfy. We traveled to Baudette MN in a snowstorm with about 6 inches of powder on the unplowed highway which covered some slick ice. Did I mention it was 35 below zero that night? What was I thinking. At least we caught plenty of Walleye.
I've spent the last two weeks finishing those UFO's that have amassed over the passed few years. I've finished 8 so far and have listed most on my etsy.com site. If you are interested in buying a quilt or just want to check out some of my stuff, go to www.riehmco.etsy.com. I have quilts, pillowcases, art quilts and some bookmarks of my art quilting. Go figure, the bookmarks seem to ne very popular.
Soon it will be teaching time for me. I'm finalizing a series of classes I'll be teaching at the Northwoods School in Minong WI for their adult education program. It's always a challenge to come up with interesting classes that will appeal to the majority.
Today a longarm quilty friend mentioned she...
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Tags:
granmas workshop, norma, quilting
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Winding Down for 2008
December 30, 2008
I'm on a brief "vacation" after the last minute Christmas rush to finish those customer quilts. Now it is Norma's UFO time. I'm currently working on shortening the pile of unquilted quilts that have grown this past year. I've finished four, one of which was in the pile for almost 3 years. Pretty sad that I can't even find the time to quilt my own things.
Sometimes sitting on the UFO pile is not a bad thing. It gives my quilt tops time to age and figure out what they should look like when they are finally finished. It also gives me time to learn new techniques that I can use on those misbehaving tops, that say "what were you really thinking?"
I hate to waste fabric. A couple of days ago, I lit a candle on my dining table that was on a candle stand. This jumbo candle leaked huge amounts of wax from a small crack on it's side onto one of my favorite table quilts. Now I have about a 12 inch section of the table quilt that is ruined. Wax soaks through fabric so nicely. Now I forsee my favorite table quilt becoming a cutter quilt...
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Posted at: 01:19 PM | 0 Comments | Add Comment | Permalink
Norma's first blog entry January 29, 2008
January 29, 2008
Today I'm almost finished quilting a huge paper pieced quilt for a customer. It's been super slow going on this one, and most of the time I'm not happy with it. That usually tells me I'll love it better when it's off the quilting machine. It has been on the machine for 5 weeks. Probably a new record for me. Very depressing.
I went on a 4 day retreat this past weekend and finished so many things even I am suprised. What a great weekend it was. There were 10 quilting friends, old and new having a great time. I was able to finish a Mariner's Compass for a class sample. It is made with hand dyed fabrics from Primrose Gradations. I'll be posting a picture of it on my teaching page for students that are signing up for the class.
I saw cool things this weekend and was inspired by others. Makes it hard to get back to serious work when there are so many ideas running in my head.
Norma
Posted at: 08:26 PM | Permalink
