Keeping warm in the bleak mid-winter

I love fire.

A warm and cozy day to all my favorite blog readers,
-Carmen Rose

New Quilt in Process

New quilt in the works, I played with it all evening yesterday... which is why I went to bed at 3 am... (uh o! The waking time doesn't change!)

Now that the bulk of Christmas production work is past and I can get back into the things that I enjoy a little more... I headed for the quilt studio. It doesn't hurt that the wood stove was on full blast last evening, I had a NCIS marathon on in the background, and it was warm and wonderful and I just didn't want to stop working. You know you love what you do when you have to force yourself to quit. I'll live with it a while this way and see what tweaking it requires and then see if I can finish it up. It will be interesting to see what the old Singer sewing machine thinks of machine quilting this baby!

The quilt is all hand dyed fabrics except for two pieces of batik, all cotton and I'm working with "wonder under" for the first time. Not crazy about it but don't hate it either. I've used a lot of "heat and bond" and there is a real difference, so I'm in the learning curve. I bought a whole bolt so I'm sure I'll love it by the time the bolt is empty! LOL!

Happy Creating, thanks for dropping by my blog!
-Carmen Rose

Fabric, Roses, Guests, Projects and Warmth

I have started another quilt and I’m not real sure where I’m going with this one. I want something to go on the dining room table in a room that will have this painting on the wall. I painted it a few years back and even though there is a little damage to the surface of it, it still feels much like a personal statement since my name is Carmen Rose. I do love roses! The more vividly fuchsia/magenta they are, the more I love them!

I pulled out a piece of very special hand dyed fabric from Frieda Anderson and put a few things with it, all batiks. I just love these colors and wanted to try to bring out vibrant color by contrasting it with more muddy murky tones. I am pretty sure that was badly unsuccessful but it was an interesting experiment. Now I’m going to need to consider it a while and see where it wants to go from here. The temptation is to cut into it to bring some strong contrast but I am not quite there yet. I think it could be pretty all quilted up and on the dining table under a large glass bowl with water and loaded up with floating candles. Sounds good, right? I will continue to give it some consideration.

I have two girls coming to spend their Spring Break with us, that will be fun. I also have a few furniture projects I would like to accomplish this week. Will I have time to paint a bedroom, make curtains and get them hung? Never a shortage of things to be done. I’ll try to remember to take “before” and “after” photos. I usually forget the “before” photos because I’m so impatient for transformation.

Oh, I almost forgot my other great news! My hubby and friends have been working on a big wood stove for our basement. As I was working at this quilt project yesterday evening, they brought in this big stove dangling on a chain from an engine lift (the thing must weigh a ton) with wheels. The apperatus looks a bit like a miniature crane. Then they carefully lowered it into place and hubby installed the needed pipe and damper and it is a thing of beauty! Well… not physically beautiful, just lovely and warm! And now we can keep the fire mess downstairs instead of using the family room fireplace when it gets ultra cold. It is a cold one here today! Brrrrrr!! I don’t know if it will really heat the whole house or anything, but it certainly makes my studio a lovely temperature! I am lovin it! Fire is good!!