Pamela Thiele Art Quilts

New Quilt

I have started working on a new quilt. Well, actually I started a couple of weeks ago and I went a little crazy, pulling potential fabrics. I figured, if I used a different fabric for each piece of each block, I’d need 108 fabrics. So I pulled 170 fabrics from my stash. Hey, what! I LIKE fabric.

I more or less winnowed this heap down to the 108 I needed and then I started cutting out the various block pieces. Which is one of my most favorite parts of making a quilt. Fussy cutting. I have fussy cut every piece of this quilt. And of the 3 or 4 other quilts I’ll be making for the left-overs of my cutting madness. Because, you see, I was so in love with each fabric and how I could manipulate the images by cutting different parts of each print, that I went a wee tad overboard on the cutting. Actually, to be accurate, I cut enough 4 inch squares to make several additional quilts. I couldn’t help it. I kept seeing possibilities in the fabrics.

I think it’s irrelevant that I did not NEED 4 inch squares for the main quilt. Nor am I going to use any 4 inch squares on that quilt.

The main quilt is another variation of Moon Over the Mountain. The one I previously made is titled Summer Solstice in the Rockies (it’s in my gallery on this website)  and the prints reflect the lushness of summer. This one uses prints that feel more Spring like. And overall, I think it has a definite color range. The Summer Solstice was about all colors–the primary colors of summer. This one seems to be more about awakening greens, sort of. And lighter blues.

I am continuing to use the sharper profile of the mountain for this, because I like it. And I live in Colorado now, with new mountains. Not back East, with older, rounder mountains.

The 9-patch I’ve put together is still not exactly right. I had cut out some 12″ squares just because…which is the exact reason I cut out the 4 inch ones. I liked what I was seeing. I was grooving on fabric. So I have incorporated one 12 inch square in the main quilt. Just one. Way cool.

And put several in the 9-patch.

It’s the 12 squares which are making me nuts in the 9-patch. I can’t quite get the right ones in the right place. Although I will, I know. I am living with each version for a day. And eventually things will gel. Can wait to piece these two together.

In the meantime, I put together a few 9-patches and 12 inch squares into 2 prayer quilts for my church quilt group. I merely need to make the backs for these, quilt them and bind them. That’s all.

So a great cutting festival  has turned into at least 4 quilts. And I am having a blast!

pure joy

This past week we had an appreciable snow fall–maybe 6 inches which isn’t a lot but is enough for two young dogs who LOVE the snow to frolic in it. I took about a million pix and finally got a few that capture their pure delight in the snow, each other, and life.. It was like watching a spectacular ballet. Their athleticism and grace just knock me sideways. And they remind  me to revel in the moment.

The spooky weather station

To being with, weather station seems like such an overdone name for a dual thermometer. But maybe that’s just me. But it’s sort of like using water feature for a fountain. Anyway, once I got the replacement weather station up and running two days ago, all was well with the world. Ignoring the fact that the instructions were a tad wrong and you had to just keep trying stuff until some combo of events I couldn’t possibly duplicate got it to work.

Ignoring the tedium of setting it up, I was happy to have both the indoor and outdoor temperatures at hand. And so we went to bed. Around 12:30 I woke up because Luka was prowling the bedroom in a very nervous manner because Lauren was prowling around the living room. I asked what was wrong, and Lauren said there was a flashing light somewhere in the house. We both thought perhaps an alarm–smoke, CO, whatever– was malfunctioning.

But no. It was the weather station which, for inexplicable reason, has a light that flashes continuously whenever the temp goes below freezing. Why, God only knows. I mean, most of this nation has days, and sometimes even weeks, when the temperature dips below 32. In fact, this device is sold by a company headquartered in Maine, for heaven’s sakes! where trust me, it can get cold. And stay cold.

Were it a device for citrus farmers, I guess I’d understand. But it was not described that way. And I imagine the citrus people have far better and more expensive devices to help them protect their crops.

I thought about returning it. Again. But then I decided to put some masking tape over the flashing light. It seems to work. The weather station can fret all it wants and yet its very insistent light will no longer wake us up. I think we are getting too complicated in our equipment. Just because something can be made to flash, does not mean it SHOULD be so made. The simple original design was all I wanted–of course it no longer exists. Something that would let me know the outside temperature without having to go outside. And nothing more. Alas. I am so close to giving up and putting up more of the very old-fashioned thermometers which hung outside a window. They worked. Argh.

wrong again

I have just received the second replacement for the weather “station” I ordered two years ago. Every year, when it’s time to change the batteries, the dang thing simply refuses to continue to work.

What it’s supposed to do is to tell me what the indoor and outdoor temperatures are. The pretty (relatively speaking) part of it sits on the mantelpiece. The sensor for the outdoors, is out by the front door. At some point, the batteries get discouraged and then it should be a simple matter of replacing them, to get back on track. But no. Wrong again.

No, once you take those initial batteries out, you are doomed to never again know what the temperature is. Unless you run downstairs and check the outdoor thermometer that’s generally on one of the windows in my studio. Unless it has fallen on the ground again in a fit of pique. And then you have to go to the thermostat in the living room, remembering to bring a flashlight because the little light in the thermostat doesn’t always go on, to read the indoor temp. That the thermostat is more elaborate than anyone could ever want is not our fault. To replace it–to get a normal thermostat–would cost about $400. And thus we figure we can tote a flashlight to it, when we need to.

So I admit to being a weather-ite. A weather geek. A weather type. Mostly I like to know what the outdoor temp is when I am indoors because I do.

When I was a teen, I got roped into a state-wide research project that had lots of us (suckers) take the temp a few times daily, and measure any precipitation. Which I did pretty faithfully. After I started college, the guy conducting the research got some one else to do it, but it turned out that my dad had been as addicted to the process as I. So he got himself the gauges for precep and started recording the highs and lows, and amount of moisture every day until he was into his 80s. There is just something fine about knowing this sort of thing.

Since then, I had been waiting for a gadget that would do what the “weather station” does, which is JUST TELL ME the temperatures. In and out. So you can imagine how tickled I was to find one. And how irritated when it refused to get reset after the yearly battery change.

I called up the company I got it from –L.L. Bean. Now we can all agree there is a good way and a bad way to handle customer inquiries and telling someone she probably did something really wrong, is not a good way. Customer service told me first to follow the instructions which came with the station, which I had already done. And then it emailed me additional instructions which said absolutely the opposite of what the original instructions said to do.

So I returned the station and offered them their choice: refund my money or send me another. The second station came and worked fine for a year. Then no matter what I did, nothing. This time, having learned my lesson, I didn’t ask for help. I just returned the thing. And today the replacement for the replacement came.

I wonder now if this is something I will be doing for the rest of my life. Sending in the old one and –after a month or so–getting a new one. Because although I try to be reasonable, I do think that the initial station should have lasted through several years and battery changes. And thus I don’t feel bad, asking for an exchange. How long is reasonable?  Perhaps I will decide after 8 more of these, that 10 years is long enough for the original to have lasted, and stop this little exchange.  Perhaps not. I am still smarting from the initial snotty response I got when I first called.

However right now I know what both the indoor and outdoor temperatures are, and I am content.