Quilters’ Blogs

Though the rose gardens were about ten days from blooming, we thoroughly enjoyed the Chinese and Japanese gardens in Portland. Dad preferred the latter; me the former. It fascinated me how each “room” was complete unto itself, but framed one’s experience of the next room.

And then there were the details. These absolutely delighted me!

This window is in the Japanese garden:

Look at how the layout of this walk makes the visitor slow down and take in the beauty. Yes, of course there are big Koi in the water!

Quilt patterns are everywhere. The walks in the Chinese garden were exquisite. Afterwards we found a postcard of them in the gift shop. Here are two of them:

The Camelias in a building in the Chinese garden were perfection:

And we had to have tea in the tea house!

Yes, we are having fun!

~Jodie

At dinner during Market we had a lovely bottle of oregon Pinot Noir. So, as Jayne and Dad and I were headed to the Willamette Valley a few days later I looked up the winery. And there we were the next day sipping wine!

These are the vineyards…

And this is the brand new St. Innocent building.

It is the St Innocent Shea Vineyards Pinot Noir we are so enamoured with.

But the event I was most anxious for was the pilgrimmage to my favorite brewery. Rogue is living beer history and every beer lover and brewer has a visit to Rogue in Newport, Oregon on their must-do list. This was my chance.

The watering hole itself is an unassuming place, certainly not revealing its standing as a mecca for beer lovers.

We sat at the bar and enjoyed Rogue beers, cheese (wow!) and even gin (more wow!)

The surf board is in unused condition. I can’t imagine anyone surfing outside. The water is cold and it’s always chilly and raining!

The actual brewery is across a bridge. What a thrill to be there! (Oh, um it wasn’t open when we got there so there just happened to be a knitting shop close by where Jayne and I spent a happy hour and came out with the first of three bags of yarn on the trip!)

Rogue is famous for such beers as Dead Guy Ale and their Hazelnut Brown Nectar, Mogul Madness, Hop Heaven… they have a ton of winners.

And for brewer John Maier’s Laborador Retriever, Brewer.

With our Rogue fix we were back on the road heading north.

~Jodie

We spend a lot of time in the spring and early summer working outside on the weekends. My husband’s water garden starts to life early, and by the time mid-June rolls around is loud with frogs in the evenings.

We have quite a few old roses. This one, Lavendar Lassie, sets our fence into bloom right before I go to Quilt Market each spring.

Of course, we have “help” with our gardening chores. Manny the Maine Coon is always nearby, often turning up napping behind a plant as I weed a perennial gadren. Funny how a few minutes later I find him in the next area I’ve moved to. He’s quite the man!

So I bet you can guess what he does when I head to my studio to cut fabric or sew. Uh huh–”help”!

~Jodie

 Several years ago Jayne and I took a fantastic trip on the Oregon Trail in wagons with a group of quilters. It was pure magic. Leslie and Kaye from Wagons Across Wyoming were fantastic. So when we saw that we’d be near an Oregon Trail museum while in Oregon we put it at the top of our must-do list. The End of the Oregon Trail Museum turned out to be a winner!

As we approached we knew we were there when we saw the telltale frames of Conestoga wagons.

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I happened to visit the Electric Quilt site recently and checked out the EQ blog.

There I found posts about uses for EQ for designing things other than quilts. An EQ user designed the tile work for her bathroom using EQ. But of course! That really caught my attention as we’re about to break ground on a new house. Check it out on the Do You EQ? Blog.

For my own non-quilting use of EQ, I designed the quilts on my cuckoo clock using EQ6. I made jpgs of the quilts and e-mailed them to Germany where they printed them on little pieces of wood to place beside the cuckoo door. Talking about a marriage of old and new!

~Jodie

The July issue of Fons & Porter’s Love of Quilting is on the newstand and making its way to your mailbox. The editors have done another bang up job putting together a lovely magazine with great projects from talented designers.

I absolutely love this quilt, Ginger’s Flower Garden by Keri Duke and Ginger White. Made of just half square triangles and squares set on point, this quilt proves that inspired simplicity rules.

Each issue Love of Quilting features the pattern for a quilt from the International Quilt Study Center & Museum. The museum has the largest publicly held collection of quilts in the world!

Summer Bouquet was designed by Anne Orr, an editor for Good Housekeeping magazine from 1919 to 1940. The editors of Love of Quilting have created and published the pattern for this quilt so you can make it yourself.

You can purchase kits for both of these quilts to help get you started sewing quickly. How nice!

We have a new ad for QNNtv running, that helps show newbies how to use the site.

And I was surprised to find a little article in the magazine about the Williamsburg episode we taped for the Love of Quilting PBS show. Working hundreds of miles away, I sometimes miss things, which often makes for nice surprises!

As always, you can subscribe to the magazine, purchase it anywhere–even the grocery store, or order it online.

~Jodie

Tasha Tudor

1915-2008

The most amazing thing one can do in one’s lifetime is to influence other people’s lives for the better. Tasha Tudor did so with beauty and sensitivity. I’m sure I’m only one of numerous creative types who were inspired by her work and her life. 

I was reminded of Tasha Tudor when I visited Williamsburg this spring to shoot a Love of Quilting epsiode. There we met Janea who depicts a milliner from the late 18th centurt. Janea told us that she and her sister loved to dress in period clothes as children, so the opportunity to live in the 1780’s professionally by working at Williamsburg was a dream come true.

Tasha lived her life in her chosen time period, the 1830’s, and supported her family through her art. She lived genuinely; to herself and others. And I think that is what we all found so appealing.

As Meghan Cox Gurdon wrote so well in an article in the Wall Street Journal, “It’s fair to say that, like Oscar Wilde, Tasha Tudor put her talent into her work and her genius into her life.

May she rest in . . . 1830.”

 ~Jodie

Visit Tasha’s memorial site

Visit the Tasha Tudor Family site

Past the waterfalls along the Columbia River, we saw a sign for Vista House, which sounded worthy of a stop. This German art nouveau building has been restored to grace its vantage point along the river. I thought of it later in the trip when we visited the End of the Oregon Trail Museum and heard stories of how treacherous the last leg of the journey to Oregon City was for early settlers. Imagine rafts floating down the river with all of one’s possessions and loved ones left to the whim of the river.

At Vista House we enjoyed cahhting with the volunteers. When they asked where we were staying that night and we responded that we had to plans, they recommended McMenamins at Edgefield, saying it is funky and shared bathrooms were compulsory, but they spoke so highly of it that we figured we were up for the adventure.

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Believe me, I wasn’t looking to find a dog. Perhaps though my visit to Guide Dogs for the Blind primed me, or was an omen. It’s been three years since our last dog died of old age, and forever since I’ve had a dog I chose. This a dog chose me. 

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After visiting the Guide Dog Center we made our way up Mt. Hood to Timberline Lodge for lunch. We ate lunch in the Cacade Dining Room overlooking the ski slopes which were still busy in May. The historic lodge is both beautiful and fascinating. It was built as a WPA project and dedicated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1937. Some ususual art work (haven’t got the pictures from my dad) was inspiring to say the least. We wanted to stay! Jayne and I kept finding more things to “oh” and “ah” over. I was entranced by the wwod carvings that were really paneling in one room. But we were on to more adventures.

From there we travelled along the Gorge along the Columbia River. There were too many waterfalls along the way to stop at them all. This one is the largest.

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