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Ballooning in Idaho – What a Ride!

By Ellen Lindner on October 3, 2021 in Uncategorized

While on our vacation out west, my husband and I got to go on a hot air balloon ride! It was EXHILARATING! And very interesting! We both really enjoyed it.

We met the crew of Elevated Ballooning at 6:30 AM, when it was only 27 degrees! This Floridian was wearing six layers of clothing, which did the trick.

Ballooning in Idaho. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Fly Girls

Our pilot, Margaret, was very experienced and skilled. She was a MASTER (mistress?) of reading the fine nuances of what she called micro weather. (Wind currents and directions to the rest of us.) My husband immediately told her that I’m also a pilot (fixed wing) so she explained many things to us.

She and her crew of two had a very efficient and well-rehearsed process for setting everything up. My husband, Kevin, got to help them, while I took photos. After setting up the passenger basket and attaching it to the balloon “envelope,” it was time to inflate the balloon. They hauled out a big fan with its own generator to fill it up.

We drifted over tiny Griggs, Idaho, and didn’t even notice our smoky view. Everything about the experience was mesmerizing!

At one point we were moving across corn fields at a pretty good clip. Yeehaw!

Margaret was actually a little worried about having a high speed landing and told us how to crouch and where to hold on in case this happened! But, she was SO GOOD at reading the wind and making use of the natural wind breaks in our surroundings that she got us slowed down to a complete hover for landing. Then, we just gently plopped down. Amazing!

Of course, there was quite a procedure to getting everything put away and Kevin, again, helped with this.

The balloon envelope alone weighs 300 pounds. After bagging it up we were invited to sit on this 300 pound “bean bag” chair for a photo op.

We finished off our adventure with a toast of champagne and orange juice, a ballooning tradition.

http://adventurequilter.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/balloon-video-great.mov

Elevated Ballooning Crew

This was, by far, the highlight of our trip and I highly recommend it!

Ellen Lindner

Arches National Park

By Ellen Lindner on September 20, 2021 in Uncategorized

My husband and I recently visited several national parks in southern Utah. Arches National Park was our hands-down favorite. The rock formations and colors were amazing!

My favorite was Double Arch, shown below.

I think my husband’s favorite was Delicate Arch, the iconic arch for which the park is known.

We worked hard for this view! It was a good hour of uphill climbing, but it was well worth it. The trail was labeled difficult and I’d have to say it lived up to it. I think I’d add another D word: dangerous. I’m not a worrier or scared of heights, but it sure would be easy to get hurt on this trail!

Check out this video showing a little bit of the hike back down. Yes, it was exactly as treacherous as it looks AND there was two-way traffic here! That’s hubby leading the way and I was the idiot who was filming!
DON’T WATCH IF YOU’RE SCARED OF HEIGHTS

Here are some of the other noteworthy sights we saw. This is Balanced Rock.

Tunnel Arch

I forget the name of this one.

Here’s another little video about a different trail, named Park Avenue. Aren’t the colors amazing?

We also visited some other parks in the area. At Capitol Reef National Park we saw petroglyphs. Can you make them out?

Arches was, to me, even more amazing than the Grand Canyon. I loved the colors!

Ellen Lindner

Floral Improv with the Tidewater Quilters, Part Two

By Ellen Lindner on September 13, 2021 in Uncategorized

In the second half of our Floral Improv class the students added stems and leaves to their compositions. First, we discussed how much each student wanted her foliage to show up. A little or a lot? This dictated her fabric choice. You’ll see very different preferences in these photos. (These photos were all taken at the end of our six hour class.)

Floral Improv with the Tidewater Quilters. Teacher Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Karen’s quilt: low contrast stems, but high contrast leaves

Linda chose low contrast leaves and stems

This maker chose low contrast foliage. However, I’m not sure if this made by Debi or Faye, since they were sharing an iPad. Help me out, ladies.

And here’s the other one made by either Debi or Faye. Here, the foliage is fairly high contrast, but not enough to over power the flowers.

Kara’s choice

Mary Ellen really wanted to show off beautiful curving stems so she made them high contrast. She wisely omitted the leaves, since she already had enough going on.

Kate selected a VERY low contrast fabric for stems and leaves. However, she’ll add contrasting stitching for definition. You can see a leaf on the left where she’s already started.

Finally, the students learned how to add definition to their poppies with contrasting stitching. It makes a huge difference!

See Marsha’s poppies bottom left.

Deb got all her poppies stitched in class and they really came to life!

With 17 students, this class was almost full. That gave us plenty of energy, but we still covered A LOT of ground! I had a wonderful day with these ladies!

Ellen Lindner
P.S. Learn more about this class.

9/11: A Field in Pennsylvania

By Ellen Lindner on September 11, 2021 in Uncategorized

After the 9/11 tragedies of 2001, many artists depicted the towers or the Pentagon with poignant and heartfelt imagery. But, I don’t remember seeing any about Flight 93 plowing into a field in Pennsylvania. I began to wonder what that field would look like one year later? Would there be a big scar in the earth? Would the vegetation have grown back? These thoughts were the impetus for my quilt, A Field in Pennsylvania, One Year Later.

I put a black border around it to indicated mourning. But, I allowed one flower to reach past the border, thinking that perhaps one year later the nation would be beginning to heal.

Nestled among the vegetation I included a remnant of police tape.

A Field in Pennsylvania - detail, a 9/11 art quilt by Ellen Lindner. AdventureQuilter.com/blog

AFTER stitching it to the quilt, I burnt the edges. I protected the rest of the quilt with aluminum foil and had a spray bottle of water at the ready. Risky stuff!

I don’t normally make quilts with any sort of social or news commentary, but with such a monumental event I found that ideas kept coming to my mind. The quilt WANTED to be made. However, I’m an optimist, so I wanted to focus on future healing, rather than dwelling on the initial tragedy.

I’m proud of this quilt. In part because it was a technical stretch for me at the time, but more for the narrative aspect of it. Isn’t it great that we can use our art to tell a story?

Ellen Lindner

Floral Improv with the Tidewater Quilters, Part One

By Ellen Lindner on September 9, 2021 in Uncategorized

The Tidewater Quilters, of Hampton Roads, VA, did a GREAT job in our Zoom Floral Improv class, back in August. As you’ll see from these photos taken at the end of our six hour class, they made a LOT of progress!

First, they learned how to make daisies without a pattern – both circular and oval versions.

Debby’s quilt

Karin’s quilt

Next, they learned to make poppies without a pattern.

Nancy’s quilt.

Deborah’s quilt

Then, I taught them a little about design and composition and they spent some time arranging their flowers. (No stems or leaves yet.)

Lee with her quilt

Susan with her quilt

Pat with her quilt

Charlene’s quilt

Didn’t they do a great job? This is only half the class. In part two I’ll show you more pictures and tell you what we covered in the latter half of the class.

Ellen Lindner
P.S. Floral Improv is a good class for traditional quilters who want to try something a little different. Read here to see if it’s a good fit for your guild.

The Tentmakers of Cairo, Part Two

By Ellen Lindner on August 20, 2021 in Uncategorized

More photos from the amazing Tentmakers of Cairo exhibit.

If you look closely at this detail shot, I think you can see that the design is appliqued. The stitches are very shallow so they don’t even show on the back of the background fabric, (the white/cream canvas.) There’s no batting or added backing fabric, but still the stitches don’t show through the canvas.

Many of the designs are inspired by historical motifs. However, more contemporary images are also used.

Embroidery is sometimes added. This is often done by wives and sisters, at home.

At one time such wall hangings would have been used to decorate the inside of royal tents and outdoor settings. Today, in Egypt, they’re used mostly for important ceremonial events, such as weddings and funerals. But, they’re also sold in the West as home decor.

If you ever get a chance to see this work in person, I think you’ll enjoy doing so!

Ellen Lindner

The Tentmakers of Cairo, Part One

By Ellen Lindner on August 17, 2021 in Uncategorized

Perhaps you’ve heard of the Tentmakers of Cairo. They’re a group of men who have shops in the historic part of Cairo, where they make and sell stitched wall hangings. And they’re AMAZING!

The Tentmakers of Cairo, Part One. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

One of my favorites

A detail shot.

See what I mean? I recently got to see an exhibit of these pieces at the Dunedin Fine Arts Center, in Florida.

Each wall hanging is made by one man and is unique. The men work 6 days a week, for 10-11 hours each day, seated in a sort of semi cross-legged position.

The largest pieces (which are smaller than bed quilts) take about 4 months to complete! But only cost around $1000!

We got to see a demonstration of how they work and they are SO SPEEDY, with that needle turn applique!
See this video to get an idea.

The exhibit has closed now, but I’ll have some more great photos for you in the next post.

Ellen Lindner

“Beet Salad” Complete

By Ellen Lindner on August 15, 2021 in Uncategorized

Whew! After LOTS of rearranging and trial and error, I’ve finally finished this piece. And I’m quite happy with it.

The finished piece is 36″ x 26″. It’s available for $695.

The yellow in this detail shot looks a little yellow-green, but it will show you the circular quilting pattern, done both on the machine and by hand.

I think it’s well named, don’t you?

Ellen Lindner
P.S. See recent posts about how I dyed the fabric for this, and in-progress construction photos.

A Fun Class with Pat Pauly

By Ellen Lindner on July 30, 2021 in Uncategorized

I had a really fantastic opportunity last week. A friend was unable to attend a 2-day Pat Pauly class and gifted it to me. How wonderful! Pat is one of my favorite teachers and I knew this class about using skinny lines and settings would be fun, educational, and challenging. And I was right on all counts.

We started by learning how to make skinny lines. They’re lots of fun and easy to do.

Next, Pat taught us how to set in blocs and a variety of other shapes.

Soon, I had a hodgepodge of wonky blocks growing on my design wall

Pat encouraged us to slice into our shapes, insert new lines, put things back together off-kilter, etc. Plus, we used the same five fabrics everywhere, so there was a good amount of “cross pollination.”

She gave us some pointers about composition and mine slowly started turning into something other than “fruit salad.”

In the shot above you can see about what mine looked like at the end of the class. By then I couldn’t put it down! I was having too much fun putting this fabric puzzle together!

I worked on it fairly consistently for another couple of days. I did a lot of folding fabrics to audition ideas, plotting, and planning.

Eventually, I had to design little pieces to fill in various gaps.

Then, it all came together! This is the quilt top ready for the next step. Although the colors are a little more jarring than I usually select, I really like them. (All the fabrics are my hand dyes, except for the black ones.)

See the finished quilt, A Little Bit Tart.

Ellen Lindner

An Award Winning Quilt, and Others on the Go

By Ellen Lindner on July 28, 2021 in Uncategorized

It’s great to have my quilts, once again, traveling to real live art and quilt shows. Especially when I win an award! Such was the case with this quilt, Miscommunication.

It won third place at the 2nd Biennial Fiber Arts National Juried Exhibition in Bedford, VA. How nice! This exhibit is on display through August 21st, if you happen to be in the area.

In addition, my quilt Melting Pot is part of the “Floridian Flavors” exhibit currently on display at the Leepa-Rattner museum in Tarpon Springs, FL.

This exhibit features work made by the Florida members of SAQA (Studio Art Quilts Associates,) and will be on display through August 15th.

Floridian Flavors exhibit, piece by Gretchen Brooks. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Artwork by Gretchen Brooks, admired by viewers.

***A road trip is really worthwhile in this case, because just down the road, in Dunedin, FL, you’ll find THREE more wonderful art quilt exhibits at the Dunedin Fine Arts Center. One of them features work by the Tentmakers of Cairo and I can’t wait to see that!

I also got word that my quilt, Florida Native #2, has been accepted into the exhibit “Let the Sun Shine In.” This exhibit will be virtual, as well as on display in at least one gallery. (TBD.)

I hope you get to see some great quilts in person!

Ellen Lindner

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