Grandma and Me

 

 We dodged another snow bullet this season.  The jet stream keeps sending the snow north.  Our luck is someone's misery.

 

One year ago today I uploaded my first post.  Like my quilting this past year, my writing is forever evolving.  Except, I noticed that with the last couple of posts, my writing had become very bland and same old, same old.  Something else I need to work on.

  

Well, I finally found a winner, plus two other pictures that will be used as subjects for future wallhangings.   I really like this photo of my mother and niece.  There is just something about seeing an adult walking with a child; I guess it is the portrayal of generations, young and old.

 

 

I like the idea of keeping them in a pumpkin patch, but I think I will take "artistic" liberties and change the pumpkin patch.  I will trace the figures, because I know my drawing limitations.

First, I thought I would have the figures cover most of the wallhanging and add a pumpkin or two.  So,  I enlarged the figures to 14" by 9".   

 

 

 

 

After tracing onto the muslin and after much thought, I thought this was a cop out and would make for a boring composition.   In other words, it would be easy and not present much of a challenge.  The wallhanging would be the two figures as it looked at that moment.

 

 

 

I retraced the figures onto a larger piece of muslin and decided I would let the rest of the wallhanging evolve as I go along.

 

 

 

Before I could begin, of course, I had to go to the fabric store to get material for the road.  I had browns, but I really liked the look of the reddish brown road.  Not really knowing how or what I was going to make the pumpkin patch, I decided to work on the center of the wallhanging.  First, I decided to cut and lay the road.  Next, I will progress to the two figures and go on from there.

 

 

 

As a child, I loved reading the "Little House" series by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  So back in the summer of 2003, Mom and I embarked on our first real road trip.  We decided to follow the trail of the Ingalls family.  Wevisiedt the homesteads and homes that Laura mentions in her books.  The first stop was Pepin, Wisconsin where Laura was born.  This is a picture of a replica of the cabin that stood on the site of the original cabin.  To this day, I can still feel the excitement we felt standing on the same land where Laura was born and played as a child.