Weekend Adventure: Missouri River Nature Trail

View of the Missouri River.

It is unseasonably warm for March in ND, everything is still very brown (best part is no bugs)

Mandan, ND hill sign.

First geocache of the day.

Rip rap to protect the bank from further erosion.

Skipping rocks in the mighty Missouri River.

Finding treasures hiding in the rocks.

Making a mark...

Do you mark you quilts?

I am in the home stretch of getting this Bike quilt finished up.  Good thing as it was commissioned as a gift for an early April birthday.  

Over the years I have tried the water soluble markers, but they always seem to be dried out when I am ready to use them.  I have used pencil, but found it is not all that easy to remove.  This soapstone pen in my stash for years and it works great and just rubs away.

I just mark the center spine on my feathers and do the petals free form. Doodling pages upon pages of quilting feather really helped my improve in getting a nice flow to the feathers and to quilt with confidence. 

  

   

I am in the home stretch of getting this baby done, wait, what......how did I forget to put that on the bike......now to figure out how to add it with all the quilting completed. 

Can you tell what I forgot? 

Weekend Adventure: Pioneer Park

My kids spend too much time plugged in to video games and the television.  I spend too much time in front of a computer all week.  In a effort to get out and explore the city, region and state we live in I am challenging myself to get out each week and find an adventure.

This week we found ourselves in Pioneer Park, a family favorite.  

This was also the first time turning off the auto shoot and testing the manual settings on my new camera.  Ended up with a mixed bag of shots. 

 We could not locate the geocache that we were looking for,  but frozen creek was fun.

It was an absolutely beautiful day to be out with some unseasonably warm weather.

New Camera

After many months of thinking about buying a new camera and a few weeks of searching the internet and asking my photo snapping friends what camera I should buy.  I took the plunge and bought a Canon Rebel T5 along with a 18-55mm lens and a 70-300mm lens.

First shot out of the box, then the battery died. 

I have not worked with a SLR camera since I took black and white photography class in college back in the dark room ages around 1992.  Since then I have had a variety of digital point and shoots and the past few years have resorted to my phone camera.

Trying out a few shots at home before we headed out to a school concert

We have a few long road trips planned for this year and I really want to get my kids out of the house and do some hiking/geocaching again this summer.   

One can only sit still so long waiting for mom before one must goof around. 

 I am ready for this adventure. 

What to do with all those doodles.....

I doodle nearly everyday. I have found it is a great way to relax and be creative as well as share with my kids.  We have a table in our family room so I can hang out and doodle while the kids play, watch tv or join me at the table. 

Both my kids love to sit and draw and paint with me so I thought it would be fun to scan several of my doodle and print them on demand for my kids.

I like to use a variety of techniques when I color including watercolors, gel pens and sharpies.  But by far our favorite are the glitter gel pens. 

One can never have too much glitter. 

Stutsman County Courthouse Quilt

I finished up  my latest architectural quilt......

Stutsman County Courthouse, located at 504 Third Avenue SE in Jamestown, ND is the oldest surviving courthouse in North Dakota and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. During the days of the Dakota Territory, meetings were held in the courthouse in preparation for statehood. The building is considered a superb but rare example in the Upper Midwest of the Gothic-Revival style of architecture. The interior is outstanding for its stamped metal ornamentation that dates to 1905.

Designed by Henry C. Koch, a Wisconsin architect who worked as General Philip H. Sheridan’s topographic engineer during the Civil War, the courthouse construction was completed in 1883. An addition designed by Gilbert R. Horton, a Jamestown architect, was added on the rear of the courthouse in 1926 to handle the growing needs of Stutsman County. The building served as the center of county government until the early 1980s when a new courthouse was built, adjoining and incorporating the earlier addition.

Historic Stutsman County Courthouse

by 

Amy Munson

2015

29.5" x 38"

Peek in my sketchbook...

I have always enjoyed drawing but never felt I was that good....until I started doodling.....

and now I doodle all the time......

I doodle in black and white.......

 
and recently started exploring adding color with gel pens....(I love the glitter gel pens)

and watercolors....

seems like every evening I find myself with paper pen in hand and watercolor surrounding me.

I even started creating my own booklets to sketch and paint in...My first homemade booklet has 6 pages (3 sheets of 11 x 17 inch folded in half and then I stitched a binding) I don't know why, but some how the booklets seem less daunting that a store bought sketchbook full of pages.

I have just about filled it full of doodles....

 and have started a second.

Do you doodle? Check out more of my doodles on Instagram. 

On my Design Wall: Stutsman County Courthouse quilt

The final fabric details have been added to the quilt and a good pressing to fuse everything down and then to start the stitching....just love how this is coming together. 

On my design wall....

I have shifted gears from knitting to working on my next quilt.  If you follow me on Instagram you have already seen a few photos of the work in progress.  It is a  commission from a colleague and it is of the historic Stutsman County Courthouse.  I blogged about and shared a few photos from a visit to the building a few years ago on a freezing day in January.
It is a grand glorious building.  Constructed in 1883 it is the oldest surviving courthouse in North Dakota.

I a just thrilled how everything is coming together.  All of the pieces are cut raw edge and fused down with wonder under.  Once all the fabric is placed and fused then I will stitch over all the edges with either a dark or light thread.  The stitching is like a scribble line and does cause frayed edges,  but I just go with it.  I like the softness and bit of messiness that the loose threads create.
The blue you seen here will be mostly cut away and the whole building stitched down to the sky fabric (once I figure out what that is going to be)