Charles M. Bair Family Museum

Martisdale, Montana

Charles Bair came to Montana in 1883 as a conductor on the Northern Pacific Railroad. At the time, he had only 14 cents and 7 green apples in his pocket. He made his fortune in Alaska by investing in a ground thawing device. He poured his earnings into oil, mining, and real estate. He had one of the world's largest sheep ranches - based here in Martinsdale, Montana (about 120 miles from Billings) - running up to 300,000 head of sheep. Later in life, the family made a home in Martinsdale, and this is the location of the Charles M. Bair Family Museum. All family members have passed away now, but the ranch continues to fund the Bair Family philanthropies, including this museum.

The family collected a lot of art over the years, and in June 2011, this state of the art museum opened - designed to showcase the family art collection.
According to our tour guide, at one time - most of the priceless art was stored in this root cellar!
This old sheep wagon was set up on the museum grounds. I found it surprisingly similar to the one my uncle had for his sheep herder back in the 1960's. I am not sure what accommodations my uncle has for the sheep herder nowadays.

Mail Art Project - Week Fifty Six

Purple Silk Leaves

The green hand dyed habotai silk back ground fabric is leftover from my daughter's prom dress.
The purple silk leaves are left over from another failed silk garment (and I used many of them on my "Space Between" entry which is now traveling the Quilts, Inc. show circut).

Machine quilted and the leaves are only attached by stitching, so the edges sort of move a bit - the leaves are made of silk charmeuse.

Today's Quote:

"Don't knock the weather;
nine tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation
if it didn't change once in a while."
-Kin Hubbard-

Venus Fly Trap at Work!

I recently saw this little plant in the local nursery. I have always been curious about carnivorous plants, but never had a chance to own one before. I could not resist - price was only $6.95, so it came home with me. I put it on the kitchen table and we went out for a few hours. When we returned, I noticed that it caught a fly in our absence!
The wing was protruding from the side of this trap! What fun! From my research, I understand it will release a liquid that will dissolve the fly's soft tissue, but when it reopens in a week or so - there will be the remains of the fly's exoskeleton.

Auditioning Pebbles for the Beet Prints

Beach Pebbles from Homer, Alaska (above)

When I added the brown strip of hand dyed fabric beneath the group of three beet print panels, I conceived a plan to add some stone chips or pebbles along that line. I very often add tangible objects - metal, stones, etc. to my work. Looking through my stash of quilt sized rocks, I found only three types that I have sufficient quantity and are of the proper size.

Granite chips from Timberline Trail in the Beartooth Mountains of Montana. I think these are a bit oversized for the brown strip of fabric - I would prefer the stones not extend beyond the edges of the brown strip.

Petrified Wood chips from Tom Miner Basin, Montana. I am actually not sure I have enough of the petrified wood for the entire row. So, right now I am leaning strongly towards using the beach pebbles. I like the way their shape echoes the shape of the beets.

3 Panel Beet Print Quilted

Well, I have finished with the quilting on this piece, which is composed of three panels of gelatin plate printed beets. The piece is entirely quilted with Aurofil Brown Cotton thread in size 28.
The edges of the brown fabric strip and the outside edges have been couched with a hand dyed specialty yarn.
I have some ideas for further embellishment. I will share those tomorrow.

Inside Looking Out

I loved the look of the landscape from the inside of the cave.
There were some interesting water worn features on the interior - pillars and erosion.


Beautiful textures and colors both inside and out.

Here is Joe on the trail back down. You may be able to see the blue pick up truck in the center of the image above.

Pryor Mountain Cave

We spotted this cave from the Sage Creek road in the Pryor Mountains. We noticed it had a trail leading up to it.

It looks like people drive ATV's up here. We drove the partway up the road in the pick-up, but hiked the rest of the way. It was steep.


This is not a very deep cave, but would certainly have provided shelter from the weather. I hoped there might be a petroglyph or pictograph, but it seemed as if this cave has had a lot of erosion. If there was ever any rock art it is now all on the cave floor.


We enjoyed exploring it. More pictures of the cave tomorrow.

Border Quilting for Beets

So here's my solution to my dilemma over the border quilting for the beet print.

Mail Art Project - Week Fifty Four

"Fingerpaint Tree"

The background is fingerpainted monoprint fabric. The screen print is adapted from a photograph of a tree in the park near my sister's home in New Haven, Connecticut.

Today's Quote:
"Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath,
no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does."
-George Bernard Shaw-

National Forest in the Pryors

We stopped partway up East Pryor Mountain (we never did get to the top) and ate our lunch while enjoying the view. We only saw a few other vehicles the entire day.

Fall Colors in the Pryor Mountains

Pryor Mountain Drive

We have had some really beautiful weather this fall and we took advantage of it by heading out to the Pryor Mountains. We ran into a few snags - closed roads, etc. These pictures are all taken before we actually got to the Custer National Forest.

The Beartooth Mountains are off in the distance - kind of hazy because of the smoke from nearby forest fires.This is called Black Butte, according to my map.


This is a view of Big Pryor Mountain - which is 8465 feet in elevation.