Category: Aurifil

Life in the slow lane….

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Wow, it’s been a really long time since I last posted to my blog. No excuse except my laptop died and I didn’t have easy access to the desktop since my husband uses it all the time. He’s gone for the summer, so I decided to hop on and start blogging again. He is being a nanny for our middle daughter who welcomed a beautiful little girl a couple of months ago. Childcare costs for a newborn are enormous so he was asked to come north and live with our youngest while caring for the baby at the middle daughter’s house during the day. Food and gas are his pay. Pretty cheap since his vehicle doesn’t use as much as mine for city driving. He’s enjoying seeing the girls and helping them both out. We talk almost every day and I do see him once a month if I want to drive 3 hours to do so.

I have been busy working on my UFO lists. I competed the tops for 7 quilts in about two months and sent 5 off to the quilting spa. She has 3 of them ready for pickup when I get up north again. It’s over 3 hours to her house. I recently bought a new Husqvarna Viking sewing machine. I bought a Sapphire 930 that loves my Aurifil thread and is a joy to sew my projects with. Even the 100 Days of Christmas is getting finished using this machine due to how easy it is to sew tiny half square triangles on it. I am also working on the Lady Tulip BOM by Laundry Basket Quilts. I chose the precut version and I wish I’d known how easy it was to sew together. No waste scraps and easy peasy to put together. I have two more BOM coming up in August and September that will come from another online quilt shop. Can’t wait for them to start coming in the mail. I enjoy getting mail more than I ever did before. Must be the slower pace of life here in rural Emery County, Utah.

One of the downsides of moving far away from the city and into a rural community is that you have to drive quite a way to see family or friends. Doctor visits are combined with other errands too. Anything to save on the cost of gasoline right now. I pay anywhere between $4.99 – $5.29 for premium here in my area. So, it’s not cheap to fill up my tank. I even schedule visits to the local quilt shops on my days when I’m going up for doctor visits.

I’m currently working on my yard. Weeding, growing new flowers and vegetables to add to the garden, and designing a couple new beds that will help fill up the back yard and get the weedy areas taken care of. I planted a cutting garden that is about 10 feet by 12 feet. I planted 107 different bulbs and tubers. Mostly dahlias and laitris but I also put in peonies. I have lots of seed to get spread down for the front strip along the road. We put in tulips and other bulbs last year, but the weeds are taking over so I want to get the wildflowers that are perennials going in there to take up the spaces between the bulbs. I really dislike weeding!

When I’m not outside weeding or planting something, I’m downstair working on current project. Right now, it’s a Jen Kingwell BOM that I took a class on at Quilts, Etc. in Sandy, UT. My sister, Laura, took the class with me and mine is almost done where she is just getting started on her pieced blocks. I even cut out several of the months for her! Funny how we all have different ways of getting things done. She works for other people and does a lot of charity quilts. Her personal quilts get put to the back of the list all the time. I am working on one project of someone but that’s it. Once it’s done, I will probably not do any more quilts for others unless it’s family. I’m finding it really hard to do handwork due to a disease I am dealing with. If it gets resolved and I get my mobility back in my body again, I hope to do more. As it is, I have donated several bins of fabric, scraps, books and kits to the Navajo Quilt Project. I hope they were able to use them all. I may have more before I’m done too! 30 years of fabric accumulations means I have more than I could ever finish in my lifetime!

I hope life doesn’t throw too much at me in the future and I hope you all have a wonderful summer!

Quilting adds meaning to my life.

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Years ago, when my youngest daughter was two weeks old, my sister invited me to my first quilt guild meeting. I was entranced by the designs and how lovely the other quilters were to each other and newbies like myself. I joined the Jordan Country Quilters and remained a member until they disbanded almost 18 years later due to the older quilters dying or joining groups closer to their homes. It was a sad day for me when I heard that not one person cared enough about this founding group of the Utah Quilt Guild to keep it going. They had over 80 members at one point but as quilters age and the younger ones took over, the sense of history and continuity was lost. As a younger quilter with six children, a husband on deployment four times in 10 years, I wasn’t able to do much in the guild at the time. I had a leadership position in the Utah Quilt Guild and could not do both. I was saddened to hear that the outgoing president didn’t think it was important to keep going. Make me wonder to this day if they were as committed to their position as they should have been to accept it in the first place.

I looked around for a while for a new group to join and ended up joining two. A day time group and one that met twice on the third Friday of the month. Both are totally different in the way they operate and I enjoy them tremendously however, due to my wildlife transportation trips, I had to scale back to the one that meets twice a day on the third Friday since I could get to one of their meetings on a more regular basis. This group is extremely involved in charity projects too which is something I really love about them. We take a break in December so that we can spend time working on our own projects which is why I have time for the 2018 AQS Christmas Countdown challenge. Last night, I finished block 5!

 Today I will be working on block 6 of the 2018 and catching up on the other three years so that by December 25th, I will have 100 blocks done! Can’t wait for this one to finish because I love finished projects, don’t you!! I’m loving the glossy colors of the #Aurifil thread that I’m using for my blocks and that stiletto is a must for keeping the tiny points together as they move under the foot of my machine. Love quilting!! 

Winter has arrived

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Life has been busy lately. I have spent over 60,000 miles in my SUV delivering injured wildlife to rehabilitators here in my state. I’ve even transported a juvenile Bobcat down to Best Friends wild animal sanctuary. A couple of weeks ago I took two small owls down to Hawks Aloft in Albuquerque, New Mexico, so that they could take them further south in their fall migration. Then a few days later, I transported a Russian mink to meet up with it’s new owner in Rock Springs, Wyoming. That was a fun trip too.

I’m now involved in a great quilting project called the Christmas Countdown from American Quilters Society. If you would like to join, check out their website at this link http://www.aqsblog.com/merry and join the fun! Here are the first two blocks that I posted late last night! 

Block 3 is out today! 

I’m off to finish block 3 and get it posted. I’m using several different reds and one white, a grunge white, that blends well with every fabric. I’m also finishing the handwork on our new Christmas tree skirt. I will post pictures of it later. Aurifil thread is being used for every project so far and I love it! The thread blends into the fabric and my points are easy to get since it is so thin and doesn’t add additional width to the seams. Try it, you just may like it!

Monsoon weather

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Today I took a lovely little white Ferret down to Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah, from the Salt Lake County Animal Shelter. It was a biter that had been returned to the shelter several times due to its temperament. Thankfully, there is a person who is a ferret expert that lives and works at the sanctuary and they will be fostering the little one until it’s deemed safe to adopt out. If I had to live my life in a small cage, with dogs barking around me and people poking at me, I’d be biting them too. Ferrets love big spaces to run around in and companions to play with or they get a bit of a temper. Much like a child that is kept indoors for days on end, they want attention and play and lots of space to run around in.

I saw several Turkey Vultures sunning themselves in the trees along the road in Mount Carmel, Utah, so I pulled over, jumped out, and walked back to take a few pictures in the cold drizzle that was hitting our state. Turkey Vultures, Mount Caramel, Utah, 10-4-18

I also saw a lot of migrating Swainson’s, Ferruginous and Redtail hawks clinging to the top of posts as they waiting out the inclement weather. I even saw a juvenile Golden Eagle hunkered down, waiting for the rain to let up.

 

Juvenile Golden Eagle
Juvenile Golden Eagle
Redtail Hawk

The weather didn’t give me great photos but it’s not often I see Goldens that close to the road. They usually don’t stay long on the poles and this one flew as I pulled up to take it’s picture as did the Redtail. Typical behavior for wild birds.

The weather has become like our normal Monsoon fall weather. Rain has been coming down throughout the state, causing flood warning in many areas that were hit by fires earlier this summer. It’s put out the fires that we still had burning for which I’m thankful. I will be posting pictures of the areas that were burnt along Highway 6 in Spanish Fork Canyon. It’s pretty sad to see the devastation.

I got home to find a package waiting for me with the three quilt books I’d ordered from Fat Quarter Company. Two Pat A. Sloan books and the Christmas Fig BOM book also the 80 weight Aurifil thread that I’m going to try out on my applique. If I like it, I will be ordering a few of them!

Tomorrow I will be finishing a quilt that my daughter and I made for a wedding. It’s a Spooky Courthouse Steps quilt. Wedding is on Sunday, rain or shine, outside at a campsite in Big Cottonwood Canyon. My daughter told her about the quilt so that they can have people sign the label as they come to the reception. It’s going to be a lasting memory of their special day. I’ll post a picture of that lovely couple with their quilt when we gift it to them. I hope they love it. First time my daughter and I have made a quilt together but I see many more in our future, come rain or shine!!!

 

Letting go ….

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Let’s try this one again. I’m learning a new way to post my blogs and it’s been a real learning curve for me.

Recently I got a good lesson on letting go. I transport injured wild animals, mostly birds, to a wildlife rehabilitator in Price, Utah. I took some time and volunteered at her place last month while her helper was on vacation. It was during this time period that she let me see the sad side of her work. I had brought her a Cooper’s hawk that was badly injured and through the stress of it’s injuries and the two hour ride to the center, it was dying. I held it as it was helped on it’s way to a peaceful death. During it’s last few minutes of life, I listened to it’s heart beat, it’s breathing and watched as it bade life farewell. It is not something I want to do on a regular basis and I cannot imagine how hard it is for my friend to do this as part of her daily work. It takes a real dedication to helping animals to know that sometimes death is the best thing for them. We cannot put our human values of life on wild animals. We have to think of their quality of life if we tried to keep them alive. Some animals just cannot make it in captivity.

I also sent a couple of my quilts to the local county fair. I did well there but not so well with the same quilts at the state fair. Oh well, it is what it is. Next year I will be putting in some totally different quilts compared to anything I’ve ever done before and hopefully they will get a good reception from the judges too.Great blue herons 2, Lee Kay Ponds, 9-7-18

I recently took a short drive over to the Lee Kay Ponds Conservation area just as it was getting dark and  got this beautiful shot of two Great Blue Herons in the sunset. Nature often reminds me of the glorious colors and textures around me that I can use in my life. Now back to quilting. I have a deadline for several small wall hangings that are going over to England in 10 days. Working on the quilting part today with my Aurifil thread collection.  Life is never boring!! More to come!Badger, Rest stop Evanston WY, 7-31-18.jpg

This is a badger that lives at the state park in Evanston, Wyoming. One of several that make it their home. Taken on a recent trip to Yellowstone, it’s one of my favorites and one that may show up in a quilt in the future!