Category: quilting

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!

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!

Summer lovin’

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grand canyon during golden hour

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I am loving our hot summer days. I recently went on a road trip with one of my sisters. We travelled through Idaho, Washington, Oregon and Nevada before heading back to our home state of Utah. Along the way we stayed with a cousin in Declo, Idaho, who was a hoot! Loved his family and his place. He installs hardwood floors and his own were works of art. I should have taken a photo!

Next stop were to the quilt shops around Boise, Idaho and surrounding towns as we made our way to Pendleton, Oregon, for the night. Then after church services at the LDS ward in Hermiston, Oregon, we travelled up to Lacey, Washington to see our Uncle Dan and Aunt Susan. They are both getting up there in years and Uncle Dan was recently diagnosed with dementia. He recognized me but not my sister which is understandable since they haven seen each other in years and I go up several times a year to see him.

The next day we were hitting the quilt shops again as we did the Row by Row Experience 2018. We met a lot of people that were so talented at all the quilt shops we visited. We stayed one night at a KOA resort then spent a night at our cousin’s house in Sedro Wooley, Washington, were we had a fabulous time. I spend a lot of time there as well. Then on the road to more shops as we headed down the Oregon coast to Gracie’s Sea Hag – home of the worlds biggest strawberry shortcake. It was a destination that my sister has been wanting to visit for 39 years when she was there with our parents. It was the same restaurant but not exactly the same strawberry shortcake. It was delicious though so well worth the stop!

bay beach caribbean clouds

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

We headed home through Sisters, Oregon, then down some back roads as we visited more quilt shops participating in the Row by Row. Spent the last night in Winnemucca, Nevada, in a dive motel but we were so tired we didn’t care. It was marginally clean and our vehicle was still in one piece when we got up. Beds were comfortable too. One final push home, stopping at quilt shops and then home. Nine days away from home and my loved one was an experience. I am so thankful for my family. I’ll be posting pictures in a later post when I figure out how to transfer them from my phone to my google account! That will be a day long adventure, I’m sure!

In the meantime, I’ll be enjoying seeing our lovely state as I travel to family reunions, transport injured wildlife and head to the mountains to see the birds. I hope you are having a great summer too!

 

Holidays make me happy

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My favorite time of year is any holiday! I love them because I usually have a slow day at work and I get to enjoy some me time. Today is no different. I will be at work this evening and hope to finish my embroidered quilt. Just needs some quilting and a binding and it’s ready to hang up in the shop.

Oh, did I mention that I’m quitting and becoming a stay at home mom again? Yup, I’m going to be home and maybe I’ll get caught up on the projects in my urgent pile!!  I may even get caught up on the Splendid Sampler and the 365 Challenge. Life sure does go by fast. I’m almost four months behind on them both thanks to work. Oh, I know, that’s a long time to not quilt but I’ve had a lot of other projects for work that had to be done. Also the decision to put my knee replacement in the forefront and get that done before the family reunion in September became more important that working. Can’t work if you can’t walk!

Today is the 25th but yesterday was a special holiday in our state – Pioneer Day. It’s a celebration of the brave men and women who crossed the plains and settled in Utah and parts of Nevada and Arizona back in the 1800’s. My ancestors were part of that event and I’m very proud of that pioneer stock. They gave up everything they had to come to Utah and settle here. Most never saw their families at home again. My father would tell us stories about his ancestors who settled in a little town called St. Thomas, Nevada, and had a hotel there. It doesn’t exist any longer due to the Hoover Dam being built and water covering the town back in 1939. Now you know a little piece of history!

I’ve been traveling around for the past few weeks. Put almost 8,000 miles on my truck as I went on the Row by Row adventure throughout the entire state of Utah then up to Washington and Oregon and parts of Idaho. I think I just added another project to my pile of Unfinished Objects! Lol! Anyhoo, you all have a wonderful day and remember to enjoy the little things of life!! Love others and always always be kind!

Another small step…

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Well, it’s another Wednesday afternoon. I have work in a bit. Life is never slow, quiet or simple for me. I’m still working on “Little Blue Bird” by Pat A. Sloan. Maybe it’s because it’s not my own design but I’ve been having a real hard time getting motivated to complete it. Does that happen to  you? I’ll be posting a photo of my completed wall hanging when I finally get it done.

My baby baby sister is having her first baby today. Emergency C-Section so this is a short blog. I’m going to be out of town for a few days to visit her and for a family funeral in Las Vegas, Nevada. Hope to get to Henderson to the quilt shop there and pick up a couple of things to use in the Splendid Sampler challenge and in the 365 Challenge which has been kicking me in the past few weeks. I’ve been so busy at work and it’s been so hot here that I can’t stand to be in the quilt room for very long. I’m motivated to complete them however because they are so awesome and they will be heirlooms for my children to enjoy. I also have four other quilts in various stages of completion that need to be done before the end of the year. I really quilt more during the winter than any other time. So watch for my posts. I should be really kicking out some fantastic work by October! Lol!!

Fairs are coming up and I have several at my LAQ to get back and bound then on the way to the fairs. I love entering my quilts in fairs because I feel that they are judged on their own merits and not compared so much to the other quilts running against them. Plus the advice from the judges is a lot nicer. Hopefully, by next year, I’ll have something to put in the HMQS event here in Utah but it depends on how well they do in the fairs. You’ll see them soon. I still need to transfer photos to my computer to upload here.

Enjoy the little things of life and keep on quilting!!