To Arizona and Back

We arrived home to the Salt Lake Valley last Sunday, after a 9-day vacation in Tubac, AZ. Tubac is located verrrrry south in Arizona, about a 20 minute drive north of the Mexico border. All of Bruce’s three remaining siblings live there, and we hadn’t visited since just before the COVID pandemic in 2020. 

Overall it was a nice trip, but from now on we’ll fly from Salt Lake to Tucson, then rent a car for the remaining 1-hour drive. Driving two days each way in the car is too long for these old bones!! But we did take a new route and saw some new scenery and towns and cities, so that was interesting. I’ll spare you all the scenery pictures except this one, taken near Kanab, Utah.

All the rest of my scenery photos had bad reflections on them. And half the time I was driving, so couldn’t take pictures. Cousin Kim drove the other half of the time as she came with us and Bruce no longer drives. I should clarify that Cousin Kim isn’t really our cousin; she’s our niece and is my age. Her mom was Faye, Bruce’s oldest sister who passed in 2005. We stayed with Bruce’s other sister Annette, who is 2 years older than Bruce. Annette’s husband Glenn died just after Christmas, a month after my brother Steve passed. So we were all glad to see one another. At our ages (seventies, and Annette is 80), visiting opportunities are winding down. 

The above photo is Annette and Glenn’s house. They moved here, downsizing from a 5-acre property in another area of town. This home looks little, but it’s about 1800 sq ft. The lot, however, is small and backs up to the golf course. 

In the mornings, we’d sit out in the backyard pictured below, drink our coffee, talk, take in the view and check out their flowering cacti. It was pleasantly warm, with each day getting up into the mid-80’sF (25-26C). 

This cactus opened one evening and bloomed until the following evening. One day! So beautiful, but sad to me in a sort of Brigadoon way.

This is Annette’s front screen door. The colored wavy lines between the iron bars are just screen mesh refracting the light.

And here is Annette. She doesn’t like her picture being taken, so we had to be sneaky with our candids.

 We were supposed to meet Bruce’s brothers for lunch, but they got their days mixed up and were no-shows. We had seen them briefly earlier in the week. Here’s the 4 of us at the restaurant without them.

L-R: Bruce, Cathy, Annette, Kim

On to quilting……

When I got home from AZ, Ruby (who had been coming in daily to feed Alfie and Darla) had dropped off the other 3 little quilts she’d quilted for me. Actually for Quilts for Kids. So I got all three bound and labeled.

Isn’t the quilting just perfect with the backing?!? 

Ruby quilted the next one with daisies. The quilt itself is rather blah from a distance.

But up close it’s a cute print and very vibrant and colorful. 

The last quilt is this little yellow and orange number. She quilted it with these rather odd swirls that she wanted to try. Yes, we routinely experiment with quilt patterns and colors on QFK donation quilts!

The little quilt pinned below is now a webbed top. I’ll hunt up or piece a backing for it and it will become the first of the next batch of kid quilts I’ve got in the works. The focal fabric of little bonnet girls is a scrap I saw in Ruby’s stash  - a literal hoard of dozens of plastic tote bins she’d bought at a quilter’s estate sale.  Then Cousin Kim had the same fabric in a chunk piece she was going to get rid of. Between the two chunks, I had enough to cut out the 31 squares at 6.5”. 

I tried out several pinks, orangey-apricots, soft greens and neutrals for the two other alternating colors. The pink isn’t as dark as it looks in the picture. I’ll try to get a more accurate color depiction when the quilt reaches the finish line.

This week also featured dentist appointments, a mammogram, and a visit from the plumber (Cousin Kim’s son Nick, actually) to fix the toilets - not used while we were gone, and the old parts in the tanks failed. They all have new “guts” now. That’s the extent of my plumbing knowledge!

By Friday afternoon, I managed to find time to piece the first of two pink Rolling Stone blocks. There is one more to make next week, along with strings blocks and crumb blocks. 

Rolling Stone

Speaking of strings, my friend Judy of the Busy Hands are Happy Hands blog sent me 12 crumb blocks for Quilts for Kids. I added three of my crumb blocks and Voila! The set of 15 crumb blocks are all packed up for my QFK workshop this morning. Sorry I didn’t get a picture, but thanks so very much, Judy! 

Next week is crazy: Monday is the HOA board meeting. I attend only the 1-hour general session to get news for the HOA newsletter I write. Tuesday is Weight Watchers and shopping for a new sport coat for Bruce, Wednesday is the probate hearing for my brother’s estate, on Thursday my daughter Megan flies in from Seattle and stays over, and Saturday is Grandson Easton’s wedding. 

And I forgot to mention that I’ll be having my second knee surgery (left knee total replacement) on Monday, May 18. I need want to get my flower garden in before that, but there are VA visits for Bruce, pre-op visits for me, Bruce’s birthday, the HOA Cinco de Mayo celebration, the closing of the sale of my brother’s house, and on and on. I think maybe being laid up for at least 2 weeks after the surgery may be a welcome respite! But don’t quote me on that!

So Much to Share

It was another busy week, especially in the sewing room. Besides sewing, we’ve been preparing to go on vacation to Arizona for the first time since just before COVID. And I had a lot of “budget and bills” work to do before we left, both on our stuff and my late brother’s. It will be nice when the sale of his house closes at the beginning of May. Supporting two households is getting old. And expensive!

This week I worked on my two Gameboard blocks (I really love these!) for Pink April in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I’ll be linking up to Scrappy Saturday, hopefully sometime Saturday morning (if I can sneak a minute before we hit the road to Arizona). 

Here are all the blocks for this year so far:

I’m the monthly newsletter editor for our homeowners association, and I have started the practice of providing it in color (instead of just black and white) and adding a photo. So a couple times during the week, in between the much-needed and much-enjoyed spring rain showers, I walked around our 72-unit complex snapping pictures of anything in bloom. That was enjoyable! But for this blog post, I’m just showing three things I photographed in our little courtyard. 

Lamium groundcover 

Brunnera

Tulips

I can’t wait to get out in the garden and get things planted! But I will wait until at least the second week of May, which is what everyone recommends for our locale and planting zone. I just don’t trust Mother Nature not to surprise us with a spring freeze!

My friend Ruby, who owns a longarm quilting machine, was able to quilt two (of 5) of my little kid quilts this week. And I, in turn, was able to trim, bind and label them. These are the first two finishes for April. 

Purple Elephant Strippie (above and below). Finished size 37.5 x 44.5”. I used a smallish width-of-fabric piece for the front, and two small fabric chunks and a little strip set for the backing. I love using up these smaller pieces of yardage. 

The second finish was this cute fox and squirrel print (3 fat quarters) that I matched up with some solid chunks for this classic little Quilts for Kids pattern. 

Ruby quilted it with swirls, which is the same pattern we used on the wedding quilt for my grandson Easton. I have the binding made for the wedding quilt, but won’t finish that up until we get back from vacation. I’m hoping that Ruby, who is tall, can be my quilt holder for its final photos. But I digress. 

The backing for this little quilt is some aqua acanthus leaves, a patterned fabric I’ve owned and used in at least three color ways now. Foxes and Owls finished at 39x45”.

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I got my act together enough to finally share my progress on the Block of the Month (BOM) class I am taking (after much coercion from Ruby). There are several of our friends and family taking the class, so it’s rather fun. But don’t tell Ruby I said that!

I’m pretty happy with all my blocks, except for one. I hated the block and had no intention of buying the requisite ruler for it, knowing I would never again voluntarily make the block. But let’s start at the beginning.

The BOM started in September and will run through August. You pay $5.00 when you start the class and provide your own background fabric (fabric A). The store provides cuts of Fabric B and Fabric C. If you finish your block and bring it to the next month’s class, you don’t have to pay for the next month’s B and C fabrics. If you don’t finish the block or attend class, you pay another $5.00 for the next block. I’ve finished every one so far.

September block

October block

November block

This next one, the December Block, is absolutely hideous. I hate the pattern and the colors they gave us (after that block, I have been changing out some of the batiks to keep them brighter). But in the interest of transparency, I’m showing the block. I know I’m merely an average quilter, and I’m just fine with that. But this block is cringe-worthy even for a beginner. (SO why, I wonder, would the instructor put this as block #4 in a “beginner” class?)  I did not have the right ruler or the inclination to make a real effort on this block, and it shows. Please don’t judge! It will definitely be replaced with prettier colors and a pattern I like better. And can sew better, LOL!!

December block

January Block

 February Block

March Block

Here are all the blocks so far. 

First Seven Blocks

I will not be posting next week due to our trip, but will be back in 2 weeks with lots of pink blocks (Rolling Stone, strings) and more little quilt finishes. And hopefully lots of sunshiney pictures of fun times! While we’re gone, Ruby will be over daily to feed the cats and talk to them. Alfie loves it when “Aunt Ruby” feeds him his Greenies treats.

Have a wonderful Easter, friends. Life is good!

Worldwide Quilt Day, Last Red Scraps and Lots of Strippie Tops

Hi there friends! Why don’t you grab a cup of your favorite beverage and have a seat. We’ve got a lot of Stuff to get through today! This will be a picture-heavy post, at least by my usual standards.

Last Saturday, we (Ruby, Kim and I) attended the World Wide Quilting Day event in Sandy, Utah. Joining us were Cathy (Ruby’s sister) and Jenny, Cousin Kim’s niece (and my late Cousin Carrie’s daughter). We had a blast. After we got settled into our favorite spot (by a window and an electrical outlet) and got our machines set up, we wandered over to the stage area. There, boxes and boxes of donated fabrics and scraps and books and patterns and….anything quilt/sewing related were spread out along with tons of quilters (both figuratively and literally) were searching for treasures. 

Our group was restrained in our acquisitions; I concentrated on smaller scraps, strings and solid yardage, which were curiously overlooked by everyone else. I also picked up a brand new bamboo pillow form still in the package. Bonus: I’m short, so it was good to sit on while I sewed! Ruby found a needlepoint owl piece that she is going to make into a pillow for her daughter who loves owls. Everyone else got a few pieces here and there. 

Last week on the blog I showed the little scrappy quilt that I’d made from the scrap challenge baggie I picked up at last year’s event. Of the 26 kits that were checked out in 2025, sixteen of us returned them as finished quilts. We were entered into a drawing for $100, and I won! Kim took my picture with the quilt and Ben Franklin.

While we were there, I sewed three Strippie quilt tops, which I’ll show and talk about later in the post. The food was plentiful and delicious, although I will admit that I may have had one or two extra helpings of apricot crumble (hold the crumble, but beware the sugar!)

Did you do anything quilt-related on Worldwide Quilting Day??

The end of March is upon us, and I managed to finish up all my red block sewing for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. First, I made 15 red string blocks that will finish at 6”. They are pinned in a group for donation to Quilts for Kids. 

And finally, I was able to eke out four 6” (finished) crumb blocks, also for Quilts for Kids. 

But even when added to the four from last year, my count is only up to 8. Maybe next year I’ll have more time and scraps to make up the final 7 to get me to a full set of 15. 

***We now interrupt this blog post for some kitty pictures, which have been scarce lately. Ruby gave me a birthday present in this box. Alfie turned his nose up at the Talavera pitcher, but fully endorsed the box. This pic was taken a few days later during one of his many forays into cardboardland. Humans just can’t appreciate the finer things in life!

Darla agrees with Alfie. But she is much more dignified. Here she is, regally “loaf”-ing on her mid-level cat tree perch.  “You may carry on,” she said. 

So, back to the Strippie quilts. And it should be evident with these quilt tops why all of a sudden I had an urge to take solids from the giveaway tables. The cute focal prints were donations, mostly from my friend Wanda. 

I’ve seen these Strippie quilts done in a very formulaic manner before, but I prefer to let the fun print determine the eventual size, depending on how much of it there is to play with. Here’s a closer picture of the colorful print.

There was enough of the vegetable fabric below to do not only this top and its backing, but another top that is cut and has yet to be sewn. 

And again, a closer shot of the fabrics.

This next top is the first one I played with when pre-cutting all the possibilities into sewing kits. The garden theme is just so happy and bright! No close-up for this one because the print is large enough to clearly distinguish. 

I’ll give all the measurements once they’re quilted and bound, but mostly they start with width-of-fabric strips (hence the name Strippie). I do trim the edges enough so that a single width-of-fabric can be used as the backing/fold-over binding. 

The above three tops were done at WWQuilting Day, as I said. But I was on a roll and kept going with this concept during the week….

Here’s a cute elephant quilt top. 

And here is another one in progress. This isn’t a Strippie, though. I had a large batch of kid print fat quarters that Ruby found at an estate sale (27 FQ’s to be exact). I selected this fox and squirrel print to start. There were 4 fat quarters of this design, but I only used 3. The other FQ was cut into two Zipper blocks and strings. 

And here’s the close-up of this fabric. 

I’ll finish up the border on this and then hang it with the others to be quilted. I’m hoping that Angela at So Scrappy will announce April’s color of the month today so that I can get started on it this weekend. Update: she did! April’s color is PINK, 

This morning is our Block of the Month class. Once that is done, my goal today is to finish the garden clean-up in the courtyard before the rains begin for all next week. Also, we (Bruce Kim and I) will be taking off for Arizona to visit family next Saturday. I’ll have a post up Friday night, but not sure when or if I’ll be able to link it up to the RSC as we’re driving for a couple days. But driving will probably be easier and faster than attempting to fly these days. Enough said.

Have a great week!

Preparing for Worldwide Quilting Day

One of the things that my Cousin Kim, me, my friend Ruby and her sister Cathy do every year is attend the Worldwide Quilting Day event in the city of Sandy, which is at the South end of the Salt Lake Valley. We’ve spent a good part of the week in preparation, gathering up the projects we want to work on, gathering up finished quilts to turn in to our Quilts for Kids group who will also be there, gathering our donations for the giveaway tables (which take up an entire performing stage area), preparing our food donation (it’s a gigantic potluck), etc. The event starts at 10:00 on Saturday morning (tomorrow as I write this but probably today as you read it). I’m sure I’ll be too excited to sleep well tonight!

But let’s get “business” out of the way first, since I won’t be able to share pictures of the event until next week. I sewed this week on some red blocks for Red March in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. 

Above are the seven Hollow Nine-Patch blocks that will finish at 6” in a quilt someday. I’ve just started these this month because I have so many 2 ½” squares and they need to be pared down. I’ve made them for RSC before and just love their ease and versatility in kid quilts. 

Below are the two Rolling Stone blocks I did in red. They finish at 12”, so I’ll probably end up with enough for at least one larger kid quilt, maybe two. 

I still have my red strings and crumbs to tackle next week, so there will be more red sewing. But for this week, I belatedly decided I ought to work on my scrap challenge quilt. Every year at WW Quilting Day, they make up gallon-sized baggies of scrap “kits”. They are numbered, and you can check one out if you’d like to make it into a quilt, supplementing it with your own scraps. Well, I forgot about it last year until just as we were leaving. So I ran back to the table where these were and all that were left were three very dark and ugly bags of scraps. I selected one that had some bright bits in it, and checked it out. 

Fast forward to this week - *ahem* I’m usually not a procrastinator, but the fabrics were so dark and ugly that I couldn’t justify spending time on it. There were 43 little wonky square-in-a-square blocks (about 2-3” each, I never actually measured). The center was a small bright print surrounded by ugly blues and grays. But there was a piece of a solid bright blue nestled in the bag that gave me an idea. So I pulled out some solid brights and set out adding another round of triangles to the wonky blocks to brighten them up. 

So the above picture shows what I had by Wednesday morning. But Ruby and  I spent Wednesday at Cathy’s house, longarm quilting the wedding quilt for my grandson’s that I’ve been working on. I’ll show that hopefully next week. It’s quilted and trimmed and I just need to bind it, then I’ll need a quilt holder and locale for its glamour shots. But I digress.

Anyway, the bright triangles brought the block sizes up to 5” (4.5” sewn). Set at 6x7, the quilt was still small. So I added a purple stop border and searched my stash for another border and backing fabric. I struck gold! Well, metaphorically anyway, because the border fabric was perfect! 

I quilted it with a simple stipple. The backing was a blue batik that my friend Nann had sent me some time ago, and I also used it as the fold-over binding. The quilt measures 37.5 x 42”. I actually ended up loving it, and will be happy to turn it in! At WW Quilting Day, the organizers do a random prize drawing of the numbered kits that are turned in as quilts. I’m hoping that my kit #16 will be a lucky number this year! As usual, the quilt will be donated to Quilts for Kids.

So that brings my total quilt finishes this year up to three so far, all done this month. And when I get the binding on the wedding quilt, which will be done this month, that will be four finishes! I think my slump is over! 

This was a busy week. We got our taxes done (yay!) and our accountant will be handling both my brother’s 2025 tax return and the estate tax return (after the closing on the sale of his house). He explained the process, and I’m so relieved that I’m in the hands of a great trust accountant, a good attorney and a good real estate agent. I see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s not an oncoming train! 

We are also planning our trip to Arizona in April, so that will be nice. But no sewing for 10 days, so I’ll be playing catch-up again in April. Then there is also my grandson’s wedding (another 2-day trip to northern Utah), and the court hearing (by phone) to be named as Personal Representative of my brother’s estate. All in April. Also, my left knee is going downhill fast, and I don’t think I’ll be able to wait until September to get that knee replaced. I’m thinking now that it’ll be some time in late June. That will mean I can heal in plenty time to enjoy the swimming pool this summer! 

Life is good.