Stringing in the Rain

I had hoped to finish my dark neutral-colored string quilt this week, but too many other projects and responsibilities prevented that. However, I was able to play with the rest of my strings and eke out enough more squares to total 42 (7.5" unfinished). Here they are set horizontally on the design board.

After the blocks were done, I had three quilts to quilt (two for Quilts for Kids and one for Cousin Kim's daughter). But then I came back to the strings and decided it needed a better name than its working title, November Strings. The colors reminded me of a quilt that I made for my son Ryan about 3 years ago, which we called November Rain (a reference to a Guns 'n Roses song that Ryan has always liked. So do I, come to think of it). And somehow, with all that swirling around in my brain, the name Stringing in the Rain came to be.

The flimsy has a 2" inner border and a black outer border that measures 4" on the sides and 6" on the top and bottom. Although it looks wonky on the design board because the top is pinned and the bottom is just hanging (the design board isn't long enough), it is perfectly rectangular at 54.5 x 65.5". I will get it layered, quilted and bound in the coming week.

This is the first of two quilts that I plan to make from my dark neutral scrap stash for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Today I'm linking up with Scrappy Saturday, where many of us are beginning to finish up and share our rainbow scrappy projects for this year.

I also managed to sew up eight cute blocks (6.5" each, unfinished) for the second step in the Seeing Stars Sew Along, hosted by Diane Knott at Butterfly Threads Quilting.  Check it out! I've really enjoyed it, and there is so much room for variety and personal interpretation - a super sew-along that's just getting started.

Alfie had a dental appointment this week, and came through just fine. Just a cleaning with no cavities extractions or other work needed. My pocketbook is grateful for that. But Himself was a bit put out that the bandage they put on his foreleg (the IV site) was PINK. Sheesh. But he recovered his dignity soon enough. And when Bruce turned on the fireplace that evening, the cats curled up in spots to contrast their furs to best advantage, and took a nice evening nap.

Life is good.

Seeing Stars. And Quilts. In a Barn. Oh My!

It's only been about 3 days since my last post, but I have so much to share, so why wait?

I'm participating in the Seeing Stars Sew Along with Diane Knott of Butterfly Threads Quilting. Diane is the author of two of my favorite books, Scrap Quilt Secrets and Strip Quilt Secrets (link here), plus I had the opportunity to meet her when she was in Utah this summer. Oh, and she did the faaaaabulous quilting on my Lattice Birds quilt too. Wow, I guess that makes me an official Fan Girl, haha!

Anyway, I had taken a picture of my fabric pull for this sew-along, but can't find it on my camera or my phone. So, we'll just move along to Step One, which was published this week on Diane's blog. The really unique thing about this sew along is that the pattern will be constructed in panels. You can decide how many panels you want to make ahead of time, like one for a table runner, two for a wall hanging, or more for a small, medium or large quilt. I've decided to do 8 panels for a nice lap quilt for myself. So, that means for every monthly block released, I will make 8 - one for each panel. Diane also gives lots of ideas for variations to personalize the various steps. It's a sure bet that there will be no two alike - and I really love that idea!

Here are my first 8 blocks for Step One.

The fabric I selected was Flower Garden by Nadra Ridgeway (Ellis and Higgs) for Riley Blake fabrics. I had a layer cake (a pack of 10" squares) of this fabric line. I omitted the oranges and beefed up the reds, greens and yellows with other pieces from my stash. I love this fabric line so much because it reminds me of a summer in Austria going to summer school when I was 16. We took a day trip by train to Innsbruck and I bought some lovely floral print fabrics. That fall back home, I sewed myself a couple dresses for school. I still have some of those fabric scraps, and this line really reminds me of them.

You can check out some of the other participants and their blocks on Instagram or Facebook using the hashtags #seeingstarssewalong or #butterflythreadsquilting

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My friend Bonnae and I went to a quilt event on Saturday called Quilts in the Barn. It is put on by a local quilt group and is held at a very exclusive estate the east side of the Salt Lake Valley. From the parking area, the visitors are shuttled to the estate, which is in a (my pinkie is up when I say this) "veddy, veddy EXCLUSIVE" neighborhood. Electronic gates to get into the neighborhood and also the estate.  Oh, and did I mention that this is put on only every 2 years?


Our driver was full of historical information about the area and the Walker Estate as he drove us through the acres and neighborhood lanes. The ladies in our van were so sweet. I didn't realize HOW sweet until Bonnae and I got up to the registration table to pay our entrance fee and found out that we were the victims of a true RAOK - random act of kindness. One of the ladies on our shuttle had paid our fees for us! Whoever you are, dear friend, THANK YOU!

Bonnae is on the left (with the pink purse) in this picture. Cousin Kim couldn't come with us, but the three of us do stitch together every Wednesday at my house.  But I digress...

Here is the "Barn".  It truly is a barn that houses animals, although they were outside in the pasture for this event. The barn was designed to resemble a European-style barn. The quilts were outside and inside on all three floors.

Let me show you a few of my favorite quilts.  Many of the pictures aren't good because the lighting was not really very good. I did take pictures of the cards, but I'm not going to post them here. I do remember that this was a pattern by Lisa Bongean done by one of the local ladies.

I loved this red sampler. Such a great variety of blocks!

Those two quilts above were on the main floor. Then we walked up the stairs to the second story and I took a picture of the view out the front barn window. It was a gorgeous day with temperatures in the mid-seventies.

This tree quilt is from a free tutorial by Amy Smart (Diary of a Quilter).

One of my favorite quilts was this one done by the wife of the gentleman who was our shuttle driver. They lived in Austria for more than a decade, and this was her tribute quilt to the landscape, people and places of Austria. It was called "Land der Berge" (Land of Mountains).

 This next quilt had assorted cute baskets and yo-yo flowers.

Close-up of a flower basket:

And then we went up to the third floor, and here is the view from that window (same view, higher up!)

The lighting on the third floor was particularly problematic, but I did want to share this picture with you. The pattern is called Laundry Day by Sandra Workman (who owns a local quilt shop called Pine Needles here in the valley). I know all this because I've got this pattern and actually started hand sewing some of the little clothing about 3 years ago.

I don't even consider it a UFO because I'm not sure if it's something I really want to finish. Except that it's So.Stinking.Cute.  *Sigh*

Then we walked back downstairs and took a quick look through the items for sale.

While we were waiting our turn for the return shuttle, I snapped this picture of the Walker mansion. It is over 150 years old and the 4th owners just moved in about six months ago. You can see it is in the French Provincial style.

The most impressive thing on all these manicured grounds (there must be a team of groundskeepers!) was this giant, stately willow tree. See the woman in the picture for scale.

Once we got back to our car, Bonnae and I went out to lunch and just sat, relaxed and gabbed. It was such a fantastic day!

Hot Fun in the Summertime!

So many fun things happened last week. Diane Knott, one of my favorite quilters and authors (Scrap Quilt Secrets and Strip Quilt Secrets) was in town for a Handi-Quilter seminar. She was there to learn lots of new things for several days. You might remember that Diane quilted my Lattice Birds quilt, and did a beautiful job. So anyway, we met up for some fun shopping and a photo op at Quilters Lodge in Draper, Utah.

Diane is so warm and friendly, and we just talked and laughed (and shopped) like we’d known each other for years. Truly, a nicer person you will not find! Quilters are such a wonderful group, aren’t they??  That was Saturday, and I was finally rested from two trips to Wheeler Farm earlier in the week.

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Wheeler Farm is a county-run historical working farm that is a block from our house. After I retired from my full-time job as a credit manager, I worked part-time at Wheeler Farm as a kids Camp “Cow”-nselor and then as a bookkeeper and docent for almost 4 years. Wheeler Farm is almost 78 acres of trails for walking and biking, plus lots of farm animals (and participatory cow milking), farmhouse tours, a machinery barn, wagon rides, summer camp, pony rides, teaching gardens (in cooperation with the county extension service) and so much more. I have a label (hashtag) on the sidebar for Wheeler Farm that includes all the posts I’ve written about it over the last 12 years of blogging.

So, on Wednesday, Cousin Kim and Bruce and I went walking around the farm just for exercise. And then on Thursday, the grandkids from Colorado visited with their mom Emily (Bruce’s daughter), and we had to show them all the new stuff. These pics combine both visits....

The restored Farmhouse, newly restored gardens.

Looking from the Farmhouse to the west

From the farmhouse you can look northeast to see pastures for cows and horses, old farm trucks and the machinery barn.

Beyond the farmhouse are the two duck ponds. That building below is the Ice House, where they used to store the ice cut from these ponds. It’s also the headquarters for Kids Camp. 

The two ponds above are formed by water diverted from Little Cottonwood Creek, which flows down from Little Cottonwood Canyon (ski resorts Brighton and Solitude). With the spring runoff, they are running at very high and dangerous levels.

Looks like some folks (picture below) are getting a tractor-pulled wagon ride. The little playhouse at the right is situated next to The Lightning Tree (a box elder), so named because it’s been hit twice by lightening. 

Here are some of the teaching vegetable gardens with the in-process Nature Center that’s being built in the background. It’s scheduled to open this fall, but the wet spring later means that it will be late fall instead of early fall.

And looking in the other direction, you can see more gardens.

We loved this little “skep” made of two-by-four chunks of wood. It’s in the center of the nature walk/teaching area for kids. 

Naturally, Cousin Kim and I had to sit in it on Wednesday.

On Thursday, Abbie, Gunner and Deacon rested in the skep and certainly look a lot cuter!

And here’s most of the gang walking along on Thursday. 

The County cleverly had wood carvers transform the stumps of dead trees into wood carved wonders along one of the main walkways of the farm.  Here daughter Emily poses with Abbie, Deacon and Gunner.

Abbie

Gunner

Deacon, Abbie, Gunner

Emily and Deacon

Not to be outdone, Alfie and Darla wanted me to show you their pictures too.

Alfie’s favorite “hang-out” is to sit on the back of the couch and look out the front window shutters to watch the neighborhood goings-on. He even naps like that sometime. 

Meanwhile, Darla sits on the ottoman and pretends she’s asleep. But we know her better; she knows exactly what is going on. 

And a final picture for the week, just because. My volunteer hollyhocks are huge. They were planted several years ago on the other side of that bed, but somehow these sprung up here for the first time last year (ish). They’re just getting started. This picture was taken last week too, and the apricots are almost ready. We’re thinking next week at the latest. If the propped up branches can hold on.....

Quilty Plans for 2019

First of all, Happy New Year to all of you. May 2019 be happy, healthy and full of all good things for you! I’ve been putting off writing this Plan for 2019 post because I can’t quite define, or wrap my head around, what exactly I want to do quilting-wise this year. Oh, I have plenty of ideas and fabric, but I’m just not sure how well I can describe them. It feels to me like a bunch of floating ideas, not a cohesive plan. But here goes....

I try to be an organized person. After working for about 35 years outside the home, I was adept at keeping a planner, making schedules and lists and sticking to them. When I retired, it was a priority of mine to let go of timetables, planners, schedules. Even sleeping in (until 8:00 am!) was a luxury. But I found my footing over several years and now find that I need to add some of that back in. The operative word here being some.  This is the 3rd year that I’m using a planner again. This year I’m trying the Quilter’s Planner. It is expensive, detailed, but not in the ways I want. It’s too big and there’s so much stuff I’m not interested in. Last year I just bought a planner at Barnes & Noble that seemed to suit my needs. But it was too generic and bare bones. Too small. Back in 2017 I used Lori Holt’s Scrappy Project Planner. We are only a few days into 2019, and I can already tell you that going forward (2020 and beyond) I’ll be going back to Lori’s Scrappy Project Planner. It is just right! (Are you thinking of Goldilocks and the Three Bears here?)  I still use some of the leftover Scrappy Project Planner pages to supplement my other books. Live and learn.

The online tools I use to keep me on track (insert sound of whip cracking here) are the Finish-Along goal-setting and finishing link-ups (with prizes!).  We set our own quarterly goals and work toward them. No pressure, just self-accountability. When we finish a project, we blog about it, link up to their end-of-quarter post and become eligible for prizes. It’s the same concept for OMG - One Monthly Goal - only that’s done on a monthly basis. Again, it’s a project we choose to work toward completing. No penalty for not finishing, but eligibility for prize incentives if we do. But my favorite of all is the Rainbow Scrap Challenge - working with an assigned color every month, we work through our scraps to make whatever we want. The buttons and links for these are on my right sidebar if you’d like to learn more about them.

Now, let’s get down to business. Generally speaking, I want to do more charity quilting. Last year I made some quilts for Quilty Hugs (see link on sidebar) and one at year-end for Quilts for Kids. In 2017 (and a few in 2018) I made lots of kennel quilts for the local Best Friends Animal Society. This year, I plan to participate with all three charities. I have no family gift quilts I need to make (after Saguaro Sunset, which I’ll talk about in a minute) and my closets are overflowing with quilts. Literally! I’ve already contacted our (family) contractor Jeff and spoken to him about expanding our hall linen closet. No lie. I’ve wanted to do it since we moved in 15 years ago, but it will happen this spring.


Like everyone else, I’m doing string scraps this year. I believe 2019 is Year of the String. At Christmastime, I treated myself to two new books, both published at the end of the year and both about string quilting.

Left: Strip Quilt Secrets by Diane Knott. My favorite of the two; very do-able projects (including a selvage project). You can check it out HERE.

Right: Bonnie Hunter’s String Frenzy. To get an autographed copy, check out Bonnie’s blog (full-price is charged, but you get a free extra pattern download). Or check out other retailers. HERE is a link to the publisher, C&T Publishing.

So that moves me on to my favorite subject - the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. This month, our organizer and leader, Angela of SoScrappy, has called the color RED for January. Our weekly Saturday link-up is HERE.

This week I tackled my selvages. I had hoped not to have to do any selvage project this year, but they keep accumulating. I swear, this is the last year for selvages. I’m not going to save them anymore!!  So, I’ve got 2 small selvage projects going. Last year I made 6.5” selvage blocks, but then made some 4.5” blocks when the colors ran low and I couldn’t make the full 6.5”.  So, I’m supplementing those smaller blocks with any remaining colored selvages in the color of the month and pairing them with low-volume and color background fabrics to make 8.5” (unfinished size) 4-patches. Eventually, I hope to get a smallish donation quilt out of them.

My multi-colored selvages - those that do not identify with a particular color family - have grown completely out of control.  Witness these two boxes full (not sorted; some obviously will fit in with a particular color.

Since I bought myself a (used) Go! Baby cutter last fall, and had the tumbler die, I decided to pair multi-colored selvages with single color tumblers. I made 5” selvage blocks, ran them through the cutter, then cut red tumblers and sewed together.

Yield: One red scrappy tumbler row, measuring approximately 39” across. I’ll make one of these every month in the monthly color and have a rainbow quilt in 10 months. I can add a border or two to expand it to whatever size I’ll need for donation and use up my selvages in the process.

I haven’t tackled my strings yet, although I’m planning at least two multi-colored string projects (again, strings from random scraps that don’t fit into a particular color family) and one RSC project where I’ll make string blocks in the monthly color. I have a week or two to make a final decision on that pattern.

What I did tackle this week were some scrappy red chunks so that I could make a test block of two of the blocks I’m definitely doing for this year’s RSC.  The first is Crackers. I love this block so much; it’s easy and fun to make.

I’ll be using black on white backgrounds for these. In fact, I’ve already pulled some additional fabric in red, white and black with scottie dogs on it to make dozens of these blocks into a donation quilt this month.  Maybe one thing I’ll be doing is making a small kids’ donation quilt in the color of the month. We’ll see how that pans out. I’ll have more pictures and updates on this as the month progresses.

The other block I’m doing is Jen Kingwell’s Little White Dove block. You can click THIS LINK  for the pattern.  But the picture that got my juices flowing was HERE.  And this is my first test block. More to follow (hopefully at least 4 per color) as the month progresses.

That’s all for my rainbow projects for this week, but I did make progress on Saguaro Sunset. This is the quilt I’m making for my SIL and BIL for when we go to visit them in Arizona next month.  It will be 12 cacti set in three rows of four, with the sunset fading from darker at the top to lighter at the bottom. I bought an ombre fabric (but not enough) for the background. So, I found a similar ombre and bought a couple yards of that to cut up for borders and use here an there.

After piecing the first row, I decided that I needed to forego the pattern and just cut the background pieces in 2.5” squares to better control the gradation of color. Hence the haphazard pinning and piecing you see here.

The above picture is how it looked at the beginning of the week. In the picture below, I’ve pieced one cactus in the second row and am OK with the colors. My hope is to make substantial progress on this second row in the coming week.

That’s about it from here. Today I have to go out and pick up Bernadette (my Bernina) who is ready to come home from the “spa” (annual servicing). I got an email on Thursday night that she was ready, but the store was closed for inventory yesterday. So today it is. And then I have to head south down to Thimbles & Threads (The Quilter’s Lodge) to pick up an order. They had some beautiful masculine fabric on sale at year-end online. I’m trying to make more boy- or masculine-themed donation quilts this year. And finally, I have a donation quilt to drop off. But first I have floors to clean before I can get my shower. Then I’ll have lunch and head out to run the errands. With a little luck, I might be able to squeeze in a couple hours of sewing today. If not, well, there’s always tomorrow!!