More About Quilts

I received this awesome quilt a couple days before Christmas, only it was wrapped so I didn't peek. The pattern is Fractured Stars and made by my friend Lynda in Nevada. She had been a neighbor and quilting buddy and then moved away. We lost contact for about five years and this year we re-connected. I sent her a gift of a quilt for our joint birthdays in July and she said I inspired her to quilt again and I got this really, really cool quilt!
This is a top I pieced this week. The blocks were made by members of WASIQ and sent to my friend Debi on her parents passing. She had an awesome blue batik in her stash and this summer I brought it and the blocks home and finally assembled a top for her. I plan to quilt it this week.
In August I went on the Crazy Eight Shop here in northern Idaho/Eastern Washington. I saw this border print and a book called Cabin Fever at The Crazy Quilter in Deary Idaho, an awesome shop in a teeny tiny town. I cut it out Friday night this week and finished it yesterday. It has minmal quilting and the applique stitching down is done as part of the quilting to make it faster. My oldest daughter loves it, and really I made it with her in mind!
This is a quilt I finished quilting this past week. I didn't make the top, my friend Joann in Arizona made the top for her oldest daughter designing it as she went. I volunteered to quilt it and had a lot of fun doing different designs. My closeups didn't show well since the thread color blended too well! Joann received the quilt Friday and already has the binding on!

Christmas

Christmas happened. Not too exciting but here are a few pictures.
The first quilt is one I made for my boss, the head teacher at the one room school. She had to have an emergency appendectomy this fall and I took squares and fabric markers to school and the students were given instructions to make a "pretty" block. The artwork is interesting! I set it together and gave it to her for Christmas and she loved it. In fact she had been hinting! It was pretty funny. We have 19 students, grades K-6 so the lower hand block is one I made just saying the name of the school and my name, date, etc. In essence a label on the front of the quilt.

Next is a wallhanging I made from a kit from Keepsake Quilting . I actually made two of them, one is mine and one for my daughter Lisa. I love that the black was all precut, you just peeled the paper and fused!
This is our tree, a prelit one we bought the day after Thanksgiving at Home Depot. We have 8 foot ceilings and with the star on top it almost touches.

The fireplace mantle with many of the stockings I have collected or made. For a few years I was in stocking exchanges on a yahoo group, but didn't do it this year due to lack of time, but I have a few stockings. There are more to the left you can't see hanging on hooks under a shelf.

My "big" Christmas village. I have a smaller set too that is on the China Hutch.

Minneapolis in December

I had a chance to go with Doug to Minneapolis the first weekend of December. He was representing shareholders at an annual meeting and I thought I needed to get away. Despite the cold weather we had a fabulous time. Two other wives and I went to Mall of America on the train and the people of Minneapolis were all fabulous at giving directions. You just stood there in the Skyway system looking lost and they asked where you wanted to go, including a UPS man who walked us there!
Doug had a free afternoon the last full day there so we walked through many blocks of the skyway system to get closer to the Mississippi River before we had to go outside and brave the elements. The picture above is me at the southern edge and we walked across the bridge and the picture below is Doug on the northern edge. Well more or less, directions were hard to figure out in that city since things aren't laid out straight and the sun wasn't always shining! We took a scenic path back and and walked across a historic stone arch bridge (not pictured) that is longer open to traffic.The last night in Minneapolis the CEO took the other six of us from the Lewiston division out to dinner at a fantastic Brazilian place. Then as we were walking back to the Hilton we came across a Christmas parade. We had taxied to the restaurant and most of us weren't prepared for standing in a snowstorm but it was pretty to watch! I took quilting along but didn't have a chance to touch it!

Too Much Snow!

I am not a fan of snow. For that reason I live in the wrong area, but I'm not going to change the place I live. I love my house and family! Don't get me wrong, I think snow is pretty, in the fields, on mountains, etc., but not on the roads. It's also very necessary for water. However, our driveway is drifted shut yet again! This is one daughter's car that was parked here a week ago. She dropped her car off to get it's snow tires on and went to Boise for Christmas with her boyfriend.

I have been hiding out in my basement sewing room and quilting at least and don't have to go back to work until Jan. 5th! I managed to get out and do a major food stockup on Dec. 23rd so I guess I shouldn't complain. The snow started a lot later this year than last year!

Where did November and December go?

Time just continues to fly by! November was really busy with the major house cleaning and painting spree getting ready for Thanksgiving. That went well, there were 31 of us here.

However the weekend before Thanksgiving I managed to go to a retreat. I worked on a few things, one of them was this wallhanging. I had printed out photos on Printed Treasures fabric and then used lots of thread embellishing to enhance it. I love the way it turned out. The photos were all from my yard and were taken by my daughter Amy and myself. Here is a closeup of one of the flowers.
Another project I worked on was this wallhanging. 9 of the blocks were made for me in an exchange from a small yahoo group. I made three more and set the top together for a calendar quilt and got it done by the deadline of November 30!


Yet another project at the retreat was this tablerunner for a Christmas exchange on this same yahoo group. The recipient asked for cardinals and I had a picture of her dishes.
This is the one I received in exchange last week.