A Couple of Finishes and a Visit

After my big basting spree (I actually added one more since my last post) I was able to quilt and bind two of the quilts and I am working on two more.  It feels so good to have some finishes!

A fellow teacher is undergoing cancer treatment right now and she has been so complimentary of my quilts and likes purple so I quilted this up from my basted pile and it was delivered to her last week.  She loves it and said the colors are perfect.  I have so many quilts it feels great to be able to gift them.  This is not paper pieced, it's one of the stack and slash style quilts.

quilting closeup, I had fun doodling

I pieced this top 4 years ago and 30's are not my style of fabrics!  My oldest daughter likes them so her room here at home is decorated with 30's quilts that I have accumulated over the years.  I had assumed I would put this there eventually, but I found out about a quilt shop owner that has never received the gift of a quilt and I enjoy her quilt retreats and I finished this quilt (Thursday night!) and dropped it off to her Friday on our way to visit our daughters.  She loves it.  I had a ruler and made 21 dresdens.  9 of them were made into a wallhanging and I sold it to my wedding singer.  I came up with this setting for the rest of the blocks.

quilting closeup

As I mentioned we made a weekend trip to visit our daughters and grandkids.  My husband finished the fall farm work and we hadn't gotten to see the twins since the end of July and the other two kids since the first week of August.

oldest daughter's kids 

My four grand-kids - two sets of cousins!

younger daughter's twins, almost a year old!

 We went for a family hike.

 Salmon River Canyon on the drive home.   My husband did a river search here with our dog for an accident victim.  This is actually on the straighter part of the drive home up through central Idaho!

linking up with Design Wall Monday

Scattered Thoughts and Quilts

I had good intentions of getting back to blogging after posting about my son but the best laid plans get interrupted by just simply being too busy or too lazy!  I am going to try this for the first time linking up to Judy L.'s blog for "Design Wall Monday".  These are blocks I worked on at a quilt retreat I went on this past weekend at Rather Be's Quilt Shop near Pomeroy, WA.  Eight of us had a great time quilting, eating and laughing. I made half of these blocks, but didn't have the rest of the pieces cut so I finished them today.  It will have two borders.  I am making another quilt of these "Mocha Meringue" fabrics and they will go on the twin beds in my basement.  They are WAY different than my usual colorways.

I had these two quilts already pin basted for quilting and I got them quilted at the retreat and bound.  The 30's one has a story.  A couple of weeks ago I stopped in at Material Girls Quilt Shop in Orofino, ID and they had 20 luscious new 30's prints.  I have a bin of 30's and they aren't my favorite fabric choice, but they were so soft and lovely and other women were making dresden plate quilts out of them.  I bought all 20 prints and background and came home and used my Dresden ruler (I can't find that style available online, it was on clearance years ago) and made 20 pointed dresden blocks.  I was contacted by someone wanted to buy a wall quilt and she loves 30's.  I sent her a picture of a couple blocks and 2 other quilts and she wanted the dresden.  So I set together 9 of them and have that quilt ready to go as shown. I made one more block so I now have 12 to go in to a twin size quilt the way I designed the next one.

I bought this quilt kit at Wild Hare Quilt Shop in Orofino, ID (yes, there are two great quilt shops in one little town).  I purchased the kit on a shop hop and got it pieced together at a retreat in April.  It's all finished, yes another UFO bites the dust!