Time Flies!

I'm back! I got really busy with the end of school and lots of things going on. I will start trying to catch up by starting with current stuff and going backwards! Even though I have several quilts to quilt for others, I take time to do charity work as I have shown before. I also went to a quilt retreat father's day weekend and had a great time. I brought home a quilt that was all basted and ready for quilting and did that in two days and mailed it off to the gift recipient, the organizer of the retreat. That is the first quilt I am showing here along with some of the border quilting. I did bunches of cat sayings. The recipient was thrilled along with my cat who thought it was his!!! I told the recipient the cat hair was a bonus!I had ordered another kit from the Downy Quilts for kids project and made the quilt up (it comes precut) this weekend and got it quilted and bound and mailed today. Another organization I support is American Hero Quilts. I won a set of lotto blocks at the retreat I went to in Leavenworth, WA and the layout was provided. I had some 2.5" strips of patriotic fabrics from Connecting Threads and saw a quilt in Quiltmaker and make my own version. I didn't follow their sizing, etc. I love how it turned out!

Quilt a day #49 and misc.

I can't believe I skipped over a whole week of blogging! There has been so much going on it's hard to keep up. I do have a couple finished quilts, I just haven't taken pictures! I haven't dug into my old photos either.

My oldest daughter Amy is a teacher in Utah and just recently got engaged. She is getting married in late summer and mentioned she would like a Double Wedding Ring quilt! I'm still in thinking mode about the technique I want to use for that. Do I use Judy Niemeyer's Wedding Star (I adore paper piecing), do I use the Quiltsmart interfacing or do I use the Marti Michell templates?

My second daughter Lisa graduated from college this past weekend and I helped move her furniture to her little brother's apartment. It's going to be weird not to have Brad here for the summer! He is an Undergraduate Research Assistant in Crop Science. I hope I got that right!

Back to quilts: I am leading 4-H quilting and here is one of the projects that is being worked on. Her father collected law enforcement patches from trainings, etc. and she has them all appliqued (with invisible thread) to the backgrounds. She is putting a 1" finished sashing between them. It will be a large wallhanging.I got out my Hawaiian blocks to stare at and realized I don't have enough of the blue fabric to do the setting triangles. I ordered some and it was too light. I ordered some more from Fabric Depot this weekend and they called today and said it's out of stock! I got the fabric quite some time ago (like five years) so I'm leaning towards some darker blue. We shall see. The other option is to take out one blocks and do a straight setting and that is too boring.

Quilt a Day #48

I keep forgetting to post a picture! I have some down below. You can skip the next couple of paragraphs if you don't want to read about my ongoing medical saga!

Yesterday was a long day, with a 6 hour round trip drive to a new specialist and a long Dr. visit with more tests. The Dr. was great and he has never actually treated someone with my exact diagnosis which is Sarcoidosis with the TINU subgroup. Sarcoidosis is inflammation in the body usually caused by a virus and settling in joints and lungs, hence me going to a rheumatologist. My Sarcoidosis didn't do that, instead it was in my kidneys and eyes which is the TINU portion. Less than 200 people have been diagnosed with this since 1975!

If my SED rate is still headed downwards I will not have any medication, just blood monitoring, if it's gone up they will give me a medicine to take for awhile. I had a chest x-ray to check for glanulomas (I think) on my lungs. After my visit we went across the street to the hospital to visit a 4 yo neighbor boy who got a severe infection from falling off a scooter and had to have surgery. I have his older brother as a student. The boy is doing better and hopefully will be home in a week.

My middle child graduates from college a week from today and my youngest is finishing his first year of college. My oldest is teaching Math in Utah so in honor of them I am posting their graduation quilts all in one group. All three were class valedictorians.

The first quilt is Amy's finished the day of her graduation, May 28, 2005! However, this is just a photo of the top, somewhere I must have the completed quilt, but couldn't find the photo. she is into the country look and we picked up FQ's here and there for about a year before and she picked the pattern.
Next is Lisa's finished a couple weeks before her graduation May 28, 2006, exactly 30 years after her dad and I graduated from the same high school! Lisa loves bright colors and we collected her fabrics and she wanted a star quilt. The cat wouldn't get off the quilt!Last is Brad's quilt. He wanted something simple and outdoorsy. He would have liked a little more blue, but these are the fabrics I accumulated. It has a flannel backing.

Quilt a day #47

I had a busy day with a teacher appreciation lunch and 4-H leaders meeting and sitting in on Doug's search and rescue meeting which lasted an hour longer than mine did. However, I did manage to finish this top I showed in progress a couple days ago. I am debating borders or no border and just quilting and binding. It will take some auditioning to get to that point. I am absolutely thrilled with this quilt. I used the State Flower fabrics from many years ago and all the frame strips were from my scraps. There are 50 big diamonds and then I used some of the fabrics to fill in around the edges. Right now it measure 38 X 55 approx.

Quilt a day #46

I have been distracted and haven't posted for a couple of days. Friday we went to our daughter Lisa's senior Engineering Design Expo at University of Idaho. Here she is at her booth with the clarinet reed maker she and her team made. She is a Bio Engineering major but there weren't any projects in her major and she had played clarinet in school so this is the project she ended up on. It's hard to believe my second child will be a college graduate in two weeks and her sister her graduated from college in 2008.I am working on a bunch of scrap projects and machine quilting. This is the quilt I am machine quilting for my friend Jo. I saw the June/July issue of Quilt magazine on the newstand and the cover quilt grabbed me. It was done in more Kaffe Fassett style fabrics, but I decided to make a smaller version in my state flowers fabrics. I had to improvise on a couple of them since I didn't have the full collection and I had gotten scraps from my friend Tamra. I had little dots on them to make sure I had one for every state. I had thrown them up on the wall but I am not sure why I am keeping up there, because I need to rearrange them anyway after sewing colors around each diamond.Last, here are a couple of "pin holders" a neighbor made me years ago when we still had the weekly hand quilting group here.

Quilt a day #45

Today was a surprise when I woke up to snow outside! My pretty tulips were all buried under snow and the roads were a mess. The snow has melted but the winds have been atrocious.

I have had bits and pieces of time and cut up a bunch of scraps and have been making scrappy 9 patches for a swap and some for when the blocks come back and then I further cut up a bunch of scraps into 10", 5", and 2.5" squares. My batiks are being cut into different pieces because I had a quilt in mind but now can't remember what!

When I went to put the 5" squares in the drawer I realized all my 3" finished 4 patches from several months of guild swapping were there. I laid the out and then made some more to fill in to a certain size. I haven't added borders yet, but this is what I have so far. I will donate it to a charity.

Quilt a day #44

I don't have anything exciting to say but decided I should post a photo since I forgot to last night. I was too busy sewing 4 patches trying to finish an old UFO. I knew I couldn't concentrate on machine quilting so I found something tedious to do!

This is a quilt I made for my niece several years ago. Oh my, it's been 10 years now. My SIL bought all the fabric and did a lot of the applique by machine. I finished the blocks, assembled and quilted it.This is a wallhanging I made many years ago as a gift for my friend Lynda. It's a really bad photo. It's probably 12-13 years ago that I made this from a Pat Campbell design.

Quilt a day #43

I went to a quilt show in Clarkston today and put a few pics on my webshots account. I was taking inspirational photos of black and white quilts and 30's quilts. I usually take more photos at a show but I kept running into people I knew and getting distracted. I didn't buy a thing, which is unfortunate for the vendors, but nothing grabbed me and I have a lot of fabric and UFO's!

When I got home from the show I took a photo of my tulips. It was cool and windy so they weren't open. My son had parked his sister's car in front of the house so I had to take a side view! Later on I will plant petunias between the crocuses and tulips. This quilt is a Yellow Brick Road I made for my friend Joann several years ago when she graduated from college.

Quilt a day #42

Amy and Nate left today, Doug took them to the airport while I went to work. It was a great visit and now I have a three day weekend. I had 4-H here this afternoon and will tomorrow as well. I am leading both quilting and sewing for four girls this year so it's a challenge.

These are a couple flannel quilts I made several years ago. One was a Thimblerries design for my friend Deb and the other is a queen size trip around the world quilt that is on my bed in the winter (along with 4 other quilts)!

Quilt a day #41

I found the picture of this baby quilt I made 15 years ago! It was for my nephew Austin. It was so fun with all the different animals and the dimension.

Quilt a day #40

Amy and Nate are here and we went to my mom's for "snacks" tonight. We are stuffed to the brim and brought home a box of food, a big box! My mom loves to cook.

I didn't have time to peruse my photos much, but here is a quilt I bought as a precut John Flynn kit and I disliked it. I donated it as a baby quilt with a cute flannel backing.

Quilt a day #39

Last night I was too busy playing cards with all three kids home and one extra to post to my blog. One daughter checked this morning and said I didn't post last night!

I have this quilt hanging in my hallway now and had to stand in my laundry room for an unsquare picture. This was a block robin many years ago. I did the cabin block and several fill in small blocks but I got an awesome assortment of blocks, a lot of them beautifully hand appliqued. Love the dogs! They are modeled after the maker's own dogs. It's a fun quilt and I loved using the floral print for the sashings.

Quilt a day #38

I was too busy cleaning last night to post. My oldest daughter and her boyfriend are flying in tonight and we are leaving in a few minutes to make the two hour round trip to pick them up.

I have already driven over 130 miles today, what's another 100 miles? At least my husband is driving this time, it's hard to see still, although I got to stop dilating my eye last night. I still have to do the steroid drops.

This wall hanging is from a class I took in July 2008 from Terrie Kralik. It's called Flora and Fauna and I love the colors. I was recovering from surgery and didn't know if I would be up to the class so I wasn't very prepared, but I love the finished project!

Quilt a day #37

I had 4-H members here today for sewing, one finished a skirt and one started a quilt. She was a bit scary because she likes to hurry and teaching a 9 yo to cut safely with a rotary cutter takes a lot of patience and nerves! I also have to hold the ruler at the ends for her.

I made this top two years ago on commission for my friend Deb to give as a wedding gift to her niece. She had tried to get a feel for the color choices of her niece and sent a bunch of pics of quilts and everything was very definitely country and this was in one of Kim Diehl's books Simple Blessings. Everyone was thrilled with it.

Quilt a day #36

I totally spaced posting a picture last night! I think it was because I was cleaning my basement on commercials of Dancing with the Stars and when it was over it was bedtime!

Here are two tops I made at the retreat. One is a Suduko I solved and made out of leftover Fossil Ferns from the previous top I posted. I love the bright colors of this quilt and have no clue what to do with it. It measures 42 X 58. I might quilt it and donate it to the Kiwanis Burn Camp or see who puts dibs on it.

The table runner is made from a Little Charmers pattern and was a Charm pack with extra for the triangles. I have never used a charm pack and I don't know if I would again. It's too controlled with different colorways of the same print. I see some areas of color that were hard to see before I stitched it together. I am planning either a brown or red binding. These aren't my usual Christmas colors for sure.

Quilt a day #35

I am home from a wonderful quilt retreat. My eye cooperated, although my right eye has to do all the seeing, at least the left one didn't hurt! I hope I can cut the dilating to once a day at night and see better!

I did get quite a lot accomplished. I quilted my larger than queen size Canyon Dance quilt. It took a 2,000 yard cone of Superior King Tut thread and lots more time than I anticipated! It was getting down to the wire on thread, but fortunately I changed thread on the border. I want to get the binding on and then take good picture.

I made this top below and another one Saturday. The pieces for this one were all precut last weekend. My friend Deb had an Australian Patchwork magazine and had sent it to me years ago along with some fabric telling me I had to make this quilt. I finally did and although I absolutely love the quilt, I discovered I really dislike working with Fossil Fern fabrics! It's completely Fossil Ferns (the bacckground is a pale gray). The pattern is called Fossil Fern Fantasy. I decided to make a Sudoku quilt out of some of the leftovers and still need to put the outer borders on. I will continue to be posting photos!

Taking a hiatus

With my serious eye issue and leaving for a retreat Thursday-Sunday I am taking a break from posting quilt photos. I just hope I can see when I'm there! I don't have time to get things set up to post while I'm gone since I have to go back to the eye Dr. for the third day in a row tomorrow. It's a several hour trip by the time we do other errands.

I need to work on packing things and getting stuff done around here. I'll be back to posting next week!

Quilt a day #34

Some of you know I have had an ongoing medical saga since Jan. 3rd of this year. I have one more chapter to add, if you are interested it will be below today's picture.

Today's weather was wild. There was a major snowstorm, but it warmed up twenty degrees and melted in a couple of hours.

This quilt is one I saw the pattern for in Colorado a couple of years ago called Merry Meadow. I didn't get it then, but ordered it later and then used some pastel florals for the background. The applique is by machine except all the yo-yo's that I made and hand appliqued. I love the soft look of this quilt.I have another chapter in my medical saga! I woke up yesterday with intense sinus pain and some eye pain. I was able to dull it and make it through the day. This morning I woke up in horrible pain in my nose and eye and my left eye vision was blurred. My eyeball was extremely sensitive. My husband was sure I had a blockage in my sinuses so I went to Express Care after working this morning. The Dr. flat out said "I don't know". He was concentrating on my eye and finally said I needed to go see my eye Dr. ASAP as my vision was 20/60 in that eye with my glasses on. I went to the eye Dr.'s office and they were able to get me in right then. I have "iritis". The eye Dr. was very, very concerned when I told him about all I had been through recently. Iritis is caused by inflammation in the body! I left with a dilated eye and had to get two prescription drops. I was alone and had to drive home with worse vision in my eye than when I went!. I have to go back tomorrow afternoon to be checked but DH is going with me this time. My iris is stuck to the lens in my eye. It's so bizarre! I never dreamed something this would happen in my continuing saga! The eye Dr. wants to know what my SED rate is next time I have my blood checked (which is next week).

Quilt a day #33

Easter dinner was nice today with mom here. We had a lot of food! I cut out a new quilt tonight to take to retreat to piece. Thankfully I did a test block. The pattern was in an Australian Patchwork and Quilting magazine and it's one Deb thought I should make and had sent me fabrics for it years ago, all fossil ferns. I had collected the rest I needed, 21 colors plus background. I knew from previous experience that somehow I don't piece grandmother's fan blocks well and this was no exception! I got the template adjusted.

This was a mystery quilt from Cindy a couple years ago. The pattern is at her site. It's probably on my blog, I just didn't go backwards. I took this photo hanging at my guild's show last summer. I love the quilting I did on it, but I doubt it will show up!

Quilt a day #32

Happy Easter! It will just be my mom joining three of us tomorrow but I think we will have plenty of food! Ham, rolls, potato salad, jello eggs, deviled eggs, bbq green beans, and bunny cake and I'm sure some misc. things too, pickles, olives, etc.

Today I finished all the things I wanted to get done on spring break so that feels good. I also started getting ready for the retreat. I'm going to Palouse Divide Lodge (Sharon had asked). It's about an hour and a half from here, it used to be a ski hill. We have a small group so we will be in the old lodge but the meals are in the main lodge. We have booked the same weekend with another group for the third year in a row and we have a joint show and tell Saturday night.

My friend Sharon has a top I assembled on her blog for today. Check it out!

Since it's Easter tomorrow today's feature is my Easter quilts. The first one is a round robin from several years ago. I was thrilled with this one. I had to stand in my laundry room to take the picture since it's hanging in the hallway. The quilt hanger is straight it really is! The second quilt is small and one I purchased one finished at a UFO auction for $5. I quilted it, added some beads and bound it with a dimensional strip next to the border.