Needless to say, I have been busy, busy, busy; I am sure you have been too. I hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving and enjoyed a day with your family and friends. We had a lovely time. At was well worth the days of effort ahead of time and the cooking, cleaning, etc. We spent a long weekend just relaxing and enjoying the kids and grandkids.

I did get another quilt finished in the little spare time I had and it turned out Pretty and Pink. SSSShhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! It is supposed to be a suprise for Christmas, and I have several more quilts to finish before Christmas, so I will surely be busier than I would like to be, but having fun just the same.




I thought that you might like to see a picture of a quilt on the machine.




Here it is all finished and ready to return to the owner to be bound and wrapped for Christmas.


A picture of the back is always fun! It is always thrilling to have a quilt finished!

Christmas Holly

I've done two Christmas themed quilts in this last week. One was a Christmas tree skirt, which was really fun. I love, love, love doing "holly", and that just filled the bill for these two projects.



The back to this one was really fun!

Now I have to get busy and quilt several quilts that customers want ready for Christmas giving. It is a real thrill to quilt something beautiful for others to use and enjoy

Boy's Quilts

Well, finished another quilt for a grandchild. His mom wanted it done for Christmas. Actually she wanted it done earlier, but I have been a little slow getting it done, so now it is for Christmas. She has had a lot of fun piecing quilts this last year and a half, and as they have to be done between customer quilts, sometimes it takes me awhile to get them finished. This is another boy quilt and I thought she did an excellent job. Boys are not always the easiest to do a quilt for, but her color choices and design choices seem just right for a teenage boy.


It is always a challenge for me to know just how to take a picture of a quilt so that it looks nice and shows the features of the quilt, etc. The first picture was taken out on the rock wall. This picture was taken on the trimming table because I thought it did a nice job of showing off the puff of the shapes. It should look really nice on the bed.


This picture is over the screen door. Ok, so I was getting desperate. The closeup below shows some detail of the border from the back. The sunshine really cast some nice shadows so that you can see it pretty well.

Just in Time

At last! The canning is all finished for the year. The peaches are in the jar, the grape juice is done, and the applesauce is on the shelves. Just in time to start getting ready for Christmas! Where has the year gone! It has been a busy fall, but we are so grateful to have the shelves full and are ready to settle in by the fire with a good book and enjoy the winter. Boy, doesn't that sound peaceful! Too bad real life is never quite that simple. Oh well, we can always dream!

Happy Halloween

I have had a little wall hanging panel on hand for some time and decided that since Halloween is Sat. that the time had arrived to get it done. I had a lot of fun doing it and tried out some new metalic thread (spiderwebs) and a new binding technique with piping. No better place to try out something new than on my own quilt. Right? Right!




My Husband says he likes the back best. That's where the stitching really shows up!

Happy Halloween!
This week I decided to take a break and quilt a little wall quilt for my house. It was really a lot of fun and let me play a little with metalic threads (spiderwebs) and a special binding technique that I learned using piping. It was a bit of a challenge, but what better place to try something out than on my own.



My husband says he likes the back the best!


I also finished the canning this week and it is wonderful to see the applesauce and grape juice on the shelves.

Regrets!

Thinking about what to post on the blog next, I decided that quilts for the grandkids has not been covered fully. Early on I helped a granddaughter quilt her own quilt. She came to visit for a month in the summer, and we sure had fun. She knew before she came that she wanted to make a quilt, so she had already picked a pattern and material with her mother. We went to work right away picking a back to match all the fabrics and then on to the cutting out and the sewing. It was a work in patience for both of us. She had to slow down and learn that accuracy was important. We had a lot of fun working together, laughing together and enjoying a feeling of success together when she won a ribbon as a youth quilter in the state quilt quilt show.I regret that I didn't taken more pictures of the process, and especially a picture of Megan with her quilt. Alas, hind sight is always better than fore sight, and the only picture I have is one with her mom and me beside HER quilt. Darn!

A Busy Time of Year

What a busy time of year. Time to get the canning finished up and the garden put to bed. Everything seems to cut into my time to quilt and blog. Oh well, that's life I guess.





I did get this customer quilt finished. It was for a friend and she was really excited because it was her first quilt. Two days after she picked it up it was bound and on the bed. Good for her! There is nothing quite like the thrill of seeing your first quilt actually on the bed!

Birthdays are FUN!

Today is my granddaughter's birthday celebration! Birthday's can be great, especially when you are young. Her Mama made her a quilt and I just finished quilting it. It is pretty upbeat and has lots of fun color combinations. She should like it as she picked out all the colors months ago from her set of colored pencils. (I thought that was a pretty clever idea!) Here it is all ready for the binding.


I can never resist laying the quilt out on the bed to see what it looks like. This will go on a double bed, so it is pretty much bedspread size. There are pillow cases to match, but they are not finished yet. Mama had to work this morning.



Sometimes it looks fun from the back too. We didn't want to make it too "flowery", just a little. She is a girl after all!

What a fun week!

Wow! What a week. We had Quilt Fest here in Utah and I took a lot of classes that really worked my brain. I decided to take some piecing classes and they were a real challenge. It did learn a lot, including an increased appreciation of the women who piece all those beautiful quilt tops that I quilt.

I did enter the two quilts that I had in the fair and won a judges award on Taylor's Quilt. It was a real thrill and totally unexpected! Amber was super excited as she was actually at the quilt show and was the first one to see that we had a ribbon. What a fun day!!

Who's Studio???

I just finished a quilt that I have been looking forward to doing for some time. Last year I designed some quilt blocks to donate to the state quilt quild for the Breast Cancer Foundation. At the first of the year they called and asked if I would like to design a quilt with these blocks in it to donate to be raffled this year to raise funds for the same foundation. I said sure, and then wondered where my mind was. I have never done anything like that before and didn't really know where to start.

When in doubt - SHOUT! So I called my daughter Amber. She has a knack for changing quilt patterns around until they suit her, so I figured that was only one step away from designing a whole quilt. Right? Anyway, she accepted the challenge and the first thing you know we were out shopping for material to complete the project.By that time I had quilts to do for others, so I put off getting my charity quilt started until the co-ordinator called the last of August and asked if I had it finished yet. I didn't have the heart to tell her that it wasn't even started yet, so just asked when she needed it and assured her it would be ready in time.Well, at that point things kicked into high gear and as soon as I was finished with canning the peaches, I sat down to quilt in earnest.Thank goodness for e-mail. Over the next couple of weeks the e-mail and the phone kept Amber and I connected several times a day discussing various aspects of the quilt and finishing the details, etc. All in all we had a lot of fun doing it and both of us were pleased with the results!

It always makes you feel so good when a project comes together. I hope someone wins it who really loves it. My husband just laughed at me when I said I was going to buy tickets for it. He thinks its really something to make the quilt and then buy it back. Oh, well! The really funny thing is - I think Amber is going to buy some tickets too! It would be so fun to see it hanging in my quilt studio (or hers).

My, How Time Flies!

Boy! Does time fly! I have been so busy that I forgot to post and when I remembered, I didn't have time. The customer I did the double wedding ring quilt for had two sons getting married within two weeks of each other. (And I think I have been busy). Consequently I had another wedding quilt to do right behind the other one.



Things really began to get out of control when a friend brought us his extra tomatoes and peppers and I knew that making salsa couldn't be put off any longer.





Such beautiful tomatoes and peppers just had to make beautiful and delicious salsa!


Right!

And then my husband bought a solar oven that he was anxious to try and so today I made bread in it. It was kind of fun, and so delicious that I won't even tell you how many slices I ate! I will say that it is a good thing that I had to keep running out to the back yard to see how it was doing. Hummmm, maybe I'll put in a casserole for supper.

All that and I did get the second quilt finished. Thank goodness it didn't take quite as long as the first one. It turned out nice and my son-in-law really liked it. Her choice of colors was beautiful!



Well, back to the kitchen! Lots to do this time of year!

Finally Finished!

Finally finished the double wedding ring quilt. It turned out pretty nice I thought. The customer gave me permission to put pictures of it on the blog and promised me a picture of it bound and at the reception. It was the first double wedding ring that I have done, and took longer than I thought, but it was worth the effort.


This is on the machine. It sure looks big! It sure was big!

This is on the bed. I would love to have it on my bed!

All the swirls and leaves turned out very pretty.

What a Week!!!

This has been a busy, busy week with a few surprises thrown in just to make life exciting. I have been canning all week and have done green beans, apricot jam, raspberry jam, dill pickles and sweet pickles and even processed pickled beets for my daughter, Angel. All that plus working on a double wedding ring quilt for a customer.

Last Saturday I took two quilts over to the County Fair. I have not entered a County Fair before and so I was a little nervous, but decided that I might as well give it a try. I had shown some of my quilts at our community Heritage Days for the last two summers and a favorable response gave me courage.

On Tuesday, I couldn't wait any longer. I had to find out if I had received a blue ribbon or what. I decided that I would stop in and see if I could get in because I knew that the vendors would be setting up that day for the opening on Wednesday. As I walked into the building I got so excited. There was my quilt hanging right out front with a big beautiful ribbon on it! Wow! What a thrill! My quilt received a "Best of Division" ribbon.

I say "my" quilt, but in truth, it was pieced by my daughter Amber and quilted by me. We were both thrilled. The quilt that I had quilted for my Grandson, Taylor, received a blue ribbon. That was neat too, even if they did hang his quilt sideways. Amber pieced that one also. She has become a talented quilter with a keen eye for color. I have been grateful to be able to work on her quilts.


This is not a very good picture, but I just had to have one of it hanging there with the ribbon on it and all.

This is a somewhat better one of it a few weeks ago at our community Heritage Days celebration. My sweet husband made the stand for it and it hung outside of the building to let people know where the quilt show was.