Quick Quilt

I put together this quilt quickly to take up to Colorado to visit the grandboys.  They like to have a picnic on their "fort," a wooden play structure which has lots of opportunities for splinters.  I thought they could lay this out for their picnics.

We had a wonderful week.  Spent a couple of nights at Mt. Princeton Hot Springs in a cabin.  It was great, relaxing, and lots of water play for the kids to tire them out.

The weather was just perfect, cool and cloudy enough to enjoy the hot water.  These white boys would have fried had it been sunny at that altitude!

 

I didn't even take a single picture.  Thanks, Justin for sharing these.  

Maybe I don't love paper piecing...

And maybe I don't hate it either.  I got to the part that seems fussy and time consuming...Removing all the paper.  This is not the fun part.  

I'm really amazed at the crisp points I was able to achieve.  

I started another "table runner" in another color combination.  I've decided the two table runners will be used as a cushion cover for the chest in our bedroom.  

I'm waffling back and forth now on whether I have the stick-to-itiveness to make a bed sized quilt.  I still love NY Beauty quilts...so maybe!

Stack-o-quilts

I finished two more quilts, making a stack of 14 quilts to deliver.  

Thanks Tove!  I'm still quilting all the tops she gave.  I also have a few that I pieced to quilt in the queue as well!

I pieced both of these consecutively on one big backing.  

 

I made a special little baby quilt for Dr. Kaufman's soon to be arriving grandson.  

I used a piece of silk (at least I think it is) for the backing that I had in my stash along with the leftover silk batting trimmings from our summer bed quilt.

Yesterday afternoon we took a short drive to the viewpoint for the dry salt lakes to the east of us.  

They have a good bit of water in them from all the rains we've gotten.  I can't remember ever seeing the hills around so green!  Amazing what a normal monsoon rainy season will do for the natural vegetation.

 Roads on either side of ours are lined with flowers!  I finally checked the settings on my camera with the manual.  I had noticed my pictures were all coming out grainy.  I was able to restore it to better settings, and also found I have a "wide" option.  Guess I should spend more time with the manual!   




 

I really like paper piecing?

I no longer hate paper piecing!  I took a great class Saturday with Barbara Gary teaching Judy Niemeyer's One for All Seasons table runner.

I've tried paper piecing before...Shelley taught us Judy Mathieson's freezer paper piecing method at one of the early yearly retreats I attend in Phoenix.  I made a pillow with my finished piece, but didn't really love the process to want to do more.

Craftsy was having a sale and I signed up for Carol Doak's paper piecing class.  It didn't really inspire me--and I didn't get very far.  

So when the opportunity to take a two-day class being offered 60 miles away, with no one I knew, presented itself...I signed up!  I thought well, this will either make or break (forever) paper piecing for me.

Look what I can do!

With detailed cutting instructions and some prep the night before, I got half of the large arcs done at the class Saturday.  Sunday morning I finished the large arcs.  Sunday afternoon I got all the small arcs done.  I'm looking forward to learning how to put it all together.

When I first started quilting I fell in love with NY Beauty style quilts.  I hoped to do one, but that seemed beyond my reach since I didn't take to paper piecing.  Now I'm considering doing a bed sized quilt with a Judy Niemeyer pattern.  

I couldn't post without a couple of colorful cloud pictures.  The storm cloud ablaze at the top was directly east of the setting sun Saturday evening.
 

    

Early morning color!

The skies were ablaze this morning!  There is also a feeling of fall in the air but with all the moisture we've had, everything is thriving...

We let flowering "weeds" have the run of the place.  A small sunflower variety started outside the front door, and it has now completely taken over.  I don't mind.  There is so much color. 

 

As I was coming back into the house, I spotted this "monster" by the picnic table.  It was just a mushroom that had broken through the soil.  We've had a few giant ones by the back door; the spores hanging around for favorable weather.  I wish I knew if they were edible.

On the quilting front, I finished quilting and binding three more tops from Tove.  This first one had a little accident...  It picked up color when I washed it with a batik quilt.  It uniformly dyed two of the fabrics, while leaving the one of the white background fabrics untouched!  

This alphabet quilt is my favorite!  Pat found an alphabet book to go with it!

 I was able to get two done on one long backing--a great rockets print.  It's nice to have some more quilts for boys!

 Trying to finish a few more before delivering quilts to Dr. Kaufman next week. 


 

More finishes!

We've continued to get rains which has now pulled this area out of the "exceptional" drought status we were in!  All the vegetation is thriving.

This is the last quilt top from Kathy F.  I've had it since early April after coming back from house sitting for our friends in Tucson.

 Tove is going to keep me busy for a while with all the tops she sent.  

Besides the tops she sent, she also included these two completed quilts!  

I'll be making a big delivery soon to Dr. Kaufman, thanks to all my quilting friends!

Clouds, rain, & quilting

Finally, I think we're coming out of the extreme drought!  Right here in Willard we had over 6.5 inches of rain for the month of July.  It's so spotty though, and sometimes too much in some areas to cause flooding.

These threatening clouds didn't actually give us much rain.  You can see a tiny sliver of moon on the left, and a jet contrail poking out of the cloud at about 3 o'clock.


I finished the quilting on Tove's quilt.  This is such a bright, cheerful quilt, featuring Kaffe Fassett fabrics.  

 

She wanted a simple Clouds panto on it, but since her backing was solid, I thought it would be better to have something with a bit more design.  I opted for Mandarin Garden. 

I'm now working on the donation tops she sent.  They'll keep me busy until my surgery date.  Finally I'm getting a fix for my total knee.  The patella is not riding right making a (painful) clunk at the end of extension.  Hopefully it will be a quick and fairly easy fix, and I'll be on my way to actually using this new knee.