A weekend getaway

We spent the long weekend in Colorado.  The grandboys are growing so fast and ever more aware.  They love Caillou--which I wasn't at all familiar with--and will stand transfixed in front of the TV while it's on.  

Of course as soon as they realized I was taking pictures they were ready to pose!

 I took the finished quilt for my nephew so that I could take a picture on a king size bed.  Jackie has a new comforter on her bed now...changing to black and white decor. 

 I've been collecting black & white fabrics for quite a while now, and will have to make her another quilt.  Hers won't have to be 120" square...since this one was way bigger than necessary for their bed with the frame.

It was a great weekend with lots of cooking, outings for thrift shopping, and spending time with the kids. 

Cranking out the quilts

Thanks to Pat, I've been cranking out the quilts.  She still has more ballerina quilt tops that she's finishing and I'm sure we'll be in high production when she comes out towards the end of October.

We had enough leftover backing from Pat's niece's quilt for this one.  

  

 I had this plaid in my stash which worked well with the border on this one.  

This one was a cute train panel.  I added the outer yellow and blue borders to make it a little bigger.  

This wide Scotty fabric had been in the stash for a while, and there was enough red and black striped binding from these doggie quilts to just get this one bound.  I love using stuff up to the last little bit.

I've got a stack of five quilts to deliver to Dr. Kaufman, and am piecing one from leftovers.  We'll need to go deliver soon.

A couple of finishes...

Every once in a while the discussion surfaces on About.com quilting forum...  Which do you prefer, piecing or quilting?  I definitely prefer quilting.  I quickly tire of the tedium of making blocks, but quilting on the other hand doesn't ever seem so tedious, even when I'm usually doing pantographs and there is a lot of repetition involved.  I see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it's easy to keep going.

  I can also say the same of binding.  I guess I just really like finishing.  Fortunately for me, Pat prefers piecing, and is rather productive.  I don't have a bounty of pieced tops that I haven't gotten around to quilting.  I do have some blocks from swaps and other "abandoned" blocks, but not nearly enough to finish into so many quilts.  Pat got these tops done, I added borders.

I also grew the backing fabric a bit, since it wasn't long enough to do both quilts after the addition of borders.  The black and white strip came from friends on the forum.  I'm also fortunate to get pieces parts from friends that I can use.  Yay for symbiotic quilting relationships!!  I also finished my nephew's wedding quilt, way ahead of schedule.  I'm taking it up to Colorado and will photograph it on Jackie's king size bed--the 120-square-inch behemoth dwarfed my queen beds and dragged on the floor. 

Back to production...

Taking a break from quilting helped me want to be productive after returning home.  My nephew's wedding quilt has a deadline, since the wedding is in early October, and it's on the longarm now.

My daughter, Jackie, asked if I had any comfort quilts...one of her coworkers was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.  I combed my stash for something I could put together and found some log cabin blocks.  The blocks and coordinating fabrics came from Chris' stash who lost her battle with pancreatic cancer.  It would have made her happy that they are going to a good cause in this quilt.

 Pat has also been busy, and she put together these two twin nine-patch pizzazz tops with doggie themed fabrics.  I used my newly purchased Moda black and white stripe, and had just enough of the perfect red for growing them with borders. 

I also have a great doggie print wide fabric for a backing that Pat got for the stash some time ago.  Everything falling into place, and I need to start getting another batch of quilts for Dr. Kaufman.  It's coming up on "high season" for newly diagnosed kids with diabetes.

Thrift shopping, etc.

On the way home, the last 30 miles, Dale discovered he had a leak of some sort in the truck.  It was kind of hard to figure out since none of the fluids were low, oil, transmission, coolant, and we were getting too good a gas mileage for it to be fuel.

It took a while to pinpoint it to one of two lines that go to the high pressure oil pump.  Dale is no slouch when it comes to troubleshooting.  Armed with that information we made an appointment and took it to the Ford dealer, Rich Ford in Edgewood.  After a week, and claims that the coolant flush maintenance had already been done, we went to pick up the truck, only to find out nothing had been done at all.  At least we didn't owe them any money.  

Second attempt took us to 2nd to None in Moriarty.  We picked up the truck when it was ready, only to discover it had blown one of the replaced O rings, and was still leaking when we got it home.  Back to Moriarty in two vehicles.  They apologized profusely and "made it right," fixing it again at no charge, and all is well now.  

I did get something out of all the trips back and forth.  I hit the jackpot at the thrift store.  I got over 35 yards of quality fabrics all for $1/yd.  There were some large eight plus yard cuts which will be great for backings.

Someone was de-stashing, and luckily I was able to score it!  I love a bargain. 

Good to be home!

Vacation is nice, but it's always good to be home.  I was glad to see "our" kitties.  Little Gray which I'd just begun to tame was receptive to my attention.

 

Our yard is overrun with "goatheads."  If you click the picture above you can see the innocent looking little yellow flowering weeds.  It's a good thing I don't go barefoot much, because the tacks come in on the soles of our shoes.

 

After a lot of laundry and putting stuff away, I'm starting to work on my nephew's quilt, auditioning borders. 

Quilt store shopping

We made a stop in Rupert Idaho, outside of Twin Falls for shopping at a store Idaho resident, Colene, emailed me about.  She claimed the store was awesome, and they did not disappoint.  

The Gathering Place is a large LQS with lots of room and a wonderful layout.  Best of all they had lots of sale fabrics.  I don't normally frequent quilt shops--my budget runs more towards JoAnn's, Hobby Lobby, Wal-Mart (the ones that still carry fabric), and of course thrift stores.

I found these fabrics, all on sale except the batik and the Moda black & white stripe.  I've been looking for a nice B&W stripe.  Colene had tipped me off to the back room for sale fabrics, but they also had some outside the front of the store.  I was amazed at the selection and quality of wool fabric they had...though I didn't buy any wool.  They also had lots of patterns for wools, so many of them done up for inspiration.  

I picked up this kitty words print at one of the Wal-Marts where we went grocery shopping for $2/yd.  The "greeter" alerted me to the sales in their fabric section when I walked in.  I must look like a quilter? 

Twin Falls

We took a southern Canadian route back to the U.S. along Crowsnest Pass.  It was a beautiful day, sunny, and we enjoyed the beautiful Canadian Rockies landscape.  Happened to go through Frank Slide area, which was quite a site, so many years after the rock slide.  Makes you kind of wonder what's holding the rest of rocks up on the mountain, but the waitress where we had lunch assured us that they monitor the mountain for any signs that there will be another slide.

Spent the night in Missoula where we caught this awesome sunset.  We were trying to get to Twin Falls for Dale to catch the air show there.  Had a couple of long days driving, but arrived in Twin Falls in plenty of time.  

We happened to catch some people getting ready to parasail off the Perrine Bridge, and so decided to wait and watch.  They didn't disappoint.  It was hard to catch them as it happened much too quickly.  Lots of preparation for a short ride!
 

We spent the afternoon checking out Shoshone Falls which seemed pretty spectacular despite claims that water levels are low due to irrigation.  

We're ready to start heading home and will make a beeline for Willard.

Lucky with only minor damage...

 On the way back from Banff Park, we stopped for a good walk at Siffleur Falls staging area.  Walked across the suspension bridge and followed a boardwalk which had been built to protect the eroding path, but the falls themselves were too far.

 

Although the day remained cloudy and it drizzled off and on all day, it was still beautiful.  Fields of wildflowers blooming all along the trail.

 

It was full day, as so many days are vacationing.  Getting ready to head out Dale discovers that the hail storm made a hole in our bedroom roof vent lid.  He fashions a repair with silicone and a piece of plastic since duct tape refused to stick to the plastic lid.  

Checking his repair down the road, he discovers it has pulled off, along with more of the lid.  We need to replace it and find one, reasonably priced, and after a bit of work Dale is able to remove the old one and replace it.  Nothing is ever just easy, but we still feel incredibly lucky to have sustained only minor damage in the storm.   

Glaciers, mountains, and bears, oh my...

We left our campsite at Crimson Lake and headed to Banff.  It was a gray, rainy, and drizzly day off and on.  It was about 130 miles to the Icefield Centre, along a scenic two lane highway.  

We drove alongside Abraham Lake, which was a beautiful milky turquoise color.  I've since learned it's due to rock flour or glacial flour.  My pictures need some touching up to make them more true to color.

A bit past this lake we came upon two bears playing alongside the road.  I made Dale turn around and I managed to snap a picture of this one before he retreated into the woods along with his buddy.

 Banff Park was expectedly congested with sightseers.  There were many bicycle riders, which made driving on the narrow two-lane road challenging.  We were so happy not to be towing the camper behind us.  Dale drove up to the Icefield Centre, while I ogled the scenery, and I drove back while he did the same. 

 A milky turquoise river from a high vantage point.  There were so many patches of wild flowers, Indian paintbrush, clover, and many more I'm not familiar with.  I took many pictures of wildflowers and want to do some fabric art in the style of Monika Whalen of My Sweet Prairie blog.

We also saw a fox on the way back but was it was too quick to get a good picture.