RED Cars, WHITE Clouds, & BLUE Sky (Blaine, WA)

How was everyone's 4th of July celebration?  Lots of eating, visiting, and viewing fireworks?

Not a rain cloud in the sky!

Us?  Well, the rain stopped and the sun came out!  Talk about good timing!  We went to Blaine to see the street festival and the classic car show.  We were not expecting it to be so busy!  Wow, where did all of the people come from?   The classic car show was spread out over quite a few blocks so it was easy to view most of the cars.

Classic Car Show

It wasn't so easy to view the vendors.  The area was so packed with people that we gave up on seeing what was good to eat or for sale.

I managed to get a couple of candid shots of people enjoying their day...

Cute!  Eagle kissing? the young lady...

A young patriot

Even the dogs were looking patriotic!

We were too tired to go watch fireworks and I really regret not going down to the bay.  Between the commercial fireworks and home-bought fireworks, it sounded like quite a joyful celebration...that went on until after midnight.  I finally fell asleep around 1 pm surrounded by two scared cats.  Poor guys did not know what to think of all that booming.  Not to worry - they are back to their old selves - begging to go outside, getting into things, and the list goes on....

Me?  I plan to go to bed early again tonight.   yawn!

On the Cutting Board

I finished the last of the sashing on Vi's quilt.  Oh, I can hear your thoughts...what?  She's still working on that quilt?  Yep, shameful.  I know!  I don't know why I am having such a hard time finishing this quilt.  Maybe, part of the reason is the large areas of sashing and borders.  Or maybe, it is all the other distractions that I keep creating for myself.  Oh well, there's no one reason, but I do plan to keep working on the quilt until it is done.

Now, I'm faced with how to mark the floral border.  I have always struggled with this part of quilting - how to transfer a pattern to a top for quilting.  Since I am quilting by hand in a hoop, I cannot use chalk.  I usually use fabric marking pens, but I need to mark as I quilt so there is no marking ahead of time.

I decided to use a simple design for the floral border since it is already very busy and my poor eyes will get quite a workout.  An easy basket weave came to mind and I drew it out on paper.  I thought of using painter's blue tape, but that means constantly measuring and re-adjusting the tape.  I saw this Mesh Transfer sheet by Clover and decided to give it a try.

To transfer the pattern from paper to the mesh sheet, I used a permanent marker.  I was hoping to use an easy-eraser marker, but the marks were smearing when I tried to mark the quilt.

I only marked a small area of this mesh with hopes of using it again for a different quilt.  Although, I might stick to simple designs and stitching in the ditch with echoing as a filler from now on!

Anyway, I positioned the mesh onto the border without removing the quilt from my hoop.  I was a little worried about the ink making it through the tiny mesh to the fabric and being able to see the markings as well.

After several tries with different fabric markers, I found this blue one worked the best because of its softer tip.  Since the markings are a little messy, I have been going over them again using just a ruler and the pen.  It is double the work, but at least I don't have to measure each time I need to mark a new section.

Anyone have any suggestions?  I would love to hear them because this has always been a dilemma for me!

Happy Quilting!

Merry Christmas!

I hope this message finds you and your family safe and warm while enjoying this holiday season. Dan and I are spending our first Christmas in Key West. We are dry camping right now which means absolutely no hook-ups for water, electricity, or sewage. This is pretty new for us. So far, it has not been that bad. We use our generator when we need to recharge batteries and for extra juice for heat or TV. Washing dishes is a problem so we are using paper plates some of the time.  Showers are taken in a public shower house that is kept very clean. One less thing for me to clean this holiday season – the shower! More time to quilt – right? But - the days have been warm so we have been spending quite a bit of time outside taking the cats for walks.

We also visited the Key West Botanical Garden. I thought I would share this most unusual flower. The trumpet flower is larger than my hand.  Isn't it beautiful?  St. Francis had his own visitors.

Today, we will join the other winter residents on base for a potluck dinner. I am taking our favorite holiday dish – Herbed Brown Rice stuffing with roasted almonds. YUM!

Despite all the distractions of dry camping and great weather, I did finish another block and I am half way through the next one already. I still have a lot to do. I got to looking at the quilt and I realized I have some very big borders that will need quilting as well. I won’t mention the binding I have not started yet. All I can do is to keep on quilting until it is done.

“In your heart, In your soul, Did you find peace there?” ~ Full Circle by Loreena McKennitt

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

RENO IS QUILTOWN (Quilt Show)

Last weekend, I finally got Dan to go with me to a quilt show. Well, sort of. Actually, someone came up with the brilliant idea of holding a quilt show inside the National Automobile Museum. What a genius!! Quilters and their spouses were happy to go together to a quilt show. And that included Dan and I. Dan took lots of pictures of cars and I took lots of pictures of quilts. I wish more quilt shows were teamed up with car or motorcycle shows. It was a lot of fun.

The Truckee Meadows Quilters put on a fabulous display of quilts throughout the museum among the vintage automobiles. I enjoyed both the quilts on display as well as the automobiles.

I have put together some of the quilts in WebShots. Mainly the ones that jumped out at me or spoke to me. I just could not do upload all of them. There were so many and all were wonderful! I added the name of the quilt and the quilter’s name in the album this time. I had someone compliment me once on a quilt I did not make even though the album was clearly marked Quilt Show. I did explain that I could not take the credit for the quilt.

You will probably notice that a lot of the quilts are by Mildred Dort. I will admit I did not look at the program when I started looking around. I was too excited to see the quilts then to read about them. Why read when I can spend the time admiring the beautiful artwork on display, listening to others quilt discussions, and do a little shopping with the vendors. I loved all the quilts, but my favorite quilts are the ones with hand-appliqué work or ones with cats or flowers.

It wasn’t until I got home and started going through the program to match photos with names that I realized I had taken a lot of pictures of Mildred Dort’s quilts. I can see why she was picked as the featured quilter. She does some excellent appliqué handwork. My friends know that I really love my appliqué handwork.

Oh, and I will be uploading photos of the vintage automobiles as well…a little later and in a separate folder. Enjoy!

A Little Hand Quilting, A Little Appliqué

I love the way the mosaic worked out on my water lilies.

I should have made smaller pieces for the fish.  I'm having a hard time keeping the bigger pieces from getting puffy.  Of course, it doesn't help when Max lies under the quilt while I am appliquéing.  I try to use him as a table, but he tends to rollover just as I have it in the perfect spot.

I plan to add some ginkgo leaves floating in the water.  I am also thinking of adding some bamboo stems with a shadow effect if I can find a way to add organza by hand.  I want to do all of this by hand if I can.

I love working with my hands, but it is very slow compared to using a machine. So far, I have finished one block and a few borders done.  The blue is chalk.  I hope this washes out!  I went back to using stencils and a washable ink marker after I finished this block.

I decided to try some free-form fill on this block.  It has been fun, but it is taking a while to finish it.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Well, we have not been blown away from the high winds and we have not needed our kayaks to get to work just yet, but it is only November. For the past week, we have had 35-40 mph winds with gusts up to 60 mph. Our Bluebird (motorhome) does give a little shake once in a while. Thank goodness it is built very solid and sits low to the ground. I feel very safe and cozy during these storms.
This is a view from our kitchen towards the living area. We do not have slide-outs, but it is an extra wide which seems to make the difference between tight space and feeling cozy for us. My sewing machine and laptop are sitting on the dining room table. I often move them to the chair when we eat.


Of course, with bad weather comes plenty of opportunity to quilt and read. I have been getting some hand quilting done along with a couple of more mini holiday quilts for my window. I did not get the Thanksgiving one done, but here are a couple pictures of my Turkey Tom. I could not find a pattern I liked so I used some clipart and blew it up to the size I wanted for the mini quilt. I get my clipart from PC Crafter. They have quite a variety of artists and art work.


Here I am getting some quilting done while watching TV. The sun actually came out for a while. About an hour later, we were having another down pour and high winds.

Hitch is staying entertained by watching the hummingbird. I’m amazed that tiny hummingbird can fly in this bad weather. He feeds all day long no matter how bad the winds are blowing.

Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!