Took a little trip

Time for a selfe in denver

Up Grandad bluff

 It finally rained here in the GNW! Hallelujah! And boy did we need it!

 Everything is greening up from the crunchy yellow and brown sear we had all this summer, though I'm sure the new complaint will be,

 "It's so gloomy out!" at today's sit-and-sew!

So what have I been up to this month? Quite a bit.

Camping

We took an extended car trip to Colorado and Wisconsin, to visit my side of the family, which was lovely! 

We filled our days with lollygagging and dawdling, talking and visiting and tons of sight seeing!

DDH over lacrosse

On the way home we stopped at rushmore on our way to Crazy Horse, 

which is IMHO a better, more worthwhile use of your time and money.

Crazy Horse

And seeing the hard work that is being done by an all volunteer group of dedicated people is inspiring!

Rushmore is the wort kind of Tourist trap, the kind you feel ripped off by. 

The obligatory rushmore

Again, My own never to be humble opinion

Though we took a nice selfie together!

Resting at Bears ears

Bears ears was also a lovely stop.

We walked around the entire base and took in the sights and the people who came to climb, sight-see and heritage walk.

On the way home we drove through the hot, in some places it was 106*! No matter how high we put the air in the car at that point you could still feel the hot trying to seep in!

Erstwhile travelling companion

It was so hot the poor car skellies hairdoo got seared!

We were gone for 3 weeks of Relaxing and then needed to go right back out again,

Off to Canada this time, for my best friends daughters wedding, that trip too was lovely! 

On the road again

Until we were coming home, into the teeth of  all the  icky brown smoke from surrounding wildfires.

 They had been raging on for months and are very hard to put out when there is no rain to help.

So we are home again and I have quilting to do, I have 3 community service kiddy quilts, 2 commissions and soo many projects to finish

but more on that later.

CQJP 2017 Paris block #3

 this block cellebrates all the open parks in the city and the art neuvo influence that you will see scattered everywhere

first up is the moth, in a vine you will see them in the dusk after the street lights go on banging their heads against the glass

then the duck, she was supposed to be a swan but oh well shes a pretty enough duckriding the waves of a pond

the phrase is from one of my favoriet Edith Piaf songs and is the title as well" Je ne regrette rien" I do not regret anything.

 the little pump in a cistern is a common sight as well usually behind large houses or in country

I did a fair amount of sewing on the flowers in the middle portion mostly because we took a 2 day train trip to see family in CHicago and 2 days on a train is the perfect place for sewing

squares for watering the gardens, horses and the other family animals

 and look what decided to flower this Year! The irises are huge and have may blooms on each stalk. I suppose this is what happens when they hybernate for 8 years!

to be fair i had them in a different location and only mooverd them 2 years ago to where they are now but they didnt bloom last year either.

I also found this fellow sleeping on my allium drumstic this morning.
he must have been caught out when the sun whent down over the trees, it gets cold quite fast around here after dusk.

more is in bloom in the garden and ill have pictures of those too soon.

Oh, the Sanity!

we went to Hawaii for our honeymoon in April and as is customary I bought more fabric than I meant to.

I have (finally) finished the pattern I bought for it all

as may of you may know I wander off into sane quilting every once in a while and when I do it takes me months to finish what I start mostly because I know find the cutting peacing and sewing down of regular quilting well, BORING! OMG! somebody shoot me please, what was I thinking!

OK now that I have gotten that out of my system I feel really proud of myself, when I can actually finish one of these things in under a year!


the first one is a little wall hanging I saw the turtle pattern in the quilt shop in Volcano village I didn't get it but it played with me in my head until I sewed it down I was originally thinking of putting more turtles on this but my appliqué skills are so rusty I don't want ruin what I have so far .

the second one I couldn't resist (even though I tried!) I bought as a kit for a table runner with one line of pineapples and then fell I lust with more of the fabric so it has turned into a lap quilt.

now I just have to sammich, quilt and bind the darned thing.
this is where it may take longer to finish.....

BJP-May dancing with the volcano

Just when you thought I had fallen off the face of the earth, I appear!
bearing eyecandy! woo....ok, ok. so It's not that exciting.
I have been busy! 

 a little bit here and a little bit there, I have mostly been out in the garden this summer.

anyway I have finished another BJP piece

  as you probably know if you read the blog regularly (or irregularly as the posts go).

I got married this past december and we took our honeymoon in Hawaii.

this is my may bead journal piece I call her dancing with the volcano.
 she is the constant lava flow of the pu'u'o'o that has been erupting on big island for over 30 years!

she has reshaped the Island several times and removed whole towns from the map but she always adds a little more than she takes.

the last time we came to big island she was running out to sea, this time she is "adding land" inland so we couldn't go see her with out a 7 mile there day hike or a  chopper so we opted for exploring the rest of the island Wipao valley is stunning!

Laconner quilt museum installment #4

here are the last of the Laconner pictures 

this crazy quilt is made of all cigar silks 

they are pretty boring one by one but are rather stunning when taken en masse

I didn't take pictures off every panel of this piece



because they are pretty much the same once you get passed the whole thing


apparently her hubbs liked a certain kind of cigar and didn't deviate too much from those





this next quilt I saved for the last because it is my favorite and it has so much to see in it that I wanted to document it  in detail







you will notice it has some lovely seams and motifs in it






some that are repeated throughout and some that stand alone







and it's in very good shape considering it was an actual bed topper 






there is very little fading or laddering due to age








which is very unusual when you take into account how old this quilt is

the dates on it range from 1887 to 1933













  and it looks to me like much of the seam work was the work of one hand

though the motifs look to be the work of several people

 and then there is my favorite room in the house the tower room

the view of which is stunning and darn it all if I didn't take any pictures of it!

couldn't you imagine sewing up here?
3 windows worth of light, views up and down the waterfront and that ceiling!





sigh!