Show and Tell

Well, another week has come and gone. The weather is getting cooler and cooler but not quite to freezing. I have pulled up all my vegetable plants except the tomato plants. I am hoping that there is still time for all the green ones on the plant to ripen.

I have given away a bunch of tomatoes but I still had quite a few very ripe ones and so I came up with the idea of making salsa. Well, I don't like spicey food but I do like Pace mild salsa. So I figured I would try to make salsa chunky and mild like that. I bought a white onion, garlic and a few jalapeno peppers.
I started right in and chopped 8 cups of tomatoes, diced onions and the garlic. Then I cut the peppers in half and started to wash out all the inside. Oh my goodness, I started coughing and itching and didn't think I was going to be able to finish with them. I finally did finish, cut them up and put them in the pot.I only put in half what the recipe said to put in.  I then bottled 6 pints. I gave two daughter in laws each a pint and I have 4 left. I am a little concerned about being able to eat any of this salsa but I will not have a problem getting the kids to eat them. They love spicey food.

I have now started on 2 boxes of pears. My daughter, Jenny, and I bottled one batch Wednesday and I have one batch going right now. That will make 14 quarts so far. Pears are a funny fruit and you have to be very patient with them. They ripen when they are ready to ripen and not before. I have another box waiting but I don't think I will be able to do any tomorrow.

Don't they look pretty.

I have a son who really likes his quilts. He still has the baby quilt my grand mother made for him when he was born. I had to have my grand mother recover his quilt many years ago because he was loving his quilt to death. Well, he came to me with the holey remains of his quilt and asked me to recover it again. I tried to tell him it was not possible but he almost begged. This quilt was mostly holes so I am referring to this new outer skin as 'encasing' his baby quilt. I put fleece on the top and cream flannel on the back. I attempted to quilt it on my HQ with a particular pattern but that did not work at all. I am lucky I got it to sew the quilt at all. The lumps you see are really lumps and I am not showing the back because the thread is a mess. So I am done and he assures me that he is happy. He hasn't seen it yet.

I have decided to put the Smith Mountain Morning quilt together and now it is a top.

It is beautiful! I am working on another quilt top but I will not show it this week.

My daughter and daughter in law, Chelsi, decided to bring out my valentine quilt and try to arrange it on the design wall. It looks pretty good. I guess I need to work on this quilt top soon.

Well, this is all for this week. See you next week!

This, That & Making Slow Progress

After writing my post last week I realized that I had skipped Chelsi's quilt. So I went hunting for the pictures of that quilt and I found three pictures but two have her in them. I do not put family in my blog for the most part. This picture is not very good but I wanted to show this quilt. I got this pattern from another designer other than Bonnie Hunter and I have the book but right off the top of my head I can't remember the designers name.

I also went looking for my son Luke's quilt and finally found it. It is from DEC 2005 and at that time I just put quilt pictures in the folder for the month and did not keep them separately like I do now.

 This quilt was a labor of love. Almost all of our family members made a block.

Luke's family members have more than one block. I haven't put in a number of the pictures I have of this quilt because there are family pictures in the quilt and I didn't want to have them be too clear to actually see the faces.

Every block has flying geese. I quilted this in the quilt as you go method but did it in rows. I did it all on the DSM. This was when I decided that I couldn't quilt on my DSM again. This quilt is a very large king size. It kills my shoulders doing this kind of quilting.

This is my box for the Smith Mountain quilt that I am preparing for next month. I will hopefully be able to finish the alternate block and sew the top together while we are in Reno, NV for the conference.

These 1 1/2 inch squares are for the block.

These are for the pieced outer border. I am taking the pieces for the outer border just in case I get that far in the piecing.

Well, I need to sign off for now. Talk next week.

Things are Starting to Settle

Well, it has been another week and things around here are looking a little bit better every day.
I have not worked in my quilting studio but I thought I would talk about the quilts I have made for my kids. I have made several over the years.

This is a Bonnie Hunter free pattern on her website Quiltville, Chunky Churndash. I made this for my oldest son Garrett.

This is Scrappy Mountain Majesty from Bonnie's website. I have made three of these quilts. This is the first one I made and it went to Garrett's wife Tosha.

This is another quilt from Bonnie Hunter but it is from one of her books and I made this one for Melanie.
I have made two quilts for my son Luke, one of which I have already wrote about. It is a Quilt of Valor. He spent 1 year in Iraq. The first one I made was a huge king size quilt that everyone in the family made a block. I can't find any pictures of this quilt and I know that I have taken many picture of it. If and when I find the pictures I will show them on this blog.

This quilt is from Bonnie and it is called Smokey Mountain Stars. I gave this one to my son Doug. It is made from recycled shirts, allot of them from my husband.

This is Jared Takes a Wife from Bonnie and this was the first big quilt I made from Bonnie. I gave this one to Doug for his birthday.

This one was made for Laura, Doug's wife. It is not a Bonnie Hunter. I just designed it the way I wanted it to be.

This is a mystery quilt from Bonnie Hunter that I gave to my daughter.

This one I have shown before in one of my first posts. It is a sampler quilt that I gave my daughter in 2000.

This is the one I made for my son Eli when he got back from his mission to Russia. Not good pictures and I machine quilted this on my DSM.

Well, I think this is enough pictures for this post. My husband and I are going on a mini vacation tomorrow and will be back on Sunday. 

I will talk next week.

Wow, 2 Weeks Have Flown By

Well, August is almost done. I have been going like crazy to catch up here at home because of being gone for 6 days. Luke and I flew out mid afternoon on Thursday and we worked like crazy getting everything packed into the truck through Sunday. Jared is a master at Tetris otherwise we would never have been able to get all the stuff into that truck that we did.
We decided to drive straight through to get home and Nebraska seems to go on forever. We left Madison, WI on Monday at 2:30p.m. and arrived home at 10:00p.m. on Tuesday. The trip was a blur.
Since being home we have worked hard to get things unpacked into the house and storage. This is a big job with 5 kids.
I have also been sitting 3 other grand kids this week because today they leave for Texas and who knows when I will ever see them again. They are moving to Houston.

I decided today to showcase a few quilts that I have not talked about on my blog. I make baby quilts for every one of my grand kids and then they get a twin size quilt when they are older. I have 21 grand children at this point and every one of them have a baby quilt. All but 2 have twin size.
Here are a few of the twin size quilts I have made.
The boy quilts I use a large center fabric and then I add borders. I try to use fabric a little older looking so they will still like their quilts when they are teenagers.

This not all of the boys quilts I have made but for the life of me I can't find pictures of a couple of quilts. 

This girls quilts are all different. They are all pieced quilts, most are Bonnie Hunter design.

From the above quilt I made two more quilts from the bonus triangles. One in purple and one in pink.

The next two quilts were leader ender projects. I gave the purple one to a grand daughter and the pink one was for charity.

This next quilt was a Bonnie Hunter design from one of her books.

This next one is actually a representation of two quilts I made for twins. The only difference being different borders.

The next two quilts are for two different grand daughters. I really enjoyed making these two because they are not pink or purple. Most little girls like pink or purple but these two like the bright and fun colors of yellow and orange.

This one is my nod to the modern quilt. I normally like the traditional look.

This quilt below is a Bonnie Hunter design in pink and purple.

I know this is not all 19 quilts I have made but I don't have a picture of one or two. I have already written about the one I made for Lizzy because it was the first Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt.

All of the grand kids get pillow shams or pillow cases the next year for their birthday. This way they have a matching set.

Well, I will sign off for now. I have really loaded this post with pictures and talk.
See you next week.

It Sure Is Cold Out There

It sure is cold outside here in Utah.  The high for today will be 23 degrees and we will be going down from there. It will be 14 degrees on Sunday.
I have been busy with the house and job interviews.
I will try to get two labels made today for 2 quilts. I have finished my grand daughter's quilt that I showed on the last post. She will be three years old in late April. This quilt started out as a leader ender. I also had started another 9 patch in pink with a bit smaller square. I gave the Mom the choice between the two. She chose purple. I really like how this quilt turned out.

I also took a picture outside to see if I could get a good shot. It is very overcast today so it didn't take very well.

I still like the contrast from the snow though but I don't like seeing my foot prints. Doesn't make for a very clean pic.
The backing is a sheet and I just love the colors.  I sure like using sheets because it saves so much time for me and you can't beat the price of a full flat sheet to use for these twin size quilts.
I am not making any progress on my red and white quilt. My weeks are flying by and I am getting allot done but there is still so much to do.  I guess that is life.
Well, I need to get busy breaking up all the chicken I am cooking for the enchiladas we are having tomorrow for our monthly Saturday lunch with all the kids.  There will be 9 adults and 9 grandkids.  We have a great time with them. Tonight we pick up two grandson for a sleepover for their birthdays this week. They are turning eight.
I will return next week.

Long Time Since I Last Blogged

I have not blogged since the 7th of December. Allot of that had to do with the holidays but it also had to do with the fact that 3 days after I last blogged I was RIFed (Reduction in Force).  I work for the University of Utah and that is a government term.

This was a total surprise and so it has taken me some time to come to terms with that and try to move on.

We are still working on our basement finish and with the holidays I have been able to keep very busy, which is a good thing.

First off, we had a great Christmas.  We celebrate on Christmas Eve with all our kids and grandchildren.

We had 21 over for dinner and our program which also includes caroling. My grandkids like the caroling even better than the food. This was not all of our children and grandchildren. Our oldest son has 7 kids and our only daughter has 4 with one on the way.  They were not able to attend.
I made some potholders and gave them away as Christmas gifts and forgot to take pictures of them.
I have made tremendous progress on the baby quilt.  I have the quilt completely done, a pillow to match and 9 burp pads. I backed this quilt with minky and no batting to try out what I have been reading online for a year. I am OK with it but the quilt feels limp.

I took this picture out in the snow. I am trying different ways to capture the quilts. I learned some of this from  Kathy of Tamarack Shack Longarm Quilting.  She takes great pictures of her quilts.

I know that the burp pads are mostly pink but when I started the quilt my daughter did not want to know boy or girl so we agreed on a yellow and green generic quilt.  After I was about finished she found out it is a girl.  The burp pads in pink are OK for that reason but honestly, I just had more left over pink flannel and she didn't care.

I have also finished the quilting on my granddaughter Katya's birthday quilt.  Her birthday is in April so I am ahead of schedule.

I will have a better picture when the quilt is washed, labeled and ready to give.  I always do a pillow sham to match the quilt or pillowcase to match for the boys. I give these to them the following birthday.  I prepare it now so it is not forgotten and so I don't use up all of the fabric in something else.

I am planning to work on my blog every week now and hope to show more of my quilts and the progress on my new quilting room.

For now I will sign off and wish you a wonderful New Year!

What I am Working on Now

I have not been able to work on too many quilting things lately because of work and the basement that we are trying to fininsh.  The basement is coming along very slowly and it is very frustrating.

Today I took off from work so the Electrician could come and finish up our electrical stuff.  He didn't show up at all and did not call.  I also had a tile guy coming over for a bid on the bathroom and kitchen tile and he didn't show either.  I had another tile guy coming at 6:30 tonight but he called and said the weather is too bad and wants to come tomorrow evening.

I worked on a couple of things while I waited.  I needed to make pillow covers for the sofa pillows and I have almost finished them today.  I just need the backing for them now.

I have also made the official start for the baby quilt that I need to have done by January.  This is our 21st grandbaby.  I have made these cute embroidered barn animals into quilts several times. This one will be green and yellow as our daughter is not going to find out what is coming until the baby arrives.

I have all the words done also so I need to clean up the threads on these and trim them to the size I want them to be.  I will be making green and yellow blocks to go with them. I will be backing this quilt with minky and will not put in batting.  I have seen a few of the baby quilts made this way on the web and decided I wanted to try this out.

Well, this will make two posts today but I am not sure when I will be able to post again so I think this is pretty good.

Sunbonnet Sue

When I was very young my Grandmother made me a Sunbonnet Sue quilt.  I loved that quilt so much and I have saved it all these years.  Recently I cut out some of the Sunbonnet Sues and I will be making a little memory quilt from them. The quilt itself has been in pieces for years and so it has been stashed away and never seen.
Just before I got my HQ I made a Sunbonnet Sue top and completed it in 2006.  I had it hanging in my closet for almost 5 years before I quilted it because I was scared to quilt it.  I finally decided that I needed to finish this quilt and so I did. I am so glad that I got brave and finished it.  A finished quilt is better than a masterpiece in my mind.

I have it drapped over my sofa in the front room most of the time and I have a little grand daughter that likes to cuddle up in it all the time.

This is a sweet little quilt and of course it is scrappy.

I love Scrappy!