Playing Catch Up

Reviewing my previous posts and noting the gap, I decided I need to fill in some blanks.  Angela and I have finished piecing the intergenerational top but I haven't quilted it yet so it remains a UFO with promise of completion in the coming year.

The biggest project that has appeared in the past two years is Angela & Jerrod's son Coen who was born in March of 2011.  I have been making frequent trips to visit him in Austin TX and that has been a joy and a priority in my life.

 Most of my projects involve quilting, beading and dyeing fabric, but I have been collecting linens, laces, and vintage sewing paraphernalia for forty years and I am looking forward to sharing those with my readers also.

I am fortunate to have two studios in my life.  The public studio is shared with my sister-in-law in our main street store called the Art & Antique Gallery.

That is where I design and repair jewelry.  I also keep my little Singer Featherweight sewing machine and vintage iron there so I can do a bit of quilt piecing during quiet times. The store basement is filled with antique picture frames, decor, and small furniture that needs sprucing up before I can put in the store.  On sunny cool mornings I do a little fabric dyeing and hang it to dry behind the store or I clean up something to add to the store inventory. 

 

My second studio is where I spread out my quilting projects and my genealogy, photography, and linen and lace collections.  It consists of two large rooms on the store's second floor next to my mother's apartment.   I'll show more of that in my next blog.   In the meantime happy creating to you all.

It's time to start

I'm inspired to write again.  
My Desert Cottage is hosting a blog hop beginning July 12 and I plan to participate.
http://www.mydesertcottage.com/

An Intergenerational UFO

Quilt blocks started by my grandmother more than 50 years ago provided entertainment for our New Year's weekend family gathering. My mother, 86 years old and still actively quilting, helped me and daughter Angela arrange them on the design wall.


Daughter Angela and Jerrod have been visiting from Austin, TX, over the holidays. My SIL Judy gave Angela a package of unfinished quilt blocks as a present.

These blocks were started back in the fifties and sixties by my grandmother in southern Utah. She used many fabrics from her scrapbag so some pieces date back to the twenties and thirties. All the diamond stars are sewed together, but only about half of them have the background set in squares and triangles hand stitched.

We arranged them on the design wall, added blue sashing, and sat down together to hand stitch enough blocks to complete the top.

I have always avoided learning quilting handwork, but finally my grandmother who has been gone since 1976, was guiding me and my daughter to learn the fun of setting in background squares. We only needed to do one block apiece to have enough. Then there are about 24 more stars which will be made into 2 twin size tops in the future. Angela took the almost completed top back to Texas along with some yellow border fabric and a wool bat contributed by my mom. We'll work on it again next time we get together.

Snowdrifts around town

Drifts across Bohemian Hiway one block south of our house.
Digging out at the main entrance of the school.
Front of Tyndall Good Samaritan Center
Main Street Piles in front of A & A Gallery

Small town Christmas Snow

Make a Smilebox greeting

Christmas Blizzard 2009

We are enjoying a rare vacation as the result of a three day blizzard. We will know it's over when the snow plow opens our driveway. Pictures of the weather can't really do it justice--it's mostly a white-out with single digit temps and 40 mph winds.

Vintage Santa Visits Art & Antique Gallery