It's time again for quilt retreat!!

Friends and Co Quilt Retreat January 2015

Today I will be going to the January 2016 Retreat.  Always a good time to just work on my own projects.  I have everything packed,  I packed several projects because I did not make any plans for any one thing to get done at this time.  Many of these ladies will not be there this year,  they will be missed and a few that did not make it to a Friends retreat in the past will be 1st time joiners.  Looking forward to a wonderful time with good friends.

Happy New Year!

Finally the end of a very hard, emotional year.

I am looking forward to the promise of good things in 2016.  I do not make resolutions, but I do try to make some basic goals each year.  I can usually keep the goals  and I hope it makes me a better person.  So the list…….

#1

  Blog blog blog,  I have let this go for way too long,  so my goal is to update here every week.

#2

  I would like to create more of my  fiber art.     

#3

  Be better at staying in touch with my family and friends.

#4 

  This might be silly but I do need to paint every room in our home.

#5

 Last but not least,  have the official plans drawn up for out new home.

Seems like a do able list,  I think the hardest is paint this house!

The photo above is the view we will have from the front of our new home.  

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Back….

This is a shot of my Dad in his hospital bed.  Only a few hours later he passed.  I have and always will miss him.  He was a good, kind man.  He taught me to laugh,  tried to teach me to think before I speak.  But he always let me be me.  

So… I think he would be good with me moving on,  getting back to art and just remembering the good times, not the getting rid of all his "stuff", remembering his last days, and all the could have, should have stuff we all deal with when one we love dies.   My Dad was an organ donor and so he was cremated,  we will bury his ashes next to my Mom and my big brother John, in Kemmerer in a few weeks.  

Raven #1

 Raven #1 is my 12"X 12" for this months Textile Artists of the Great Yellowstone monthly challenge.  The theme this month was "something you may not know about me".  And so the Raven.  I love this bird, they are fun to watch, they live to be well over 20 years, they have a great sense of humor.  Not a single day goes by that I do not see a Raven in the area.  They soar,  they love the wind,  they make everyday play time.    Years ago,  I met a Native American medicine man, he told me that my spirit guide is the Raven.  I am not sure how he would know that, but since that time I value these birds.  I have watched them closely,they make me believe that each one that I see will bring me good thoughts, good days.  A happy life.  They certainly make me smile.  This is the 1st in a series I hope to make using the Raven as the constant in quilts.  

Merry Christmas!

I made this for our Textile Artists of the Greater Yellowstone Christmas gift exchange   The trees are 3-D.  Our theme for this exchange was Peace or Piece.  I did both.

Love the hugs!

 

 Russ, Olivia, me. We also enjoyed this lunch with Emily, John,  Jessi, Willie and Liam.  This was November,  we were all doing really well keeping the Birthday Party a surprise from John.

Playa-Del Carmen, Mexico

We spent a beautiful week last spring in Mexico. The beach was beautiful, food pretty good, the best part we spent it with our family.  This is a photo of the angel wings my Granddaughter made in the sand.  It struck me as very funny that she had made angel wings in the snow at Christmas time.  Then found her doing it once again in the beautiful sand of Mexico.

Lovin the Grandma part of life!!

Our Grandchildren!  They have given us  a great deal of joy.  We have a lot of fun spending time with them.  

More traveling!!

This little 20" X20" quilt is traveling with the Sew Batik challenge quilts.  They started at  National Quilt Assc. Quilt show last Spring.  We just received notice that they want our quilts to travel to the Home Machine Quilting Show HMQS in Salt Lake City in May 2015 and then on to The Reno Show in June 2015. 

Our Cabin

This is the front of our cabin, minus the saw and the saw horses that are on the porch.  This was taken June 2014.  We were just finishing the board and bat on the 2 outside ends.  

Cabin Kitchen

The cabinets as well as the counter tops in our cabin were built by Russ.  The wood was all cut on our sawmill.  They are made of pine from the Beartooth Mtn area.  I love how these turned out they are absolutely beautiful. 

Pilot/Index Mtn.

This is the view from our future home site in Crandall Wy.  I took this with my I phone,  it is an ok photo,  what attracted me to taking this shot over many I see of this view was the cloud that looks like smoke.  An unusual shot for sure.

My Family

This photo was taken last April in Playa del Carmen.  It was a wedding  celebration with Russ's family. We had a really wonderful time. It is not often we all get together.    

Winter at the cabin

This is what the front of the cabin looked like last winter.  Snow was about 4-5 feet at level about March 2014.  The snow that slide off the roof was probably 10 feet deep and stayed there until the middle of June.   This year… we have snow shoes and planning to purchase cross country skis.  The work is pretty much finished and now the fun begins.  Come on SNOW!

little change up.

This is a photo taken across the Clarks Fork River from our cabin.  You can see the Clarks Fork River in the front of the pine trees.  Our hope is to retire in a few years and live on this property full time.  We often sit on that porch, drink a cool one, and are amazed at the awesome view of our front yard.  This photo was taken November/ December of 2013.

Running Wild

Running Wild 

This is another thread painted quilt.  I gave this one to my son John, so it lives in Anchorage. 
It represents the wild horses that roam the peaks just outside of Cody.  Every once in a while you can actually see these horses from the highway between Cody and Greybull.  

Tactile Challenge 2014

"Flowers at dusk"

This quilt is another thread painted quilt it measures 18" X 24".  I finished  this for the TAGY   Tactile Challenge. We chose 2 techniques last December and were to use those or 2 of our own choosing,  with one being a technique that we might have never used or are not comfortable using.  The two I chose in December were beading and appliqué. I did both of those, I still do not like beading.  I did choose another, I chose to do the binding with a flange, but this binding/flange is a bit different than most.  It is not separate from the binding, it is in fact the binding.  Finished this…  this was started about 8 years ago.  I find it interesting how my own techniques have changed.  Unfinished  this quilt was not totally thread painted,  it now is with the exception of the white flowers, they have some fabric showing through. I do not like how the bottom of the quilt looks, the grass is odd to me but, Good to have another unfinished project completely done!!

Hiding Out in Old Trail Town

This is my Old Trail Town Challenge.  TAGY members went to Old Trial Town here in Cody a year ago last May.  We all took photos and from those we made our OTT challenges.  I had stayed a bit later than most that day,  I noticed the rabbits and bunnies started to come out.  So that is what I chose as the subject matter in this challenge.  I tried very hard to use a boardwalk or an old wheel as the backdrop for the bunny, but it never looked right.  Old Trail Town is full of old log cabins so I used the quilters traditional log cabin as the backdrop, added the rocks and a little grass around the bunny.  This quilt and 15 others will debut at Yellowstone Quilt Fest this week.

Speaking with Magpies

Speaking with Magpies a book of poems by James McGrath is the inspiration  for this thread painting.

  Speaking with Magpies

In their nests of woven twigs,

they hold lost rings,

old letters, duck feathers,

cat fur, identification tags, from neighborhood dogs,

broken talons of owls,

Tafoya's lost keys.

They sit on fence posts gathering stories

voices of spotted towhees,

shadows of red-tailed hawks,

passing clouds

whispering hisses of snakes, 

twistings of lizards,

the agony of polluted lichens.

Their tail feathers,

longer than their lumpy bodies, 

are usually frayed from leaving messages,

poems in the road dust and sandbars,

arguments in the apple trees.

Their stories are carried

from orchard to orchard,

across mountains,

through windows,

held in the laps of children, 

caught in the coats of bears,

etched in the spots of lynx.

Magpies are the Mevelana Jelaheddin Rumi

of the natural world, waiting

to give their hoards away

to those who listen to their chattering wisdom,

who write poems or sit on stones

loving the world as it is.

                       

                 10 November 2004

A little 12" X12"

Winter
This is a small quilt I made to "practice" the tiled background.  I added the little blue bird nest to add a touch of color to the very wintery look. 

Sew Batik Challenge NQA 2014

This is such a fun quilt, traveling right now but I am missing it. I had posted this on this blog sometime ago but thought it worth another share. 

Another thread painting

"A New Look for  Hobbit"

 Many years ago I went on a "girl only"  pack trip into the Beartooth Mountains, we packed in with llama's. My very sweet llama  was Hobbit.  I used a photo I had taken of him on that pack trip. It was only after I finished this quilt that I realized Hobbit is really much darker in color.  I believe it was the reprinting of my photo that changed his color.  That is how I came up with the title for this quilt. 

TAGY Monthly Challenge

The River Challenge

 The TAGY monthly challenge is a 12" X 12" quilt, each month we have chosen a theme. For this challenge it was "River".  We all made our river going in and out of the quilt the same width, we hung these so the river flowed into the next quilt.

"Fly Away with me"

"Fly Away with me", machine trupunto.  One of the only trupunto quilts I have done.  I really like this quilt but it is not really a quilt to put on a bed when you have 3 dogs and a cat. So, it sits in my quilt closet.  I named it Fly Away with me because the entire time I was quilting this I listened to Norah Jones.  It is one of her songs and also a favorite.

Arnica Fire

 Arnica Fire  was made using raw edge appliqué', the stems are melted felt, and over the entire piece I put netting to make it look "hazy".  As I looked out my kitchen window that day, it was very dark but the sun could be seen.  It was just a strange feeling to know that it was ash and smoke from the Arnica Fire.  What made it all the more strange was to know that my son Willie was on this fire, it was in Yellowstone Park several years ago.  At the time I was trying hard to do the Fast Friday Challenges.  And of course Willie and his crew, Lewis and Clark Hotshots,  are always on my mind this time of year, so it just seemed natural to do a FFFC related to fire. 

Not in Wyoming!

This quilt was once a larger quilt, I did it for the Wyoming State Guild Challenge.  I cut it smaller and like it better.  The sand is actual sand.  I used puff paint and sprinkled sand on it before heating it with a heat gun.  The heat gun also melted the tulle that I used as  the sea foam.  The flip flops are 3 D made from fabric for the bottoms and clay for the tops.  Photographer, Kathy Lichtendahl took photos of this quilt for me.  I did submit it for a publication but it was not accepted.    

"Dining out"

Hummingbirds are thread painted as well as the flowers and leave.  I actually used this as a sample in a thread painting class I taught years ago.  I used fabric under the birds, leaves and flowers,  I did not cover it completely.  I now usually thread paint the entire subject.  I found this in my sewing room just over a year ago and finished the thread painting,  put the borders on and quilted it.  It is on display and for sale at the Cody Country Art League.

Thread Painted Zebra

"Gone Wild"

"Gone Wild'  is totally thread, with the beads hanging down and off the quilt.   I made this quilt for the 2013 Wyoming State Guild Challenge.  We had to put a 4 patch in this quilt.  I have be critiqued that I chose to put my 4 patch  in several of the beads.  Not exactly "traditional" but it also said on the challenge rules that we could do a black and white quilt or red and white.  That they would give awards to both.  This quilt took 2nd place because they did not bother to count the votes separate.  If it is 2nd and 1st is red/white, then this is  a1st place quilt!!!    

One of my favorite art quilts!!

"Hunter or Hunted"

"Hunter or Hunted" now belongs to my son John.  So this wolf lives in Alaska.  It is thread painted, only a base fabric was used, no other fabric on the wolf itself.  It is my original design, and quilting.   It started out as a much smaller quilt, it did not look right, so I cut the wolf out of that quilt and redid the entire background.  

I thought….

Yes,  I had hope that I would  be updating more often.  But life is busy.  We have just  spent 2 weeks in Crandall finishing up much of the cabin, I taught a thread painting class,  started a couple new quilts, and am now starting to work on the 2016 raffle quilt for Wyoming State Guild.  Our region will have the annual convention in Powell Wy, in 2016 .