Alietare Update

We had a lovely Christmas.  We had already visited our grandgirls and son/DIL mid December so the two weeks before Christmas were spent making and delivering Deviled eggs to Greg's doctors and coordinating the blessing for the staff at our church then Christmas eve day we went to the Moby Dick movie and to church Christmas Eve.  The day of Christmas we FT with the kids, took out Christmas lunch bags for some of the homeless in our community then Greg played with his trains and watched old Christmas themed sitcoms while I sewed.  Just thoroughly enjoyed the day and the reason for it.

I am a little behind with Allietare, I have clues #1,2,3 done but only have 1/2 of #4 and a few of   #5.  Right now I am trying to finish Pies and Tarts which I have worked on incrementally over the last 3 years.  I have all the circles done (English paper piecing) and have all the large ones appliqued to the neutral squares.  Today I started sewing the rows together (I had done 3 already) and gluing on the small tarts on the intersections  of the neutral squares. I can start to applique tonight as i watch tv.  i am seeing an end in sight.  Allietare has become a leader and ender to Pies and Tarts.

Getting lots of help from Bertha.  You can see Celtic Solstice peeking out from under Pies and Tarts

All of large pieces done but only 6 or 8 of the others done.  I have substituted green for gray in my version

You can see how others are doing on Bonnie Hunter's Blog.

Bionic Gear Bags

I love these bags!  You can download the pattern on Craftsy or you can pay $100.00 plus on Etsy and buy one.  They take 12 plus hours of sewing so 100 dollars is about $8.00 an hour-so 100 dollars doesn't sound so bad after doing one.  However-they were super fun and the You Tube videos take you step by step through the process.

My DIL's is on the left.  I made hers for a travel cosmetic bag as she doesn't sew.

 The one on the right was made out of selvages on the cover and filled with everything I need for sewing.  4 zipped pockets and the spaces in between holds EVERYTHING. 

These are wonderfully designed and I plan to make several for Christmas next year-but I am starting in January!

I won't be able to do the mystery clue until I get back on Tuesday, but I am caught up with the first two. 

Allietare Clue #2

We are leaving for Seattle on Friday for a few days to celebrate Christmas with our grandgirls and our son and daughter in love.  I still have a bionic bag to make for Regan, but clue #2 is done!

It was a busy weekend with a leadership dinner Friday night, a Christmas play Saturday afternoon and evening and Church on Sunday-but I got them done!  I am doing 1/2 so maybe not entirely done, but done for now!  Now on to finish my Bionic Bag and start Regan's!

To see what others are doing, go HERE. The color that Bonnie chose for the wings on the flying geese was grey.  I am hoping my choice of sage greens doesn't make it a Christmas quilt.  Clue 2 sure look like Santa hats-we'll see!

Mug Rugs for Christmas

I really like my DIL's family, so I try to get them each a little something for Christmas.  She has 3 siblings and a BIL.  This year I found monogrammed mugs at Joannes (60% off) and thought I would make a mug rug for each.  I finally started using some of my boxes of stash strings-YES!

Just a couple of coffee cards and make a bionic bag for my DIL and I am done with the presents I need for the Seattle family.  Utah family's presents were delivered on Thanksgiving.  My goal is to have everything bought, wrapped and decorated by this time next week.  I am close!

Allietare Mystery Quilt

I wasn't going to do the Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt but the colors drew me in.  I am just going to do a half sized quilt so I need approximately 150 HST's.  We were in Utah for Thanksgiving so I just got home late Saturday night.  After church yesterday I cut out 90 and sewed 3.  I have substituted  soft sage greens for the grays.

Before I could start sewing the HST's, I needed to do some Christmas sewing, so I strip quilted 3 out of 6 mug rugs I need to make.  Just need to add the chosen bindings.

Hope everyone is getting their Christmas sewing done as well-unfortunately, I am just thinking about finishing the rest of the HST's by Friday when clue #2 comes out!   The fabrics I have chosen for this one is shown below-Happy Stitching!

Check out and see what others are doing: http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2015/11/mystery-monday-link-up-allietare-part-1.html   It is only the beginning, so it is not too late to join in!

A prayer quilt for my friend

One of the other reasons I haven't kept up this blog was the loss of 3 friends starting last April.  A secretary in the counseling/admin office who I worked with for 11 years retired last December and died two days after getting food poisoning at a restaurant that served an Easter buffet. Toni was a lovely caring and compassionate woman who was the heart of our office. A month later, a colleague who I had worked with and knew well enough to have the occasional coffee together and work on special projects together, died in her sleep.  Sharon was in exceptional good health and watched her diet and exercise. Lastly, on July 3rd I lost a best friend of 40 years to cancer.  I started this prayer quilt thinking I had the 6-12 months the doctors had given her.  However, Donna was gone within a month and she only saw the quilt through Facetime.  I will be sending it to her youngest daughter.

It served its purpose in that I prayed for her the whole time I was working on it.

A double 4 patch block

Scriptures in the neutrals and fish and crosses in the quilting because my friend loved Jesus.

I think I have been in mourning and didn't recognize it for what it was. So glad to have the hope of seeing those that have the hope of eternal life again.

A 5 month Sabbatical

I started to work part time without stopping my very full retired life and it finally just got to be too much. So, I finished my duties as programs chair for Friendship Quilters and didn't take on any new ones.  Our wonderful local quilt shop, The Crazy 9 Patch closed a couple of months ago so my tenure as a quilting teacher ended naturally at that venue.  I am teaching my last class which ends in January at Poway Sewing and that will free up a little more time.  I have a break from subbing until January 1 when I will work 2 to 3 days a week until school ends in June.  Because of all the busyness, I stopped blogging for awhile. I didn't have much to show anyway as I hadn't been quilting all that much.

I do want to share "Falling Leaves"  which is Bonnie Hunter's Celtic Solstice Mystery Quilt from 2 years ago.  Just got it back from the binder's and I love it!

This quilt will grace the guest room bed during the fall.  Since the quilt shop closed a few sit and sews have cropped up and I am happily quilting with the girls again.  Life is good!

I have epiphany's on occasion, those light bulb moments when your head is raised from the immediacy of the now and you can see the light above the thread balls.  If we stay in Cali-I need to work part time.  I was exploring teaching in the quilt kingdom to prepare for the possibility of a move to the northwest.  I knew I wasn't going to learn a whole new system to work in education at this time in my life if we moved.  However, prepping for classes, subbing 2 or 3 days a week, doing prayer ministry 1 day a week, program's chair for our guild and just life in general has made me entirely too busy, to the point of stress in the middle of the night.  I knew some changes were coming-they had to.

I went away for my annual retreat to the green woods of Julian with two good friends who have made the pilgrimage for 15 years.  We stay in our respective motor home, 5th wheel and cabin during the day, reading, studying and, in my case, sewing.  Then we meet at 4 to go into town for dinner and fellowship and return to our individual dwellings around 7pm to do the same.  I always come back rested and refreshed.  I worked on Celtic Solstice as I finally had the 5 million 3.5 inch squares pieced.

My conclusion is:  I make much more money working in the district occasionally than I do teaching a quilt class-as much as I like it.  I probably won't take on another class and that will lighten my load tremendously.  There is a lot of prep involved and I am making quilts just for the teaching rather than the joy of it.  I also am not, NOT going to start another large project until I have finished four, FOUR that I have in progress. I have honestly at least 15 unfinished quilts and hangings-that is just silly.  I have enough material to supply a small country with individual quilts-that is just wrong.  So, I am going to start making quilts for my family (who want them), and friends and then we will see where I am at that point.  I also hosted our last speaker, Lenore Crawford so I am officially done as Programs chair-YAY!!! I had fun but glad to be finished.

Speaking of Lenore-I took this 2 year project to her class and made significant progress over the two days-i didn't have ANY material on it when I showed up at the class:

I think this is the kind of work I would like to do-I have a lot of finishing to do on this piece but I love the process and it is easier on my neck. I am thrilled that the flat piece of Kaffee Fassett dotted fabric actually looks folded and rounded.  There-that's it-my epiphany-quit 3 things before I take on 1, finish 4 things before I start a new one! School ends on the 18th of June so I have the summer off and enough time to quit one more thing before I start again in Sept. Jesus usually has to put me in a corner before I can see the path-I love Julian-God is so good to give me a wooded quiet corner.

My sweet sister in law will be here for a short visit from Utah-can't wait to see her and our nephew and his family tonight for dinner here-so I better get busy!

Flying Free

This will be a class at the Crazy 9 Patch in June but if I don't get the sample to them in the next day or two-nobody will sign up for it.

This pattern and the XBloc rulers are by Patricia Pepe who gifted me with the pattern and small ruler (I already had the 6") when she visited our guild this last year.  She is a wonderful presenter and great teacher and is very reasonable.  She is also a really nice lady who was flexible, funny and very easy to work with.

I am planning a simple quilting pattern and hope to start that process this afternoon.

I just finished this Mother's Day gift for my DIL.  It is the kids handprints made to reflect each month of the year.  The backing is orange plaid flannel.  I think she will like it.

The sashing and border fabric was from 1 piece of fabric that had alternating rows of buses and boats.  The boats were in the waves that was an unplanned addition as a frame for the quilt blocks.  The binding had flags on black.  I used Inktense pencils and permanent fabric pens for the rest.

Our guild has our last workshop this next weekend with Lenore Crawford-can't wait!  I tried to sign up for Asilimar Empty Spools but it didn't open until 20 min after it was supposed to and I had a dentist appointment.  I quickly filled out the form the minute it opened but my scanner wasn't working so took it to the dentist where my friend tried to fax it for an hour-no luck-busy, busy, busy.  So, I took it to the church office where they scanned it and sent it for me.  I only had one choice, Susan Carlson.  If i don't get in there she also teaches in AZ and Montana and Maine where she lives.  It is much less expensive for the other locations so travel expenses would  not be prohibitive.  We''ll see!

After Tea Regroup

Every year for the last 5, I have worked on a Tea with a group of ladies from 5 other churches to benefit our local pregnancy center.  This year we chose a baby shower theme and 160 ladies brought baby shower gifts in addition to coming to the tea.  I don't have the final count after the opportunity tickets but I do know we made 3,200.00 on tea ticket sales and at least 1,000.00 in donated baby items from pacifiers to diaper bags.  The tea has been my focus for the last two weeks and now that it is done I can get back to sewing-well, I will after we get back from our Seattle trip.  We are taking a train this time and stopping in Eugene, OR to visit friends overnight then back on the train to Seattle.  We have never gotten a roomette before-emphasis on "ette" as it is smaller than our queensize bed.  It should be interesting.

My first series:

Squares trimmed to 2 1/2"

Squares trimmed to 2"

The third will be squares trimmed to 1 1/2" which respectively will finish at 2", 1 1/2", and 1".  After that I may be ready for a Sally Collins piece:)

Going to start this when I get back from Seattle for a class at the Crazy 9 Patch:

 Using this pile of fabric:

Lastly-first blooms:

Trains, Planes and Automobiles

I bought my Greg a train trip for his 70th.  He loves trains but we have never taken an overnight trip on one.  It was wonderful!  We hopped on at 7am in Oceanside, CA and ended up in Seattle, WA.

Greg and my feet  in our little roomette

between LA and Santa Barbara

Cali coast is awesome

Woke up to this-Mt Shasta area

Greg in the parlor car

Parlor car

Me

Our roof view

Stopped overnight in Eugene to visit the Enquists and Johnsons who drove up from Medford

Columbia river

Washington somewhere

Add caption Washington sunset

Ava's 5th birthday

Future model's "workin' it"

 Went to El Camino quilt guild for a Mary Lou Weidman trunk show

New moose pattern

I just love her work!  Lastly, I finished my encrusted name tag-just looking for a mule to carry it-it is a little heavy but I liked making it.

Another Tiny Treasure

I meet once a month with a group called Tiny Treasures-not that we are tiny treasures but everything we make is on the small side.  This piece was supposed to be made with 5"squares and I cut them down to 3 1/2".  After putting in the stripe, I then cut it to 3" and it finished at 2 1/2"-so the 6x6 setting makes it 15"x15".  I also changed the positioning of the stripes-they were supposed to criss-cross but I changed them to go in one direction.  I like the finished piece.  Don't know if I will add a border or not yet.

Playing with 1.5" HST's-need to play some more.  6.5" unfinished

Sally Collins Workshop

Sally did a 2 day workshop for our guild and she was wonderful.  Even if you are not a fan of small scale, her techniques apply to all sizes.  Measure, Measure, Measure-I got it!  It really does make a difference.

The centers of these quilts are 7x7 inches.  Squares are 1/2 inch finished and the quilts are called "Circle of Stars"

This is 1/4' of the pattern done at 1" instead of 1/2" scale

Except for Susan who is using the 1/2 inch scale

Lots of thinking going on!

Really love the colors in this one-Cecelia's

Machelle had to change out all her fabrics-think she has a winner!

Sally sharing the importance of measuring after every seam.

 I didn't actually do the workshop, but I took lots of notes and can't wait to try her methods on a small piece.  Too many UFO's and too little time!

We have the line-up for next years workshops and I am excited:  Karen Brow, Norma Whaley, Catherine Wilson, Catherine Redford, David Taylor, Mary Lou Weidman and Pam Buda.  A good variety I think.  I met Catherine Redford at a mini retreat that I attended.  A cute little English lady with that awesome British Accent. After being charmed by her I found out : she teaches on criuses, will be teaching at Houston in October, has been raved about by Bonnie Hunter and has a new book out about using your walking foot in quilting.  She will be coming after Houston next Nov. and is really reasonable.  I signed her up for 3 classes as she has a large variety to choose from.