You’ve heard of “animal rescue”, well I’ve been involved with “handmade basket rescue” (smile)!
I know, silly, but when I am at a charity thrift shop and I see a handmade basket, I seem to need to bring it home!
Recently I picked up this basket at a thrift shop:
Which looks like a larger version of a Sotak Handmade basket pattern I made in the past:
On closer inspection turned out it was the same pattern!
I know the work it takes to make this basket, so how could I just leave one in excellent condition for only a couple dollars in the thrift store unloved?!!??! (Yes these are the justifications I tell myself…) I just had to give it a home 😉
I have this collection of Art Gallery Fabrics scraps that I plan to use to make this quilt my friend D made me – Then Came Jone’s Nova Star:
So I thought my new basket would be the perfect vessel to store those scraps:
Here is another basket in my studio (different pattern) I rescued a couple years ago from a thrift shop which houses a collection of precut flannel squares:
I hope I come across more of these baskets in the future when thrifting, as a crafter who appreciates the work that went into them, they are a special and useful find!
I was getting suspicious about Spring in Colorado. We had a streak of some wonderful weather with temperatures in the 60s to even 80 degree F (16 – 26 C) and I thought Spring was really here (even did a garden clean out in preparation for Spring planting) and then BAM – SNOW STORM!
But the snow is gone and the first trees to really pop in my section of Eastern Colorado are really popping – the Crabapple Trees!
This scene from my daily walk yesterday made me really happy:
Yay! The smell from the flowering Crabapples was so deliciously fragrant, especially coupled with the warm weather (70 degree F yesterday).
I am starting to believe it is really Spring (until the next snowstorm, ha!)
Oh and with Spring comes new musical adventures:
John used to play guitar when he was a teenager and was sort of a guitar prodigy. He shared he could have had a career in it if he had pursued when he graduated high school. Instead college and life distracted him and he never played again.
For the past year he’s been talking about wanting to pick up the guitar again, but hasn’t bought a guitar. I found a guitar at Costco (some of you might be cringing, ha, but it is at least a Yamaha guitar) – a Keith Urban guitar with lessons included, and convinced John we should buy it.
Well John is currently enjoying relearning the guitar! If you are on Instagram you can pop over to @tierneycreates and see John practicing his guitar.
Just wanted to share a quick up on my quilt in progress “Go Boldly”. This is a follow up to this post from March – Update on “Go Boldly” .
I am hand quilting it and really enjoying working on it (I put hand quilting the denim quilt “What Direction Do I Go?” on hold for now) and I’ve made quite a bit of progress laying it on my lap nearly every evening and working on it.
At first I was only going to hand tie it at each corner but then I decided to actual stitch the curves. Hand tying it did help stabilize it as it is nearly a Queen-sized quilt.
Here is the front of the quilt on the floor of my studio, all wrinkly from having it on my lap for hand quilting:
And here is the back of the quilt which was pieced from the leftover blocks and leftover fabric:
Here are a couple more photos of the quilting and Mariss @Fabrications has NO NEED TO WORRY that I will fly over to SA and steal her hand quilting teaching opportunities – ha! But I don’t plan to enter it in any shows and hand quilting it makes me happy 🙂
I am using some rainbow colored variegated heavyweight thread from a collection of thread that I bought back in 1999 at my first sewing expo show! Good thing I didn’t get rid of it – ha! I did use it “someday” as I probably kept telling myself to justify holding onto it 😉
As I mentioned in the post Rock & Roll Icons’ Guitars and Outfits, John and I recently returned from a trip to Miami and Hollywood, Florida where John attended a poker tournament.
Before John played in his day long poker tournament, we spent a couple days wandering about in Hollywood and Miami (South Beach), Florida.
Here’s a little photo travelogue of some of our fun adventures.
HOLLYWOOD, FLORIDA
We stayed at the Marlin Beachside in the Hollywood Beach area, right on the beach:
Images credit: Tripadvisor
They had free bikes for guests, so every morning we went for a 8 – 10 mile bike ride along the beach on the boardwalk and then to breakfast:
Nearly every evening there was a free rock concert on the boardwalk by a cover band. Some of them were kind of “cheesy” but one evening they had an amazing band that did excellent Classic Rock covers. Here we are enjoying the music!
SOUTH BEACH, MIAMI, FLORIDA
We had a rental car to get around and we spent an afternoon in the South BeachArt Deco Historic District in Miami.
Our wandering about the outdoor shopping district began with a visit to an amazing German bookstore – Taschen Books. There are only two US bookstore locations for this store – in Hollywood, California and in Miami, Florida.
The store featured mind blowing oversized coffee table books, which started at around $80 USD in price. My favorite of their books was one about the world’s most beautiful libraries:
They had on display an amazing book on Ferrari race cars that retailed for $7500 USD and was encased in a special display case, which John, a race car buff, enjoyed looking through with the required white gloves on his hands.
Image credit; Taschen Books website
Wandering around the shopping area, we came across a very cool window display at one of the many art galleries around the Art Deco District – a display of human sized matches with human heads!
We had paella for lunch under a tree in one of the outdoor courtyards in the Art Deco Historic District. While waiting our food, beautiful flowers keep falling from the tree about onto my plate.
Something special about flowers falling from the sky and arranging themselves on your plate while you await your delicious meal.
Finally the paella arrived and I removed the flowers from my plate to make room!
Towards the end of the meal a rain of a liquid substance came down on John. Turned out a HUGE Iguana in the tree above was spitting at him or something!
We didn’t realize at the time it was only a harmless Iguana – our mind went to other things like a poisonous Gila Monster! So we paid the check quickly and got out of them – ha! The restaurant staff gave John some clothes with some type of cleaner on them to clean his arms where the “Iguana-rain” had fallen!
After that we wandered over to a jazz concert in the park in front of the beach area and then wandered along the beach
It was nice to put my toes in the Atlantic Ocean!
We had a wonderful trip and thanks for reading!
(IFor someone who lives very far away from palm trees, it was cool seeing palm trees bending with the wind at dusk along the beach!)
It’s the 15th of the month and time for my monthly “ScrapHappy” post as part of the ScrapHappy group I belong. At the end of this post I have a link to the other blogs participating in this monthly event in case you’d like to check out their ScrapHappy posts.
In last month’s ScrapHappy postScrapHappy March 2024: Revisting Farm Girl Vintage, I shared that I had pulled on a rather old quilting “UFO” – a VERY SCRAPPY sampler based on patterns from Lori Holt’s book Farm Girl Vintage, in which I had completed 19 12-inch-blocks.
Now a month later I realized I should start actually working on completing it since I pulled it out and talked about it! While going through everything in the project box I came across a MYSTERY that I will discuss a little further in this post.
First I got all 19 12-inch-blocks up on my design wall, so I could make it real that I was actually going to work on this quilt (smile):
Then I looked through all the scraps and a couple fat quarters/section of yardage I’d set aside for this project, removed them from the bag I had them in and filled the project box with them:
Now comes the MYSTERY: While doing this I discovered at set of 25 log cabin piecing like small blocks in several stages of piecing, along with scrap fabric cut for additional rows around each block:
What the heck??!!??!
I couldn’t figure out what the heck I was planning to do with these, it did not make sense. It had been several years since I worked on this quilt and all I remember was that I was tired of having the quilt unfinished and was planning to do something to quickly finish it. But what was I planning to do with these 25 blocks in progress??!!?
It was very frustrating and I started to just set them aside and donate them to one of the local charity thrift stores (fabric scraps are very popular items) when I was done with the quilt.
But then I looked (three times it took me) through the Farm Girl Vintage book and discovered there is a block in the book that looks like what I was trying to piece – the Haystack Block:
Image credit: from the Farmgirl Vintage book by Lori Holt
And I had already made one of these blocks:
But the mystery was not solved because why was I trying to make 25 of these blocks in apparently a smaller version?!?!??!
Have you guessed it yet? Did you solve the mystery with what I’ve just shared so far?
(I thought about just ending the post here and making you wait until tomorrow to find out but I am not the quilting Agatha Christy, so I will just tell you, ha!)
I remembered two things:
There are TWO block size options in the Farmgirl Vintage book– you can piece a 6 inch or a 12 inch finished sized block; and
There are various block layout/setting options in the back of the book
So looking through the setting options in the Farmgirl Vintage book I discovered this setting called Square Dance:
Image credit: from the Farmgirl Vintage book by Lori Holt
So I must have planned to make one more 12 inch block and then set the blocks in this setting using 6 inch blocks like in the image above.
I did discover that I might have needed 30 6-inch-blocks to accomplish that setting with 20 12-inch-blocks. So I was 5 blocks off, but at least I solved the mystery and now knew I had devised a plan and hadn’t lost my mind and was randomly piecing blocks – ha! (Have some fun and do the math and see if I am right…if you are really bored…)
So with the mystery solved, I was able to form a plan of what I want to do to finish this quilt:
Keep this same setting idea – use the Square Dance setting layout
Instead of 1 more 12-inch-block, make 6 additional 12-inch blocks to make the quilt 25 12-inch-blocks/ a 5 by 5 12-inch-block layout
Complete the in progress 25 6-inch blocks and make 10 additional for the 35 needed for the Square Dance layout for 25 12-inch-blocks (again, feel free to check my math/count for how many 6-inch blocks I need for the setting)
Yay! Now I can move forward and plan to report more on the progress on this old UFO in May’s ScrapHappy post.
POSTSCRIPT
While sorting through the project box I also discovered these:
I’ll discuss them next month in my post on this quilt and what I might do with them (I have to think through it). I seem to be obsessed with not throwing away these flour bags!
As promised, here are the bloggers that participate in the ScrapHappy monthly posting event, check out their blogs linked below for their ScrapHappy posts:
I spent a day at the Hard Rock Hotel wandering about and donating some money to slot machines while John was in his poker tournament.
The hotel’s decor was a tribute to Rock & Roll and when you first enter the hotel they have guitars on their doors:
The also have a guitar shaped Guitar Hotel!
Image credit: kayak.com
The hotel had an AMAZING collection of Rock & Roll memorabilia, primarily instruments (mostly guitars) and outfits that Rock & Roll icons played and wore. For those of you who love music like I do, I thought you might enjoyed some photos of their displays.
The Guitars
Here is a selection of some of the awesome guitars on display:
In case you have trouble reading the sings below the guitars in the images above, they are in order: Lenny Kravitz, Tom Petty, Geddy Lee (Rush), Eric Clapton, Johnny Cash, and Nancy Wilson (of Heart).
The Clothing
Here is a sampling of some of the outfits worn by Rock & Roll icons they had on display:
The signs might be difficult to read in the image above so here are the artists attached to the clothing in each image in order: The Supremes, John Lennon (The Beatles), Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, Prince, George Michael, Keith Moon (The Who), and The Temptations.
Of course the images I share in this post do not do justice to what the guitars and clothing looked like in real life. It was amazing to see the displays of Rock & Roll history in person.
The hotel and casino was beautiful inside and I really loved this entire wall of seashells they had on display:
More on our recent trip to Florida in another post, just wanted to share a little about my visit to this hotel/casino.
Needle-arts crafters (knitting, crocheting, cross-stitch and other needlework) seem to be good people based on those I’ve met through blogging, so I thought I would try for the first time to join a Knit/Crochet Group instead of a quilting group.
One of the area libraries, Arapahoe Library, had a Knit/Crochet Group that met once a week.
I already belong to three Denver area library systems (have library cards), so why not add one more to my list (they are fairly laid back on who can get a library card and there are a lot of libraries systems in the Denver Metro Area), so I went to visit one of the Arapahoe Library branches for the first time – the Smoky Hill Branch.
I was so surprised on my first visit as this branch had a cafe, an awesome used bookstore, and a free seed library where you could take 3 packets of seeds a day!
Of course I had to browse through a stack of used books (that I didn’t buy) at their bookstore while enjoying a hot chocolate and a danish at the cafe:
Other cool things I discovered while doing a self-tour of this library was kits for book groups which included 10 copies of books, and an awesome Craft book section (where else would I have headed first, ha!):
So for the past three weeks I attended the weekly meetings of the Knit/Crochet Group and I met some nice people. Here I am at the group meeting working on another knitted hat; and checking out a wooden yarn holder bowl another attendee’s woodworker husband made her:
I decided not to continue with the group as the venue was too large (space for 17 people) and I wasn’t getting any work done on my project and I was getting a little overwhelmed by the crowd, all their energy and stories. I appeared to have fully transitions to an Introvert post-pandemic!
I might try another group someday in a smaller venue.
FINALLY in April 2024, Tierney has finish the blanket and has put it on the upstairs guest bed as the warmer weather season covering (though she appears to be confused as it is not officially “warmer weather”, we are just getting warm days here and there):
I know, I know, you were hoping to see me stretched out on this bed relaxing like you did in other posts, however I am boycotting this blanket as I wanted it to only be for ME as she led me to believe while she was making it!
Happier times when the blanket was in a configuration that worked for ME…
Oh Tierney has come in the room and bugged me while I am writing…
Don’t bug me while I am writing! A lot of concentration is required when you don’t have opposable thumbs!
Oh, Tierney stopped by to ask me to tell you she got a cute new radio while thrifting last year during her trip to Florida with her sister (see the post Sisters’ Trip to Englewood, Florida) that she placed next to the bed in this room:
She says it is a “Tivoli Radio” and she got it for only $5 when normally it would retail for over $100 and it has a wonderful sound. This means nothing to me as a dog, but I am passing this along at her request (why doesn’t she just write her own darn posts if she wants to share something??!?).
Okay I have to go find somewhere to nap now after all this typing and I can’t just go lay down on the bed behind me as I am boycotting it…
(Oh and I am not going to even address that weird post Tierney had yesterday – Imagining Mike Playing Sports – I am going to learn how to use that app and write a guest blog post with images of Tierney playing sports!)
I downloaded a new app on my iPhone called MS Copilot which can generate AI images based on instructions.
There was a tiny bit of a learning curve on how to word things so the AI could understand what I wanted, but here is Mike my Miniature Schnauzer playing with three of the professional Colorado based sports teams.
The Denver Broncos Football Team:
He’s trying to catch a pass to then score a touchdown!
The Denver Nuggets Basketball Team:
(The AI used an older team uniform for the Nuggets, not their current one) Mike is getting ready to shoot the ball into the hoop!
The Colorado Avalanche Hockey Team:
Mike is going to send the hockey puck into the goal net!
I know there are a lot of scary things about AI but this app appears to be one of the non scary, fun things!
tierneycreates 