Author: tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles
Quilter, crafter, obsessive tea drinker and lover of all furry creatures (especially dogs and cats) - join me on my tierneycreates blog as I share stories from "A Crafter's Life".
A quick follow up to the post from June 28 Getting Down to Business. I’ve been working on finishing up my pesky English Paper Piecing hexagon flowers quilt that I began in 2016 (because I am weary of it!!!)
Made more progress – I have 21 blocks ready for the sewing machine to applique the flowers to the background denim fabric, then trim to 6.5 inches by 6.5 inches.
(So happy about my progress I took two photos!)
Once the 21 blocks are done I will add them to the rest of the blocks (currently 65) on the design wall:
AND that will bring me to a total of 86 block completed! Only 13 more blocks to go after that! (I can see the finish line, I can see it!) for 99 blocks for my 9 by 11 blocks setting.
Okay I will continue plodding along to get this quilt tope D-O-N-E!
Postscript
I also wanted to follow up on the Postscript section from the post Getting Down to Business, where I discuss my challenge with running out of media image space on my blog after 13 years of blogging and paying for an upgraded plan.
I recently discovered something very cool (and sort of unbelievable): the Denver Public Library lets patrons print out up to 100 photocopies a day for free. Yes, you read that correctly – 100 copies a day!!!
Here is what it says on their website:
So it sounded too good to be true and I suspected it was 100 pages per library card or something like that, total, for your lifetime! So I called the library and verified it is 100 pages per day!
I am still in disbelief as I used to pay 25 cents per copy at my other library system.
So I have the option of printing out in black & white OR color, old pages from my blog if I want to make some type of book of my old posts! Also they have mobile printing and I can upload documents from my computer and then retrieve them at the library!!! (Is this all a dream?!?!)
I love having this option available as I still work on figuring out what I want to do to decrease my media files stored on my blog (I got to clean house in some capacity!)
My friend J is an avid hiker and is introducing me to local hikes in our area. Recently we went on a hike at Barr Lake State Park a wildlife conservation area, a bird sanctuary; and a premiere bird watching location in the Denver Metropolitan area.
J is training with her granddaughter to do a “14er/Fourteener” which in Colorado is known as climbing/hiking to the top of one of the 14,000 feet above Sea Level (4267.2 meters) mountains in Colorado. (Colorado is famous having the most in the US – 53 mountain peaks 14,000 ft or higher, Alaska comes in second with 29 peaks, California with 12, and Washington State with 2).
So hiking the 9 miles around Barr Lake State Park is a good start to prepare for a 14er.
The highest I’ve been in Colorado (or anywhere else) is 12,000 feet above Sea Level when we visited Rocky Mountain National Park. I can tell you at 12,000 ft I was really feeling the altitude! Luckily I use to live at around 6000 ft above Sea Level and now I live at around 5300 feet so my body has a little bit of altitude acclimation. I think it would take me a while to train for a 14er…
Some photos from our hike:
In the photo above you will see an example of the numerous elevated wooden bridges they have around the park so that you do not disturb the wildlife.
The park also had a bird watching area near the water (many varieties of water fowl visit the lake) with a built in set of binoculars if you did not bring your own!
It was so beautiful and peaceful on our hike with many bird sounds/songs in the background. I want to return there is John and bring a picnic and take him on a hike there!
A couple of videos if you would like to see more about what it is to hike at Barr Lake State Park.
As I mentioned in the post Taking a New Quilter on Her First “Shop Hop” my friend J who I met in my new neighborhood at the community quilt group, is helping a new quilter D make her first quilt and I am tagging along (and occasionally being helpful as an experienced quilter).
Today we met up for a “quilters playdate” at J’s studio (which I featured in the post Project Linus Mini Retreat, Part II) and J taught D how to use a rotary cutter to cut her fabric into the sizes required for the pattern.
D made great progress on cutting her fabrics out with a rotary cutter for the first time:
While I worked on making some little wallets as something easy to work on while I visited with the group:
She also showed us on her design wall is amazing and complex Judy Niemeyer pattern she was working on (pattern piecing and applique!):
I am intimidated!
J is a Judy Niemeyer pattern expert, has taking many classes from her; and made many of her complex paper piecing quilts. J was even selected to longarm machine quilt one of the cover quilts for one of Judy Niemeyer’s pattern booklets!
She thinks I should make one someday…
I’m just trying to get through my English Paper Piecing quilt from heck!
But I do have the pattern for the Plover Pouch and will make that one someday 🙂
The three of us are meeting again next Friday to teach D how to sew a quarter inch seam to piece her quilt together. J will be doing most the teaching and I will provide moral support!
This week I attended two free concerts (I love my new neighborhood/community) and worked on my latest granny square blanket during both of them.
The Denver Concert Band played a concert at the community center in my neighborhood:
And we attended a free concert at our local farmer’s market at the community park:
Both concerts were awesome and I got a lot of crocheting done!
Hope to share progress in the future, it’s in a boring state right now and I want to complete some entire granny square blocks before official post about it 🙂
Honestly – I am tired of the English Paper Piecing (EPP) quilt I’ve been working on since 2016 and posting about during the monthly ScrapHappy 15th of the month posting group.
In my June ScrapHappy post (ScrapHappy June 2026), I mentioned I’ve only gotten 6 more EPP Rosettes (a flower like combination of 7 paper pieced hexagons) since May’s ScrapHappy post.
Well last week I decided I needed to GET DOWN TO BUSINESS and just get the quilt FINISHED as I am tired of working on it, thinking about it, and writing about it!
So I went from 6 completed rosettes to now 20 by just making myself sit in my studio and finishing sewing sides together of rosettes for MANY hours!
Do you see the mess of papers to the left – well that all the EPP hexagon papers I had to pull out of each rosette so I can applique them to their background squares.
This is the really tedious part of EPP – removing the papers:
I think the problem is that I had my late husband help me with wrapping the fabric around the paper hexagons and he was very heavy on the glue. He did most of his work helping me create the EPP hexagons back in 2016 and 2017 so the glue on the fabric has been sitting since that time.
After removing the papers, ripping them away from the glue at times, they hexagons/”hexies” can get deformed and I have to iron them back into shape before adhering them with a little bit of fusible to their background block to be appliqued.
(20 done and waiting to be pressed back into shape with an iron)
The true problem could be that I am the “World’s Worse EPPer” – ha!
Originally I used the traditional technique of stitching/basting them in place on the paper hexies. Then another quilter showed me the faster glueing method (which has special glue pens you can buy to use) and I thought “this isn’t too bad”.
I was guilty of not demonstrating to Terry the “light application of the glue pen” and he got focused on helping me to get a lot done (production mode).
But if I keep up what I am doing – focusing on finishing – eventually it will be done. I’ve already arranged for someone to longarm machine quilt it. As soon as I have the top done I want the thing out of my house to be finished, ha! I am not domestic machine quilting it!
Okay that was my whine ;-). I will torture you to future updates on my progress…
By the way I have 2 other EPP projects I started in 2016 when I became obsessed with EPP but they are aging in the closet for now (perhaps forever?!?!?)
Postscript
You’ll probably see more blog posts from me the rest of the summer (fingers crossed) as we’ve sort of slowed down on traveling (one trip per month and sometimes just a road trip instead of the craziness we had in 2025).
I really enjoy blogging, connecting with my blogging buddies around the world, and of course reading your posts.
I am starting to run out of photo storage space on my blog though at 13 years of blogging even though I pay like $96 a year for a WordPress plan with expanded storage space. I know in the beginning I didn’t think about resizing my photos; and even though I’ve been resizing my photos for years I think I’ve just posted too many photos. I also pay like $18 a year to have my blog web address be “tierneycreates.com” instead of the free “tierneycreates.wordpress.com”.
I’ve been mulling over an overhaul and audit of my blog for a long time. It might be time to archive offline or delete my early posts. I doubt any one is going back in my blog history and reading my posts from 2014, etc.
Honestly I am challenged with revisiting the older posts myself as many of the contain stories about my fun life with my late husband who was also a quilter. I’ve been mulling over doing a summary of all the “Terry the Quilting Husband” posts in some type of memorial essay and just having that as a page on my blog and removing all the posts.
Same sort of challenge (though not comparing the passing of my spouse to my dogs) with old blog posts that feature my late dogs Sassy, Snickers and Mike. Sassy had her own blog “Sassy the Highly Opinionated Miniature Schnauzer” which I archived.
I am thinking about doing a page for the dogs also with some fun memories and stories and deleted all the old dog related posts.
I tell you memories, even if fun and wonderful, can be rough. However for my own benefit I’d like to figure out some way to keep their memory alive on my blog. Just stuff I am mulling over, no decisions made.
(This is sort of a long Postscript, it could have been it’s own blog post!)
I’m not sure if our day qualified as a “Quilt Shop Hop” since we only visited two quilt shops (the day got away from us) but on Friday I headed with two other quilters to Loveland and Longmont, Coloradofor a day of quilt shop hopping, tasty treats/food, and a yarn shop.
My new community has a quilting group that meets monthly and I have new quilting friends in my life now! One of our members D is a brand new quilter (though she is a very experienced seamstress) and my buddy J and I decided we should take her on her first quilt shop hop to help her select fabric for her first quilt that she is making for her newborn grandson.
Now if you are a quilter, you know experienced quilters LOVE to get in other quilters “business” (ha!) and help them choose fabric for a quilt (just visit any quilt shop and you will see this is action).
So J (who has been quilting since birth I think) and I (since 1999) couldn’t wait for this road trip. Luckily D was of good humor and appreciated (being bossed around) the help to select fabrics!
J drove and I sat in back and worked on my latest granny square blanket:
(Previous post – Starting a New Granny Square Blanket – I’ll do an update on that post from April 2026 once I get a little further along on it.)
Quilter’s Dream
Our first stop was Quilter’s Dream in Loveland, CO (they don’t have a website but I linked their Facebook page) where we got to work helping her pull fat quarters and yardage for a beginner quilt pattern that D was making:
And we figuratively “held her hand” while she got her yardage for a quilt pattern cut from bolts for the first time:
After all that fabric selection assistance and additional time wandering around this wonderful quilt shop looking for ourselves (it’s not like J and I weren’t going to shop too!), we were ready for a treat and headed to the ice cream shop next door to that quilt shop! (hmm…wonder if they get a lot of business from quilters, ha!)
Yes we were well behaved and did not tap on the glass…but we did longingly gaze at all the delicious sounding flavor options! (This shop also has a “liquor infused” ice cream selection but we thought that a bad idea at 11 am and fabric shopping!)
A couple ice cream cones later (only one person, ha) and we were ready to head to the next shop.
Maggie’s Sewing & Fabric
The second shop we visited (and fell into a hole in the space-time continuum because I think we spent a month there, ha!) was Maggie’s Sewing & Fabric in Longmont, CO.
We were greeted by an adorable pup as we walked in, which is also a good sign for me when I enter any shop!
They had quite the sense of humor in this log cabin themed quilt shop with fun displays like this Barbie fabric one:
A couple photos around this shop, which I really liked and didn’t want to leave:
Yes I spent some time visiting the Clearance section where they had some amazing modern fabrics for 30 – 50% off, as well as kits, panels and pattern. I ended up bring the kit (for 50% off) of this quilt home with me (hey, it begged me to take it home, not my fault!):
The shop dog saw us off after our long visit (which did involve some dog petting of course):
Yes we had ice cream (hours ago!) but we were now hungry for actual food and had a wonderful lunch at Teocalli Cocina in Downtown Longmont.
I had the most amazing salad with a spicy oil infused egg and lots of avocado (I love, love, love avocado).
As we came out of the restaurant we noticed that practically next door in Downtown Longmont was a yarn shop!
Longmont Yarn Shoppe
We couldn’t stop ourselves from wandering in since we all either knitted and/or crocheted.
While checking out (I bought a deck of granny square pattern cards) they had this awesome crocheted mandala on display behind the register, which reminded me I want to make one someday.
Believe it or not, we began our day with J picking us up around 9:00 am and it was now 3:00 pm! So it was time to head home and to wander how we didn’t have enough time to have fit in a 3rd quilt shop (unfortunately the one we wanted to go to next closed at 3:00 pm we discovered too late!).
Very fun day and it’s been a long time since I’ve had the pleasure of quilt shop hopping with other quilters and bossing around new quilters on their fabric selections – ha!
(I posted that meme above with humor as J and I were very respectful of D’s choices on fabrics and just acted just as facilitators…okay rather passionate and insistent at times facilitators..ha!)
Today I went on a fun quilt shop hop with some new quilting buddies. I will blog about that tomorrow, but for now I just wanted to quickly share the funniest quilt concept I’ve seen to date – a toilet paper roll inspired quilt:
It was in the bathroom of one of the quilt shops we stopped at and I had quilt the giggling while visiting the bathroom.
One of the blocks of the quilt even had an empty roll of toilet paper!
Very creative but alas I did not ask for the pattern (if it even exists, ha!)
I am excited to share that an essay I wrote on creativity will be part of the anthology This is How We Create, edited by Dr. Yvette Prior of priorhouse blog and PRIORHOUSE WRITES.
Here is the draft book cover:
According to Dr. Prior’s Book page on her PRIORHOUSE WRITES it is scheduled for release in September 2026. Based on other books listed on that blog page, I think it will be available as a paperback from Amazon, a Kindle book and perhaps other mediums.
When you make something for someone you may never know what becomes of it…and you may be pleasantly surprised…and even DEEPLY touched when you find out!
Back in 2023 I did a post A Reminder on Why I Make Quilts in which I shared my surprise that a baby quilt I made (now) 16 years ago for my “Danish Brother”‘s first born son was being used as a “family heirloom” in their family – passing it around to all newborns in the immediate and extended family. I was blown away and very honored 🙂
Well recently I discovered that my long time (and at times long lost) friend’s daughter, who is now 24, has been dragging around the baby blanket I made her 24 years ago! It went to undergrad and graduate school with her and is always by her side.
I made this blanket back when the “no sew/tied fleece” blankets were very popular.
During my lunch hour at my job in Seattle a group of us used the conference room to teach each other how to make them! It seemed like I made at least 10 of them on year to give as gifts on Christmas!
Example of a “tied fleece blanket/no sew blanket”:
I met my friend K when I moved to Seattle, Washington in 1997 and we became fast friends. I was her doula when she got pregnant and was there for the birth of her daughter. My friend K moved to Bend, Oregon and it was because of her I discovered Bend, Oregon and spent 14 glorious years of my life there.
A couple years of living in Bend, she and her young daughter and husband moved to Kodiak, Alaska and we stayed in touch on and off over the years but not as often as we’d both like (life happens when you are raising a family and/or building a career). We reconnected after my husband Terry passed in 2018 and stay in touch on and off.
Recently she notified me that her amazing daughter just graduated from her Masters program, just got engaged, and still carried around the baby blanket I made her over 24 years ago! It is her security blanket and although pretty shredded, it is still beloved.
My friend K, her husband M, their daughter, and her fiancé were going to be in the continental US for a week and John and I decided to meet up with them for a reunion.
K sent me a photo of the very loved/shredded/in tatters blanket her daughter carries with her:
I decided I needed to make her a replacement.
I searched and searched but the original fleece pattern was not available however I did find another cute dog themed blanket to make her for our reunion:
For the back of the blanket I chose a fleece that celebrated her growing up in Alaska:
So when we recently met up with them, I got to take a picture of her daughter and her beloved 24 year old blanket:
It looks even worse in person, ha! It is so well loved. She said she actually has a box of pieces that she rotates.
By the way, here is what the blanket originally looked like (I was able to locate a phote online but not any resource in which to buy this fleece pattern):
Although it could never replace the original blanket I made her, I think the new blanket I gave her daughter was a hit (she appeared to be deeply touched)!
After we returned home from meeting up with them, my friend K sent me a photo of her daughter with her new Tierney blanket on her lap!
You just never know what a handmade item you give means to someone else (and that for 24 years they would make it an intergal part of their lives).
Postscript
06/20/26
Going through comments on this post, one person’s awesome comments made me think of that famous passage from the children’s book The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams Bianco (published in 1922):
“Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’
‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit.
‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’
‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit?’
‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
This month I have little to report as I’ve been hosting out of town visitors; and traveling (3 trips in the past month) including a big emotional return to Bend, Oregon for my birthday in May. It was my for first time in 7 years since I moved to Denver after my husband suddenly died in 2019. I’ll blog about that return sometime in the future.
Yes, that’s it for the past month since the May 15th post!
But I do have a couple random curious things to share to conclude this post.
Granny Square Shoes?
If you’ve followed my blog for a while you might note my obsession for crocheting granny square blankets like this one I completed in 2025:
During my recent travels I came across a pair of granny square shoes!!!! They weren’t in my shoe size and they actually did not look that well made but they were fun to look at!
Everybody Needs a Pair of Quilted Shorts…
I am a quilter and during my recent travels I came across a pair of quilted shorts that gave me a giggle too!
I think an old quilt was turned into clothing. I would suggest this a curious fashion choice, but no judgement if you need a pair of vintage quilt shorts to wear!
I bet the original quilt is “scrap happy” and was made from someone’s fabric scrap basket so these shorts might also count for ScrapHappy June 🙂
An Amazing Thought/Concept
I came across this sign in my travels and I think it is an amazing thought/concept to close this post.
More on our roadtrip around Northern California with our Sacramento-area based friends earlier this month. Went part of a day at the Muir Woods National Monument.
According to Wikipedia:
“Muir Woods National Monument is a United States national monument managed by the National Park Service and named after naturalist John Muir. It is located on Mount Tamalpais near the Pacific coast in southwestern Marin County, California. The Monument is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and is 12 miles (19 km) north of San Francisco. It protects 554 acres (224 ha),[4] of which 240 acres (97 ha) are old-growthcoast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) forests,[5] one of the few such stands remaining in the San Francisco Bay Area.“
John Muir (1838–1914) was a Scottish-Born American naturalist, author, and early advocate for the preservation of the U.S. wilderness. Known as the “Father of the National Parks,” his writings inspired the creation of the National Park System and he co-founded the Sierra Club in 1892.
(Source: Google AI)
Fortunately we began our trek through the Muir Woods at 9:00 am before the crowds arrived (by 11 am it was very crowded).
Wow these trees are old! Here is a tree cross section exhibit they had along the path of a tree that was a 1000+ years old:
We came upon an area called “Cathedral Grove” and I appreciated the signage as well as information I learned in the cafe later about this section of the Muir Woods:
Of course I couldn’t control myself, I had to let my inner “Ansel Adams” run free and snap a couple B&W photos while wandering the woods:
I took more but I won’t embarrass myself further by sharing more – ha!
We were able to get a stamp on and sticker for our National Parks Passport that we are obsessed with. It’s been fun to get the rubber stamp mark that we were there and the sticker for the national park or monument whenever we are visiting one!
Below is an example of the little passport book and the inside pages to mark that you visited a park:
Postscript
While road tripping in Northern California, I brought my English Paper Piecing (EPP) project to work on – I worked on sewing the individual hexagons together for some of my EPP rosettes (see post ScrapHappy May 2026 – Moving Along on the EPP Quilt).
But disaster stuck and I lost one of the rosettes I was working on somewhere in my travels!!!
So now I only have 98 instead of the 99 I made for this quilt 😦
So before I can finish the quilt I had to make another rosette from scratch (pout, pout, pout)!
I’ve decided not to travel with them again, I will bring a knit or crochet project instead.
Last Wednesday the new community based quilt group I joined met to finish up the Project Linusquilts they started in April. Several members with longarm quilting machines completed the quilting on the quilts and put on the binding. Now it was time to sew down the binding so the 5 quilts could get donated.
Instead of hand stitching down the binding, the team decided to just “stitch in the ditch” the binding to finish the quilts.
I got the binding on three quilts sewn down, while others worked on adding the binding to those not finished. Here are some photos from the morning:
While on a recent California road trip with friends we stopped in Loomis, California to see theLoomis Quilt & Fiber Guild Quilt Show in which one of my friends is a member.
For those of you who quilt, I thought you might like to see a sampling of some of the quilt in the show. I had a fun time wandering around the show and stopping at the vendor booths (I was well behaved and did not buy anything). Oh it was crowded so I had to work around people to take photos so they are not at the best angle…
I got a kick out this “postage stamp” style traditional quilt but with a kitty hanging from it (see red arrow):
I liked this quilt with Tim Holtz fabric – not a complex pattern but the fabric really makes the quilt spectacular:
No it’s not a new pattern, it’s the same pattern I’ve used for the 15+ versions of the same hat (I’ve gifted about half of them and the other are in my “Cold Weather Hat Stash”.)
I’m still working on the granny square blanket I last posted about in Starting a New Granny Square Blanket but I wanted an even more portable project for my recent California roadtrip with friends (and one of my friends is a knitter and would be bringing along a knitting project).
I found a skein of black yarn with little flecks of color and figured that would work – I don’t have a hat in that color in my Hat Stash!
Update on the Scrappy English Paper Piecing (EPP) Project
So here is my update on the scrappy English Paper Piecing (EPP) hexie rosette project I’ve been working on since 2016 that I previously posted about in this post – ScrapHappy April 2026: Update on the EPP Quilt
I made a bit of progress from April’s update and completed 16 more blocks.
Here is what the quilt in progress looked like in April 2026 with 49 blocks completed:
And here is what the quilt looks like in May 2026 with 65 blocks completed (yay!):
The quilt will be 9 by 11 for a total of 99 blocks. So I have 34 more blocks to go!
As I mentioned in a previous post, I have to finish sewing all the little paper pieced hexagons to each other for each rosette (and remove the EPP foundation paper) before I can applique the rosette to the recycled denim background. That is why I only got 16 blocks completed in the past month. Very tedious work!
Oh, you might notice that on the left side of the quilt arrangement on my design wall I have all dark background blocks:
That is because I am cutting scrap denim as I need it and I cut too much dark so now I have to make a bunch of lighter background blocks to mix in. But progress is progress and I bet before I know it I will have all 99 blocks done and sewn together!
In closing this post I thought I would share that these types of blocks, like the image below, make me smile because they remind me of just how “scrappy” this project is!
I ran out of some of the scrap fabrics and couldn’t make 6 hexagons in the same fabric to surround the center hexagon so I had to mix similar colors (I am using the word “similar” very loosely, ha!):
I was going to try and just focus on my crafting adventures but I just have to sneak in some travel stories. I love travel nearly as much as crafting.
Back in mid January, before we decided to do something crazy like suddenly sell our house and buy a new house, I went on a little trip to Mt. Dora, Floridawith my sister.
It is a charming little town that is not as touristy as some of the bigger tourist towns in Florida…sort of a hidden gem.
We had so much fun wandering around the beautiful downtown area filled with eateries and lots of sweet little boutique shops.
Each evening we were treated to glorious sunsets by the water:
But you do have be aware of/be careful of the alligators (we didn’t see any but we knew they were lurking somewhere!):
We ate diner one night at an awesome restaurant called The Goblin Market that was set up like you were having dinner in someone’s comfy house…with a nice library!
We also attended one of the largest indoor/outdoor flea markets in the US – Renninger’s Flea Market & Antique Center. It was quite the experience! We spent nearly an entire day there and still didn’t see all of it!
Here is a write up about the place from visitflorida.com:
“Two Separate Shopping Experiences, Located on 140 acres, just east of Mount Dora. The Antique Center has over 200 shops in an air conditioned enclosed building. Shop owners, indoors and outdoors, will answer your questions and provide you with personal attention. Most dealers accept charge cards and checks. Be sure and visit the buildings in the “Street of Shops” The Consignment Area has over 40 Cases & 30 Booths. You will find Antique Furniture, Hand made Gold and Diamond Jewelry, Paintings, Vintage Books, antique & vintage Glass, China, Porcelain, Shabby Chic & Primitive Collectibles. Eat at the Grub Hub, the best place in Mount Dora. Don’t miss the Special Shows every month.”
Yes you read that correctly – a 140 acres of flea market!!!!!
They had many quirky things at the flea market and we exhausted ourselves (but in a fun way) trying to see all of it. There was a shop that specialized in vintage televisions and radios; and related supplies to fix vintage televisions and radios. The shopkeeper was as quirky as the things he was selling.
I could have done a whole series of posts on our flea market experience but I was too engrossed in the experience to take very many photos.
To close out this post about our trip, here is a random photo from our trip that stimulated my creative muse – a section of the boardwalk deck was designed in a very cool pattern:
Here is the second part of my two post series on the mini quilt retreat I attended on Saturday with my community quilting group to group make Project Linusquilts. Please see Part I of the story on this post – Project Linus Mini Quilt Retreat, Part I.
As mentioned in the Part I post, one of the quilt group members hosted the day retreat at her house in her basement that she had turned into an AMAZING quilt studio. In this post I thought I’d give you a little tour of her studio.
Here is a video I took at uploaded to YouTube (I was so proud of myself that I finally learned how to add music to replace the random snippets of conversation that were originally peppered throughout the video):
Here are some photos of the main section of the basement studio:
She is amazing quilter (making many of those complicated Judy Niemeyer patterns) and an amazing long arm machine quilter. Here is an example on a floral panel of some of her spectacular long arm quilting:
She did a little trunk show of some of her Judy Niemeyer pattern elaborate bed sized quilts she had quilted and I didn’t even think to take photos, darn it! (I was just too busy gasping!)
Since the studio is in a basement, it had window wells. Creatively she lined in cool landscape scenes her window wells!
I showed John and I’d like to do something like that someday in our window wells!
Oh and here is room attached to her studio which is set up little a quilting classroom/workshop area, in which I worked on my assigned Project Linus quilt during the retreat. I didn’t do the best job photographing the space as I was distracted visiting my new quilting buddies, but there are tables with power strips set up all around the room.
One of the things I like about the new community that John and I now live in is that they have a lot of community activities and clubs.
For example John joined the Poker Club and the Sports Fanatics Club, and so far I’ve joined the Quilting Club.
Saturday the Quilting Club met at the home of one of the members who has turned her entire basement into an AMAZING quilt studio (which I will show photos of in part 2 of this series of posts), to work on Project Linus quilts.
If you aren’t familiar with Project Linus, it is a volunteer organization that “provides handmade blankets to children 0-18 in the United States who are seriously ill, traumatized, or otherwise in need” (projectlinus.org). The “blankets” donated are usually handmade quilts or crocheted/knitted blankets.
My community quilting group has many years of experience making quilts for kids as part of Project Linus and the group thought a day of intense group quilt production would be a great way to whip up some donation quilts.
We were assigned either cutting, ironing, or sewing; and the long-arm quilters in the group would do the machine quilting on the quilts. They chose a simple pattern and precut packets of coordinate fabrics for those of us assigned to sewing (I was in that group):
I brought my little travel Bernina and had fun hanging out with the other “sewing assigned” quilters, sewing our pieces together while the “ironing assigned” quilters came and took out chained pieces from our machines to press!
Here I am with my completed quilt top at the end of the mini retreat day:
Here are some of the other quilts (same pattern) in progress or completed:
And here is one of the completed quilt tops on the long arm machine getting quilted:
It was a very fun day, though we joked we were in a “quilting sweat shop” – ha! We did take breaks and visited/chatted a lot. We had a wonderful potluck lunch.
We got at least 5 quilt tops completed and a couple more started.
Next post I will show you a tour of the amazing full basement quilt studio of the lovely woman who hosted our mini retreat.
We are getting settled into our new home and yesterday we decided to go and explore our new easy access to Denver’s light rail – Regional Transportation District (RTD). Previously we lived deep in “suburbia”, far away from public transportation.
So on Tuesday we headed to the RTD light rail station park and ride just a couple miles from our house (we could have taken the bus to the light rail station if we wanted to be purely public transportation):
We had around a 25 minute train ride and we were in downtown Denver!!! By car it would have taken us 30 – 45 minutes in traffic (or longer in rush hour) and then $10 to $20 for parking!
We arrived at Union Station in downtown Denver and we were greeted with a bookstore immediately when we got off the train!
After browsing in the little bookstore connected to the train station, we wandered around the historical interior of Union Station (built in 1881) and then around the lovely surrounding area.
We spent the afternoon exploring downtown Denver by foot visiting the Dairy Block area:
We stopped for an adult beverage at GarageSale Vintage which is a bar and vintage/thrift shop in Larimer Square!
We ate a delicious taco lunch at a food truck parked in front a downtown office building and sat with office workers from the surrounding skyscrapers having lunch.
We also wandered around the 16th Street Mall (outdoor shopping street mall) area and wandered into this cool private feeling courtyard area in a residential section and had a nice break there:
Then it was time to head back to Union Station and take the train home.
But first we stopped at MilkBox Creamery in Union Station, got some delicious ice cream and sat outside on the 80 degree day to enjoy!
On the train ride back to the Park and Ride I did get a little hexie rosette sewing (I packed crafts of course for the train ride…which I thought would be longer…):
We returned to the Park and Ride very satisfied with our fun day of playing tourist in our town!
John and I came to the realization that we can actually go out to dinner now in downtown Denver (which has a fabulous culinary scene) via the light rail – the fare is very low, we don’t have to pay for parking; and we save time and money by taking public transportation!
A couple years ago on a whim I bought several skeins of Lion Brand yarn’s Re-Spun line of yarn. Re-Spun is yarn made from recycled plastic (see my post Plastic Yarn?).
I decided to make a granny square crocheted blanket with the yarn and crocheted up some of squares:
I hated them. They looked okay but they were too flimsy and didn’t feel right (not sure how to specifically describe it) and I didn’t think they would work well for a cozy blanket. I was crocheting them in the only granny square pattern I knew at the time.
So I abandoned them and put the granny squares, in various stages of completion, and the yarn away.
Then I taught myself via YouTube how to make the sunflower block granny square and made this blanket which is now sitting on the recliner in my living room:
Near the end of last year I stumbled upon a stash of the Re-Spun yarn in the thrift store for $1.99 a skein (it retails for $8.99 a skein now). I grabbed all they had (you can’t see all the colors in the image below but I’ll share more images of the yarn in a future post):
I think it was an “out of body” purchase experience, because when I got home I thought: “What were you thinking? You abandoned the project with the original three skeins of yarn!”
Then I remembered the sunflower pattern I loved (it made a very cozy blanket) and decided to do some frogging (I never heard this term before until I read it in the post of other bloggers and now I know it is unraveling your work) on the previous granny squares because it would be an atrocity to throw them away when I originally bought the yarn because it was “eco-friendly” – ha!
So after what seemed like tedious frogging, and then crocheting, I have made 58 centers for my new “flower” (they are not sunflower colors) granny square blanket:
I’m going to make a total of 100 centers and then move onto round 2.
Here is the pattern I am using in case you are interested:
I really like the instructional videos by Hooked by Robin!
So I am going to have a cozy “flower” granny square blanket for my library/dining room area. I’ll update you all on the progress.
I made myself work on TEDIOUS sewing the sides of the hexie flowers on the remaining 50 blocks. If I don’t start doing it, I won’t have anything to report for May’s ScrapHappy post on this quilt!
I got 6 done yesterday, 44 to go.
If only little magical creatures could sneak into my studio at night and finish them….
If you’ve been with me for a while in the blogosphere then you know I love libraries. As an awkward introverted kid I used to hide out in the library all summer, riding my bike there everyday, and getting to know the librarians.
On this blog I used to do a regular series of posts called The Library Stack where I would share my latest stack of library books borrowed. I eventual stopped it as I figured readers were tiring of seeing my library borrows, ha!
Well Tuesday I went and checked out the library near my new home which is part of the Denver Public Library System :
Image credit: denverlibrary.org
After meeting the librarians (yes I am a complete library nerd) and introducing myself as new in the area, I went immediately to my favorite section:
And then onto the crafting section which was paltry…
But no worries, my small community library doesn’t have a large catalogue BUT I have access to the entire Denver Public Library system and I had already put a bunch of books on hold and was there to pick them up!
Mine! (The “Hoga”s)
While wandering around the the library I discovered they had a special display for National Poetry Month:
I grabbed one and what a delight when I opened it up later at a local brewery we stopped at for a beverage:
It was the poem Dreams by Langston Hughes!
How amazing and meaningful to me because I created a Langston Hughes quilt for the show Black Pioneers: Legacy in the American West.
So it was a very satisfying trip to my library with this poetry surprise!
I’ll close this post with my new Library Stack from my new library for those of you who remember me torturing you regularly years ago with images of my latest library stack 😉
(Oh I am very interested in making Bojagi curtains for my new house and this is what started my search for library books on the subject, so I could learn how to do the seams…)
Update on the Scrappy English Paper Piecing (EPP) Project
So here is my update on the scrappy English Paper Piecing (EPP) hexie rosette project I’ve been working on since 2016 that I previously posted about in this post –ScrapHappy February 2026.
If you are just joining us, it was inspired by this quilt on the cover of the premiere issue of Quiltfolk Magazine, Issue 1: Oregon:
Image credit: quiltfolk.com
This was my progress back in February 2026 when I had 37 EPP flowers machine appliquéd to scrap denim:
I’ve machine appliquéd 12 more blocks since then:
I’ve would have done more but there was this little thing going on in my life called moving house…
Here are the 49 blocks now completed:
I have 50 more blocks to make for a 9 by 11 (99 blocks) setting.
My little challenge is the remaining 50 blocks need my completion of sewing all the hexies in the rosette together! They are just a center hexie with 6 hexies sewn to the center but not sewn to each other…
So I need to settle in for some serious hand sewing to be able to report progress in May’s ScrapHappy post 🙂
Well we’ve come to the end of my series of posts on my new studio in the upstairs loft of my new home. The previous related posts can be found in these links:
Thanks for reading this series of posts on my journey to put together my new studio and here is the full tour.
Full Studio Tour
The stairs up to the loft (photographed looking down from the loft):
Entering the loft:
Around the room:
Projects stored in baskets under studio table:
One of my favorite signs:
So the journey is complete and that is enough about where I create, it’s time for me to get back to creating! This will be my focus for my future posts 🙂
The kitchen is below the living room and Tierney added in some storage seating to our table:
Beasties get very hungry so we have a lot of food. Since we are knitted we don’t gain any weight with all we eat!
On the bottom level is John Beastie’s basement studio and game room. He likes to hang out there with Mikelet as it leads to the yard where he and Mikelet can play ball.
We are avid gardeners and find plastic plants very easy to care for!
tierneycreates 