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".
Thought I would close out my series of posts about my visit to the Oregon Coast at the end of July 2023 with a couple favorite photos from the ca-zillion (an even higher number than “zillion”) photos I took during the trip.
(If you are just joining us you can catch the rest of the story in this series of posts (scroll down when you click the link to get to the 4 earlier stories from this trip) – Oregon Coast Adventures.)
Our Oregon based friends MJ and J who know the Oregon Coast very well, took us on road trips from Newport to Florence, Oregon along Highway 101. Many of the photos below are from those stops and apologies I do not remember all the names of the places so I just omitted them – ha!
It was so wonderful to be back in Pacific NW and walk among the old growth forests/trees – oh how I missed them and their dense foliage! I remember many a wonderful solitary or group hike in these types of forests during the 22 years I lived in the Pacific NW (8 years in Seattle, Washington and 14 years in Bend, Oregon).
I’ll close out this post with what might be my favorite photo from the trip:
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.
For September’s ScrapHappy post I am going to reveal my completed quilt top for the wall hanging Strings Attached, which I previously posted about in late August – Made Some Progress on “Strings Attached” .
Last week on Instagram (@tierneycreates) I shared the nearly completed quilt top (one more border to go):
And here is the fully completed quilt top!
It will have a thin red binding after I quilt it – here is the binding next to the quilt top:
It took a while to string piece on muslin the 4 last border strips – a lot of fabric scraps were used!
Here are the completed strips – front and back images (so you can see how they were sewn onto muslin):
I noticed when I was moving the quilt top around to position it for piecing on the borders, it looked cool when in was backlit with sunlight. The sunlight was fading when I took the photos below but it sort of gives you the feeling of what I was seeing:
I am going to quilt it on my machine in similar way to how the sample quilt from the pattern is quilted (eventually…for now need to set it aside and move onto other things…):
As promised, here are the bloggers that participate in the ScrapHappy monthly posting event, check out their blogs linked below for their ScrapHappy posts:
Continuing my series of posts about our trip to the Oregon Coast in late July to visit with our dear friends MJ and J.
(If you are just joining us you can catch the rest of the story in this series of posts (scroll down when you click the link to get to the 3 earlier stories from this trip) – Oregon Coast Adventures.)
On our way to meet up with our friends I had John stop at a “boutique” Goodwill Thrift Store. I’ve never been to one before. I chatted with the staff member who greeted me when I entered and she said they sold donated “luxury” and “upscale” items there.
It was unlike any Goodwill I’d been to before (if you are familiar with Goodwill thrift/charity shops then you know many of them are very cluttered and kind of run down looking).
Friends of our friends let us stay at their amazing vacation home in Newport. One of the owners is a quilter and the gorgeous vacation home was filled with quilts! (My kind of place to stay at!)
They even had a quilt in the master suite bathroom!
The house had a wonderful view out the back of the Newport Bridge and a lovely piece of stained glass in the entry way window:
It was nice to stay in a cozy home for a couple days on vacation with our friends as we were able to make delicious meals and have a movie night one evening. John of course made his famous “sausage and gravy” for breakfast one morning to the delight of our friends.
While in Newport we wandered around the Nye Beach area and I could not wait to get my toes in the sand and then the ocean!
The town next to the beach is charming (they have flowers everywhere!) and we had fun wandering about and of course I had to stop at the local independent bookstore!
John and my friends were very patient while I got my bookstore browsing on. They had a lovely new and used book collection.
I’ll close out this post with a couple more photos from our wandering around Newport to include some cool art made from recycled rubber tires in downtown Newport.
Thanks to my friends K and L, I’ve recently discovered that Quiltfolk Magazine has posted a preview for the issue and if you’d like to see it here is the link – Issue 28 Reveal.
Here is a screen shot from that link of me (Tierney Davis Hogan):
I’ve been sent the draft article to review as well as a proof of the photos to assist with captioning but I haven’t seen the complete article yet – can’t wait!
Before July’s trip to the Oregon Coast gets to be too much of a blur in the place, I should probably continue my story about the trip. I am going to jump the end of our trip and the road trip to return from Newport/Oregon Coast to Portland, Oregon to fly home back to Denver. Also I want to share a little quilt shop tour of the “out of the way, down the road, in the back of the woods” quilt shop we came across in Tillmook, Oregonon our way back to Portland.
If you are just joining us you can catch the rest of the story in this series of posts (scroll down when you click the link to get to the 3 earlier stories from this trip) – Oregon Coast Adventures.
Here was our route from Newport, Oregon (on the coast) to Portland, Oregon (inland). We took a different route back to Portland than the one we took to the Oregon Coast (where we went through McMinnville) in the post Oregon Coast Adventures: First Stop -McMinnville, Oregon:
Let’s talk Tillmook first, as it was the one quilt shop stop I made while visiting the Oregon Coast area. Technically it is not on the coast as it is a little bit inland but we’ll pretend like it is the coast.
I asked John if we could stop in Tillmook on our way to Portland as it’s been many years since I’ve been to the Tillmook Factory/Tillmook Dairy Co-opwhere the dairy products I love (seriously yummy ice cream and cheese, etc.) come from.
On our way there I saw a sign for a quilt shop –Sew Little Timeand I asked John to pull off the main highway and follow it. This took us into some back roads and I was beginning to get suspicious if there was actually a quilt shop there…
(Can you see the news headlines: DENVER COUPLE DISAPPEARS LOOKING FOR A QUILT SHOP IN RURAL TILLAMOOK)
But finally there was after driving deeper and deeper into the rural area – at someone’s house!
Once I convinced myself to walk in, I discovered a lovely little shop with wonderful and very helpful staff.
This is the shop where I found the fabric to make the bag from our friends K & M who just got the new lab puppy (see post Bag to Celebrate a New Lab!):
The had older fabric lines and a lot of “country/rural life” themed fabrics but they are a small shop in a neighborhood and likely gear their fabric selections to what people in the rural community wanted (Tillamook has a large farming community and we saw some gorgeous farms as we drove around). The staff was so warm and friendly I would stop there again even if I am not sure what I would buy there (unless I had a friend who just got a new tractor and I was making a gift with tractor fabric…). The shop does not appear to have a website but here is an article about them from the Cannon Beach Gazette – With ‘Sew Little Time’, go quilt shopping.
After the quilt shop we headed to the Tillmook Factory/Tillmook Dairy Co-opand wandered around a bit and shopped in their giant “gift shop” of dairy delights!
Not for the lactose-intolerant!
Before we got to Tillamook, we stopped in Pacific City at the Pelican Brewing Company and had snack and a craft beer, then wandered along to beach.
Our flight back to Denver was in the early evening, and before we dropped our rental car back off at the Portland airport, we stopped in downtown Portland for an early dinner at Deschutes Brewery and a wander around Powell’s Books.
It was fun to take John to two places I love (Deschutes Brewery and Powell’s) for the first time!
I likely have another story or two in me about this trip so stay tuned for more Oregon Coast adventures in the future.
One of my favorite bag designers is Svetlana Sotak of Sotak Handmade out of the Netherlands. The drawstring bag pattern I use is one of hers. I love that buy purchasing her patterns she licenses handmade craft businesses to sell them on a small scale, all she requests is that you credit her as a pattern maker, like I’ve done in my Etsy listings in the past. (Note she sells her patterns on Etsy and that is where I purchase them in the US market)
I have several of her patterns and I recently tried out the pattern Lagom Storage Bins:
Image credit – sotakco.nl
Here are the three Lagom Storage Bins I made in the smallest size (the pattern has 5 sizes!!!) as gifts for friends:
The first one was made with Marimekko fabric from Finland was sent to my friend W in Central Oregon. The cool shark fabric is from my friend D when she came for a quilt retreat to my house in May (she brought awesome fabric for me as a hostess gift). The Asian fabric is from my stash and was actually selected by my sister for a future project she’d like me to make her for Christmas – a whole backpack out of that fabric.
As far as the Marimekko fabric one, here is how my friend W is using it in her home(thanks to W for the photo!):
The other two storage bins were given as welcome gifts to my friends MJ and J when they arrived at my home for a little quilting/girls retreat a couple weeks ago (I’ll share a post someday about that):
I didn’t enjoy making the baskets as much as I enjoy making the drawstring bags but I might just need to make more of them to get a true feel for what it is like to make them.
They do use two types of interfacing, which makes them a little more expensive to make that the drawstring bags, but they do not have a drawstring to have to thread at the end of the process (which is sometimes a little tedious when you just want to be done!).
I haven’t decided if I will offer them someday on my Etsy shop or not. First I have to grow to love making them 🙂
Oh and speaking of baskets, here is an amazing giant bag made out of recycled plastic grocery shopping bags my friend MJ brought me as a hostess gift when she came for the retreat. A friend of hers crochets them from her stash of grocery bags.
I always appreciate a thoughtful hostess gift, especially handmade!
A month or so ago (this summer is a little blurry as it has been rather busy), I went with John to a large food and shopping market in Denver/Edgewater called the Edgewater Public Market. John was meeting some previous job colleagues there for a reunion. They are friendly people but I decided I would just wander the market on my own for the evening (if you check out the market on the link above it is pretty cool!), grab dinner on my own from one of the many eateries in the market, and read my book/work on my portable crochet granny squares.
While I was wandering the Edgewater Public Market I came across this storefront for The Tangled Ball:
A “yarn lover’s delight”! I love yarn and I had time to fill so after I ate my dinner, I wandered in. Next thing I knew I was sitting at one of the big tables in the shop with the owner and her husband (who is also a knitter and was working on a pair of socks) and working on my granny squares while chatting with them.
Here is what the shop owner was working on – a lovely knitted vest:
While we were talking at the table, working on our projects, I admired a cute project bag sitting on the table. The owner mentioned a local crafter made those bags but was no longer making the bags for the shop. She said she was looking into another source for project bags for customers to buy. I mentioned I make Drawstring Project Bags and she was interested in potentially selling them at The Tangled Ball.
If you are new to my blog, here are some examples of the drawstring project bags I make:
I’d planned to sell them again on my Textiles & Smiles Etsy Shop but I haven’t done all the product photography and writing of the listings to get them up on the shop yet.
So we agreed I would bring the bags by her shop in the future for her to see in person.
Before I get back to what happened with the bags and the yarn shop, here is a little tour for my fellow Yarn Lovers of The Tangled Ball:
I really loved the giant knitting needles with a Work in Progress (WIP) on the needles!
A week or so passed and I returned to The Tangled Ball to attend Colorado Makers Night Out held several times at month at the shop; and to bring a large sampling of my drawstring project bags for consideration to sell at the shop.
At the Colorado Makers Night Out I worked on my granny squares, while dining at the community table and visiting with some VERY talented and engaging knitters. Below are photos of my section of the table (my food, my project, and a drawstring bag I brought it in); and and amazing sweater (the photo does not do it justice) that one of the knitters was working on:
The other makers at the table were all beyond my skill set of knitting! (and I was the only person not knitting, ha, I was crocheting!) It’s was like sitting around with some of my blogging buddies who are knitting goddesses (you know who you are…) and watching in awe.
As far as the bags, the shop’s owner purchased about a 1/3rd of the bags I brought to try out at her shop. I recently found it she’s sold a couple of them so far!
I am so honored to sell my bags at a yarn shop but I will need to see if I can afford to continue sell at “wholesale prices” that the shop owner offers, when I do not buy my supplies at wholesale, etc. She owns a small business and is limited on what price she can pay for and then sell the bags for in her shop. It’s just the reality of the market.
I am going to get my act together and project bags up on my Etsy shop soon.
If you are a Yarn Lover and in the Denver area, I highly recommend this lovely yarn shop!
Our friends K&M are Retriever aficionados, and they appear to especially like Labrador Retrievers (“Labs”). They’ve had various “labs” as part of their family for years (Yellow, Chocolate, etc.) and now they’ve recent adopted a new Black Labrador Retriever puppy named “Murphy”.
While I was on the Oregon Coast (someday I will finish up my series of posts about that trip in July) I found this awesome fabric which was a tribute to Retrievers including Labradors, Goldens, Flat Coated Retrievers, etc., and I made them a drawstring project bag filled with treats for Murphy as a “Puppy Warming” gift.
Here is the front and back of the drawstring bag so you can see more of the fabric and all the different type of Retrievers included:
Here are photos my friend K sent me when they received the surprise Puppy Warming gift in the mail from me, including photos of the adorable pup Murphy!
I can’t wait to meet that cutie in person someday!
I’ve been busy preparing to restock by Textiles & Smiles Etsy shop and getting ready for another scrappy fabric quilting retreat at my house, I am having with a different set of friends. Below is the basket of scraps they can work from:
In between that, some road trip adventure with John, and the completion of a home renovation project (well John did most the work), I’ve managed to make a little progress on the scrappy solid color medallion wallhanging I’ve been working on – Strings Attached.
Since my previous post What’s on the Design Wall: Strings Attached, I’ve sewn all the section of the center medallion string pieced star together and done the first border:
There were so many Y-seams! It seamed like every seam (smile) was Y-seam – yikes! I got a little more proficient on Y-seams after doing so many in a row but I don’t have any great insight, tips or wisdom to impart, sorry.
Here is a reminder of what the completed quilt will sort of look like:
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.
On August 15th, ScrapHappy Day, I’d hope to share the completed quilt top for the VERY SCRAPPY wallhanging quilt I am currently working on – “Strings Attached” from August 2021 issue of AmericanQuilter Magazine, pattern by Lori DeJarnatt (see post What’s on the Design Wall: Strings Attached), but alas, I’ve gotten no further than what I shared on August 9th when I last posted about it.
So instead for ScrapHappy August I am going to share the story behind this VERY SCRAPPY quilt – Recycled Hope VII: All the Trimmings
I made this quilt during the COVID pandemic and it holds a lot of meaning, and I will share the “Artist Statement” on this quilt in a moment for the full background. First I want to tell you about my “Recycled Hope” series of quilts:
The Recycled Hope an ongoing series of improvisational art quilts using recycled materials to include denim as the primary fabric on many of the pieces, combined with other recycled materials. “Hope” and the interpretation of the word “hope” is the primary theme of infused into these pieces.Most of the fabrics were not reusable as clothing or home decor and were destined to end up in a landfill. Reimagining recycled clothing and other materials into art quilts satisfies my hopeful desire to honor the environment and make art that is eco-conscious. Ending up in an art quilt is a better outcome than ending up in a landfill.
Okay now that you know the background on this series of quilts (if you want to see the rest of the quilts in the series, check out my Portfolio page) here is the story behind this SUPER SCRAPPY quilt which measures 72.5″ L x 57.5″ W:
Missing my Quilting Community during the 2020 Coronavirus Quarantine and inspired by Amanda Jean Nyberg’s pattern “All Sizes”, I created a quilt from 15 years of scrap triangles collected from my quilting friends at quilt retreats and “sew dates”. Most of the scraps in this quilt are from the trimmings of blocks by many quilters as they made their quilts. Instead of going into the trash, nearly 600 scrap triangles from the trimming of quilt blocks compose this cozy quilt. This piece gave me hope that someday I can return to attending quilt retreats.
Hopefully for next month’s ScrapHappyDay post I can share newly completed work (smile).
HAPPY SCRAPPING!
As promised, here are the bloggers that participate in the ScrapHappy monthly posting event, check out their blogs linked below for their ScrapHappy posts:
Toward the end of July 2023 we met up with dear friends on the Oregon Coast. I am doing a series of blog posts about our adventures on the Oregon Coast – check out the blog category – Oregon Coast Adventures– for the other posts (note when you click the link this current post will be the first one that shows but keep scrolling).
After flying into Portland, Oregon, renting a car, and stopping in McMinnville, Oregon (see post Oregon Coast Adventures: First Stop -McMinnville, Oregon) we drove to Depoe Bay, Oregon and spent the night at a little motel right on the bay. We came in a day before our friends we to arrive so we could do a little sightseeing on our own and leisurely make our way toNewport, Oregon to meet up with them.
The motel itself was nothing to “write home about” but it had a tasty free breakfast included and some amazing views.
This was the view from our motel room window:
And here are photos of the beach area a little bit down from the motel where we did a little exploring before heading to a delicious fresh seafood dinner.
And of course I had to take a photo in B&W:
I love this photo! Looks kind of mysterious and moody!
Next post in this series I’ll share our adventures when we got to Newport, Oregon to meet up with our friends.
A quick update to the post What’s on the Design Wall & “Agriculture Report” on the string pieced wallhanging I am making called “Strings Attached” from August 2021 issue of AmericanQuilter Magazine, pattern by Lori DeJarnatt.
I finished string piecing the 8 sections of the center star:
And then tried my hand a the first “Y-seam” (when 3 or more seams come together and they DON’T make a right angle per the geekybobbin.com) to join the first two star sections:
You can see in the photo above I got so excited joining one section that I started laying out the first border (instead of just piecing the whole center star first).
In the comments in the first post on this quilt, one of my blogging buddies asked me to share any tips I had on doing “Y-seams”. My first tip would be: “No, avoid them” but since I really wanted to make this piece I could not get around it.
Luckily the pattern designer had dots on her template for the center star sections that were a 1/4 inch away from the edge of the points; and she instructed the reader to make the same dots 1/4 inch from the points of the four squares and four inset triangles (the blue fabric) and match them with the dots on the star sections.
Sounds scary (and it looked scary) but it worked. I just got to do this 3 more times and then I can assemble the center star. I wonder if I can then get some sort of Certificate of Completion (I would frame it!) for those Y-seams – ha!
Toward the end of July we met up with dear friends (the kind of friends that you’d also consider family) on the Oregon Coast.
These are friends I met in Bend, Oregon where I lived for 14 years until my husband Terry suddenly died in 2018. I haven’t been able in the 4.5+ years since moving to Colorado to bring myself to return to Bend, Oregon for a visit (such an awesome life…nearly perfect… was lost there and I still have some trauma from coming home and finding my life partner on the floor dead in the house I’d plan to live in with him the rest of my life…too painful to return yet…) and I didn’t want try to ask my friends to come all the way to Denver again to visit us, so the “compromise” was to meet up the Oregon Coast (via Portland, Oregon).
It wasn’t much of a “compromise” as I love the Oregon Coast; and John (my new life partner) hasn’t been to the Oregon Coast, one of my favorite places in the world (or the places I’ve been in the world), and I was so excited to share it with him.
Central Oregon Coast map from aaroads.com/guides/us-101-or/
The plan was meet up with our friends in Newport, Oregonon the Oregon Coast the next day after flying into Portland, Oregon. We rented a car and here was our travel route (with lots of beauty along the way to see on the Pacific Coast Highway/Highway 101):
Image from Google Maps
But along the way we decided to stop in McMinnville, Oregon for lunch and to visit a quilt shop I had visited many years ago (I think before blogging as I could not find a blog post about it, ha!) – Boersma’s Sewing Center.
John sat in “the husband area” (ha!) with the vacuums (they sell sewing and vacuum related items) while I browsed.
After the quilt shop we headed to a lovely brewery (Two Dogs Taphouse) nearby for a delicious lunch:
We loved that they had a cozy sitting area, actually like a living room, that you could relax in with your beer and your food and watch TV:
After lunch we stopped at Third Street Books (how can I pass up an independent bookstore?) on our way to our car:
And then off to Depoe Bay (the town before Newport as you head south down the Oregon Coast) where we would be spending the night until we met up with our friends the next day in Newport, Oregon.
I was going to blog more about my recent Oregon Coast trip but there are so many photos to sort through so I thought I’d just post about a new wall hanging I am working on and my “Agriculture Report”. (What is an “Agriculture Report”? Well One of my blogging buddies @quiteayarnblog has an ongoing series of posts called “Agriculture Report” whose title always cracks me up because it is an update of what is going on in her garden.So I had to adopt that term for my garden report)
WHAT’S ON THE DESIGN WALL
I have so many projects in queue – unfinished projects and new project with imaginary and actual deadlines – but I was having a “squirrel” moment and cleaning out old quilting magazines and came across this pattern, String Attached, in an old issue of AmericanQuilter Magazine – and had to make it!
I am not sure why I fell in love with it but I did. I’ve done very little “string piecing” in the past but I thought it would be a great way to work down my collection of solid color fabric scraps:
I dumped them out and selected fabric scraps for the little quilt. I decided to stay away from dark or medium purple but to have red-violet and pink instead. I also tried to select fabrics similar to the sample one in the pattern.
The pattern calls string piecing on foundation paper but I decided to use muslin instead.
And here is the beginning of the center star on my design wall:
I am hopeful so far but I have some Y-seam type piecing to do when I get all 8 points to the center star done – yikes!
AGRICULTURE REPORT
My little upstairs patio garden is doing well this year, probably due to the ridiculous amount of rain we’ve been getting in the Denver Metro area. John and I joke we are now living in “Den-attle” or “Sea-enver” (Denver + Seattle).
I have tomatoes, peppers, and various herbs growing along with some Marigolds for pest control.
I was excited the other day to harvest my first tomatoes of the season!
Yes there were three cherry (small) tomatoes, but it was still exciting (smile).
It’s been a long time since I’ve added a post to my blog categoryLife in B&W where I let my inner Ansel Adams run free (smile). So it was time to share some of the Black & White photos I took while recently visiting the Oregon Coast. I’ll tell you more about the trip in a future post, but for now here are photos from our visit to Yaquina Bay State Park in Newport, Oregon and the Yaquina Head Lighthouse:
While at the state park beach area we enjoyed looking for life in the tide pools (the tide was low), a visiting with a park ranger who gave us a great overview, looking at large rocks covered with endless mussels, and trying to carefully walk on the rocks on the beach near the tide pools (the beach is entirely made of black basaltic rocks) without wiping out on Cobble Beach!
If you’d like to see more and see some of what we saw but in actual color, here is a video I found on YouTube:
The photos are courtesy of the couple who run “Dog Camp”, they send me daily photos! His new crush is named Gracie and she is entangled with him in the second photo. We were informed that Mike was obsessed with her during dog camp!
Before John and I left for the Oregon Coast to rent a car and have a road trip (John’s never been to the Oregon Coast and I know it fairly well) and to have a reunion with some of my very dear old friends, John stopped by his Dad Chuck’s house to drop something off. He brought Mike with him (who loves Chuck so much!) and there was another Goose and Mike incident, ha! John of course took photos (smile).
Here is Mike getting loving from Chuck while Goose looks irritated:
Goose then whispers something in Mike’s ear:
Mike tries again to convince John that Goose is trouble:
And finally Mike just walks off:
John says Mike spends a lot of time barking at Chuck and at him when Goose is around. It is like Mike is saying: “get him out of here”!
Hopefully they will eventually learn to get along but for now he remains Mike’s nemesis…
Next post I will tell you about my Oregon Coast adventures!
I hate being behind on reading my blogging buddies posts, so I wasn’t going to post again until I caught up. I haven’t caught up yet but I am only like 3 – 4 days behind now so I am allowing myself to do this quick post!
As I mentioned in the February 6, 2023 post What’s On the “Design Carpet”, I am a nervous front seat passenger in a car. My best bet is to do something to distract me while I am a front seat passenger (especially when my partner John is driving, ha!). So I’ve been taking a granny square crochet project on the road whenever I am a passenger and I’ve made a bit of progress.
Instead of the “Design Wall” in my studio, I thought I’d show you my progress on the “Design Carpet” in my living room – ha!
Here is what the granny squares looked like in the beginning of the project:
I decided to add to more rows in a different color gray to float the centers:
And now 5 month later, I have 50 granny squares completed:
You might notice one very dark gray bordered granny square in the image above:
Well I have 30 more granny squares to complete and I plan to make a lot of them with that darker gray yarn (Currently I plan to make an 8 by 10 granny square blanket, so I need 80 blocks to complete it).
If you haven’t guessed it, I’ve been using up my collection of random gray acrylic and acrylic/wool blend yarn, including two different variegated grays/blacks yarns from my stash. So it will be another “scrappy” granny square blanket like these two I made previously:
I seem to have a thing about gray yarn as I notice there is a lot of gray in that blanket above!
I’d love to someday make a super “scrappy” granny square afghan like the one I came across in the blog post Scrappy July by View From Our Hill. She has like 16 different yarns in each granny square block – check out the link!
The Black Pioneers: Legacy in the American Westexhibit opened at the California Museum in Sacramento, CA on June 10, 2023 however the official exhibit opening event occurred on July 15, 2023 and I attended.
I was so surprised to discover my quilt Langston Hughes: Pioneer Poet was used as their show poster! The museum staff told me how much they loved my quilt.
Here are some of the photos I took (including the poster and my piece, see videos below to see the other quilts in the show):
This quilt has gotten a lot of mileage! I also found it posted on other online advertisement for the show:
GoodDay Sacramento morning show had a segment on the exhibit (you will see my piece toward the end of the segment):
GoodDay Sacramento
CBS News Sacramento also had a segment on the exhibit:
CBS News Sacramento
And here is the walk-through video I took while at the exhibit:
I recently returned from a long weekend in California. John and I visited family and friends in Oakland and Sacramento California. I’ll share some photos/stories from those visits in a future post.
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.
I finished the freeform scrappy log cabin quilt I first wrote about in this post – What’s on the Design Wall: Scrappy Log Cabin. I pieced the blocks as a sample for theScrap Happy Quilt RetreatI had in May. I got it back the other week from the longarm quilter, put on a binding, and earlier this week I finished sewing down the binding.
It is now hung in the wall of the upstairs guest bedroom where I have a B&W theme going on with some framed Ansel Adams posters, Black & White wall art, and B&W photos I’ve taken (on the walls not shown in the images below).
This quilt is very “scrap happy” as the quilt top was pieced entirely from my collection of black, white and gray scraps!
As promised, here are the bloggers that participate in the ScrapHappy monthly posting event, check out their blogs linked below for their ScrapHappy posts:
A month ago John and I decided to visit Fort Collins, CO for an overnight visit. We love Fort Collins and are entertaining the idea of moving there someday…perhaps.
On our way to Fort Collins, we stopped in the neighboring town Loveland, CO to visit John’s sister and her husband and go on a boat ride with her and her husband.
We had a lovely boat ride around the reservoir/lake area they live in (Colorado is far from the ocean but we do have rivers, reservoirs and lakes to sail on). Their adorable little dog Lacey came on the boat ride with us and had her own little bed on the boat:
After visiting with John’s sister and her husband we stopped at the Loveland Visitor Center to get John a sticker (he collects stickers to put on his toolbox) and took some photos of the awesome “Love” sign outside the visitor center:
(Did you spot John in the photo?)
Behind the “O” of LOVE, which is shaped into a heart, are “love locks” where people promising their love to each other have left locks:
You can see the theme of Loveland is “Love” and inside the visitor center they also had this sign that you could use as a background for photos:
Postscript
A Visit to Pink Door Fabrics
Before we got to Loveland, we first stopped in Frederick, CO to visit the retail store of Pink Door Fabrics, which is only open to the public 2 days a month.
Here are some photos from my wander around the retail store of Pink Door Fabrics, which is primarily an online shop specializing in Tula Pink fabrics.
I was well behaved until I got to this section of the shop:
I filled my bag really full and they did not mind!
For the Quiltfolk Magazine photoshoot (see posts Quiltfolk Magazine Photoshoot, Part I andQuiltfolk Magazine Photoshoot, Part II ), I wanted to have a quilt in progress up on the wall. The magazine editor had suggested it a day prior to the photoshoot and the quilt I had in my “UFO Stash” that came to mind were blocks of brightly colored “Crazy Curve Circles” that my friend D had given me a couple years ago (see June 2020 post Tweaks to the Tierneycreates Studio).
D already pieced a lot of the blocks; and I ended up piecing the rest of the sections together that she cut from the templates but had not pieced. She also gave me fabric and I made some additional blocks using the templates she also gave me.
Here is what the quilt currently looks like on my design wall – I’ve made a small version of the quilt pattern designed by Elisa’s Back Porch Designs:
There was a lot of piecing to get the whole quilt together – first the individual sections into a four patch, resulting in 16 blocks; and then sewing the 16 blocks together. I thought about making a larger quilt (I am so many blocks left over) but I just wanted to get this one done and move on to my other projects.
I’ve decided to hand quilt it as a late Autumn/early Winter project, and use this dusty collection of hand quilting threads I bought at a sewing expo show in Seattle, WA early in my quilting days (2000?):
So I am taking this quilt off the design wall and putting it away until the cooler weather when I’d want to have a quilt sitting on my lap while I hand quilt it.
So what to do with all the leftover blocks?
I’ve decided to make the large version of the quilt Circle Dance which includes both the larger “Crazy Curves” blocks (the one I made) and the smaller ones:
The pattern says “63 inches by 70 inches” but I think I can make it even larger with all the blocks I have left over. I will need to make the small “Crazy Curves” from the small template from the extra fabric D gave me.
I might start that in 2024 or 2025, who knows. I have so many projects in queue!
Next up on my project list is sewing on and then sewing down the binding for my black, white and gray scrappy freeform log cabin quilt – Oh Scrap – It’s Not Just Black and White (see post ScrapHappy June 2023: “Oh Scrap – It’s Not Just Black and White!” if you’d like background on this quilt), which is back from the longarm machine quilter:
And to close out this post, here is my Human Manager, Mike (see previous post) who is irritated I was taking a photo of the quilt on my design wall and not playing with him and his bear.
This is Mike, the Miniature Schnauzer that lives with Tierney and John and provides management of their lives. I am guest blogging since Tierney has fallen off the blogging-wagon again busy with summer visitors and trying to finish up projects (that she will eventually blog about…)
I want to share with you an irritating issue I’ve been dealing with for a while: a battle between my “cousin” (or “uncle”) Goose and I over who gets to manage the humans.
First you might be confused if you’ve never lived with Miniature Schnauzers. Miniature Schnauzers are natural “Human Managers” and can help guide humans in their daily lives. My late sister Sassy the Highly Opinionated Miniature Schnauzer had her own blog Schnauzer Snips and she addressed this in a Special Service Announcement she made on her blog:
I already had John and Tierney “under my paw”; and John’s Dad Chuck was very amenable to Human Management by a Miniature Schnauzer – whenever I stayed over my “grandpa’s” house I was able to keep him easily in line.
Then everything changed…
John’s sister decided to get a Miniature Schnauzer puppy (Goose) and share custody with her father Chuck. At first I was okay with this as I know I am a role model of dog fabulousness and I figured they were just trying (and would not succeed) to find their own “Mike wannabe” that they could have regularly in their life.
Little did I know Goose had his own plans and would become my nemesis in a battle for control of the Humans!
Here are some recent photos from when John and I stopped by for a visit with Chuck and Goose (I much prefer when we visit Chuck and irritating Goose is at his other home!)
Goose is whispering in my ear: “Chuck is mine and soon John will be too, I’m going to be in charge of managing the humans!”
Here we are at a stand-off, each one of us wanting to get on John’s lap.
Here I am pleading to John to just ignore Goose, I am his one and only manager!
Goose succeeds in getting on John’s lap and his now mocking me.
Here I am whispering to Goose: “You might have won this one but watch your furry back. There can only be one human manager in this family!”
Hopefully Tierney will return to blogging in the future, until then I am happy to let you know about my struggles to be the primary Human Manager of John and my grandpa!
Recently my sister and my nephew visited us in Colorado for 4 days. Here are some highlights of their trip which included a visit to the Night Bazaarin downtown Denver, hiking at Castlewood Canyon, and making homemade Ramen.
THE NIGHT BAZAAR
I liked calling it “The Night Market” (it sounded more mysterious) and we stumbled upon it when visiting downtown Denver one evening.
My nephew, who likes trying out eateries he hears about on viral Tik Tok videos, asked if we could visit Dave’s Hot Chicken (which they do not have available in Virginia where they live). It is a “fast food” type of eatery but one of the founders trained at Thomas Keller’s French Laundry (one of the world’s most famous three-Michelin star restaurants) and it shows in what I would consider a masterpiece of “fast food” eatery chicken.
daveshotchicken.com
So we ventured to downtown Denver where one of the Dave’s Hot Chicken locations was located and across from that eatery was the Night Bazaar. After our visit to Dave’s we headed over to the Night Bazaar.
We had so much fun wandering through the vendor booths as the sun was setting. Mike the Miniature Schnauzer was in the backpack and got to enjoy some sightseeing in downtown Denver:
John was continually stopped as we wandered through the market and then the Platte River Plaza bridge area with questions about Mike in a backpack. In the photo above he is chatting with a large group of people who want to know how Mike ended up in a backpack (the other dogs were being walked on leash through the market).
My sister and nephew found this cool sidewalk art with very wise words and took this cool photo:
THE CANYON
My nephew loves Colorado and wanted to go on a hike while he was visiting. We decided to take him to Castlewood Canyon which is not too far from our home and has lots of hiking options based on desired activity level. Here are a couple photos from our hike:
I’ve learned to wear a hat (I am the sister in the hat) when it’s hot and you are hiking – it helps in the Colorado sun!
At the Visitor Center, where I stopped to use the bathroom, I met a Park Ranger that had a rescued Bull Snake wrapped around her waist. The snake was recovering from an illness and she was “babysitting” it by keeping it on her all day at work!
Now that is dedication to the park’s wildlife!
If you’d like to see more photos of Castlewood Canyon check out this post I did in April 2020 – And on the 8th Day…Part III.
THE RAMEN
John’s loves to cook and always wants to challenge himself and experiment with making foods outside his comfort zone. A couple weeks ago, after much YouTube watching, he began making Ramen soup at home. He was using pre-packaged air-dried noodles (much higher quality than the instant ramen you eat in college) along with his fresh ingredients.
Well he wanted to take it to the next level and learn how to make his own Ramen noodles from scratch. My visiting nephew also loves to cook and was game to do a “Ramen Night” one evening for dinner and make Ramen with handmade noodles.
It took them two evenings to complete the dish – you have to let the ramen noodles sit for a day before you can use them. You also have to let the prepared chicken thighs for the ramen sit overnight before cooking the chicken so it will have a nice crust on the skin.
After all their hard work, they served us Ramen for dinner on Sunday night:
Their Miso based broth was amazing and I thought I was at an authentic ramen eatery!
So those are some highlights from their visit.
I’ll close this post with a couple bonus photos from their visit:
1) My sister brought a kimono for me as a belated birthday gift. She has connected with a woman with in Thailand that makes these kimonos with fabric sourced from Japan. She plans to import some of the kimonos to sell in the US. Here I am modeling the kimono she gifted me:
2) My sister and nephew adore my dog Mike, they are dog people…and cat people (they have two cats and two dogs) and Mike went on a lot of road trips with us. Here is Mike acting as a granny square crochet square rest as I crocheted sitting in the back seat of the car with my sister during their visit:
(I work on crocheting granny squares when I am a passenger in a car for a long car ride…keeps my passenger-in-a-car anxiety under control!)
3) My nephew and John played tennis at the tennis courts in my neighborhood and had a blast.
John didn’t do too bad playing someone like 1/3rd his age. (Both had played on tennis teams in junior high school but there was quite the difference of years since those experiences!)
I was randomly thinking about this memory the other day and thought I would re-post it. If you’ve been following my blog a very long time (at least since 2016) you might remember the post – The Ladies Friendship Circle (1931).
In 2013 I facilitated the completion of a quilt started in the 1930s and given as a gift to someone 80 years later (who was alive when the quilt was first started). Here is the story:
THE LADIES FRIENDSHIP CIRCLE (1931)
82 years ago in 1931 (note this post was originally written in 2013) my friend’s MJ’s grandmother and her group of friends made a quilt top for MJ’s mother (the new baby in 1931). The quilt was never finished. MJ wanted to finish this quilt for her 82 year old mother who had kept it packed away in a chest for 80+ years and surprise her for Christmas.
After searching several quilt shops, MJ and I found the perfect backing and binding fabric at one of our wonderful Central Oregon quilt shops. Then we had the quilt professionally longarm machine quilted.
MJ and I spent an evening sewing down the quilt binding to finish it. We were both snuggled under the quilt as we each worked on sewing down one end of the binding. MJ planned to surprise her 82 year Mother with the mind blowing Christmas gift of a lifetime – a quilt top put away since 1931 that has been turned into a quilt!
Something very special about this quilt: MJ’s Mom is the only person living from this time period of this dear group of family and family friends – so when she gets the surprise quilt for Christmas she will see the names of the long-passed very dear people she grew up with.
I warned MJ – when you hand your Mom the quilt at Christmas, it is going to be a “blow out the tear ducts moment”!
MJ presented her mother with the quilt for Christmas in December 2013 and yes there were many tears of joy. Imagine receiving a completed quilt that was started when you were a child, by people who loved you and are now are long gone.
MJ’s Mom passed away in mid 80s and I am so glad she got to enjoy this quilt before she passed.
Quilts are love (as most quilters know) and this quilt contained the “spirits” of the departed loved ones entwined in the quilt’s hand embroidered stitches. I liked to imagine these “spirits” being very pleased that their quilt was finally finished and given to the intended…even if it took 82 years…
I had a couple brief updates and I thought I would spread them out into a bunch of brief blog posts but I am lumping them all together.
GO BOLDLY
An update on the quilt (which might end up more wallhanging size) that I mentioned in the post What I’ve Been Up To and What’s on the Design Wall, which I named “Go Boldly“: I am now sewing the blocks together. There are 64 blocks and each need to be sewing into blocks of 4 to make them into 16 blocks to then sew together.
I am currently debating whether to make the quilt larger (I have enough leftover blocks to make 1 – 2 additional quilts or wallhangings) or leave as it is. I think I am going to just sew the 16 blocks (4 mini sections to make a block) together and then decide.
The longarm machine quilter (Sew Colorado Quilting) has finished quilting it and sent me some photos, here is one of them.
I actually picked up the quilt today from her and will do a post on it with more photos once I get the extra backing and binding trimmed (I like to do my own trimming) and decide on a binding. I am thinking about doing a “facing” on it (like you would do with an art quilt) as I plan to hang it on the wall.
COLOUR WHEEL
A quick follow up on this post The Colour Wheel Quilt is Done, about the color wheel quilt I made to use as a teaching aid when I give a workshop next year (September 2024).
By the way I will share more information about that workshop including the venue once that venue gets ready to publish its online catalogue listing the workshop. If that doesn’t happen before October 2023, then I’ll go ahead and share as I’ve shared it with the Quiltfolk article writer for Issue 28 that comes out in October so it will be publicly revealed then anyway!
I had put the quilt away until next year for the workshop but then I decided to find a place for it in my studio so I could enjoy it before then – here it is now on a wall in my studio that I rearranged to make room for it:
VARIOUS RANDOM INFORMATION
John who loves to cook, tried making Ramen for the first time the other night and it came out pretty good!
My yellow rose bush in my front garden is finally taking off and here is one of its lovely roses:
And finally, here is Mike and his “cousin” Goose both trying to via for John’s laps (Goose won) when John was visiting his Dad the other day.
Hmm, I just realized that technically Goose is Mike’s “uncle” not his cousin – ha!
tierneycreates 