I am taking a break from posting about the natural geologic beauty of Colorado like I did in my previous two posts. Instead I have a sort of follow up to my 04/16/2020 post Solo Show Seattle Municipal Tower (re-post).
My first solo show at the Seattle Municipal Tower (sponsored by the City of Seattle’s Office of Arts and Culture) ended in July 2019, and I’d already moved to Colorado. The City of Seattle ended up purchasing 3 of the quilts from the show for their permanent collection; and private collectors purchased 2 more, so that left 7 quilts (or 6 I forget) to be returned to me.
Thanks to my friends Colleen, Donna and Judy, the quilts were held for me until I attended a quilt retreat in Washington state in November 2019.
I noticed when I picked up the quilts that had not sold, the City of Seattle had also included all the placards from the show! Below is an example of one of those placards created by the City of Seattle’s gallery curator and his team:
I was not sure as to what to do with these placards, but after moving back into our current house (after due to the COVID related financial crisis we decided not to buy a new house), I decided to create a gallery in my house with the remaining art quilts and their placards.
The gallery is scattered about the house upstairs and downstairs; and is found in hallways as well as bedrooms.
I also mounted on the wall of my studio the placards for the quilts that sold as well as the main poster for the show.
I am not sure how long I will leave the placards up along side the remaining art quilts, but for now I find it entertaining. I guess when you are stuck at home during the COVID times you have to discover new ways to entertain yourself!
Postscript
Speaking of entertaining oneself, I’ve been thinking about the instruction/suggestion below that I discovered on a morning walk as sidewalk/walking path art (see post Paved Trail Inspirations):
Social isolation is the standard now in the “time of COVID” (how I refer to these times), and my partner John and I have been trying to be creative with finding simple ways to entertain ourselves (besides exhaustive online television network watching).
One of the things we do a couple times of week is having “walking cocktail hour” when we take Mike our miniature schnauzer for a walk in the evening. We load our portable tumblers with our cocktails – a microbrew for me, an Old Fashioned for him, and head out on our dog walk!
And no one knows what is our tumblers…(smile)
I always wonder what pets are thinking about the COVID times and the humans always being around. I already telecommuted full-time and now my partner is also telecommuting, so we are always home together. Here is Mike trying to make the best of us both working on our laptops and fitting in a snuggle with the humans…
Here is the description of this spectacular park from the 
My partner John, who took the photos, had to precariously hand me Mike once I got myself safely positions on the rocks in the middle of the water.
All I can say is that these images do not do the beauty of this place justice.
And to close out this post, here is me, feeling quite happy and blessed to be a on a beautiful hike, on a beautiful day, in the beautiful state of Colorado!
Don’t panic, I’ve did not give up on the project I blogged about yesterday. Instead I removed all the half square triangles (HSTs) made from scrap triangles so they could be trimmed:
And I got a whole lotta trimming to do! There are 5 different sizes of HSTs: 5.5″, 4.5″, 3.5″, 2.5″, and 2″that make up this quilt pattern. For example, I need 200 2″ squares.
So unless you want to see a slow record of my continuing growing piles of HSTs in various sizes, I am not going to update you on this project until I get all the HSTs (hundreds of them!) cut to size and start laying the quilt out.
These bins contains scraps organized by color.
One of these collections, is a collection of scrap triangles, most given to me by other quilters when they trimmed these triangle when piecing blocks for their quilts. The triangles are in various sizes.
But I’ve decided I want to start using (and cleaning out) my ridiculous collection of themed bags of scraps (mainly given to me by other quilters) and my scrap triangle collection had gotten out of control.
And pulled out this awesome book by Amanda Jean Nyberg, No Scrap Left Behind, for ideas.
Eventually my “hot mess” of scrap triangles, turned into this on my design wall:
But hey – it’s going to be a very scrappy quilt!
Someday it will be done…
Oh – if you’d like to see close up photos and read more about the flags about the guest bed, here is a post I did in May 2017 on these flags –
I had a mismatched collection of baskets I’ve collected over the years and I used them in an old storage shelf/bookcase (that fit perfectly in 1/2 the closet) to store my paper crafting, jewelry making and miscellaneous craft supplies. I am pleased with the re-purposing.
Well, 2 days ago, I discovered on my walk a whole path of inspirational messages in sidewalk chalk that I want to share with you.
We were created by the very, very, very talented Helen of 
Well enough about me (even though I am very interesting) and let’s get to the tour of Tierney’s “new” studio.
So when they decided not to buy the new house/not to move, Tierney had to unpack her studio and in unpacking her studio, she decided to reimagine the layout.
Over the next several days she unpacked her boxes (which seemed like they would never end), hung up some art and quilts on the studio wall and found a place for the large design wall her partner John built her.
So Tierney is ready to create (she can be tierneycreates again) in her new studio! She is so happy to have her sewing machine unpacked!
But she is hoping to start sewing a bit more fun things in the near future than masks…
Which of course should have been her first priority from the beginning of setting up her studio!
But due to the current financial crisis (and the hit we took in the stock market, etc.) and the global pandemic/its related uncertainty, it did not feel like the right time to buy the new house or to move, so we decided to stay where we are at for a couple more years.
I was sad for a brief moment (just a couple tears, not an “ugly cry” or anything) of not getting the new house, but then here is where “perspective” really came in:
In my next post I will show you my unpacked and reconfigured studio (or perhaps I’ll have a guest blogger, the 
We even invented the “Shoe Coaster” (patent pending) for our special beverages on the beach!
Unfortunately we grew a little bored of just hanging out on the beach after a while.
The truth is, after just a couple days of this “relaxation” stuff, we were bored out of our minds.
But like the creature in the image above, after a couple of days we decided all this relaxation vacation stuff was “for the birds” and not for us!
Inside this bag was a large collection of fabrics by a company called 
The package included yardage, precuts (charm squares and fat quarters), a panel (a Moda Fabrics panel) and some odd size fabric scraps.
The pictures above do not do the package as there is enough fabric for several quilts (there are at least 10+ yards of fabric among the yardage).
When I returned home, I trimmed these blocks to 5′ x 5″ (12.7 cm x 12.7 cm) blocks and began piecing them together and musing over how to finish the quilt including whether to machine or hand quilt it, etc.:
That’s where I left off in my previous post about this quilt – 
Here it is ready for hand stitching:
I bought a couple spools of gray Perle Cotton for hand stitching (I am not sure how much I need yet and did not want to over-buy):
And I’ve started stitching:
The quilt measures around 60″ x 60″ (152.4 x 152.4 cm) and it is going to take a while to hand quilt it, even with using large 
I love variegated yarn and I think the pattern created by the variegations in the yarn is yummy!
A handmade knitted hat is not enough to thank my sister for how much she was there for me during the most difficult time in my life but it is a little token of my appreciation.
Likely this is related to the worse winter of my life in early 2019 (after the worse Christmas season in my life when my husband died 12 days before Christmas).
The shop owner was delightful and she was working on gift boxes for customers with her monthly gift box subscription:
After a wonderful wander about this shop and delightful chat with the shop owner, we wandered around the other surrounding shops:
We stopped for a delicious lunch at a vegan restaurant:
And here are some unusual patterned fat quarters I bought at the shop (who knows what I will make with them but I just loved them and I do not know why!)
I put an arrow where the female turkey was and she did not seem very interested in any of them (she kept wandering away) while they took turns (or simultaneously) displaying their plumages!
Next post (which is the final one in this series of posts) I will share photos and stories from our Quilt Shop Hopping in Northern California!
Oh yes there we a lot more, but I figure four images is enough to expose you to 🙂
I spent a lot of the weekend cuddling with Riley (good therapy). She was a puppy of course and very active and crazy by nature but I set up a system of “Swaddling” her in a towel the evening to relax her and give us a break from her crazy puppy energy.
And for a beautiful moment in the midst of my grief, I felt at peace and quite loved.
On Superbowl Sunday (last Sunday), I had a “Stitching Bowl” and worked on getting the center of the piece sewn together:
I spent a brief time inside the ferry passenger cabin, which is HUGE! There are plenty of commuters that take the ferry every day. It was outside commuting hours, so the inside the ferry was fairly empty (or most people were sitting in their cars, as it is also a car ferry).
I got myself settled right in (sorry I am talking about me just a little in this post) and unpacked my most important quilt retreat accessory: my comfy fleecy ROBE!
I happily wore my robe most of the retreat...except when we went outside and to visit quaint little historic downtown Poulsbo!
But let’s back-up a moment, and tell you how this piece began and got to this point…
I began with creating a pattern with the dark gray framed blocks:
Then I worked on framing them with the light gray blocks:
tierneycreates 
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