A representative from the PNW Quilting Bloggers Comfort Quilt Drive reached out to me via my Inquiries page on my blog (which forwards to my email) asking if I could share this with my blog followers (edited a little bit for flow).
I have no background on, experience with, or affiliation with this project so it is at your discretion to decide to participate and you can contact the project coordinator directly for more information.
From Monique Arnold of The Sandpiper Project:
Just over a month ago, we launched our 10th bi-annual Comfort Quilt Drive, and with it came a wonderful idea: reaching out to the vibrant and generous quilting community here in the Pacific Northwest.
The Sandpiper Project is a community outreach dedicated to bringing comfort, spreading joy, and offering hope to children facing critical illnesses—primarily pediatric cancer.
Our work goes beyond delivering quilts. We also serve as ambassadors, using quilt auctions and community engagement to raise awareness and vital funding for nonprofit organizations that support children and their families during the most difficult seasons of life. The Sandpiper Project began as a way to pay forward the extraordinary care and compassion our family received when our oldest daughter was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at age 16.
In just four years, our community has: -Delivered over 1,300 handmade quilts to major children’s hospitals -Raised more than $100,000 for 12 children-focused nonprofits across the Pacific Northwest
Today, I’m reaching out with a heartfelt invitation. We would be honored if you—and your readers or followers—would consider participating in this year’s Comfort Quilt Drive by donating a quilt & helping us share the drive within your quilting community. Each quilt becomes a tangible reminder to a child that they are seen, cared for, and not alone.
This year’s quilts will be delivered to: —OHSU Doernbecher Children’s Hospital (Portland, OR) —Randall Children’s Hospital (Portland, OR) —All Ronald McDonald Houses in Oregon and Southwest Washington
The drive runs from November through January 15, 2026. If you choose to participate, we would love to feature your quilts, acknowledge your blog and community, and keep you updated on the meaningful ripple effects your generosity helps create.
Thank you for the beautiful work you do and for considering being part of this season of comfort and hope.
Warmly, Monique Arnold The Sandpiper Project c/o Wish Ambassador Lizzie Arnold 3650 NW Witham Hill Drive Corvallis, Oregon 97330 moakey2@icloud.com Facebook Group: The Sandpiper Project – Quilting the Fabric of Hope
The Sandpiper Project on Facebook Being Able To Say “Wish Granted!” Is AMAZING!
I made big progress and got the whole Sunflower themed Granny Square blanket all attached (horizontal and vertical) using a single crochet stitch to join the squares in both directions.
Here it is on the “Design Carpet”:
Here is another photo:
Now I am adding a single crochet border around the whole thing, likely several rows of single crochet, I’ll decide as I go along.
And then it will be time to weave in all the thread tails that are hiding in the back!
Oh I did try to make finishing the granny square blanket a portable project on like to I did with the individual granny squares, where I would work on them while riding in the car…
But it was a disaster and we had the “Great Hunt for the Lost Crochet Hook” in the car as well yarn tangling and blanket in my feet tangling disasters. So I had to finish it in my living room sitting in a chair to limit the drama – ha!
House Holiday Decorating
After I got the blanket assembled I felt very industrious and with the help of John got the Christmas tree up and the fireplace mantle decorated for the holidays!
It was fun to pull out our ornaments and various decorations and see them again! I missed these three holiday bears that I’ve had for over 25 years – they’ve held up pretty well:
I also put up this copy of The Night Before Christmas that John has had since he was a child.
The pages are on the verge of falling apart but I like reread it every year.
Do you need any help getting in the mood for the upcoming Christmas holidays? Do you want to see where Christmas has “exploded” and holiday cheer is spewed everywhere? Well I have a post for you 😉
John and I were recently in Las Vegas for his poker tournament and we stopped one day at the Bellagio Hotel’s Conservatory and Gardens where they had outdone themselves on Christmas decorations.
Here we are, overwhelmed with holiday cheer 😉
I don’t mean to make fun of it, the display was actually very lovely and the Bellagio’s team did a spectacular job with the design and decorations.
I got a kick out of the miniature train set circling one of the Christmas trees on display. It reminded of the electric train set we got from my grandfather that always chugged around our Christmas tree when I was a kid.
After touring the gardens we popped into the over the top Christmas Shop at the Bellagio where many items cost a mortgage payment.
But they were beautiful to look at and we had fun browsing the very crowded shop.
Update on the post 48 Granny Squares Now Connected – I now have 84 sunflower granny squares joined together vertically! I am plugging along 🙂
So 7 out of the 11 rows of 12 granny square each, are done and just 4 more rows (48 granny squares) to go.
Then I am of course going to single crochet them together horizontally and add a single crochet border all the way around to anchor everything. After that I will decide if I want to make a fancy border, etc.
Revisiting a Hat I Started Last Winter
I made 137 sunflower granny squares while riding in cars, planes, trains and sitting at events beginning May 2024. Now that the making of the individual sunflower granny squares is done (and the blanket is finally being assembled) I needed another portable project.
I used a variegated ball of yarn I found thrifting with little idea of what the different colors would be since it was already rolled into a ball and I could only see a little of the color changes!
It was my leap of faith hat!
So on Friday John’s son Z was visiting and we took him to the Denver Film Festival and saw the premiere of the film Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, starring Danile Craig, I brought my hat and worked on it in the car on the way to the event and at the event before the film showing began (we arrived early to get good seats and had a bit of a wait before the movie started).
Here’s some additional images from the festival including the lovely Chihuly chandelier that hangs in the Ellie Caulkins Opera House where the film was premiering.
The film was really fun and I recommend it when it premieres on Netflix in December.
Well they are at it again and they keep winning Halloween in my opinion!
The other day on my neighborhood walk I took another series of photos of the annual Halloween display of one of the area houses. Posting again for those of you who love Halloween (of course my photos do not do their display justice, it is so awesome and epic in person!)
Postscript
Bonus photo: John loves Maple Leaf cookies from Trader Joes and they finally had them in stock at our Trader Joes. He posed with this cookies in the pumpkin display in front of the store!
Skipping around in my Summer of Travel stories to share a recent story (this past weekend).
I recently returned from a 3-day weekend in Portland, Oregon. I went with John to visit his son Z and decided to take a craft class in Portland one day so John and Z could have time on their own one day.
At first I looked into classes on crafts I already know – quilting, bag making or knitting/crochet. I couldn’t find any class that interested me on the weekend I was in Portland.
Then a crazy idea came to mind: I’ve been interested in learning to paint using Watercolors (not sure why I am so drawn to Watercolor but I am) – why not find a Watercolor Painting class?
I found two options at Wildcraft Studio School: 1) Introduction to Watercolor Painting; or 2) Color Theory: Watercolor.
I am very interested in Color Theory (see my post about my Colour Wheel Quilt – The Colour Wheel Quilt is Done) and the class said it was for beginner and experienced Watercolor artists.
So I selected this class. I figure I can watch YouTube videos to learn Watercolor painting techniques but I’d really like some hands on instruction with how to mix colors using the Watercolor paint medium.
Arriving to class this past Saturday I was greeted with a lovely courtyard in front of the studio as you enter (I ended up enjoying my lunch in that courtyard during our break):
I felt very intimidated as I sat down at my table – what was I thinking dabbling in Watercolors?!?!?
The class was comprised of women in my age group, one young woman and one man. They were a friendly and engaging group and I really enjoyed chatting with the two women who sat at the table with me.
The class was taught by the Seattle-based Watercolor Artist Robin Bundi who was kind, patient and an excellent instructor!
The class was focused on understanding color and color mixing and our primary class exercise involved creating color wheel mixing samples using different sets of primary color palettes.
The instructor had many amazing examples of how just a couple primary colors (some version of red, blue, yellow) can make an endless assortment of colors, tints and shades.
Here’s an amazing sample piece created by the instructor demonstrating how you can just use two colors (Ultramarine and Brick) to create a palette:
So I got to work and finally (sort of) got the hang of mixing colors.
And at the end of the class she had us each paint a small piece with basic shapes/improvisational design, using what we learned of color mixing as well as color washing techniques.
Here is the piece I made (yes, not ready for a solo exhibit in Watercolors yet, ha!) but I forgot to erase/lighten the original pencil lines I used (and then ignored) when sketching the piece.
I joked with the instructor when she critiqued the piece that it looks like I took some mind altering substances before I began painting – ha!
Now when I catch up on my sewing projects I am going to work through an Introduction to Watercolor book I found a couple months ago thrifting as well as watch YouTube videos on painting techniques.
I think my goal is to be able to make Watercolor cards to send to friends (for them to recycle – ha!)
Well I will close out my serious of posts about our ambitious roadtrip in July 2025 to Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nebraska with a post about where the roadtrip adventures began – in Cheyenne Wyoming.
Before we headed to Frontier Days in Cheyenne, we wandered around downtown Cheyenne, stopping at the famous The Wrangler western store.
And being met with the largest cowboy boot selection I’ve ever seen:
John was a sport and tried on some boots which went so nicely with his shorts (not! ha!):
No sorry, as fetching as they looked, he did not leave the store with them.
Back outside there was a giant cowboy boot on display painted with western scenes:
To give perspective of how big the boot is here I am standing next to it and I am around 5′ 11″:
Then we headed to Frontier Days and ate our way through the Fairgrounds, ha!
It all began with a corn dog (I think I literally squealed with delight when I saw the corn dog booth as I hadn’t had one in like 8 years):
Then we found a booth with VERY amazing brisket birria tacos! They were so good we shared a second serving.
We of course had to get some lemonade to share in a commemorative cup when this booth, shaped like a lemon lured us over:
Yes we were on the verge of needing to roll ourselves out of the fairgrounds if we kept going, so we just admired the rest of the food from afar. Here a little gallery of some of the POOR NUTRITIONAL CHOICES we could have kept making 😉 :
Some of the foods sound like serious indigestion but they are probably fun to eat…
Fair Food makes me laugh – there is definitely some sort of competition to serve the craziest food that you’d never eat in your daily life. And of course they had things like deep fried Twinkies and deep fried Oreos. I am curious about the Pickle Pizza – I wish I could have sampled just a little of it to satisfy my curiosity!
After filling our tummies we headed to see the some of the annual Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo. I was good for about an hour and that was enough rodeo for me, I am not a big rodeo person. I can’t help myself I always start feeling bad for the animals like the little calves getting roped and tied. I know, I know, I’d never make it on the American Frontier! The bull riding was fun to watch for a while but then I started thinking about the bulls who didn’t want humans on their backs.
When I lived in Houston, Texas in the late 1980s to late 1990s, we used to go to the Houston Livestock and Rodeo once a year. I mainly went to see the livestock and I enjoyed seeing all the 4-H farm kids showing off their animals.
Then one year we went I absolutely fell in love with the cutest cow with fluffy ears. I was obsessed with this cow. I wanted to move to a farm and have a cow like that.
What a vaguely remember the cow looked like (image credit Depositphotos)
My late husband Terry said to me: “Yes we could adopt it and name it ‘Hamburger'”.
Oh no I realized – my sweet fluffy eared new friend was going to become a yummy burger someday! After that I stopped wanting to go to the livestock show – ha!
(I was a Vegetarian for a while when I was in my late teens/early 20s but bacon and the smell of burgers on the grill made lured me back to being an Omnivore…)
Oh so back to the Cheyenne Frontiers Day Rodeo – there was one moment during my brief time at the rodeo that captured by heart. The competition opened with a Native American/Lakota horse blessing by Mo-Brings-Plenty, a member of the Lakota Tribe who was also the Grand Marshall for the 2025 Cheyenne Frontier Days.
I took a little video of the end of the presentation as I was too enthralled at first to think to film it, but here is what I have:
I wish I had captured the whole thing.
Well that continues this series of posts. If you are just joining us, here are the other posts about our travels in Wyoming, South Dakota and Nebraska.
“According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change, global climate is on track to increase by 1.5° C by 2040, and with that, irreparable damage will likely be done to earth’s ecosystems if our course is not changed decisively and with haste. In the IPCC’s Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report, clear goals and pathways have been defined to reverse our emissions of green house gases – 50% by 2030, and to arrive at net zero emissions by 2050, keeping the global rise in temperature to under 1.5° C in perpetuity. Hence, 2050 marks a very important point in our human history…
Textile work from makers from 45 U.S. states and 9 countries have become important parts of TOWARD 2050, which has culminated in this immersive installation at Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, Arizona – February 8th through June 1st of 2025. Makers were called to create environmentally themed, textile panels in the style of “prayer flags”. Our goal was to collect enough double sided flags to define the pathways of this interactive labyrinth experience. That goal was met thanks to the generousity and commitment of all the makers participating in this project.”
Here are some images from the TOWARD 2050 textile flags labyrinth (which took over a half hour to the center and back) I walked during my visit to the Desert Botanical Garden.
I recently found this video on YouTube of the labyrinth I walked back in February 2025:
NEXT STEP: MAKING BLANKETS (QUILTS)
As you can see from the Toward 2025 website screen shot above, after the exhibit (and raising awareness), the next step is to make “blankets” (to me they would be quilts) to donate to communities that will “suffer future climate catastrophe).
From the Toward 2050 website here are the packets that will be sent out to volunteers and what they want the “blankets” to look like:
Images credits: Toward 2050 website
VOLUNTEERING TO MAKE A QUILT/BLANKET TOP
So I signed up and a couple weeks ago (while I was traveling) a package of 30 flags arrived in the mail:
Here are the 30 blocks laid out quickly on my design wall:
And here is a sampling of some of the blocks I was sent to piece together made from participants all over the world:
Volunteers are required to provide the fabric for the lattice and borders for the “blanket top” they are piecing from the Toward 2050 blocks (the “blanket” will then be longarm quilted by other volunteers).
I was planning to search through my fabric stash to find something that would work with all the different colors in the blocks when I received a gifted piece of fabric in the mail from one of my awesome penpals! (You know who you are and you ROCK! Impeccable timing!)
Turns out this fabric would work well with the blocks and I tested it out in the image above.
Talk about a serendipitous surprise!
I will of course share the pieced blanket/quilt top with you all in a future post once I get it put together.
Postscript
If by chance you are interested in participating, they are still looking for volunteers to piece tops using 30 of the textile flags the they will send you.
I sat down this morning to catch up on reading blog posts and to write a blog post and I discovered that Yvette @Priorhouse Blog has posted the interview I did for her blog.
A couple of months ago she invited me to be interviewed for her Summer 2025 series of blogger interviews. I accepted and here is the interview on her blog:
Hopefully clicking the above image where I’ve imbedded link to the interview works to open it.
After leaving Glenwood Springs, we headed to see Leadville, Colorado where John’s paternal grandmother grew up and he’d not return to since he was a young child.
To get to Leadville, we crossed the Tennessee Pass, elevation 10,424 feet above sea level, and crossed over the Continental Divide.
An Emotional “Divide“
As shown in the image above, the Tennessee Pass section of the Continental Divide is home to the 10th Mountain Division Memorial.
My late husband, Terry (aka “Terry the Quilting Husband”) was a HUGE military history buff, with a focus on the Napoleonic Wars (we visited Waterloo in Belgium), the Civil War (we visited Gettysburg), and World War II (he didn’t want to visit Normandy/Omaha Beach in France and I always suspect he stormed the beaches in a past life by how much the thought of visiting deeply disturbed him*).
*An interesting little story about Terry: His older sister, who helped raise him in a family of 7 children, told me after he passed, that when he was a young child he would set up very elaborate battles with his toy soldiers that were far beyond the knowledge, skill and understanding of a 4 year old child. She always suspected he was a former military person reincarnated or something.
He read/studied/engaged in historical miniature wargaming and military strategy gaming (historical battle reenactment on paper/tabletop game) extensively related to World War II battles and was quite the amateur historian when it came to the United States Army’s 10th Mountain Division which is based out of Fort Drum, New York (Terry grew up in NY and when he served in the US Army as a Medic he spent time at Fort Drum). The 10th Mountain Division had an significant role in the European Theater of World War II.
I was very familiar with the 10th Mountain Division as Terry and I had many historical discussions during the 33 years we were together.
So when John and stopped at the memorial on our way to Leadville I was completely emotionally overwhelmed. Not only because of the memories of discussing the 10th Mountain Division for years with Terry; but because I knew Terry would have so loved to see the memorial. It would have made him very happy and moved him deeply.
I spent some time alone just being with the memorial and my thoughts (John was very understanding). It was a very emotional (Continental) Divide experience…
Leadville, Colorado
We continued on to Leadville and explored the town.
Exploring included wandering around downtown Leadville and visiting an independent bookstore and antique shop – The Two Dog Market; and a yarn/craft shop – Fire on the Mountain:
As well as a very quirky hardware and antique shop – The Western Hardware:
I got a little emotional again during our visit to this hardware store as in addition to historical miniature wargaming, Terry loved fantasy wargaming (like Warhammer 40,000 and Dungeons and Dragons). They had a display of the same type of fantasy wargaming figures that Terry had a collection of and liked to paint (see image above). I then had to spend some alone/emotionally reflective time with this display.
It seemed that the Universe was providing me with quite the memory and grief tinged day!
We also paid a visit to the famous (at least in Colorado) adventure clothing factory store Melanzana while in Leadville.
Here I am in the image above with my new Melanzana “hoody” and cap made with leftover hoody fabric.
After Leadville we headed to Breckenridge, Colorado and then home. I didn’t take any photos in Breckenridge but here is a post from 2024 on on my first visit there – Breckenridge and the Continental Divide (we crossed a different section of the Continental Divide – Loveland Pass – on our way there during of 2024 trip).
Closing the post with a random photo – somewhere that we stopped near Leadville.
Even though it was early June, there was still snow on the ground!
(As a I mentioned in the previous post: Leadville is the highest incorporated city in North America, sitting at an elevation of 10,152 feet/3094 meters above sea level)
Continuing the story about how I celebrated my 60th birthday that I began in the post Birthday-ing with Bruno.
After our trip to Las Vegas (see post Birthday-ing with Bruno), the next part of my birthday celebration was a Colorado roadtrip in early June 2025 to Dillon, Glenwood Springs, Leadville and Breckenridge, Colorado.
I love Colorado and I want to get know as much of the state as I can/see as much of it as I can.
On the way to Glenwood Springs: Dillon, Colorado
We started out heading to Dillon, Colorado a small mountain town 10 miles from the Continental Divide; and is located 9,111 feet (2,777 meters) above sea level. In addition to Dillon, we stopped in the neighboring town Silverthorne, Colorado another small mountain town and visited the best Habitat for Humanity Restore (Thrift Store) I’ve ever been to!
Image credit: alignable.com
We spent an hour there wandering around and I found a lovely African basket there which I now use in my studio, along with a bunch of awesome CDs (I’ve rediscovered the CD player stereo component and have taken to listening to entire albums in the living, old school style!).
John and I spent a lovely evening with our cocktails sitting in the room above on one of the sofas chatting about life.
During the day we wandered around Glenwood Springs (famous for it’s Hot Springs, which I refer to as “the community bathtub”*) and had a wonderful lunch at the historic Hotel Colorado which in “1905 became the temporary home for the President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt and his assistants during a three-week bear hunting expedition. Already a fan of the state of Colorado, Roosevelt stayed at the Hotel Colorado on multiple occasions” (History of Hotel Colorado).
Here’s some photos from our lunch:
I love this quit when you enter the Hotel Colorado – any place with a quilt displayed when you walk in is okay by me!
Here are some of the “community bathtubs”* (the Hot Springs) that Glenwood Springs is famous for:
*You might be curious as to why I refer to the Hot Springs in Glenwood Springs as the “community bathtub”. Well the two times I’ve visited them and soaked in them, they were bath water temperature and it was like taking a bath with a hundred other people!
A Stop in Minturn, Colorado
On our way back towards home we stopped in Minturn, Colorado which is near Vail, Colorado the famous resort/ski town, and visited a tiny whiskey tasting room in a little house for the distillery the Minturn Whisky Company.
We had an awesome time sampling the spirits and John bought home a bottle.
From Minturn we continued onto Leadville (the highest incorporated city in North America, sitting at an elevation of 10,152 feet/3094 meters above sea level), crossing another section of the Continental Divide which I’d not been to before and then onto Breckenridge and back home.
I’ll share our adventures in Leadville and Breckenridge in the next post, but to close this post here are a couple photos from our roadtrip when we stopped at various scenic areas for a break from being in the car. Sorry I do not remember where these are located but they were lovely (smile):
In late May we traveled to Las Vegas, Nevada to celebrate my 60th birthday Part I (I wanted to two part birthday trip and the second part was a Four Corners/Mesa Verde National Park/Durango/Ouray/Pagosa Springs trip which I share in other posts).
So yes I just said it – I turned 60. It’s very shocking. I’ve been blogging since I was in my late 40s (October 2025 is my 12 year blogging anniversary) and when I turned 50 I kept it pretty secret in the blogosphere as I didn’t want my readers to know I was “that old” (ha, that is no longer old). At first I was going to hid the turning 60 but why – who cares?
Actually I only feel like celebrating getting older these days as 1) I can’t age backward so I’m stuck with it; 2) my mother only got to live to her early 50s; 3) my late husband passed at 58; and 4) I am in good health (at least in my mind).
Originally I was going to spend my 60th birthday in Bend, Oregon where I lived for 14 years before moving to Colorado in 2019. It would be my first time returning in 6 years since my husband Terry died suddenly in December 2018 and I moved in April 2019.
I was planning a wonderful reunion with several groups of Central Oregon friends, staying at several houses; and the opportunity for several of them to meet John for the first time.
But I couldn’t do it. Not yet. I ended up disappointing several groups of friends and giving a lot of apologies. I just could not return to the place where I “lost it all”. Grief is weird and people react different ways to big life losses.
I guess I am still reacting to the loss of my wonderful life partner and life in Central Oregon by not being psychologically able to return…at least not yet.
So I had to rethink what I wanted to do for my 60th birthday and I came up with a strange combination: 1) go to Las Vegas and see some type of major show (Bruno Mars); and 2) go on a major Colorado roadtrip!
So on part one of my birthday celebration we went to Las Vegas, Nevada for a couple days and saw Bruno Mars in concert at the Park MGM Resort (where we also stayed) in Vegas.
It was one of the best concerts we’ve ever been to in in our lives. They locked up your phone when you entered the concert venue and no photography was allowed so I haev no photos from the experience to share.
Here is a video I found on YouTube from 2024 to give you a taste of his music and talent if you are not familiar with Bruno Mars:
It was a cool experience watching a concert without anyone having their phones recording the show, taking photos, or checking their messages, etc. The entire audience, including John and I, were laser focused on the show without any distractions.
We had really good seats and discovered later in the show when Bruno Mars pointed her out and gave recognition to her progeny that we were sitting a tiny section over from Katherine Jackson, the mother of the Jackson 5/Michael Jackson, and Janet Jackson! She was the special guest of Bruno Mars for that particular show so we kind of had a once in a lifetime experience to sit within 100 yards of the mother of Michael and Janet Jackson! The woman sitting in front of us broke down crying as she said she was a huge Michael Jackson fan and to be sitting close to his mother completely overwhelmed her!
(Security ushered her out of the show before it ended so no one got to bother her)
In addition to seeing Bruno Mars in concert, we enjoyed a fun couple of days wandering around Las Vegas and going to the exhibit I always stop and see when I am in Las Vegas – the Bellagio Conservatory & Botanical Gardens.
Their current exhibit is Glam Menagerie: A Surrealist Summer. Here is the 3D tour if you’d like to see: Glam Menagerie 3D Tour.
Here are some of my photos from the exhibit:
We always enjoy yummy dining experience when visiting Vegas and in addition to stopping at some of our favorite places (Eataly, Taco El Gordo, and Din Tai Fung) we had a scrumptious breakfast at Paris Las Vegas Hotel in their Parisian themed restaurant Mon Ami Gabi.
I had the lemon curd and raspberry crepes and they were a “spiritual” experience in breakfast dining!
It was a good part one celebration and in future posts I’ll share our adventures during the second week part of my 60th birthday celebration.
I thought I’d jump back into blogging by sharing my experience attending the Modern Quilt Guild (MSC)’s annual quilting convention, QuiltCon, for the first time. The convention was held in Phoenix, Arizona in February 2025. (Put the kettle on and get your cuppa ready, this is a long post…)
I’ll also share a couple extracurricular activities we did in Phoenix while there for the convention, which included a trip to the Desert Botanical Garden, the Phoenix Art Museum, and one of the Frank Lloyd Wright workshops Taliesin West.
QuiltCon 2025
I attended QuiltCon for the first time with a quilting friend (who was also a “first timer”) and our partners, and saw some really amazing modern quilts! The quilts were hung from curtained panels and when I first walked into the huge convention space and it looked like there were miles and miles of quilts to see!
So many impressive quilts and here is a tiny sampling of some of my favorites:
The artists/quilt names on these quilts in image order: Jennifer Candon/Chasing Rainbows (who had many fabulous quilts shown at QuiltCon), Steve Moe/Finally They Danced, Jane Rundle/Nurturing the Pod, Irene Roderick/Desperados, Emilie Trahan/Out of the Blue, Jennifer Candon/Modern Dresden, Jenny Hayes/Fokus, Wendy L. Starn/What Did We Do? What Will You Do?, Nikki Woolsey/Wild Geese.
In addition to the endless rows of quilts, there was a large (and seemingly endless) Vendor area:
Look at all those handmade bag samples in the image above! I wanted to buy all the patterns to make the bags (but I did not as I have many bag patterns already that have not been opened!)
Wandering around the Vendor area I got to meet several favorite quilt book authors and fabric designers including Elizabeth Hartman, Anna Marie Horner, Denyse Schmidt, and Blair Stocker. It was fun to meet/chat with the authors of some of my favorite patterns, books and fabric.
During QuiltCon, there were numerous interactive “Make and Take”s at various vendor booths where you could make a project for free (they supplied all the materials). I worked on an embroidered eyeglass case project at one of the “Make and Take” tables, but I’ve not finished it…
The samples in the images below are the talented instructor’s work.
Quiltcon was 4 days long but I only attended Day 1. Next year I will return to Quiltcon (which will be held in Raleigh, North Carolina), this time with a group of quilting friends, and likely attend the full 4 days. There is so much to see and do! (John will stay home this time).
Desert Botanical Garden
We attended 1 day of Quiltcon but we were in Phoenix, Arizona for a total of 5 days. Before QuiltCon we spent time hanging out with my friend’s sister (who we stayed with for a couple days) and visiting various sites of “artistic inspiration” like the botanical garden, the art museum, and Frank Lloyd Wright’s workshop.
My friend, her sister and I spent a day at the Desert Botanical Garden enjoying their collection of cactuses and other desert flora (the guys were golfing at one of the zillion golf courses in Phoenix).
However what really stood out during our visit to the botanical garden was their exhibit Toward 2050.
Here’s an excerpt from the Toward 2050 page linked in the paragraph above:
“According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change, global climate is on track to increase by 1.5° C by 2040, and with that, irreparable damage will likely be done to earth’s ecosystems if our course is not changed decisively and with haste. In the IPCC’s Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report, clear goals and pathways have been defined to reverse our emissions of green house gases – 50% by 2030, and to arrive at net zero emissions by 2050, keeping the global rise in temperature to under 1.5° C in perpetuity. Hence, 2050 marks a very important point in our human history…
Textile work from makers from 45 U.S. states and 9 countries have become important parts of TOWARD 2050, which has culminated in this immersive installation at Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, Arizona – February 8th through June 1st of 2025. Makers were called to create environmentally themed, textile panels in the style of “prayer flags”. Our goal was to collect enough double sided flags to define the pathways of this interactive labyrinth experience. That goal was met thanks to the generousity and commitment of all the makers participating in this project.”
The exhibit was breathtaking and I walked the entire labyrinth (which took over a half hour to the center and back) that the handmade flags were arranged in. Photos will not do the my experience justice but here are some of my photos from the experience:
After I attended I found out from a friend that she made a flag for Toward 2050. I wish I’d known early so I could have found it and sent her a photo.
Phoenix Art Museum
We spent a half day at the Phoenix Art Museum and John, the woodworker, fell in love with an amazing piece of wood art we came upon in the exhibits:
I hope John makes a piece like this someday!
Taliesin West
One of the major highlights of our extracurricular activities before we went to Quiltcon, was visiting renown architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s workshop Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona.
A blurb on it from the franklloydwright.org website:
“Wright’s beloved winter home and desert laboratory was established in 1937 and diligently handcrafted over many years. Deeply connected to the desert from which it was forged, Taliesin West possesses an almost prehistoric grandeur. It was built and maintained almost entirely by Wright and his apprentices, making it among the most personal of the architect’s creations.“
The venue ticket included a self guided audio tour that was amazing. It included a primer on basic architectural concepts so you could better appreciate what you were viewing.
I took a ridiculous amount of photos but here is a sampling of my tour experience:
John is a huge fan of Frank Lloyd Wright’s design style and he was very naughty in the gift shop!
One thing I did realize after visiting Taliesin West is that Frank Lloyd Wright was heavily inspired by Japanese aesthetics and design. I appreciate his work but I am thinking he sort of “reinvented the wheel”.
Other Adventures in the Phoenix Area
My friend’s sister has a winter home (she lives in Colorado during the warm months and Arizona during the cold months) in a gorgeous suburb of Phoenix in a horse owner/rider community surrounded by amazing walking trails. Each day we went for a walk on the trails (and I got fresh Meyer lemons from a tree along the trail!) and we visited the horse ranch where my friend’s sister keeps her horses.
The home we stayed in was comfy and well appointed with two fun German Shepherds to play with!
Photo above: One of the pups needed to know where were at all times (the “herding” instinct), and ambushed us while we were in bed!
One day we walked a couple miles on the trail with the dogs to the local outdoor taco stand which had delicious food and “horse parking”!
Nothing like riding your horse to the taco stand!
My visit to Phoenix was pretty memorable and I so appreciated the hospitality of our hosts and my friend for making it happen.
I did make a “hostess gift” for our arrival – a set of horse themed drawstring bags:
And then upon returning home, I made a “thank you” gift primarily focused on her sister’s husband who had taken our partner golfing three days in row – a golf themed drawstring bag filled with a sleeve of his favorite golf balls:
Okay you’ve probably worked through your pot of tea now so I will end this long post.
Postscript
I’m working on overhauling my blog and rethinking it. It’s been 12+ years of blogging and I want to freshen it up as well as clean out some old stuff.
We spent the week of Christmas (12/22 – 12/27/24) in Miami, Florida with my family. One of my stepsons joined us along with my siblings, their kids and my sister-in-law. We came from Oregon, Virginia, Delaware and Denver to meet up for Christmas week!
Here is John on his way to get our rental car in the Miami airport with the artificial Christmas tree we brought along on his back!
John and I rented a couple loft condos in a converted former industrial building so the 8 of us would have plenty of space; and made our condo the main Christmas area with the tree, stockings and meals served there. I put on a fireplace video with Christmas music from YouTube and hung the stockings on the entertainment center for ambiance – ha!
Here’s what our condo looked like with a view of Miami’s skyline:
John made several wonderful meals and it was so good to sit down with the family from all over the country and share his yummy cooking:
I spent an evening on Espanola Way in South Beach with my siblings and their kids wandering around and it was magical!
John got to go on several rented bike rides along South Beach with his son Z who is an avid cyclist in Portland, Oregon (they didn’t appear to take any photos).
Miami was beautiful and decorated for the holidays:
I got to spend a morning wandering around downtown Miami with my sister and visiting the really lovely Brickell City Centre shopping area.
We stopped for some amazing pastries at the Rosetta Bakery.
Our family was so sweet and the day after Christmas they threw a surprise party in the afternoon for John and I at the other condo to celebrate our love and our commitment to family. They decorated the table with my favorite – sunflowers!
My brother, sister and stepson all made amazing speeches and John and I got pretty choked up! It was a very special afternoon.
On our last day in Miami, before heading to the airport, a couple of us went to Coral Gables and spent time in a delightful independent bookstore – Books & Books. It has a cafe, a bar, and endless rooms of books! I didn’t want to leave but eventually we had to head to the airport – ha!
I loved the cozy looking windows looking out to the outside dining at the bookstore.
The week flew by fast and we didn’t get to do all the things we planned (like go to the beach!) but it was a very special Christmas!
Hope your holidays were wonderful, I’ll be catching up on my blogging buddies’ posts I’ve missed in the near future 🙂
Here is the second post in the two post series on the Card Making Party I had on Tuesday. The first post, Card Making Party, Part I, shows our set up and work in progress.
This post is a gallery of what everyone made.
I only made three cards as I was pretty busy hosting:
But my guests were more prolific – here is a sampling of the cards they made:
There was an art quilter in the group so you might be able to pick out some of her cards! The snowman was made by my friend who is a retired 1st grade and Kindergarten teacher – she simply looked at an image on her phone and cut out the snowman from paper scraps, and then embellishing it with paint pens!
Everyone who attended said this card making/crafting party was “Exactly what they needed”.
It’s cold out and Colorado Winter is upon us (even though it’s not officially Winter yet), so it was time for a fun crafting get together distraction!
Tuesday I hosted a card making party for three of my friends in studio. In this post I’ll share the set up and crafting in progress; in the next post I’ll share the cards we made!
I converted my studio table (putting away the cutting mats, rotary cutters, pins, etc.) into a card making supply station and the lunch buffet station:
We were not short of food options! One of my friends brought her homemade chili and I had made broccoli cheese soup! We didn’t coordinate the menu, people just brought what they wanted – and both of us were thinking we needed a hot liquid dish to warm us up!
My studio table went from this before the party:
To this (in order to accommodate 4 crafters!):
I set up a “crafting placemat” (some pretty hard-sided Rifle Paper Co. placemats I found thrifting) at each crafter’s station, along with their own light and some basic supplies (scissors, glue stick, etc.). I also included a little holiday gift for them – a mug for their coffee//tea filled with goodies.
After diving into the lunch buffet, everyone got to work making lots of cards!
Sometimes even taking to the floor for special card making techniques (small hole punching using my eyelet kit).
While in the Carolinas, we roadtripped (E and S brought their temporary rental car as their car had been totaled by a tree in the hurricane) to Greenvile and visited the he Upcountry History Museum to view the traveling show Black Pioneers: Legacy in the American West. My quilt, Langston Hughes: Pioneer Poet is part of that show.
Here are some photos of the museum’s interesting interior:
We headed upstairs to see the show and I discovered my quilt was on display as you first enter the exhibit!
I filmed a walk-through of the exhibit and uploaded it to YouTube (and I was so proud of myself figuring out how to add music so you wouldn’t have to just listen to my breathing!):
While I was there they museum’s Special Projects/Media Relations Director Meg Hunt came up to meet me, chat with my group (John, E, S and me) and take some photos.
Yes I am terrible at selfies…
I really appreciated her taking the time to visit with us.
Okay next post on the trip will be about our fun time at the Fall for Greenville Fall festival.
I’ve been working on an English Paper Piecing (EPP) quilt forever and my most recent post on this quilt was in May – All 99 are finally done!.
Someday the quilt I finish will look sort of like this quilt from Issue 1 (October 2016) of Quiltfolk Magazine:
Well a week or so ago (not sure exactly as most of October seems like a blur) my quilting friend and her partner; and attended the opening of two quilt shows, one of which I will share in this post and the other in the next post, at the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum.
The first show of the opening was all ENGLISH PAPER PIECED QUILTS – English Paper Piecing. There were so many amazing quilts and I am inspired to complete my quilt someday (smile).
Thought I share photos of my favorite quilts in the show, including the details on some quilts to show the immense EPP work that was done to make these quilts.
My photos don’t do the quilts justice and some of them I had to take at off angles as the exhibit was super crowded and it was difficult to get a photo of a quilt without a group of people in front of it.
The Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum has a gift shop/quilt shop inside of it and it was open for the evening show. I wandered around the shop and then John wandered around it and found some fabric he liked – a mathematical themed print. I am going to make a laptop case for him out of it and will show share an image of the fabric when I post about the laptop case.
Here is John buying the fabric for his laptop case – his first personal fabric purchase in quilt shop:
My quilting is a bit more “organic” with an occasional line touching or a little wiggle (why yes I of course planned that – ha!)
Here is the back of the quilt, I love the feel/texture of the quilting:
I cannot wait to finish it. I plan to do a “facing” instead of binding the quilt. Okay well back to work for me!
Postscript: Halloween Cuteness
Oh and here is some Halloween cuteness (yesterday was Halloween). We stopped over a friend’s house last night and they had two of their dogs in Hawaiian shirts dressed up as “Magnum. P.I.“ (if you remember that that 1980s show starring Tom Selleck):
Here are Pepi and Lewis doing their best Magnum, P.I. impersonations. Dolly the Aussie Shepherd was having no part in it!
Bet you can’t tell the dogs apart from Tom Selleck, right? Ha!
What is an “Agriculture Report”? Well I was inspired by @quiteayarnblog‘s ongoing series of posts titled “Agriculture Report” (and this title always cracks me up) that are actually updates of what is going on in her garden.I just had to adopt this same title for updates on what is going on in my garden/my “garden report“…
I figured I would get one more “Agriculture Report” in for the year now that the growing season in Colorado’s Front Range where I live. I think this is the only update I am providing since my July 19, 2024 post Agriculture Report: Plantings Gone Wild.
As I mentioned in the July post, the free seeds I got from one of my local libraries really took off! Here is what the plants looked like in the raised bed John built at the end of September:
I’d routinely been getting tomatoes from the upstairs porch tomato plants and I started getting tomatoes AND our first cucumbers from the seed planted crops in the raised bed!
John made a Cucumber Salad with our first cucumbers (which are the first cucumbers I’ve ever grown!):
We recently returned from a trip to the Oregon Coast and the weather at home had changed radically (getting colder and colder at night) and there is rumor of a big freeze and possibly snowstorm at lower elevations (we live at 6000 ft above sea level). It has already snowed at the higher elevations (we have a lot of 14,000+ ft above sea level mountain regions in Colorado). So it was time to shut down the garden for the season. Plus it was time to “blowout” our sprinkler system/winterize it, so the plants wouldn’t be getting any more irrigation and where going to die out.
We harvested a bunch of tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini (but only a little as the rest did not ripen they were planted too late) from the raised bed:
John made pickles with the cucumbers and so far they taste delicious (they are still aging in their “pickling”):
In addition to the cucumbers from our raised bed, John used a hot pepper (not sure what I planted) and fresh thyme from our garden.
Besides vegetables, we had some luck with free flower seeds we got from the library. It took awhile but the Cosmos flower seeds I planted really took off:
We plan to put in a couple more raised beds next season, and I will be more organized in my free seed plantings (I hope the library hands out free seeds again next year). I did overcrowd the one raised bed, and the carrots, onions and spinach I planted from the free seeds did not grow.
Oh and would you like to see some photos of real harvests? A couple weeks ago we went to the Sunday Farmers’ Market in Parker and the fruits and vegetables were bountiful!
They have one stand at the Farmers’ Market that allows you to fill a large bag for $15 with whatever they have at their stand (and they have a lot of choices). They are very liberal on how the interpret “fill a bag” and they let me balance a very large head of cauliflower at the very top of the bag! They were also giving out free acorn squashes with purchase (I made a nice soup from mine) – I think they had more squash than they knew what to do with.
CONCERT
October 12 we went to see an awesome outdoor concert by our favorite Icelandic band, Kaleo.
And here is the full performance of this song that made John fall in love with the band as much I did when I first heard them around 2016:
But our favorite of their songs is not sung in English, it is sung in their native Icelandic language – Vor í Vaglaskógi – and based on Icelandic folklore:
Hope you enjoyed the music! The lead singer, JJ Julius Son (Jökull Júlíusson) has quite the voice/vocal range, and we love the musicianship of the band.
In that post I shared the “hot mess” that my first piece looked like after I completed by surface design activities:
But I didn’t show what it looked like after the whole process was done.
My piece went through a series of soakings after I made it, then was laundered and dried.
And here is how it came out….
(drum roll)
Yes, even worse. But a new kind of awful. I like variety in my awful – ha!
Thanks in advance for your kind words like you shared on the first post about my misadventures in surface design, however I will not believe them on this reveal – ha!
But I am keeping the piece and will cut it up and use it in something…someday…I think…
I joined a group of quilters for a Surface Design workshop.
In case you are not familiar with the term “Surface Design” I looked for a formal definition, found many variations but essentially fabric “Surface Design” is creating original patterns and prints on fabric using various mediums which can include dyeing techniques, printing techniques, drawing, painting, embroidery, etc.
Little did I know this was not my thing and that I would be happy to continue purchasing commercial designed fabric after my MISADVENTURE IN SURFACE DESIGN!
The other quilters were very experienced fabric surface designers and their quilts made with surface designed fabrics have shown and been award ribbons at Quilt National, been show internationally, and have graced the covers or pages of Quilting Arts Magazine.
Here is an example of one of the quilter’s amazing collection of fabrics she has surface designed to use in her art quilts:
And then there is me who was totally clueless.
They threw me right into it and I was introduced to the equipment and chemicals involved in fabric dyeing, screen printing, and manual surface design including how to mix dyes and how to prepare your fabric with a soda ash solution soak. We dried our prepared fabric on the clothesline.
Here I am trying to “surface design” (but only making a “hot mess” on fabric):
So I failed at surface designing but perhaps I will try it again someday like in a formal class and not with a group of expert surface designers, ha! For now I will stick with commercially purchased fabric that someone else has designed!
After we finished our “behind the scenes tour” (see yesterday’s post for more on that) we had some time to wander about the museum before we needed to get back on the road to drive 7 hours back to Denver.
Okay so now back to my experience wandering the museum’s exhibits.
Below are photos from some of the exhibits I really enjoyed while we wandered around after the behind the scenes tour.
Sue Spargo: A Journey in Quilting Exhibit
Sue Spargois known for her amazing hand embroidery work. The images below that I took do not do the quilts justice, they were amazing. When I lived in Bend, Oregon she used to come to Central Oregon all the time and I could have easily taken classes with her, too bad I missed out on the opportunity!
Feed Sacks: An American Fairy Tale Exhibit
I got teary eyed viewing this exhibit because I thought of all those women that make quilts (and clothes) with what they had available – feed sacks. If you aren’t familiar with “feed sacks” there is an explanation in one of the images below. The exhibit had examples of actual feed sacks they used which was amazing!
The 4th image below is a modern quilt honoring those Pioneer women who made quilts from feed sacks and the Pioneer men of the same period.
Trek – Victoria Findlay Wolfe Exhibit
I actually took a LOT of photos of this Victoria Findlay Wolfe exhibit but the photos did not do the experience of the exhibit justice. When you walk into the exhibit it has it’s own large gallery room with high ceilings and you are visually overwhelmed with these HUGE quilts covering “floor to ceiling” with some quilts that spill on to the floor of the gallery.
I really enjoyed this exhibit and fell in love with a recycled denim quilt (Renaissance by Emiko Todo Loeb) in the exhibit which is in one of the images below.
So that is a little on our experience at the International Quilting Museum. Here is a YouTube video (courtesy of the PBS series Craft in America) if you’d like a little more info about this amazing museum.
The International Quilt Museum’s mission is to build a global collection and audience that celebrate the cultural and artistic significance of quilts. The International Quilt Museum is located on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s East Campus at 33rd and Holdrege streets. The museum has the world’s largest publicly held quilt collection, dating from the early 1700s to present and representing more than 60 countries.
We had an amazing tour guide, a retired high school teacher, and did the behind the scenes tour with another group of visiting quilters. Here I am about to go on the tour:
Our first stop was the room where they handle quilts in their collections for various archiving activities or setting up for exhibit. The staff of course wear gloves when handling the quilts and we were only allowed to view the quilt they were evaluating from afar:
In the other group on the tour with us, there was a family group who had requested to see ahead one of their relative’s quilts that are part of the International Quilt Museum‘s collection. We chatted with them and their mother/grandmother (who was passed) was a renown quilter and several of her quilts are at the museum. This specific quilt was made for her grandson, now a grown man, and they wanted him to see it in person after all these years. It was a sweet and very emotional family moment for them and I enjoyed chatting with the family and learning more about their family matriarch the renown quilter.
In the room where they archive and evaluate quilts, they had a humorous wallhanging that gave us a smile – a traditional “Sunbonnet Sue” but she was wielding a knife!
If you are familiar with this famous antique quilt block pattern then you might get a giggle (or fright) out of the knife wielding version!
We also toured where the museum stored it’s huge quilt collection in special moving racks/vaults.
I’ll continue the story and photos about my first visit to the International Quilt Museum in my next post.
This year I am participating in the Ovarian Cancer Fundraiser Quilt coordinated by the awesome Australia based quilting goddess Kate @ talltalesfromchiconia. I am contributing two blocks to the quilt and I thought I would share those blocks with you.
This year’s theme is the sea and I signed up for the “deep sea” section of quilt blocks.
I researched deep sea creatures found in Australian waters and decided to make a block inspired by the Deep-Sea Bullseye Scallop and a block inspired by the Dumbo Octopus. Then I pulled out my box of batik fabric scraps and sorted out my teal and blue scraps.
In the images below you will see the original photo that inspired me (photo source hyperlinked) and then the block I created based (loosely) on that photo. Note: my smartphone camera photographed some of the true teal as blues and so there is a lot more teal in the blocks than it appears in the images.
The Sandpiper Project on Facebook
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