Life is Full

December was a full month for us. The raven is the ornament I made this year for our annual ornament exchange. The moon is glow-in-the-dark fabric & the raven I did entirely with thread.

I taught Warren how to needle felt, & he did this bar of soap as is ornament.

Above are stockings I made for Michelle & the 2 Seans.

Above is the finished Airport quilt, hung in the conference room at the airport. Mary lee is the maker, (I quilted it for her). After they hung it, Mary's son Mike took Mary & me on a private tour of the airport. It was fun rinding the runway right next to a big plane taking off., & seeing things I never knew were there!

We had a great time at Calendar Girls at Betty's house too.

Right before Christmas Warren & I went to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada to spend the holiday with Brandon & Laura & the girls. Our first full day there, Laura & I took the girls to the Edmonton Mall to see Santa. We waited in line for about 4 hours for the girls to set on Santa's lap & have a picture.  They made some friends while waiting.

& Zoe took a nap too.

After Santa, we went to the Spagetti Factory for dinner. The girls did a little Melodrama for us using this metal gate as a prop. They were saying "Help me..."

We spent time just hanging out at the house.

Zoe tried to put some moves on little Simon the neighbor kid.

Laura made an 8 course dinner on Christmas eve, & had friends over.

Christmas morning was chaos & great fun.

Finger painting happened later in the day.

& bath time folloed.

We also had a day at the Science Center.

We finally had to say goodbye to the family & Edmonton. It was so good spending time with them.

This past week I worked & cleaned house. Put away Xmas. Yesterday we went to see "Les Miserables". I never have read the book & didn't know what the story was. I had expected to like it better, but can't say that it was any fault of the movie thta I didn't fully enjoy it. We had the misfortune of having a very drunk girl set down next to us, & she kept shouting out & making noises & rude comments. The 3 people directly in front of her got up & moved. When we & a few others asked her to be quiet she told us we should move too. I finally got fed up & went out & complained. The manager came in & very quietly asked her to leave. She didn't, but she did pass out so it was better for the rest of us. then suddenly the movie froze, the lights came up, & the manager apologized for the interruptions. 3 big policemen came in, woke the girl up & took her away.She was stumbling drunk, & all got a view of her backside, because her pants were falling off when she got up. The manager gave us each a free pass for another movie anytime we want to use it. I managed to get enough into the movie, that I shed a few tears at the end.

Today I hung the next quilt top to be quilted.Shot a few pictures & will do some drawing on them before I attempt to quilt it. It's a beautiful hand applique' done by my friend Jan Wills.

I also made this flower/pin to send to the RVQuilter who won my blog drawing a couple of months ago!

The Round Robin Finale

My camera & my computer stopped talking to each other. I finally took them into Best Buy & the Geek Squad fixed the problem. 

The last of the Round Robin quilts that I had to work on was Carol's. She had started with the purchased raven block screen print by local artist Cindy Shake. Sorry I don't have a picture of what it was like before I got it, but what I added was the upper & left side borders. I also added the little streaks of green & the centers in the leaves.

Here is Carol with her block.

Jackie..

Jan..

Mary Lee..

Betty B...

Rena..

Mary G. She got lucky...her's is finished quilted & bound!

Me with mine & my new hairdo from Sean in Seattle.

I took my piece home & tweaked it a bit. I moved the last applique' to a spot that pleased my eyes better, & I spritzed the top with a bit of green ink. I may do more...I can't leave anything alone.

We had the gang over for dinner a couple weeks ago.

& here is the latest quilt fresh off of Lily. Too big to take a decent photo. It's about 6 feet tall & 13 1/2 feet long. My pal Mary Lee made it for our airport.

She drew several designs about flight that I quilted on top.

I've decorated for Christmas & getting packages ready to ship.

Super Fast & simple Quilt Project for Longarm

For the latest addition to the family, I needed to make a fast, simple & fun quilt.

I layered the back, batting & solid piece of fabric on top, 

Then I cut skinny strips with a wavy rotary cutter & quilted them down as I went.

The result was fun & it has limitless possibilities. All kinds of designs could be made this way. Think of how many comfort quilts could be done!

The Giving Quilt

Jennifer Chiaverini has written another Elm Creek Novel. I read it while I was on vacation. It makes me wish that Elm Creek & all it's quilters were real. I'd love to sign up to go to this place & meet these people. She has moved back to the present time, & a week of camp centered around making quilts for Project Linus. The project is real, & the characters feel real. She weaves a beautiful story with new characters introduced, & old friends brought back. 

I picture Sylvia much like Helen Kelly, who used to write articles for Quilters Newsletter. I went to one of Helen's lectures once, & learned so much from her.

It's another warm cozy, easy read. I really enjoyed it.

I got back from Seattle over a week ago, but it feels like only yesterday. We had a great time, & I'm already looking forward to our next trip. I'll post photos later. Spent a lot of time holding the baby.

I worked hard this past weekend on the biggest quilt I've ever worked on, & it's been a somewhat trying experience. I'm not sure how I'm ever going to photograph it, unless I can go with Mary when she hangs it at the Airport.  I haven't forgotten about the prizes I owe, they are on my "To Do" list.

 Happy Halloween all!

Post #700 /Birthdays/ & the winner is...

Today is both my DH, & my DS#1's birthday. My how they grow up fast. Below in the stripe shirt is Brandon, next to his sister Michelle, & brother Corey. Brandon turned 40 today (somehow that makes me feel older than anything else ever has!). He is on his way to Portland, OR today, & we will be meeting them in Seattle Wednesday night. I post some grown up pictures after the trip.This picture is how I see my children every time I dream about them. Gosh I miss them.

To calebrate the day, we drove down to Girdwood, here is looking across Turnagain Arm (part of the Pacific Ocean), to Hope, Alaska under the clouds over there. Trees that still have their leaves are gold.

In front of the Double Musky wine bottles decorate a tree.

This is what it looks like every day  before they open the restaurant. It's been listed as 1 of America's top 10 best restaurants.

We had a great meal, & Warren enjoyed a piece of carrot cake for his birthday.

At home on the quilting front, I have a bit of a problem child on Lily right now. My friend Mary made the biggest darned quilt I've seen since Don Locke's Last Supper. It is big & unwieldy, & the boarders are a tad tight, with the center wanting to poof out. I've layer extra wool batting on top of the cotton batt in the center to try & solve the problem, & now I am quilting it into submission!

Hopfully it will work out ok when I'm done.

I cut out all of the messages from the last 3 postings, & had Warren draw 2 names in celebration of this 700th post. The winners are, Stephanie Briggs (& since she's right here in town, I decided to draw a 2nd name), & it was rvquilter. So contact me at akquilter1@acsalaska.net, & give me your address. I will send you a prize by the end of October (since I'm working the next 2 days, then leaving town for a while).

 Thanks to every body for the nice comments. 

Robbie Joy Eklow was a lot of fun. We found a lot of common ground & I told her she needs to bring her husband next time & stay with us. The guys can fish & we can dye fabric together.