Halfway June

Hard to believe that June is half over already. DD#1 & her hubby have gone to Cancun so I have their little boy for the week. Yep, feels a little like deja vu since I did the same thing for DD#2 a month ago! Sure do love those little ones, but I know why we have kids when we're young ourselves. Whew!

I met with one of my rug groups last week and there was some good show & tell. Kim hadn't done any hooking, but showed us her beautiful blocks for a square-in-a-square quilt she's making. She'd planned to make it for herself, but her younger son is making wedding plans so she decided it would be made for the newlyweds instead. Beautiful fabrics!

Sandy's husband designed and hand drew this awesome rug for her entry way. It's at least 4' x 6' - maybe a bit bigger. She plans to hook is using only brown & cream wool - very classic and totally awesome! I have several friends who's husbands are interested in their rug hooking and it always amazes me to hear of their support, since my hubby isn't like that. Lucky gals!

Yesterday I met with the Salt Lake Group - our newest member had finished her very first rug hooking project - a floral pillow inspired by a piece of fabric. The back and piping were black velvet - very rich looking.

I love the way she added bits of purple fabric to the black background when she hooked it.

Yvonne is making progress on her bright floral rug - plans to put it in the guest room where her grand daughters sleep when they come to visit. Isn't it happy looking?

Nancy is nearing a finish on her rug - she often includes clever and/or inspiring sayings in her projects and this one is a goody.

Myra has been very busy and brought two sewing buckets that are spectacular. She designed several of the motifs on the outer pockets to reflect the owner - this one is her's......

....and this is for one of her daughters. She has plans to make many more. What lucky family members she has! Makes me wish she would adopt me! LOL Over the weekend our guild had a workshop and made Nuno felted scarves. Sadly, I was too busy helping put in a sprinkler system and couldn't attend, but Myra brought her scarf and it was just beautiful. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of that. I'm hoping to try this technique myself some day!

Mary Jane featured one of my rugs on her blog yesterday - I was honored that she asked to do so - she did a great job on it! You can read her entry here.

Friendship

A week ago I spent the day with two of my good friends and we took the 90 minute drive to visit the Spiral Jetty on the north end of the Great Salt Lake. They had never been there before, and I'd only been once before about 25 years ago, so we were all looking forward to it. We stopped at Subway and got sandwiches & salads for our lunch, then sat in the dirt parking lot on lawn chairs and enjoyed the view after walking the spiral and hiking the overlook. Fun day! (I wore a quilty shirt!) If you Google Spiral Jetty you can see more photos and learn about the artist and the history of the installation - it's kind of interesting. People come from all over the world to see this, and yet very few local people even know it exists!

Also last week, I won my friend Janet's blog giveaway (Rogue Quilter) and the goodies arrived in the mail yesterday. Her handmade soaps are SO luxurious - love using them in the shower. The little thread snips will be great for both machine work and hand work so they'll be used a lot. And what quilter doesn't enjoy receiving new fabrics? The little Dresden pincushion is perfection itself! Thanks for your generosity Janet!

When I packed up my studio to move to the new house, I discovered some vintage fabrics I had forgotten all about. This small piece of cheddar & purple really caught my eye - it was shaped irregularly - maybe a fat quarter in size - and I loved the colors.

Janet had just shared a free pattern available on the Henry Glass website and I thought it was cute.

After I chose some coordinating fabrics from my stash, I decided to try making it.

This is what I had leftover, and I had to piece together small bits for one of the alternate blocks - I felt very 'make-do' in my efforts. The largest piece is probably 2" across.

The top is all finished - and just this minute I noticed that two of the blocks are turned the wrong way. ARGH! Guess I'll get my seam ripper out..... The finished size is 23" x 29".

A bit of a close-up shot below - a totally different feel than the original design by Stacy West!

I'm so thankful for friends and their influence and contributions to my life!