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!

37 Years!

I'm very late at getting this post written, but today is my 37th wedding anniversary!  Hubby hand drew a picture for the front of our wedding invitation all those years ago - it was very unconventional to say the least - showing a frog marrying a princess! About 15 years ago I found a Willie Rae figurine that reminded me SO much of his drawing that I had to buy it. I dug out one of our invitations and framed it in a thrift store frame. Now they are displayed side by side on my bedside table.

Yesterday my friends Kay and Sue came to see the new house. Kay is a rug hooker and brought some show & tell. Several months ago I dyed some wool for her to use as stained glass windows and hoped it would work for her. Well, here's how it turned out.

Pretty perfect, I think!

This depicts the Kaysville LDS Tabernacle which is right next door to her house......

....and here is an old photo of the pioneer era building.

(the stained glass windows from the inside)

She also showed me her newest rug which includes one of the things she always tells her sons and grandchildren - very good advice for all of us - BE NICE! As always, her hubby drew the design for her.

She had this darling little piece of embellished stitchery that a friend had gifted her with - so sweet! I love the smushed thimble being used for a flower pot!

End of Year!

It's hard to believe the year is almost over, isn't it? It's been a busy month for me with LOTS of gift making and party/luncheon attending - but SO much fun!  One of the funnest things I made was this cute little Dresden Plate that measures only 2" across!

I call it a fashion accessory for a vintage sewing machine and I sent it to my mom to use on her old Singer 301. Blue is her favorite color. I forgot to put a note in the box explaining to her what it's for, so it'll be interesting to see if she can figure it out before I call her! LOL  I really, really want to make a little quilt with these blocks now, but I need to find a 30* ruler to make cutting the blades easier - anyone know who makes one? You can find the tutorial for making your own HERE and you can see more color combinations and step by step instructions.

I made a few other gifts for my rug groups - a set of quilted zipper bags - - - -

- - - - and some quilted key fobs. (tutorial HERE)

I made myself a different version by paper piecing a long string of flying geese.

One of my groups had a wooly ornament exchange and these were all the wonderful items that were made for that.

Janet's son works for a company that makes high end messenger bags and journals using very dense 1/4" felt that costs $144/yd. He saves all the tiny scraps for her and she made this four-sided ornament using some of them.

My local quilt store has been doing a weekly giveaway on their Facebook page and I was lucky enough to be one of their winners. I received a yard of this lovely Jo Morton fabric - they even mailed it right to my house!

Some of the rugs projects I've seen this month include a couple of finished rugs by Sandy and Coralee.

Sandy started a new Santa rug.

Myra is replicating a photograph to make this wonderful landscape rug as a gift for her aunt. The moose were added from her imagination!

Nancy finished up this cute pillow using mostly leftover worms from her stash.

And she has begun a new floral.

I do a lot of string piecing when I quilt, and I usually just use thread snips to cut apart the sections as they come out of the machine. But when I saw this new gizmo I could see how helpful it would be, so I ordered one for myself.

It works great!

I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas! That's what I plan on doing!

Talented Friends

I have such amazing friends, both in rug hooking and quilting, and I'm so thankful that they allow me to share their beautiful work here on my blog each month. Otherwise, I would be sorely lacking in the show & tell department! (smile) Yesterday the First Tuesday group met and I was able to see Sandy's stained glass rug completed. She had it stretched at mounted at a frame shop and it literally took my breath away when I first saw it on display in her entryway.

This represents The Sacred Grove in Upstate New York that holds a lot of significance for those of us who are members of the LDS Church. You can read about the history HERE.

She had permission from the artist to  recreate his work and she told us about taking the finished rug to show him in his studio as he had requested. His name is Tom Holdman and you can visit his website HERE. Below is a print of his original piece of art.

Sandy was busily working on her newest rug which she is making for her grandson who spent two years as a missionary in Mexico. The lime green background is fabulous - in fact all the bright colors are spectacular. She said there wasn't a single boring part in hooking this design.

Jeanette is hooking a Polly Minick design of a happy bicycle - I love the tassels on the handle bars! You might not be able to tell from the photo, but she used standing wool circles in the center of the wheel and thinks she will use proddy for the flowers in the basket.

Sharon is hooking a Porche insignia for a grandson using quite a narrow size of strip. I'm not sure if he actually owns a Porche, or if he's just a fan. Either way, he's a lucky guy to be getting this from her.

Victoria has knit dozens of pairs of socks and that's what she was working on yesterday. She was using the completed sock to gauge the length of the rib on the new one she's making. That striped yarn is so awesome - like magic!

I recently completed this scrappy rug and it was fun to do. I'm sure I drew squares on my backing, but every single one of them turned out looking more like a rectangle to me! Oh well.

And yes Saundra - it was me who wanted to copy your UFO rug - I got a start on it and I'm hoping to make a dent in my collection of 8.5 cut worms. Funny how I started in the middle and you started on the outside!

A couple weeks ago I tried my hand at solar dyeing after reading Lauren's tutorial a month ago. I was pleased with the outcome and you can see before & after pictures of the wools below. The weather has turned cooler here in Utah and I'm not sure I'll get another batch done before winter. I think these mottled blues will look awesome when they get hooked in to a rug.

Okay - I'm off to do some housework today - I've let things go longer than they should have....

Back to Back!

This is one of those times when my two monthly rug groups met on consecutive days, so I got a BIG dose of rug hooking eye candy last week! Love it when that happens!

Marliss is SO close to finishing this colorful rug that she started in a class with Sharon Smith. I love how freeform and organic it looks!

 Kim's son drew this design for her of a woman with a watering can and she started it in a recent class with Anne Marie Littenberg. It's wonderful and she's making great progress!

Sharon is done with the hooking on this piece and was finishing the edges to make it into a pillow. The colors she used make it look instantly old, and since she lives in a 100+ year old house, it is right at home in it's surroundings!

Yvonne finished a runner that is a design from a Pat Cross book. It has a lot of energy and movement.

Fun to see it side-by-side with Nancy's version of the same rug that she hooked a few years ago.

Yvonne was stitching down the binding on this darling baby quilt for her second great grandchild who will arrive very soon. I don't usually get excited about quilts made from panels, but she did a great job of combining the printed border with some pieced log cabin blocks in the center.

Here's a picture of a recent finish that Nancy made for her telephone table. The other end is a mirror image of this side and I like how it hangs over the edge so you can really see the design.

Last month I didn't have my camera with me, but now I can share this photo of a Maggie B. rug she hooked with a vibrant pink background - SO much different than Maggie's color choice. Very fun!

She's currently working on a quirky rug inspired by an original painting that her daughter owns. Not quite her normal style so I'm looking forward to seeing it as it progresses.

Myra finished stitching these twelve beautiful wool applique quilt blocks. Her work is incredible and the colors just pop on the black background.

She also showed us this adorable tiny button that she made with fancy embroidery stitches. It will be attached to a retractable lanyard and be used to hold scissors. The design is from a local gal named Kerry Green who blogs HERE. Her style is very reminiscent of Sue Spargo to me.

I began a new rug and I'm hooking it in a 8.5 cut which seems to be my new favorite size of strip. Sure does hook up fast! This is Hannah's Star by Barb Carroll. I think each square will have the same colors in them, but I will use different wools to mix them up a little.

I received the new book from Rug Hooking Magazine about story rugs and it was SO fun to see a local friend's rugs included in it! My husband did the photography on these and they look great. She has been asked to enter them in the big rug show at Sauder Village this summer. So excited for her!