Golf Christmas Ornament...

Just what every golfer wants, right?  A golf ornament for the tree!  This is a gift for my father-in-law.  He seems to like the things I stitch... This measures a little shy of 3" across.  I've had the canvas for a few years now.  I used silk & ivory and Impressions and did the whole thing in basketweave stitch.  The flag is a red silk.  It is finished with a flat back.  

Mary Engelbreit ornament finished...

This is an older needlepoint canvas - I started it some time ago but had a hard time with the lettering and outlining.  I think the canvas was quickly painted and it was very "interpretive" on my end to get it to be legible.  That said, I'm really pleased with how it turned out and I love the peppermint cording too!  For the back I used a red sculpted velvet with a hard back.  It is about 4" across.  Design by Mary Engelbreit.

Two Melissa Shirley Ornaments Completed...

"You bring the tree, I'll bring the wreath!"

I just love these ornaments.  They are hand-painted canvases from Melissa Shirley.  I used odds and ends from my thread stash for the different colors.  The tree Santa is stitched in red Very Velvet and the wreath Santa is stitched in Trio.  Love them!  They are about 3" across and I finished them with hard backs and blue velvet.  

Santa Baby and the holidays...

Thought I'd share some of my holiday decorations up.  I love Christmas and decorating for it!  We wait until early December to decorate.

I just finished up this Quilt; it is called "Santa Baby" and is by Buggy Barn.  It is from the Positively Crazy book.

It measures 84" square.  I backed it with Minky in a chevron pattern.  I quilted in the ditch using a walking foot on my sewing machine.  No batting - I love the weight on this and it looks great in the living room!

This is our upstairs living room - the tree has about half of my stitched ornaments on it, red glass balls, and our Lenox collection (we buy one a year).  My two Amanda Lawford Santas are to the side.  Hanging is the Cricket Collection bellpull, and on the table are my Melissa Shirley Nutcracker Pops.  The couch has the sweater pillow.

Downstairs on the fireplace I have our family stockings hung.  On the mantel are some of the odds and ends I've stitched over the years.  

Happy Christmas!

Flower Needlepoint Pillow Stitched and Finished.

This is another pillow for me.  I purchased this canvas at a guild meeting years and years ago.  I have been slowly working my way through all my unfinished projects and am down to only a few. The tag says "From the Collection of the Women's Educational & Industrial Union.  Boston, Massachusetts, Est. 1877".  I believe they used to sell needlepoint yarn and canvases but am not sure if the design is from a reproduction in their collection (which is what I was told when I bought it) or if they used to sell other designer's canvases.  Either way, it's a lovely piece.  If you happen to know who the designer is please let me know!


I knew I wanted this for a pillow so I used basketweave throughout.  I stitched all the background in cream wool (Appleton, with one ply of the four pulled out so it wasn't too tight) and then all the flowers and ribbons are stitched in silk fibers from my stash.

I used a bronze ribbon, striped ribbon, and two trims around the edge.  I love these colors!  It's a pretty good size - maybe 22" across?  The backing is a heavy woven dot that I used on another pillow (the standing lion pillow).

Finished a needlepoint pillow - Amanda Lawford floral.

This was stitched in 2013.  It is a hand-painted canvas from Amanda Lawford.  I stitched it in silk threads, mostly Vineyard Silks with basketweave.  The purple flowers I worked in Au Ver a Soie with silk shading.  The gold is a Kreinik Vintage Braid.  

I picked up the backing fabric at Tina's in Madison Park.  It's a fun shop to visit with lots of really beautiful fabrics and trims.  I added three ribbons around the piece and more roses at each corner.  It has pinch-pleat corners as well. This photo is a little light to show detail - they are a solid black in life.  It's a stunner.  

More true to life on colors.

Now I'm working on a double wedding ring quilt.  It's never going to be done.  

My Wild Lone Star Quilt Completed...

Forest Park in Mukilteo, Washington, will always have a special place in my heart.  Victoria and I did our first Mommy & Me swim class there and spent many happy hours on that playground.  We still love the park but don't get there as often.  Miss Madeline kindly climbed this tree for me so I could get another "favorite" spot in for the quilt picture.

Word of note - you might already know this - with blogspot if you click on a picture it opens up the picture viewer and you can scroll right or left through that blogs photos.  Alternatively (and better, I think!) is you can right-click a picture and open in a new tab.  You can then click that photo and get a giant picture if you want to see better detail. 

My Wild Lone Star

This pattern is from "Scrappy Firework Quilts" by Edyta Sitar of Laundry Basket Quilts.  Her instructions are impeccable and I really enjoyed making this quilt.  I also have her "Friendship Strips" book from which I plan on making a couple pieces. 

It is machine pieced, hand appliqued, and I machine quilted it.  My favorite applique memory was working on it at the reptile museum with friends.  It measures 73" square.

I am so happy that the points match!  It also lays flat!  This is a BIG DEAL because I wasn't sure it would lay flat.  :)

It might be hard to see the color but I quilted the background with a darker grey thread and a flower pattern.  I thought of it as night flowers.

The background and binding fabric are from Phillip Jacobs, called Brocade Peony.  It's a little less bright than in this picture, might be my monitor.  I love the print.

Some comments from facebook:

Sarah Page This is wonderful. Bright, happy, alive.

Anne Andersen A really gorgeous quilt Summer. 

Jillian Grant Lovely work, beautiful quilt!

Susanne Holst A piece of art - stunning work and detail.

Shilpa Singh Gour 3D Gorgeous !

Trish Bloomfield are you doing the happy dance? I would be .

MaryJean Cummings Bower Breathtaking ...beautiful colors!

Glenna Quigley wow , love it

Mary Julia Skwar LOVE how the applique works with that quilt! Beautiful work!

Evelyn Bylemeer I just started this quilt on Monday, love the pattern!

Barbara Falb Fine Wow that is spectacular - Bravo!

Cathy Good Stunning!!

Betty Eberle Very Pretty Love the colors

Sharon Dallman Summer I clicked on your photo to see more of the quilt and it is just beautiful! I really love the fabrics you used for your appliqued flowers! heart emoticon

Kathy Fey Stunning!

Two needlepoint pillows finished...

I actually *finished* some needlepoint projects!

This handpainted canvas was stitched in 2013.  I used metallic-blend (or Kreinik) threads for all the ornaments and silk/wool blend (I think it was Impressions) for the ornament ribbons and background.  I really love how it turned out.  I don't know the canvas artist - let me know if you know who painted it!  It might be Needlepoint of Back Bay?

This canvas was painted by Michael Wilhoite of Needlepoint of Back Bay.  I stitched it all in silk fibers and basketweave.  

As it is a gift for Travis, I tried to make the finishing masculine but also youthful.  (He's 7.)

Pinch pleat edge on the corners with twisted cording edge. 

The Colourful Quilt / Over & Under Variation Quilt Finished...

I finished "The Colourful Quilt" this last week.  It is designed by Jacqueline de Jonge and is paper pieced.  I did it with black instead of limey-green batik.  It measures about 50" square.  The back is a variation of the Over & Under quilt design from Quilt Sampler Fall 2011 magazine (Deb Burton).   It is photographed at a gorgeous beach - Picnic Point in Edmonds on the Puget Sound.

This quilt was my first time using batik fabrics so that was kind of fun to not really worry about right side/wrong side.  I did end up using several needles throughout the top when usually 1-2 per top is fine.  I did the quilting using overdyed cotton threads for the background stuff and shiny rayon on the colored pieces.  

It won a Blue Ribbon at the Evergreen State Fair in Monroe 2013 (99/100 points!) I was thrilled!

Thanks to Susan for taking a picture of me with the quilt!  This is at one of my favorite shops - Gathering Fabric in Woodinville.  

Road Trip 2013 - Blueberry Farm Quilt Completed...

The beginning of June is the Tri-Cities swim meet held at Memorial Park in Pasco, Washington.  It is a beautiful pool and the children really love swimming at this meet.  It seems a bit far for me (3.5 hour drive) but, again, the children love it.  This was Travis' first swim meet and it was pretty funny to watch how excited he was to literally dive in at the deep end and swim a 50 Meter pool.  Short course is going to look really short!  

After three days in Pasco Brad headed back to Seattle and I headed Southeast with the children.  My absolute favorite part of the drive is the climb from Pendleton to Boise.  Just gorgeous big sky country and a big hill climb on 6% grade.

 

After a night stay in Boise we stopped at a beautiful Idaho State Park, Bruneau Sand Dunes.  

We then drove more Southeast and went to the City of Rocks National Monument.  It would be an amazing place to rock climb.  About this time, Victoria started to have really, really bad allergies.  Post nasal drip led to some serious coughing.  She already takes a daily allergy pill and has been on antibiotics for almost a month for a sinus infection.  She ended up having coughing fits if she walked more than 50 feet or so.  Part of it may have been altitude.  So, alas, no hiking.

We got into Utah and after a rest drove up to Squaw Peak with my Dad so he could show the kids his new Jeep.  This is the view of Utah Valley.  As a side note, Squaw Peak is where all the college students go to make out (do they still call it that?) so having my children run around outside people's cars in the twilight is great birth control.

Tuesday, Victoria was still not feeling well, so we pushed back continuing our trip to Wednesday.  On Wednesday morning we got up early and headed down to a Utah State park, Goblin Valley.  Again, Victoria started coughing upon exertion so I think we hiked .5 mile total.

A tiny slot canyon:

Leaving Goblin Valley:

We then drove west to Capitol Reef National Park.  GORGEOUS country.  

I really let the kidlets climb what they could.  We stayed the night in a hotel to the east of the park and had a great dinner at Duke's Slick Rock Restaurant.  (Named after The Duke.)

This switchback mountain climb was AMAZING.

Coming out west of Capitol Reef we had an amazing view of Grande Staircase-Escalante National Park's 50 Mile Red Mountain:

On Friday we made it back to parent's house.  I made this quilt for my brother, Charles.  

I went and saw the Gee's Bend exhibit last year (?) at Bellevue Arts Museum. I was inspired to create a quilt using some of their techniques. None of the fabric was cut (all ripped), no measuring, sewing until it was big enough, and making do.

My Poppy Field Quilt - block design is from Blueberry Farm pattern from Edyta Sitar. The poppy fabric is from Hoffman and is a few years old. The strata stars are Kaffe/Mably/ Phillip Jabobs fabrics.

While in Utah I looked through some old albums trying to find copies of birth certificates of grandparents/great grandparents.  I came across this picture of my paternal grandfather.  He was a pretty neat guy and I do miss him.  

Here he is as a young man.  Very handsome!  My maternal grandmother passed this January.  Wasn't she lovely too?

                

On Sunday we went to the Hogle Zoo.  They've really made some improvements to the animal habitats and are revamping the entire Savannah exhibit, thankfully.  

On Monday we headed out towards home.  We stopped at Golden Spike National Historic Site and watched the trains come in, then the children earned another Junior Ranger badge.  While there I saw this photo on the wall, with my Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfather shown on the right (Abraham Hunsaker), and his son on his left.  (In the large picture he is 3rd from right.)

After Golden Spike we headed back up into Idaho and stopped at Minidoka.  This was a Japanese Interment camp during WWII.  Victoria still wasn't 100% (BTW she is fine now we are home and out of the dust.) so she only looked around a little bit but Madeline walked almost the entire trail by herself and read all the signs.  She said it was really sad.  

We stopped in Baker City for the night and then made an early day home yesterday.  I'm tired but had a good time at quilt guild this morning and the park this afternoon.  Back to swimming last night!