Africa

I'm finding it difficult to put my recent mission trip to Eswatini, Africa into words. Here are some photos to give you a taste of our journey.

traveling with my daughter, Leigh Anne was awesome

meeting Phumla and Okuhle, my sponsor kids, was a huge highlight

the kids at the Children's Cup care point love selfies

enjoying a healthy meal at the care point

This woman is amazing. I'm thinking she deserves her own blog post...

I made fabric bracelets with the kids in the after school program. They loved it!

Safari at Hlane National Park

The lions were calm in the evening. In the morning? not so much!

picture perfect sunset

Huge thank you to missionaries Gethen and Bex Amos and their gorgeous children for hosting us

The Liberty Global Mission Team

You can learn more about Liberty Church and Children's Cup at their websites.

quilt con fun - part one

Oh Pasadena, What fun I had at Quilt Con. I'm going to break this up over several posts so I don't make you too jealous all at once.

My buddy Diann and I flew to LAX last Wednesday morning. We arrived at our hotel at lunchtime (perfect!) and had time to get our bearings before the event began. I also enjoyed dinner with my brother and his family that evening since they live nearby. A bonus treat!

I'll jump ahead to mini quilt swap day, since I already teased you with a post about my quilt. I actually met my partner, Tzitzi, a couple of days before the swap. She spotted me in the classroom building, grabbing a diet coke, and ran over to introduce herself. I was so glad we got time to really get acquainted!

On Saturday at swap time, we met with hundreds of others in the ballroom. It was a party in there! So many quilters, searching for their partners, squealing over what they received, swapping phones for photos....

we savored every moment!

And when we opened our quilts, we were both over the moon excited. Don't you think she nailed my taste? And look at that crowd behind us!

Tzitzi told me that she goes every Tuesday to a quilt teacher's home in her town in Mexico to learn new techniques. Each bubble in my quilt represents one of the types of quilting she has learned..... cathedral windows, pieced pinwheels, appliqué, english paper piecing and log cabins. I loved hearing her story and it made my quilt even more special.

and yes, she loved what I made for her too! The best part is, I have a new friend who I will think of every time I look at my beautiful mini.

word of the year quilt

Every year I make a quilt for my word of the year. This is my eighth year doing it! Hard to believe. Each word has had a special meaning for me and I love looking back at my past quilts.

This year's word is journey. My original plan was to take a huge airplane trip with my oldest daughter. We have been planning to go on a mission trip to Swaziland together. It will be a great opportunity to meet the children I sponsor and to serve in the communities there. Unfortunately, my recovery from recent surgeries is going to take some time. I need to be 100% for this trip! So we are putting it off until next year.

So, what to do about my word? I had a quilt planned that featured a giant airplane. hmmm. There will still be airplane trips this year (hello Quiltcon! I'm coming for you soon!). I decided, rather than change my word, I would embrace my journey, whatever it turns out to be. I made my airplane a bit smaller and in a color that would blend into the background. Then I added feet! My journey this year definitely involves walking.

Funny how sometimes my words evolve. Some years I know exactly why I've chosen a word. Other years, I have no idea, and I discover the purpose as I go. Then there are years like this one, where the meaning of my word changes and evolves. I'm open to that!

I really need to get these quilts up on a wall! Do you have a word for 2018? I'd love to hear your story

NYC 2017

I love to visit NYC in the fall! This year the weather didn't exactly cooperate - it was still in the 80s! But I still had a wonderful time with Leigh Anne. Here is our view from the hotel room. Not too shabby!

I was there to attend the She Is Free conference with Leigh Anne, but I did sneak in a few detours... including a trip to Mood!

wow! so much fabric. I was terribly overwhelmed. Didn't buy a thing! (ok, I bought a t-shirt).

The conference was amazing! Great speakers & powerful worship. Oh, and I wore some of my new fall clothes because it was freezing in the theater, LOL

On Sunday we spent some time in Brooklyn. Visited Leigh Anne's new apartment on the top floor of this awesome brownstone...

Visited Emma Straub's sweet bookstore, Books are Magic...

And the Brooklyn General store (where, yes, I did buy some fabric!)

As always, I found inspiration in some of the incredible graffiti around town...

Until next time New York!

Improv bridges

It happened again. I woke up Monday morning with an idea in my head and had to set right to work! Inspired by these two pictures I took in San Francisco, one of the Golden Gate Bridge and one of the Bay Bridge, I wanted to try my hand at improv piecing and recreate them in a quilt.

I had some scraps of my hand dyed fabric leftover from my Hashtag quilt, and thought they would work perfectly. I didn't measure anything, I just started cutting and piecing.

My first bridge came out pretty good, so I did another from the same photo

Then two of the Bay bridge. Never did get a solo shot of the fourth block!

I trimmed the blocks so they were all the same height (7 inches) and squared them up to different widths. Added sashing strips in between and ended up with a 13" square topper.

Since I was already stretching myself, I decided to do some wavy line quilting with my walking foot (also outside of my box!) and I'm so glad I did! Bound in the same steel gray I used in my hashtag quilt and this baby is done! I learned a lot and feel really good about my first real foray into unguided improv quilting. 

Celebrating Dad

It was such a treat to travel to Phoenix this past weekend and celebrate my dad's 80th birthday. We had lots of family time and a big party and I don't think he stopped smiling the whole time!

Dad is the greatest guy I know! He loves people, is always the first to help when needed. He's kind and generous.... I have always looked up to him. It was fun to do nice things for him for a change!

Before we left I decided to whip up a little quilt for him to hang.....

Dad is a huge Cleveland Indians fan (we were really hoping for a World Series win last fall!) so I thought a chief wahoo mini would do the trick. I used a picture of chief wahoo to create the appliqué and I think it turned out pretty sweet! Dad seemed to like it too.

The weekend went way too fast & now I am home, nursing a nasty cold. Sigh.

NYC 2016

Last weekend I jaunted off to the Big Apple to visit my oldest daughter, Leigh Anne...

The main purpose of this visit was for the two of us to attend the She Is Free conference, hosted by her church, Liberty Church NYC. There's an incredible video here, if you want to see more about She Is Free. It was an incredible weekend!

We ate lots of great (gluten free!) food in NYC, of course. And on Sunday, after the conference had ended, I requested a trip to Purl Soho which Leigh Anne politely agreed to (she did not acquire the crafty gene sadly). I had been planning my purchase from Purl Soho and saving for it for quite a while. 

Isn't it beautiful? A fat eighth bundle of 56 different pieces of Liberty Lawn. OH. MY. GOODNESS. and since Liberty Lawn is 54 inches wide, a fat eighth is 9" X 27" which means even more incredible goodness! I plan to stretch this fabric and include it in many many projects. But I wasn't home long before I selected 30 prints and cut a 2 1/2" strip from each, prepping pieces for an English Paper Pieced plus quilt. 

I have dreamed of a liberty version of this quilt ever since I made my first EPP Plus quilt last year. When I finished prepping, I had a pile of tiny strips of Liberty on my cutting table and I couldn't bear to throw them away....

My friend Mahriam, the queen of "no scrap left behind" suggested I put them in a pretty jar! Brilliant. So off I went to Walmart where I got this cute, tiny jar for less than $3.

It was the perfect size! And now I will always have a little bit of Liberty making my studio a happy place...

I have added my EPP Plus Liberty quilt to my fourth quarter goals for the finish along.

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a week in Charlotte

I'm just home from a wonderful week visiting my friend Kathie in Charlotte, NC. You might remember that I visited her when she lived in Asheville. Back in 2014 I was fascinated with Kathie's weaving, just as I have been for the 20+ years that I've known her. But, I didn't know enough to really appreciate what she does. THIS time.... now that I've been weaving for a couple of months on my rigid heddle loom, THIS time I had a solid appreciation for everything Kathie does. And a million questions! 

We went to visit her off site studio where she was working on weaving baby blankets....

 And we spent TONS of time in her studio at home. Check out this yarn! Kathie has every single color of 8/2 cotton that WEBS sells...

 Look at the light streaming into her space...

 even her shuttles look pretty in a basket on the shelf...

 and bobbins in another basket...

and guess what? Kathie taught me to weave on her small floor loom! I learned so so much. Check back tomorrow if you want to see what I made in just a week!