Howdy

How do you begin to blog when you haven't really had much to blog about or been way to busy to blog for the past few months?  Well I am done traveling for a while, starting to settle back into home life again, even though my parents are visiting for the next couple of weeks.

I will start with what I have been working on.

I made a quilt for a distant cousin for thanks in helping my mother doing genealogy research.

 The grand daughter was my quilt holder.  She was extra brave perched up on the downed tree in the river. 

 Of course as soon as I got her situated the wind came up. 

The pictures were taken across and down the river from my great grandparent's homestead.  I learned to swim in this river.  I miss this place, especially the clear, clean water.  The quilt was made up of a jelly roll of Robert Kaufman Wildlife Sanctuary, a yellow/gold speckled batik, a light blue and dark midnight blue for the border.  At this time I cannot locate the name of the pattern but it is easy peasy.  I quilted it with a simple wavy line on my sewing machine.

I entered my Fiesta Vintage Rose in the county fair and won a blue ribbon!

I have the block of the month for my Tuesday sewing group.

I am currently working on the one for the month of August.

The LQS BOM that I am participating in.

This one is called Kaleidoscope.

These are Amish with a Twist.

I have an idea for the Quilt Guild Challenge quilt and it started with a set of New York Beauty blocks.

I have a couple of different parts going on this one right now.

Before I left on my journeys I was working on quilting a charity quilt on my quilting machine, broke a needle which resulted in the needle collar getting really loose.  I decided to take the machine in since it is over 2 years old even though it may have less than 20 hours of sewing.  The nearest repair shop was in Pickney, Michigan about 1 hour away.  I called and made arrangements for my girl to have a spa day.  Took her out of the table with the help of the grand daughter, and loaded her in the car for the trip.  While they were checking her in I started playing with a similar machine on what they call a little foot frame.

Yep I upgraded my Sweet Sixteen to a Simply Sixteen (technically) with a little foot frame.  The frame is only 5 feet long, but already I have been enjoying the control much more than the sit down machine.

While I was traveling I did do a bit of shopping, but honestly not a whole lot. I saw a Row by Row in Brownsville, Oregon that I thought was hilarious so one day my mom and I headed out to visit Brownsville.  We got there and this teeny, tiny town off the beaten path was crazy busy for being July 23rd. 

Old cars everywhere.

Neat old buildings.

There was no place to park in town, we had to drive around, and around before we finally located a parking spot.  Come to find out the town is where the movie Stand By Me was filmed, and July 23rd is always "Stand By Me Days", no matter what day of the week it falls on.

The quilt shop in Brownsville is called Yankee Dutch Quilting and they had the funnest Row by Row pattern.

While we were driving through Montana after visiting Glacier National Park we spied a quilt store next to a small diner where we were enjoying breakfast.  The store is called Native Life and is in Browning, Montana.  I liked their row by row for this year and last year so I purchased the kits.

I have tons more to share and finally figured out how to move the pictures from my phone to my computer quickly, which will make things a whole lot easier when it comes to posting.