Or Not Friday

For Finished (or not) Friday I have fabric acquisitions 😃.  Lisa & I went to Sew Special Maui where I purchased some material to make a top with the Hawaii panel I have. 

I bought the panel to use on the back of a quilt I was gifting but it didn’t work out. Now that I’ve made it to Hawaii, I can make myself a quilt! Here’s what I bought.

The flower print on the bottom right is a pack of 5” squares, all Hawaii prints and the red print was a freebie. 

Aloha, Cherie

Handwork

I pulled out this fall table topper and started hand quilting in the ditch. There’s a lot of ditches for such a small piece due to the HST’s that make a subtle zigzag in the background.

I think it will look nice on our coffee table at the cabin so I’ll try to finish it up while we’re here.

We are leaving our cabin for a trip to Maui for a week so I may be silent for a bit, but who knows, there might be some roadside attractions 😄

Cheers, Cherie 

Roadside Attractions

Next on our trip was to depart Red Lodge Montana. We took the Beartooth Highway and were wowed by the beautiful vistas as it climbs to 10,947 feet. It has plenty of pull-offs with many having places you can wonder or hike. Rock Creek Vista Point pull-off has a trail out to a point with amazing views (and bathrooms). There are lakes, glacial ice and waterfalls which made for a spectacular drive.

Then we traveled to the northeast entrance into Yellowstone National Park and through the Lamar Valley which did not disappoint! We saw hundreds of bison and some antelope. The bison were in multiple locations both off in the distance and close to or on the road. We spent quite a bit of time watching these magnificent beasts.  

Highly recommend the Beartooth Highway and Lamar Valley. No roadside attractions can compare so we didn’t even try 😂

Our drive ended in Idaho to visit friends for a few days (Lisa & Greg👋🏼). Both Lisa & her mom are quilters and Lisa’s mom is the one taking the 3 1/2” squares off my hands. She is also taking several yards of baby fabric. I asked about those two things. I did not ask about the rest of things in the picture below 😁😆🤣.

 

Included is the broken dishes quilt I’ve been trying to get myself to finish. I’ve made two large throws and a baby quilt from these blocks already and I just am not interested in one more. Lisa said she will take a stab at it 😁😁. I use leftover blocks/units when I can for pieced backings. I LOVE and sew with scraps but most leftover blocks/units are not my jam.  

Cheers, Cherie

Catching Up and a Finish

As we departed Rapid City, I just had to get a picture of this old sign as it is cool. It looks like it had neon lights at one time. Hope the building renovation behind it doesn’t spell the sign’s demise.

On the way to Red Lodge, Montana, we made a stop in Billings for our scheduled roadside attraction……an installation celebrating The Great Montana Centennial Cattle Drive that happened in 1989.

But then we drove past this installation……and had to turn around!

On the way I finished the Quadrangle quilt!

Linking up with Finished (or Not) Friday.

Cheers, Cherie

Monday Miscellaneo

We stayed in Rapid City two nights. On our last drive through there was a storm that brought dense fog to the area and we weren’t able to see the Crazy Horse Monument. This time we wanted to catch the Wind Cave National Park and Crazy Horse. 

I love that so many of the CCC projects are still benefiting us today. The elevator at wind cave is one of those projects. Isn’t the floor indicator way cool???

I learned so much at the Crazy Horse Monument. The fact that it will take so long to complete makes it feel epic. I would like to return in 10 years. They had two pictures, one from 2020 and one from 2023 that clearly showed the progress on the extended hand. It is such a monumental project, it’s hard to take in the scale. This is a photo of the plaster sculpture that, if I remember correctly, is 16 tons itself!

The letters on the poem are slated to be three feet high. Just an incredible, monumental project.

Lastly, just like our trip before, our timing just happened to coincide with the Sturgis motorcycle rally. We saw motorcyclists everywhere and I’m sure the economic benefits to all the surrounding areas helps sustain many businesses. This trip, we actually drove into Sturgis and the number of motorcycles in Sturgis itself was incredible!! They have a platform that, for $5, you can climb to for pictures with the proceeds going to that day’s charity organization. Nice touch, Sturgis!

It was easy to drive in to Sturgis and park our car on a side street. Interestingly, there were several locations offering their yard to pitch your tent.

And that is our roadside attraction!

Cherie

Sunday’s Attraction

Yesterday’s roadside attraction is located in Sioux City, IA in Trinity Heights/Queen of Peace park. A 33 foot high metal statue of Jesus and a 30 foot high one of Mary. 

I love the flowing robes and had to capture the reflection of Mary once my DH pointed it out.

We also stopped at the Chamberlain, SD rest stop and visited a previous roadside attraction: Dignity of Earth and Sky. Metal statues day for us, lol.

I did a fair amount of the driving but fully turned the third binding corner and am closing in on the fourth. 

Cheers, Cherie 

Saturday Aug 8

On the road again! Yesterday we were in St Louis, MO and went to Turtle Park and here’s our roadside attraction.

Today we headed out to Council Bluffs, Iowa but our roadside attraction occurred at the end of our drive across the Missouri River in Omaha, Nebraska.

In the Italian section….15’ fork and pasta….with a Bocce ball court behind it 😃. I wasn’t sure if the weather would allow for a visit….it was looking a bit scary but it moved east before we got to where it was worst.

I got some sewing in……2 and a half corners turned.

Happy Trails, Cherie

August BOM

Monday, amid packing, I finished the August BOM which means I will only be behind the month of September when we return home in October. 

I finalized my stitching to go bag……

..….and elected to sew the binding on the Quadrangle quilt first. 

The roadside attraction for our first day of driving was in Zanesville, OH - Cottrill’s sidewalk of sculptures.

There are two blocks of sculptures and they are amazing!

Check out what this sheep is wearing…..

Ice skates 😂😂.

Fun times! Cherie 

The Question….

……I’ve been asking myself is what do I really want to work on. The answer is some improv, some liberated piecing, using my vast collection of thrifted shirts, and a few projects I’ve had in mind for years. 

Given these answers, I’ve decided that while I enjoy cutting up leftover fabrics for the scraps user’s system à la Bonnie Hunter, I don’t really want to sew with them. I’ve offered this 5 1/2” high stack of 3 1/2” squares to friend who does sewing for charity. Similar to giving my batting cutoffs to Jan, they are used, just not by me 😉😉.

I have a love of re-using containers and found the perfect almond windmill cookies container to put the squares in for packing.

Along the same lines, Patty said she was going to order more white flannel for the thread beds she makes. That reminded me I bought extra wide white flannel for a design wall when I first moved to PA but I’ve been using flannel backed table cloths. I like them as I can easily roll it up to preserve what is on it and put up another one which means I never used the flannel.

The flannel and the Friendship Star quilt packages were both taken to the post office on Saturday. Fingers crossed both will arrive safely.  

Letting go of things that, realistically, I will never use will help me focus on the projects I most want to make but seem to take a backseat. That’s the plan, anyway.

 Cheers, Cherie

Completed! Finished! Done!

I have put in the very last stitches on the Friendship Star quilt. It seems heavy but weighs only 9 pounds…..so much less than I would have guessed. I ended up glue basting the binding which took several hours but worked well. I used my zipper foot to get close to the edge of the binding and used my stiletto to help keep the binding fold out of the way.

It worked pretty darn well and saved a ton of time vs hand stitching the binding down. The corners came out really nice too.

Here’s the label….this quilt is going to England thus the USA on the label.

Here’s the finished photos of this 108” x 108” monster.

Linking up with Finished (or not) Friday….because it is FINISHED!

Yippee! Cherie

Binding Time

I cut and sewed the binding strips for Friendship Stars yesterday. I did my usual pre-check to make sure no joins landed on the corners.

Today I got the label prepared and sewn in the corner.

I used a strip of the selvage to make the octopus and now there’s nothing left but to get to sewing!

Happy sewing! Cherie

I Win!

I played backing chicken and I won! Yippee!!

I did lose at bobbin chicken, running out of thread about 15” from completing the last row of quilting but better that than not having enough backing!

This quilt is huge and it’s heavy. I’m definitely going to sew the binding on by machine using glue basting. I’ve been sewing on my featherweight in a featherweight table but it is the size of a card table…..just not enough real estate to manage this size of quilt. So I got to thinking.  We have a large desk that isn’t used much since I’m no longer working. Also we both use iPads and no longer have a desktop computer…so I asked about moving our desk into the quilt studio. 

I’m not certain if I’ll rearrange things or not but this will work for now! It will be so much better for sewing on borders and bindings!

Cheers, Cherie