The Beginning

Inspiration photograph

I decided to make a landscape featuring a cliff that is near our Kanab home. I took this photograph while on our hike last weekend.  I love the red rock in the area! I am planning some sort of improvisational type piecing. I think. We will see what happens. Sometimes these ideas take on a different path.

Fabric Palette

I pulled batiks in browns, oranges, corals, sages, and olive greens. I also grabbed a couple of pieces of my hand dyed blues.

Thread selection

I filled a container with possible quilting threads. I always like to have a lot of thread possibilities, I most likely will use only a few of these. And the red is in there for a bowl, not this project.

Almost quilted!

I was able to get some more bubbles quilted in my little spiral quilt. I hope to finish that this afternoon and get a binding on it.

I am linking to Emily, Amanda Jean and Nina-Marie.

Sew into the Summer

What I was sewing

How it looked on the ironing board

Maybe this way?!

A few weeks ago I blogged about getting back to this unnamed project. This week I was finally able to sew for a couple of hours. Yeah, my piecing curved. I had to think on that one before finishing the strip piecing. Do I want to go back and sew it straight? Or do I want to go with the curve? I went with the curve! I think it gives it a cool look. Now my issue is which way is up? Is it a landscape?  I had originally intended to try a cutting holes in the top technique that I saw on a blog a couple of months ago. Now I am thinking this is not the piece to try out that technique.  So while I am pondering that issue, I pulled out another UFO and did some FMQ.

FMQ

I didn't get too much done, Sweetie came home and then talked to me and I was out of the groove. I have some time today, hope to finish the bubbles.

Demo bowl

Wednesday was the Wales quilt guild. I taught clothes line bowls. I love making bowls! This is a fun group. On sew days we have a potluck lunch. And then the regular meeting. Each meeting one of our members does a trunk show. This month was Cheryl's turn. Loved seeing all her projects.

EZ Crazy

"Charlotte"

And bonus! She showed two quilts from classes that she took from me! It is always a thrill to see a class project out in the wild!  I am renaming the red quilt class "Charlotte" in honor of one of my dearest friends here in Sanpete County.

Yarn Chicken

On Ravelry I am participating in a sock knitting competition titled "Tour De Sock". It is a fundraiser for Drs without Borders.  We are on the second stage of the race, and I am on my first sock.  I had two small skeins of yarn for this pair. I am close to completing the toe, hope the yarn holds out!

The birds got my cherry

I recently had shown a photograph of the only cherry on our small tree. I had hope to eat that guy. We were out of town over the weekend and the birds got my cherry!

I am linking to Nina-Marie, Beth, Emily, Monday Making and Amanda Jean this week.

Inspiration at Rat Fink Reunion

Every year the small town south of us, Manti, holds the "Rat Fink Reunion". It is in honor of the late Ed Roth who is famous for his drawings of the Rat Fink. He was also famous for inventing pin striping and printing on T-shirts. Included in the festivities is a car show. We went last weekend, it was fun! This show has a good variety of cars. Stock, restored,chopped, art, in progress and everything in between! I love the emblems on vintage cars! So inspirational! One of these days I need to make a fiber art piece inspired by one of my car show photographs.

Loved this emblem 

One of the issues with taking photographs of cars at a car show is that they are polished within an inch of their lives and it is tricky to try and get a photo without it being a selfie! You can see my squished face in the chrome at the top.

A crown and a rat

Love the metal work on this art car! No doubt this guy is not finished yet!

An Art Beetle

Sometimes they paint it to look like rust! 

Rat Fink

You see a lot of tributes to the Rat Fink on the cars.

Lovely pin striping!

And once again I am in the photograph!

Old fire truck!

It was hard to get all the elements of this in one photograph. There is a ladder with another firefighter skeleton up against the tree rescuing a cat skeleton. There is a dog skeleton on the front of the truck.

In other excitement this week I received a package in the mail.......

Oh, of course it is packed upside down!

Inspired by the National Parks!

My copy of  "Inspired by the National Parks" by Donna Marcinkowski DeSoto! It is a beautiful book with wonderfully written stories from National park rangers. I am thrilled to be a part of it!

Capitol Reef

A couple of weeks ago I was able to reveal my quilt "Fruita View" that I submitted for this book. I love the way it looks in the book!

Brooks River

My good pal, Lisa Chin, did Katmai park. I love the way she used free form piecing to depict the sky, trees and water.

I am linking to Nina-Marie , Emily , Love Laugh, Quilt , Sarah and Amanda Jean's linky parties.

And the Summer Starts off with a Whimper

So many things going on this year and not a lot of sewing or creating art. We have our home up for sale, which means that stuff is stowed away and everything has to be tidy. Not my way of working in the sewing room! A court case involving the family cabin's subdivision and an unethical mayor/city council which has been dragging on for over two years now. And then to top it off my sweet puppy dog, Eddy, had to have surgery yesterday to remove a lump from his right hip. Poor little guy! And I believe that he blames me. I dropped him off telling him that the nice people at the vet clinic were going to take good care of him and then they knocked him out, cut him up and then put a cone of shame on him.  He cried the entire drive home. I need to keep a close eye on him today, make sure that he is healing.

The last blooming iris

I did get a bit of gardening done while Eddy was at the clinic. The last of the irises are blooming.  I did not get out there to take photographs of them this year. They did put on a good show!

Tomatoes

I am only planting a few tomato plants this year. The last couple of years I had an overabundance of them and couldn't keep up.  I planted two Romas and one cherry (not pictured). I hope that will be enough. 

Basil

I decided to plant the basil in a pot. That way if our house sells I can take it with me. I have a perennial herb garden, but basil needs to be replanted every year. I have hopes of dividing the perennials and putting some in pots so that I can start another herb garden at the new house.

Cherry

Three or four years ago we planted a cherry tree. It had a rough start the first year. But came back the next with some good branches. This year there were plenty of blossoms.  But there is only one cherry on the entire tree. I hope I get to share it with sweetie, around here the birds know exactly when the fruit is perfectly ripe, usually one day before I realize it.  The peach trees have a decent amount of fruit.  Hope to beat the birds to those as well.

Two years ago I participated in a summer photography scavenger hunt. It was fun! Last year I missed it, so decided to do it this summer. I will be posting my photographs to my photo blog. It started on the 1st. Still time to join in. If you are interested here is the link to the host of this event.

In my studio

I hope to spend some time in the studio today. I have this piece, started from leftovers, that has been vegging for a couple of weeks. I wanted to try and cut holes into the top, saw the technique on a blog a couple of months ago. I really wanted to try it out and with all the house stuff going on, this is as far as I got.

My off the wall and finished friday post for this week.