Quilting

(Disclaimer: This is probably more than you want to know about this quilt … so skip this post if you want to.)

I know you’ve been waiting for this, right?  J’s quilt, which I started way back in February … IS FINALLY DONE!!!  After piecing the top together, and taking it to Utah to quilt around each square, I finished the edges and then quilted each individual square.  This is how it turned out.

I love turning the quilt over, after I’ve quilted the inside of the square, and looking at the back.  On some of them, you can seem the details better that way.

Can you see the 3 smaller c-47s flying in formation?

Or the shark fin sticking out of the waves in the corner?

Some of them were easy, and some of them I agonized over.

At first the wolf howled at a whole moon … but it looked less like a moon and more like a random circle … so I made a crescent, and I liked it much better.

This one is a control tower and a runway.  I say that because everyone looks at this square a little strangely. 

It was supposed to be an octopus … but it’s more like a deep-sea monster.

ABC and 123 … and then I realized the picture wasn’t really a school bus.  Oh well.

Do you see that lovely African tree on the horizon?

J really likes the ones that have a “momma and baby” on them.

So, I’m done, right?  Right?

Those who know me best will know I have a touch of OCD. 

And what’s a brand new quilt without a matching pillow sham?

And then he needs a new valance!  (Please excuse the fleece hanging behind it – daylight savings time and long summer days kill us without being able to drop the fleece down and darken the room at bedtime.)

And there you have it.  All done!

This summer got away from me …

Last summer it seemed we were forever waiting on trips to Utah.  We visited my grandpa before he died, then we went back for his funeral.  Then we went down for my brother’s farewell and for a family reunion.  I spent the time between trips recovering from the last and anticipating the next one.  At the end of the summer, I felt like I’d missed out on a lot of summer things that we never got around to.  So, I decided we would make time for those things this summer. 

We got out the little sprinkler and just let the kids play.

I signed the kids up for two sessions of swimming lessons.

I hurried out and bought L a bike (which I’d needed to do last year …).

And we had A BLAST!!!

 

While the kids played, I worked on refinishing my sis-in-law’s dining room table and sewed a quilt (which will get its own post).

And just when we were all played out, we got to August … and things got busy … and I stopped posting pictures …

We went down to my parents’ house, first.  They recently moved into my Grandpa’s house, which he designed and built himself.  I LOVE that they are there.  That house is just about as close to a “home” as I have (and when my other grandparents sell their house, I will shed buckets of tears).  My dad’s putting in a deck out back, and we put the kids’ handprints in the cement.

My brother-in-law helped each of the grandkids leave their prints.

Then we went up to Snowbird, up Little Cottonwood Canyon.  For the very first time, I saw a moose!  (And I know this sounds like a little thing, but C and I went on our honeymoon to Yellowstone while my family went to Snowbird.  While we couldn’t find a single moose, they saw three!)

Oh, there’s a moose!  Take a pic, quick!

She’s hanging around.  Take more pictures …

Hello, Moose!

She didn’t seem to mind us being there at all.

Of course, the kids didn’t mind her, either.  They’d found a caterpillar, which was infinitely more amusing.

One so you can see how close we were.  She wasn’t more than thirty feet up the mountainside.

My kids loved Snowbird.  They’re getting big enough to go on short hikes without having to carry them out … well, except for J, who rode on my shoulders for the second half of our White Pine adventure.

I love that they get to spent time with my grandparents.

And time with their cousins, of course! 

And they learned how to water the trees in the forest … a skill they will thank me for when they are teenagers and go to girls’ camp!

We played in a mountain stream … and slipped into it!

L has learned to roll her eyes when I pull out my camera.

S didn’t want to smile because she wanted to remember, in the picture, that she’d gotten all wet.

Then she hurried back to the water.

My mom read books to the grandkids and generally spoiled them.

And we came home completely wiped out.