A special project and more Dresdens

I am in a Dresden kind of mood.  I finished up more for Catherine's quilt and as you see below, they are coming along swimmingly.  

But, I can't stop with Catherine's quilt. I have to do more Dresdens.  The South Sound Modern Quilt Guild is holding a get to meet you event by asking members to trade scrap fabric packages and asking the recipient of someone's scraps to make that lucky lady something from them.  You get an idea of what they like and you get to play with something that might not be in your wheel house.  It is a really nice skill building event.  The scraps I got are featured below (sorry, I wasn't clever enough to take pictures of them before slicing into them).  The instructions I got from the scrap owner were to do something with a heart.  That is a great challenge.  After playing with the scraps and toying with various heart designs, I decided that the center of a Dresden plate could easily be a lovely heart and my plan of action took place.  All the fabrics are the scraps of the donor except for the heart.  My first heart attempt ended badly.  Luckily, no one was hurt and I was able to move on.  I thought this aqua fabric would make a fun heart.  I will also be using it for another SSMQG project that I need to complete this week too.  It's a month of aqua for me. 

My donor's scraps also had some lovely 1.5 inch wide purple strips which I just had to play with.  I decided on a couple of log cabins for the back. 

The quilting job was rather simple, but I really like how it turned out on the back. You can see the plate and the heart and I like that you can see that on both sides.  And, with that, my first mini quilt is complete and my first Dresden plate is complete.  Boom!

Now for some more aqua work.....

Dresdens, Baby

We had a lovely week of summer, but it is cooling off a bit here and that is probably fine for my long neglected garden.  I watered earlier this week and should have last night but there is a very large spider who has decided to live above the spigot in the back yard and those hoses aren't going to get turned on until he moves on.  I'm hoping for a hard frost.  

Neglecting my garden has given me lots of free time to finish up some more Dresdens.  I really like how these are turning out and if the process of attaching them to something doesn't lead me to drink (ha!), I will probably do another Dresden quilt in the future.  I've got 9 of these bad boys done.  Only a few more to go and then the painful attaching period starts.  

Backpacking in the Olympics

It has been brought to my attention that I have not yet blogged about my three day, two night backpacking trip in the Olympics.  It isn't that I didn't want to share, it's that is hard to write about something that was fun, intense, and rather spiritual.  I was awfully proud of myself to be able to walk the 21 mile loop in three days with a full backpack.  (Not as full as AH's pack was - thanks for carrying the tent, stove, and bear canister!)  Well, I was proud of myself until we came across people on the trail who were running it in a day.  That's right running it.  Jerks.

Our destination on day 1.

Dr. Seuss plants

Invisible elk 

A view of the trail, cutting into the hillside.

It was a physically challenging hike which seemed to be straight up hill for two days with a lovely, quick, and rather slippery downhill on day three.  There were lots of signs to watch out for aggressive mountain goats, but we didn't see any (aggressive or otherwise).  Something big came through our campsite at night - bear, goat, chupacabra, or bigfoot.  I don't know what it was because I was too scared to leave the tent to find out; I like to think years of watching bad horror movies have taught me not to leave the safety of my tent when it is pitch dark out and you are in the woods.  We had lightning and rain that first night but managed to get some nice star watching in before the clouds came over.

And the views?  Well, as you can see, the views were spectacular.  Green, green lakes, clear skies with beautiful mountains, and lots of beautiful wildflowers.  We did see a rather large herd of elk, or maybe two herds hanging out together.  We were not close to them so my pictures didn't turn out but it was nice to see those large animals in an area where they were not going to be messed with by people.  It was reassuring that wild spots remain on this planet and I can't wait to hit the trail again.

SSMQG - Block Challenge

The South Sound Modern Quilt Guild is off to a running start.  It's been so interesting to see what the other quilters have made and it is very inspiring.  I'm so glad to be a part of this.  One of our members was gifted a large amount of what can only be charitably described as "hideous" cat fabric.  We took it upon ourselves to use this fabric as our first challenge block.  Take a 10 inch square of cat fabric and make it modern.  Don't believe that it is hideous?

(don't look straight at it)

It is decidedly not modern fabric.  And, half of my block is the back of a cat.  Yikes.

For inspiration, I picked up my Modern Blocks book and came up with this:

I liked using the bright pink to brighten it up, but I can't help thinking that it now looks like the cats are in jail.  The featured cat sure does not look happy.  Oh well, I will be very excited to see what the others have come up with at our next meeting.

Dresden Plates

My friend Catherine is adulting.  She has a real job with a real salary and benefits, is smart and funny, and is an amazing crafter.  She also just bought a house.  Her first house.  This calls for a gift of a handmade quilt.  After giving Ms. Catherine a choice of two fabric packs that I picked up from Fabricworm, she chose the following:

An excellent choice if I do say so myself.  The next question for myself was what to do with this bit of loveliness.  I played with the pack and took a couple of the lighter gray shades out and put in a couple Pearl Bracelets from my stash (in that I went to the fabric store, bought them for this project, and put them in a bin before I began cutting).   But, I was still confronted with the question of what to make out of this.  Sure, I could just cut this all into five inch squares and sew that together but that isn't going to cut it because this is Catherine we are talking about and it is going to be special like her.

I was going back and forth on pattern ideas - some kind of disappearing 9 patch, a block called the Old Maid's Block which would just be funny to do, or something else.  And then it hit me.  Dresden Plates.  Why not take Dresden Plates and make them modern with that lovely fabric? I honestly had never really been that interested in the Dresden Plate pattern; I thought it was too old fashioned and fussy and not really "modern." However, after working my way through the Spinster Quilt I realized that half of the fun of modern quilting is taking an old pattern and making it new.  I checked with Catherine to make sure this would be okay and that Dresden Plates didn't bring up a horrible childhood experience.  "Sure, that would be fine except Dresden Plates were responsible for the death of the family dog." After getting the all clear, I bought the template and began slicing away at the fabric.

I have three done, about 13 or 17 to go, depending how a 4x4 layout looks.  This is also going to be a huge quilt - the blocks will be approximately 17 by 17 inches which is a whole lot of Dresden.

The next step will be to figure out how to put these on something and get those center circles cut and in place.  

Graphic Florals - Completed Front

I promised more pictures of my current project that uses a lot of colors that are bright enough to see from space.  (As if I can do any other kind of quilt.)  I'm posting those pictures which also includes lots of cameos from the cat army.  

Working on the layout with Angry Bob.  

Layout complete, cats in motion.

Labeled and ready to go. 

Scout on inspection of the final project. 

Completely pieced front.

Sadly, no cats appeared for this photo.

I'm off to work on the back of this and I'm thinking of using some of the dark blue that was left over from the Spinster Quilt. I really should be outside playing on this beautiful day, but I'm staying close to home to keep an eye on Scout, AKA Little Girl Cat, AKA Scooter, AKA Scooter McGooder.   As you can see above, she is doing great.  Why am I worried?  Well, she had surgery on Friday to remove a tumor and an abscessed tooth.  The tumor was on her lip and is in the process of being sent to the lab for testing.  We are assuming that the tumor is benign until we hear differently and will not be worrying about it until then.  Friday was exciting in that I got her home from the vet and she was still loopy from the anesthesia and stumbling around like an adorable little furry drunken sailor.  She also managed to fall down the stairs twice, which is why I'm staying close to home today.  Meanwhile don't worry about Scooter McFurryPants.  She is getting lots of scritches today and free access to whatever sewing project she chooses to sit on.  She will be fine.  Me, on the other hand........

Emerald Ridge

Two posts in one day!  This is amazing.  We should all buy lottery tickets, because magic is happening.

These pictures are from last weekend's backpacking trip with AH.  We did two days and one night on the mountain to Emerald Ridge and parts of the Wonderland trail.  It was amazing.  The trail we took to connect us to the Wonderland trail was not maintained.  This is a bit of an understatement.  There had been a landslide and about 50 feet of the trail was washed out.  The choices were to go through the very fast and cold river or bushwhack through the landslide.  We bushwhacked and it was hard.  There were times we had to take off our packs and push them ahead of us because we were ducking under trees and tree roots.  It was also very, very steep and it was very important to not slide down into the river. Half an hour later we were back on the trail.  This was the "easy" part.  We were hooking up to the Wonderland trail where we had 2.8 miles and 3000 feet of elevation gain to challenge us.  It was a challenge, but we made it to the top and the simply amazing views of the mountain and the glaciers.

Night was spent at the South Puyallup River campsite near the Puyallup River.  It was beautiful and I wish I had gotten out of the tent to look at the stars, but sometimes you are tired and in a sleeping bag and there you will remain.

Many more pictures are here.