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Off to Colorado!

I am SO excited! I am off to Colorado tomorrow morning to see my eldest son Andy and his family. Andy has been serving in Afghanistan for the last year and his deployment is finally over! I had a message on my answering machine when I got home from work-he was in Maine. Very exciting news as there was a question as to whether he would be home this weekend or not.

My husband is changing jobs soon and this weekend is the ONLY one we can get away to go visit. We have an 11 to 12 hour drive ahead of us. Dread that, but can't WAIT to see my grandchildren. I miss them so much, and it will be great to see Andy all safe and sound. This was his 3rd overseas tour, I hope it's the last one.

Machine Needlefelting Class

Last week I held a machine needle felting class at the Quilting Connection in Ames, and I managed to take snap a few pictures of the class.

I chose postcards as the project for the night. Here a a couple that I used for samples for the class.


I kept mine simple, with no further embellishments. I didn't want people to feel intimidated by some of the unusual materials I like to use, or feel they had to bring a lot of extra supplies to class.


Here April, Chris, and Marlene are hard at work on their projects.

Marlene's postcard, almost finished. I failed to get a good picture of the finished postcard, but it reminded me of a Van Gogh painting. Simply beautiful.

And then, this week, I got the greatest surprise, I got this in the mail from April! It was the card she was working on in class.
Below is the postcard that I will be mailing off to April. Hope she likes it!

Recent Finishes

With all the snow we've had here there's not much to do besides stay in and quilt, or in my case, actually break down and finish some quilts. Here are two sane (as opposed to crazy)quilts that I've managed to bind.

First up is a Civil War reproduction quilt that I made as a sample for the Quilting Connection, quilted by my friend April West. Nice quilt, but I would never, ever make a quilt entirely of triangles ever again. Ever.

Detail.... Next up is a small version of an old Mount Redoubt pattern, used as a teaching tool for a class. I had left this without a binding for years, now finished, it's ready for gift giving.

Sea Urchin Necklace

Quite some time ago I fell in love with a Sea Urchin bead from Heather Powers, a polymer clay artist who sells her work on both etsy and from her website . Heather posted an absolutely beautiful necklace on her blog. I loved the necklace so much that I had to make my own version. I originally intended to make mine exactly like Heather's but it just didn't work that way for me. I tend to work in a monocromatic or very low contrast pallet when making both quilts and jewelry. I guess I just find it soothing to do so.

My version of Heather's necklace uses some beautiful freshwater keshi pearls, faceted amazonite rounds, 2 lampwork beads from an ebay artist, sterling silver beads and findings, and seedbeads.

I can't wait for summer to start wearing it again.