Indigo Way is a Flimsy, a Wedding, and my RSC!

I am all caught up on A Quilting Life's BOM and my Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2024.  I went back and made a second January block in green and then made two blocks in purple for March.  Loving these scrappy blocks!

For Christmas Becky sent me a Halloween table runner.  It arrived in early February I think, but accidentally went to our old Milwaukee address.  The people there took it in their house and their dog got to the package.  They thought it was not damaged, but one green square was ripped apart.  I did not want to mention it to Becky (I love this table runner) so I got a spider and sewed it over the top.  Looks even better!  I have one more smaller spider that I might just add to the other side!

Last weekend my goddaughter (and niece from ex hubby's side) got married nearby.  She lives in Milwaukee.  Kelsey and Tony have been together for ten years and finally decided to marry.  She was a beautiful bride and I predict many happy years for the two of them!  Hazel was the flower girl which was super cute.  

I held Indie for about ninety minutes (the whole ceremony and some of the dinner/reception) and as far as I know there are no pictures of it.  Kathy had her for five minutes, but I got a picture.  Indie is such a snuggler and a happy baby.  She has a helmet til April for a slightly wrongly shaped head.  It is pretty much fixed now.  She looks so cute with her helmet and when we take it off we barely recognize her.  She wears it 23 hours a day.

Here are Kelsey and Tony with Talkin Turkey which I gave them for their wedding.  It looks like they love it!  This was a hard one to part with, but I can see they appreciate it! 

                          

Now on to my big finish!  I had two days in a row of sewing this week!  Indie started daycare so I have the girls two days a week now (instead of a third day with Indie) so I am recovering a bit better and can sew more.

I had the top together the end of February and was putting off trimming it and getting the borders on. I did not follow the directions correctly as I thought I could take a shortcut, haha!  So I had to add a partial unit to the end of my border to make it work out.

My corners are not great and I am not sure this is perfectly square, but Indigo Way is done.  I love how the colors came out.
 

There is not enough room to lay this out in the living room.  I had to move furniture, and it is still on top of a chair leg.  So happy to have this one done!

Bucket List Checks!

 

 Last Sunday my cousins and I met up at the Grand Canyon to hike Bright Angel Trail and Plateau Point!  My Uncle Rick and his daughter Lindy flew in from Wisconsin with their exchange student Caca (Katja) and a good friend of the family Kersten.  My Aunt Lisa was unable to come so Kersten was a last minute substitution and she decided to hike too.  My cousin Tricia flew in from Minnesota. We left about 8:45 AM and this first picture is the before picture!

 Rick and Kathy stayed above and spent much of the day spotting us!  I texted all day as we reached different points and they used the color of our ever changing clothes to find us!  Here we go!

 

 I had my first blister about a mile in!  It is so steep.  In the end I wrapped both my first and second toes on both feet.  I will prewrap and buy sock liners (a friend told me about after) if I ever undertake something like that again!  It was beautiful and so amazing to do this journey at this point in my life.  We made it to Plateau Point and saw the Hudson River far below.  Very few people were out there and it was like being alone!

 

One of us has a picture of the five of us out there, but I don't have it yet, so here is the one of the four of us that Tricia took.

On the way up we separated into two, sometimes three, groups.  It was 301 flights of stairs up, 12.7 miles total and took me 8 hours and 55 minutes!  The average time is 9 hours so I was pretty happy with that! Caca is a hiker she beat us by 45 minutes--she is 17.  Kersten got a migraine and was sick all the next day and in the ER.  I think she didn't have time to train though she is 20 and in great shape.  She beat us by 30 minutes.  Tricia stayed back with Lindy and I and cheered us on or she would have been up with or before the others.  The altitude was killer.  My body held up great and I felt strong, but my heart would get pounding and I needed more air way too often.  It was so much harder to breathe on the way up than I have ever experienced. 

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 Here we are with a group hug at the top!  I will cherish this day always and am so proud to check it off my bucket list!

 

 Here are the after pictures.  We are still smiling and there is still daylight! 

 And now for bucket list item number two--you may be more interested in this one as it is quilt related! Kathy and I put some quilts in the Arizona Quilt Guild Show this year.  We ran over there and took some pictures late this afternoon. 

Kathy with Allietare!

Me with Talkin' Turkey!

A Quilt Camp Weekend of Nothing but Talkin' Turkey!

 I had all my blocks done when I arrived this camp but soon discovered the purple goosey had lost its way so I had to fix it.   Of course, it was already in the quilt by that time!  Not sure how I missed it when I made it!

 I made all the flying geese Quilt in a Day style and am glad I prepped as much as I did on that since it still took forever,  I already had the rainbow border made but had to tear the papers and sew into strips.  There as also an inner border I had to cut colored squares for and add to the neutrals I had already prepped.

 We arrived around 5 PM on Thursday and it took me all of that night, Friday (minus a few hour run to town for Barb and a two mile hike), Saturday (minus another two mile hike) and an hour Sunday morning to get this done in time to hang out!  It truly was all I worked on.  I am so glad my pup challenge for Nimble Thimbles is a flimsy!  This was also my Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt from 2014 so I need to find a linky on Angela's Blog and hook it up!  Pattern is in Bonnie Hunters.

Stitching and Prepping for Camp!

 I finally decided on the Simple Gifts pattern for Suli's twins.  I made the one for the little guy first.  Suli says each of her kids has a forest animal that represents them and he will be raccoon.  She will be fox so I had to order fox fabric so hers isn't done yet.

 I also did a ton of prepping for quilt camp.  Here I cut the strips for one of the Talkin' Turkey borders.

 I cut for other borders as well.

 And today after my migraine finally went back several notches (I came home from working early and napped for several hours) I got the flying geese part of the border cut and pinned and marked.

Rachel sent me a snapchat of Leon (in Norway) with his tool belt on that I made him.  He likes it and He spends hours fixing stuff at home now!  Made my day!

Linky Number Three Coming Right Up!

 I stopped at the store to pick up some sand colored fabrics so I could complete clue three however I just was not finding what I wanted but the three sun colored fabrics above did call to me.  I decided that sun and sand were about interchangeable and that that it made for a better combination so a swap was had.  So interestingly, my clue three matched Bonnie's...hers may be more gold than mine but mine is sunny.  I pulled from my matching scraps and have a lot of variety.

Linking up with Quiltville as soon as the linky is up (and I am too!).  I am behind on last weeks linky visits.

I spent a good bit of Sunday attaching the sashing to Talkin' Turkey!  I laid them out on the bed and switched them around a zillion times.  No permanent decision yet, but at least this UFO is coming along!

I haven't figured out how to handle the sashing.  In Bonnie's quilt nine patches are formed where the sashing meets (all in red because her blocks are all red in mine four colors are meeting.I am thinking about doing a rainbow in the center block for all of them or just a random different color that isn't in the cornerstones.  If you have any ideas to share, feel free!  I want to keep working on this one since it is for my PUP challenge and needs to be done by July!

Making Tracks to Guild and Talkin' Turkey and More!

 I am keeping up with the Temecula Quilt Company's "We Wish You a Merry Christmas"  I love sneaking in sewing during the week!  My job this morning ended two hours early and I had that time free to come home and sew before heading to my regular gig.

At work I finished hand binding my President's Challenge quilt for Nimble Thimbles.  Our current president is Suzy and she gave us the solid red fabric (Kona cotton Lipstick) and two little thimbles (one for front and one for the label) and said it was to be a mini about "what Nimble Thimbles means to me" and to bind it in black.  We will share our quilts tomorrow night at the Holiday Party and then we can enter them in the show together.  I have not ever tried to do any of this before and with the hectic past few months I have had, I am impressed that I have it done!  My friend Fran offered to quit it for me because I was afraid I would ruin it.  She did a great job and I owe her one!

 Tonight after doing my elliptical (still eating right and exercising--just not really going anywhere lately but not giving up!) I snuck in more sewing time while watching "The Wiz" and here are all my sashings and bindings for Talkin' Turkey.  Bit by bit this one is getting closer to a top.

Kathy is SEW happy she is finally done with Grand illusion so we can get this quilted for Coleman and Chelsea's wedding quilt.  She is now happily sewing away on clue one of Allietare!

Last night I prepped up a new hand project--Bonnie's "A Little Bit Hexie" looked like so much fun and I just decided to do it!

I am looking forward to stitching this up when I have time away from home!

Allietare Linky Party--Clue Two!

 I stole a few of Ros' pictures from the third annual Quiltville Mystery Kickoff Party because I am actually in this one!  I know by now you have seen us wrapped in our quilts, but these are my favorite pictures every year!

 Welcome again to Andee in AZ's blog if you have clicked here from the Quitlville Linky Party! I thought I would update you on my tumbler blocks before sharing my clue two.  Not long before Bonnie announced she was going to do a tumbler leader and ender this year, I had already started cutting just from reds and whites/creams for a Lil' Crumbler tumblerish quilt.  I am trying not to duplicate any of the reds so this is as far as I am.  I have not sewn a one since I have been afraid to mess it up since I hear they are a little tricky at first.  Today I watched two Quiltcams that I missed when they were live and Bonnie was demoing her tumbler blocks so now I know what to consider as I sew...so hope to put this under the needle starting...now!

 Also thought I would share with you this crazy rule I have about the "bonus" half square triangles that we get on many of the mysteries.  I used to just pile them up after they were sewn...waiting for something to use them in and then realized that because they were not ironed I was never going to use them.  So new rule is if I bother to sew the bonus hst's up I must iron them along with whatever I got them from.  So look at all those bonus blocks!  They need squaring up but that I save for when I want to do something with them...as you can see I already made two blocks with them.

 I finished clue two tonight.  Love all the variety in my turquoise and in my neutrals.  I have pulled yardage for this quilt, but as each clue comes out I dig in the bin for the right size strips and start with those before cutting into my yardage.  This ensures tons of variety!  All these colored bins hold coordinating color strips in the sizes Bonnie tells us to save--sure beats having odds and ends fabric in a box or bin somewhere that never gets used!

See all that variety?  I hope you have lots of fun fabrics in your mystery quilt too!

So clue one and two are patiently waiting for clue three this Friday!  Linking up with Quiltville so you can get back and click on to see other blogs.  In other Quiltville news, I managed to get the sashing and cornerstones cut for Talkin' Turkey.  

Here is Bonnie's regramming of my Talkin' Turkey quilt.  If you are on IG I hope we are following each other!

Linking up with Angela over at SoScrappy for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.