Day: July 31, 2017

Quilts for “Quilts for Kids”

I had started these two little quilts in South Dakota, but I finished the piecing while we were in GTNP. My granddaughter Ava decided the block arrangement. QFK provided the kits, so I will restate that these were not my fabric choices (especially the pink/turquoise one). They came out cute though. I quilted and bound them when we got home.

This one hurt my eyes. Those borders! If you read an earlier post, the turquoise is actually the back side of a printed fabric. I just couldn’t handle that much wildness. The fabrics screamed to me for a flower motif in the quilting, so that is what the main body has. For the outside border I just followed some of the big swirls. The top thread is a light peach SoFine and the bobbin thread is a light tan SuperBob. I used extra backing for the binding and used a feather stitch to finish the binding.

Pretty wild.
The back of the wild one.
Back of the wild one.

This one is full of small animal/bug prints. I like it a lot more! It was so busy I just did an all-over meander in the body of the quilt. I used my rulers on the borders. It is quilted in a YLI multi-colored brown/green/gold thread with the same tan SuperBob the first one used. The binding is a wood grain print I had laying around. I used a 3 stitch zig zag to apply the binding.

I like this one a lot more.
A little old lady bear print was the backing on the brown/green one.

All I need to do to finish these is stitch on the Quilts for Kids label and deliver them. The quilting was done on my Sweet 16.

I really prefer a feather stitch to finish machine bindings, but my machine is having troubles with stitching to the left. There is a definite “click” when it goes far left, so I am taking it in to the repair guy. It either needs timing or a new hook, and maybe both. It gets a lot of use, and it is time to get it some maintenance.

Next up is quilting my big Carpenter’s Square quilt that goes on the queen bed in one of my guest bedrooms. I have two weeks until we take off again, so I have to get going. I hope to have the quilting done, just waiting on the binding until I get my sewing machine back.

Back from Iowa

It has been a while, but I got distracted.

After Ft. Robinson, we headed toward Grand Teton National Park. We spent Wednesday night, 19 July, at the KOA in Dubois, WY (pronounced “du-boy”). Note I am leaving in some pronunciations for my own future use since I kept forgetting! At the KOA I almost got assaulted. I had the audacity to tell someone to not walk through our site to get to the pool. Note there was an empty site right next to us that would have required the offender to walk at least 10′ farther. The adult man’s father (around my age) came screaming up to me and waved a fist in my face for being so rude. SMH! Luckily a staff member was driving by in the golf cart and intervened. The rude people left my site, and the staff member said they wouldn’t bother me again. They didn’t.

The next morning we left fairly early to move to Gros Ventre (“grah-vaunt”) campground in GTNP. We were there at 10:00 and got a nice site with shade. It was plenty big for our trailer with the truck parked next to us. We thought of trying for an electric site (they take a new wait list for them each morning), but it seemed like a bad use of money. It was much less expensive to use some gas in the generator than pay the electrical fee. I figured there were a lot of people who didn’t have the ability to dry camp for very long, so we left the electric sites for them.

Kevin’s back pain was really bothering him. I did all the driving from Carney on, and he still wasn’t getting better. We found an Urgent Care site in Jackson to concur there wasn’t anything really bad and get some muscle relaxants. He also ended up with a couple of rounds of massage therapy and some time in the hot tub at the local recreation center. The combination finally started some improvement, but I still did almost all the driving.

Is it time for the mandatory park pictures?

An elk wandered through the campground.
Mandatory picture of the Tetons.
Absolutely incredible wildflowers were everywhere.
Trust me, that is a big bull moose along the Gros Ventre River a couple of miles from the campground.
The sun coming through the clouds.

We ended up staying a bit more than a week. The campground only costs $14.50/night with a Senior Pass and had a 2 dot Verizon signal which kept us up to date with the world. A few days we drove around the park and even went to Yellowstone’s south east side. We had never spent much time in that area, so it was a good trip. Other days we just stayed around the campground, just relaxing. We came home on Friday, 28 July, a relatively easy drive. Kevin is still getting massage therapy here in SLC, and it is definitely helping both his back and his knee.

While we were gone on this long trip, I figured out how easily I get bored. I really need to bring more sewing with me. I finished two quilt tops that had been partially completed before we left, and I wanted to do more sewing. There is only so much sight seeing and reading I can do! Look at the next post to see the quilting results.