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Crossroads
What is the difference between achievement and accomplishment? asked Adam Gopnick. That question has set me thinking about it ever since. We quilters work hard to get our quilts finished, our patches pieced and…
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Double Star • new pattern
Kolob Canyon. We were about mid-point in our drive from the Salt Lake City area to our home in Southern California, when we turned into the Kolob Canyon parking lot, in the upper section…
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JanFebMarAprMayJune 2023 This and That
Yeah, just lumping them all in here together, because I just can hardly remember the first six months of this year. I know I dropped a lot of balls: unfinished quilts, undusted corners, unsent…
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Community • Quilt Finish: North Country Patchwork
This is a quilter’s visual paradise: triangles, circles, squares, bits-and-pieces; it’s the Cosmati pavement in Westminster Cathedral, which got a lot of press recently with the coronation of King Charles. And this is an…
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Time Let Me Play
I was struck by the idea that: “…all thinking is an act of memory in some form. That includes imagination, creativity, innovation and other variations of ‘new’ thoughts. That means the components of the…
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Flashback
Occasionally I attempt to clean out my emailbox, which is a vain and futile attempt to generally keep my life organized. But in this round, I found several stacks of emails regarding Quilt Swaps,…
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Quilt Finish: Blossom and This & That for May 2023
I’ve been storing up some This-and-Thats, so buckle up, here we go. First up is a quilt finish. I started this in June of 2021, and finished it today. I was teaching classes about…
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Quilt Finishes, Kitchen Re-do, Watching a Plant Bloom
These strange looking almost-flowering buds belong to the Mother of Pearl plant. It’s also known as the Ghost plant, or Graptopetalum paraguayense. This is the mother ship of that spindly, tentative arm that is…
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Primula Ballerina • Quilt Finish
A hymn sung in our church begins with “Earth, with her ten-thousand flowers” and ends with the sentiment that all these things of nature “Have one chorus: God is love.” This was reinforced to…
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Garden Flower • Quilt Top Finish
Floods! Snow! Storms! Rain! More Rain! That old saying about April Showers really doesn’t apply to California, because for us it’s March showers bring April flowers, so yes, my garden is overflowing with flowers…
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Bright Ladies (Well Read) • Quilt Top Finish
There was a young lady named Bright,Whose speed was far faster than light; She set out one day In a relative way,And returned home the previous night.(limerick by Arthur Henry Reginal Buller) Our high…
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Poppies!
Anne of Springleaf Studios recently wrote to me, including a photo of her poppy quilt: Anne is an amazing colorist; seeing her quilts is always a treat, as they are rich in color and…
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An Auspicious Anniversary
January 2020 • Road to California, where I showed Jen Kingwell my completed Small World Quilt February 2020, QuiltCon: Shown here finishing my first block in Yvonne’s class (QuiltingJetGirl) March 2020 • Quilt Guild…
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Quilt Baby Pictures
I ran across some quilt baby pictures the other day. And a tangent: Chaucer was on to something when he wrote “The life so short, the craft so long to learn.” I’ll explain, but…
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The Ladies are Back: This & That February 2023
They’ve lain quietly in the quilt block graveyard since December 2021, and I’ve decided it’s time to resurrect them. I have combed the book I have by Freddy Moran — the designer of this…
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Quilt Finish: Chris’ Quilt
Make this snappy, I thought: no malingering or beating around the bush. You’ve got a birthday deadline. This is Chris’ quilt, quilt #283 in the Index, it’s roughly 60″ by 72″– tall enough for…
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Quilt Finish: Aerial Beacon
To get across great distances, way back in the day, early airplane pilots would focus on visual landmarks, or sometimes lit bonfires if they needed to find their way in the dark: “In February…
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Flame-out? or Creative Spark?
If you are anything like me, there are multiple ideas in your head, lurking in the fabric you’ve purchased, or photos on your phone of projects to make. And if you are really really…
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The Sublime and the Mundane
The Mundane That is, if making a Wild Geese quilt block can be considered mundane, which makes me think back to the Days of the Babies, when the only time I could find to…
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Happy New Year 2023
“Time is draining from the clock,” says 2022 and Mary Oliver. Your loss, my gain says 2023. And here we are again, in a quote/poetry slam. (Quoted works are at the end.) I made…
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Merry Christmas 2022
My annual Christmas post brings Alison Krauss and YoYoMa and one of my favorite Christmas Carols: The Wexford Carol (click to listen).
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Continuously Hung up In Bias (aka Failing Forward)
Not that kind of bias. I had to teach that subject when I was an English teacher, and it was a struggle getting the ideas of Preferences vs. Bias into college Freshmen Heads, as…
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Stella di Natale • Quilt Finish
I started this quilt as another class sample for the Triad Harmony quilt pattern. The name “Stella di Natale,” is my version of Star of Bethlehem, but it is also a cake and the…
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Earthly Goods
There are quilts in the post. I promise. But, first. I found this photo of my mother while I was hunting for something else. As most of you know, she passed away mid-November [obituary],…
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Butternut Crunch Toffee
My daughter Barbara, of SweetMacShop, recently held a class at a Cooking Store in Salt Lake City, teaching people how to make my Butternut Crunch Toffee recipe. Then she linked it on her Stories,…
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Her Day is Done
After 94 years, my mother went Home. I heeded all your messages and got in the car that afternoon. I made it in time to see her before she lapsed into unconsciousness, then, by…
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It Takes Time
It takes time to stare out the window at the welcomed rain, the summer dust washing off, leaving the leaves glistening. It takes time for my sister Susan to call all seven of us…
OccasionalPiece--Quilt! 