CALIFORNIA AND MORE DJ BLOCKS

We are in California now and just spent a few days with DH's cousin at their place in the hills.  It  took an hour of driving through hills and switchbacks to reach their home from the main road!  But it is lovely and was worth it!

Gate into cousin's "ranch"

 They had 3 burros in their pasture.

Burros 

While we were there, I had some time to sew, so I worked on my Dear Jane blocks and got 4 finished!
B-10 didn't turn out how it was supposed to, but I think I'll leave it this way.

B-10

B-3 was real easy.  I hand stitched the curved line and machine sewed the for sections together.

B-3

 Both of these border blocks were done with paper piecing.

TR-3

TR-1

Today we're going to Yosemite National Park, so I need to end this and get ready!  

OUR YEARLY TRIP TO OREGON

I can't believe it's been about 3 week since I posted on my blog!  I have been super busy plus getting ready for our trip and tonight we are in Golden Valley, AZ for the night.  This morning, I got out my Dear Jane stuff to see where I stand.  It's been quite a while since I have done anything with it.  I have 16 blocks done and this morning I cut a few border triangles.  I had planned to work on a block tonight, but we got here too late.  Here is the counter in our camper where I can cut fabric.

The copy of the block I plan to paper piece next is on top of my book - maybe tomorrow morning if I get up early I can get it done?  I selected come fabric for it too.

As we were driving on I-40 through Arizona, I saw the sign for the Walnut Canyon National Monument and it wasn't far from the highway, so I asked (told?) DH that we should stop there so I could get my National Park Passport stamped and we could look around a little.

Apparently around 800 years ago, there were cliff dwellers living in the walls of the canyon.

From the highway, you would never know this was here.

Proof that I visited!

Here's our truck with the camper behind, but you can't really see our 5th wheel because of the old wagon in the foreground.  I liked this view because of the old wagon and also the mountains in the background.

This is memorial day weekend - a chance for us to remember the brave soldiers who defended our freedoms and the freedoms of others around the world.

QUILTING AND BINDING FINISHED ON GRADUATION QUILT

It feels so good when a quilt is all finished.  And after the 25th anniversary quilt, with "custom" quilting, it felt so good to do an "overall" quilting job.  

I again used Angela Walters "Free Motion Quilting" book for inspiration.  In fact I used the same quilting design as I did on the Virginia Bound quilt (in header).  Except, this time, I think I finally got the hang of the hook in the "Swirled Hook" design.  Some of these same shirts were used in Virginia Bound and they aren't used up yet!

They aren't perfect, but maybe you can see a few of the hooks in the close-up pictures.

This is Bonnie Hunter's "Star Gazing" pattern and again, even though there is a lot of piecing to do, it seems to go pretty fast when you follow each section in the pattern as she describes it and get the chain piecing going.

I didn't have one piece of fabric that I could use for the whole back, so I pieced it (just like Bonnie does)!  I had some of the musical fabric left from the front - mostly used in the red and light colored triangles.

The whole back.

I also had some "historic" fabric pieces and some blue that went with it all and pieced it together the best that I could.  I think you can see the quilting better in this section below.

I still need to make a label and plan to do that this next week.  Woo Hoo!  Now I can get on to some fun UFOs, hopefully!

We found out that our DGS will be going to college in Minnesota, so I think this will help keep him warm for the cold winters they have there.

Oh, BTW, I didn't start anything new in April.