Julie's Latest Doings

Consignments in store

2011-01-22T10:38:00.000-07:00

Since we had our big inventory reduction sale in the fall, we had a lot of empty space, so some local crafters have let us put some of their crafts in the store. We've always sold quilts on consignment, but now the store is really hopping. We've added a corner of used books, pop bottle art by Benjaporn Helburn (Porn for short) and painted snow people by Sandy Rivers.

Sandy comes to our Tuesday night sew-ins, and instead of sewing, she paints. Each one is handpainted and takes her hours to do. They are made of resin, so they are pretty much unbreakable.
Porn is from Thailand, and learned Pop Bottle art in her home country. Some of the flowers are so delicate they look like blown glass. She's a welcome addition to our circle of friends - she cooks like a maniac, and always brings munchies to anything she goes to. She's a quilter and a painter, so I get to see her at painting groups and at quilting groups. I wish I could blame her for my weight, but it wouldn't be fair. Everyone does a double take when they hear her name, but it means blessing in Thai.

All these craft things are pretty much one-of-a-kind, so I don't put them on the website, but I really wanted to share them with you.

Joining the modern world

2011-01-17T10:26:00.000-07:00

I have been asked to put the shop on facebook, so Big Horn Quilts has a new presence there. I've been talking to my kids and relatives for years on facebook, but trying to do a commercial thing is tricky. I still haven't figured out how to do the little 'like' deal on my website under each item, but I'm working on it. Back in the 1980s I was an internet pioneer (I was a beta tester for aol, before it was called aol), and then in the nineties I was one of the first online stores, but about that time I was so busy I just didn't keep up with the newer stuff like social networking and mobile apps. If you don't go forward, you slip backwards. Or, if you snooze you lose. I've been trying to catch up since the weather got too cold to work in my garden. Does anyone know how to get the like box on my website? I tried following facebook's instructions, but I seemed to get everything but a like box.

Eggnog

2011-01-13T11:52:00.000-07:00

The worst thing about this time of year isn't the weather, it is that eggnog disappears from the store shelves. I gorge for a month and a half, and then it's -poof- gone. Every year I get out the cookbook, consider making some from scratch, decide its more trouble than its worth, and don't make any. Maybe this year I actually will make it.

Another year has shot by...

2011-01-12T17:48:00.000-07:00

Our second Saturday club for 2011 is off to a good start. We're going to make either a row quilt or a medallion quilt, whichever people want. I'll post designs and handouts on the website throughout the year. I'm doing a row quilt, and my main row is a mountain scene, which is coming along.

What is with the crazy weather? Ours here in Wyoming is pretty normal - some snow, and the first half of January always sees some nights below zero. But snow in Florida? And the floods in Australia! Global warming, right....

Busy December

2010-12-08T11:36:00.000-07:00

We have a lot of new fabric to add to the website, and next week I have a meeting or a party or a rodeo or something every day, so I am going to work hard this week and get all the new stuff online and get the newsletter sent out before Friday. Plus I need to get all the bookwork ready for the accountant, I promised Dave I would get it to her by the weekend. But interfering with that is the new World of Warcraft expansion, which has suddenly made the game a lot more interesting. Oh well, nose to the grindstone....

New cars vs old cars

2010-11-30T09:12:00.000-07:00

Today is the last day of hunting season here, so everyone who still has a tag has to use it today. Seems like about half the men in town aren't in town today, they've gone on the last hunt. I made an appointment a week ago to get a new battery and starter in my car, and this morning when I took it in, I found out the mechanic is going hunting today. Oh well. I drive a 1995 Chevy Tahoe, and I plan on keeping it running until I die. I had a newer car for a while, right after I got my knees replaced. The Tahoe involves climbing to get in and dropping to the ground to get out. Dave sold his pickup and drove the Tahoe at that time. I HATED all the features the new car had. It had this stupid light on the top of the dash that stayed on all the time - supposed to be a safety feature. How is running your battery down more safe? It insisted on locking the doors all the time - I hate a car that thinks its smarter than I am. That door locking thing was just plain inconvenient. I like to decide when the doors will be locked. Most of the time I choose to leave them unlocked. The first time I ran out in the dark in my pajamas to get a book out of the car and found it completely locked up, I decided I really hated that car. Then there was the seat belt thing - instead of just telling you once politely that you might want to put your seat belt on, the newer Mercury kept telling me, louder and louder until I finally put it on. And it didn't have a tape player, only a CD player! My Tahoe has both. If I had my druthers and could design my own car, I would have:
1. wing windows - I still don't know why they got rid of them.
2. crank windows. It is stupid to have to start your car to operate the windows. Plus the safety thing, what if your car won't start? What if you drive into a river and can't get out because the engine is flooded and the pressure is too high to open the door?
3. I like the dingy reminder that your lights are on when you shut off the car, but I hate the loud buzzer thing that tells everyone within 100 yards that you are leaving the keys in the car when you run into a convenience store, or trying to get the trailer ball lined up with the trailer hitch.
4. Both cd and tape player
5. Airbags
6. A trunk that doesn't open from inside the car. That way, you can put any valuables in the trunk and lock it and leave the car unlocked for convenience.

Enough ranting.

Getting ready for Christmas

2010-11-29T10:10:00.000-07:00

No pictures today, but several people have pointed out that it is dumb to have a blog if you aren't ever going to write anything on it. So, here goes.
This year we didn't go anywhere for Thanksgiving, just stayed home and ate leftovers and played computer games and cleaned house. A lot of our kids got together in Laramie at daughter Becky's house, but since we had gone to Laramie for her son's wedding in August, we had just seen everyone. Daughter Sibyl and granddaughter Julie stopped and spent the night on their way back to Helena, so we did get in a little Scrabble.
The donkeys are fine, and in spite of some below zero weather already, the water tap hasn't frozen up, and the solar water tank is working beautifully. For anyone else who has to water stock in freezing weather without electricity, I recommend this tank! We ordered ours from the maker, http://www.ranchtanks.com. It sure beats trying to break six inches of ice with a sledge hammer.
I've been painting again, and sewing still, making some placemats for Sibyl this week. Our store is beginning to feel like Christmas, the staff was busy Saturday getting decorations up. I think this year I'm really feeling holiday spirit!

Refreshed, retreated and renewed!

2010-04-29T08:41:00.001-06:00

I just got back from a 4 day retreat in Cody. Made a new back cushion for Dave's rocker, using the one the dogs ate as a pattern. Worked a while on Brook and Sam's wedding quilt, but mostly I worked on a new scrap quilt. I used Bonnie Hunter's Scrappy Mountain Majesty pattern. If you haven't been to her website, she has tons of free scrap quilt patterns, and lots of free advice. I've known her since the Interquilt days, back in the mid 90's, and she is a wonderful giving person.
Anyway, I am still trying to use up my stash, or at least knock it down some. I felt like a green and gold quilt, so I went to my stash and pulled lights and darks that either contained or would go with green and gold. I made the 132 blocks - fun blocks, you make great big half square triangles, slice them and rearrange them. But then came the dillemma: how to set it? I had my design wall with me, so I played. These are some of the settings I came up with.

I took votes, because I liked all of them. The consensus was the last one, which is the actual delectable mountains pattern, the traditional one. So thats what I'm going with. I'm back in the shop now, and have it on my big design wall and am sewing it together.

My rototiller has been in the shop for 2 months, frustrating my yearly spring urge to dig in the dirt. But we got it back yesterday, so today after I put our new fabric on the website I plan to get out and dig!

Crazy Quilting

2010-02-20T11:14:00.000-07:00

In my shop newsletter this month, I asked for pictures of crazy quilts (since mine is in the ugly adolescent stage). Jackie Perry of Marion, Virginia sent in 3 pictures of a great quilt she made.

This is an exciting quilt. The closeup shows lots of fancy embellishments. Back, pre-civil war, there were quilts called kaleidoscope quilts that were done in this way, except they weren't pieced on foundations and they weren't embellished much. This reminds me of one of those I saw, in its overall impact.

Then Gen, from Gensplace (don't actually know her name) sent two closeups of an antique crazy quilt she owns.

This is done the hard way, all by hand. This is what I'm trying to do with mine, and Betty Shem is leading a group of the crazy quilt club who are doing more like the first quilt, with their machines. We're all having a lot of fun! I started out not using a thimble, but all the hand embroidery soon wore a sore place on my middle finger, so I'm back to a thimble. I haven't hand quilted for 10 years, so I'm having to get used to the thimble again. Soon I'll share some of my stuff. If anyone wants to send me pictures of crazy quilts, I'd love to post them here.

Busy weekend

2010-02-02T09:50:00.000-07:00

We had looked forward to last weekend, because Brook and her brand new husband Sam were coming. As usual, two days of cleaning the house beforehand, vacuuming up dog hair (how does it get IN the oven?) from everywhere, dusting all the places I never think of normally and scouring the bathroom. We need to have company more often, we'd sure have a cleaner house. Anyway, we were expecting them on Friday, and on Thursday my son Josh called, said he was in Wyoming on a business trip and had Nikki and kids. They live in Colorado now, and Nikki really misses Casper so he brought them to see old friends. He asked could they come and spend Friday night? It was great having everyone here. We really like Sam, its great to see Brook so happy.
In the shop we are getting ready for our Twelfth Annual Superbowl Sunday Sale. Its always fun. We have a catered goodie table, by Linda Fulton. She used to work for me, but she has been a professional chef, and makes finger foods to die for. We put everything in the store 20% off, and draw door prizes every half hour. Lots of my friends bring handwork and sit in the classroom and eat and sew and gossip. We are open from 12-4. I'll get pictures this year and post them on the blog.
This morning I went out to a farm that has a lot of donkeys, looking for a prospective wife for Jasper. I'm no expert, and don't even know how to evaluate a donkey. I just want a jenny of breeding age who is tame and reasonably pretty. I'll find her - I just started looking. Wouldn't it be cool to have a donkey baby?

Installed like plumbing

2010-01-22T10:00:00.000-07:00

Last night at the Greybull Chamber of Commerce annual dinner, I was installed as the new president. Installed, isn't that a funny word for recognizing a new president? Like a toilet or a dishwasher. Maybe it means they actually expect me to work! It was a nice dinner, good speaker, good turnout, good fellowship.

I heard this morning that there is a rumor going around Wyoming that I have sold Big Horn Quilts. Not only is it not true, but I haven't even had an offer. I haven't posted it for sale anywhere. I guess if someone with more money than sense were to come along and offer to buy me out, I'd sell, but that hasn't happened. Dave and I have decided to weather this recession, and try to sell it in about 2012. Thats when I hit 70, and at this point that looks like a good age to get out. Of course, I may change my mind - a woman's prerogative, right?

Catching up

2010-01-21T10:31:00.000-07:00

Saturday Sherry taught a class called Day And Night, based on an Eleanor Burns pattern/book. It was actually a second class for the few people who missed it when she taught it last year. I kind of sat in on it, since the classroom is also my office. Its kind of a neat quilt, because there are pieces left over that you can make a whole second quilt out of.

Our new dog, Andy, has more or less decided he is Dave's little lap dog. Dave fell asleep watching TV, but Andy didn't.

I've had a stupid cold or something for two weeks. I go through a day of sneezing but not feeling too bad, then the next day I can hardly move. Then it goes away for a few days and then comes back. So I went to the doctor yesterday and got some stuff to squirt up my nose. Today I feel human. Which is a good thing, because tonite is a fancy Chamber of Commerce dinner where I am to be installed as president. The entree is barbequed ribs, which is number one on the list of things Dave won't eat in public because of his beard. Our marriage has survived 34 years on the principal that we don't volunteer each other for things. He doesn't make me go out to his sub-zero black powder shoots, and I don't make him eat ribs in public, so I'll be attending the dinner without him.

The donkeys are doing well. I've about decided that Jasper (the white one) gets a wife and Fuzz (the brown one) gets the knife. He's just a little too much stud for me. Sometimes he scares me.

He's actually got very nice markings, a good cross on his back. They call that a Jerusalem donkey, and the lore is that the shadow of Jesus' cross fell on a faithful donkey and they have carried the cross on their back ever since. It is a black stripe down his center back, and you can just barely see the cross piece in this picture in front of Jasper's face.

Crazy quilting fever

2010-01-12T11:36:00.000-07:00

FRONT AND BACK OF A TOTE I MADE THE LAST TIME I GOT CRAZY

The last time I got into a crazy quilting mode, I made this tote and a doll quilt. This time I am going to make a vest, maybe a Christmas stocking or two, and definitely some more doll blankets. Its really fun, because I can play with lots of techniques and all the goofy fabrics that I have left over from making Barbie doll clothes and dance outfits for my daughters. They are so pretty I just couldn't bring myself to throw away the scraps. Velvets and satins and sparkly stuff. This year for our shop 'Saturday club' I decided to do crazy quilting, thanks to a suggestion by Betty Shem, a very creative friend who works for me. Over the 12 years that Big Horn Quilts has been in business I've occasionally received satins and silks and velvets that didn't sell, but I stashed them in the back room. So we chopped them all up and are sharing with the club. And who doesn't have a stash of men's neckties? A couple great garage sale purchases resulted in a tub full of odd lace. So we're going to run with it. The people who hate handwork are doing theirs by machine, but I decided to try to do mine the old way. For the most part, the seams in old crazy quilts are not appliqued. One patch is folded under and basted, then the 'fancywork' is done on top, which holds the seam together. Then the basting is removed. I'm not pre-embroidering the patch motifs, I'm going to do that after I get the seams embellished, but I'll have flowers and birds and owls and spiders and all the usual stuff on this one. As usual when I get excited about a project, I've got 2 or 3 going in my head.

Ever since Sherry suggested putting a thin cotton batting behind embroidery on quilts, I can't stand to embroider any other way, so am putting one between my foundation and the patches. It doesn't look like much so far. And I'm not even sure what this is going to be - probably a doll quilt.

Plans for 2010

2009-12-31T11:18:00.000-07:00

We are going to have two clubs in 2010 here in the shop. They will meet on the Second Saturday of every month. At 10 am we will have a Crazy Quilt Club, where we will do all kinds of crazy quilting. At 11 the Christmas Club will meet, taught by Sherry, and will be a lot of projects from Nancy Halvorsen's books and other Christmas projects. I love crazy quilting, and havent done much for a while, so I've got to get back in the groove and get something done this week to show on January 9th to the club, for a sample. I've got samples I've made of a doll quilt and a purse/tote, but I'm going to do a lot more.

When I was making a deposit this morning, I found a check that was written out to the Guilt Shop. Freudian slip?

This year flew by!

2009-12-28T13:13:00.002-07:00

Wow, I can't believe this year is darn near over! I've been busy with the donkeys, the shop, and playing way too much World of Warcraft. I am just about finished with Sarah Palin's book Going Rogue, and I like her. I really like her - she's real.

Our second Saturday of the month club at Big Horn Quilts is going to be a two parter next year. I'm hosting 'Crazy Club' at 10am, and Sherry is hosting 'Christmas Club' at 11. Show and tell will be joint, at 10:30. Crazy club will be a lot of crazy quilted projects, and one crazy quilt if anyone wants to do a big one, and Christmas club will be the same - a lot of small projects and one bigger quilt. I'm still trying to use up my stash, but the darn thing is still breeding everytime I turn out the lights.

Our Christmas was really low key, we mostly just watched movies and played on the computer. We plan to do the same thing for New Years. Sometimes its good just to veg out.

We didn't get the big snow like the east coast, but we've had temperatures below zero a lot so far this winter. I got a solar water trough for the donkeys, and it really is slick. No more ice chopping - I just take a jug of hot water from the house, pour it in the trough and fill it up from the tap Dave installed last year.

2009-12-17T12:50:00.004-07:00

We've had a busy month so far - went to Laramie to see Brook, our oldest granddaughter, get married. We're going to the Chase Hawks Rough Stock Rodeo this Saturday in Billings. And the weather has been hovering on both sides of zero for several weeks, meaning two trips a day out to our pastureland to break ice for Fuzz and Jasper. They've never been tamed except when they were babies, and they sometimes act like the jackasses they are, but that is going to change. Just as soon as the weather mellows out some. The white one, Jasper, actually is very friendly. Fuzz spooks really easily, so he's going to take some quieting down.

This is the newest member of our family, Andy. He is a rescue dog, half lab and half border collie, with one ear representing each breed. He's rambunctious and insecure, but he's getting calmer every day. He doesn't make us forget Maggie and Walter, but at least he fills a big dog-shaped hole in our lives. Dave found him on the internet, cruising the nearby animal shelters. The Roundup, MT shelter had him - his original name was Doobie. My daughters think that is more appropriate for him than Andy, but we're sticking with Andy.

Worst Blogger in the World

2009-11-14T06:09:00.002-07:00

I have got to be the worst blogger in the world. Excuses are like armpits - everybody has them, and they all stink. So I'll just admit I haven't felt like blogging and go from there. I went to a great quilt retreat in Cody and got quite a bit done - a couple wall hangings, a table runner, and a top using Ricky Timm's kaleidescope. The same weekend as the retreat, we got a new dog. His name is Andy and he is a border collie - lab mix. He's about 18 months old, and has way too much energy. He has to be walked every day, and we're working on actually walking rather than trying to pull the human all over town. He would make a great sled dog, he's sure got pulling muscles.
I was walking him and a squirrel ran across the street from our side. He took off after the squirrel, and I went flying through the air horizontally across the street. He missed the squirrel by inches as it ran up a tree. He barked at it, saying "I'd have had you for dinner if I hadn't had to pull this fat lady across the street".
We also got two donkey's from Jan and Fred Barnett. Their names are Jasper and Fuzz, both jacks. I'm now in the business of checking on them two or three times a day, breaking the ice on their water, and trying to get them to come to me. They get closer every time I go out there, but they still haven't decided I'm safe yet. I still don't have pictures of the them, but I'll post pictures next time I blog.

Summer is flying by

2009-07-07T21:37:00.004-06:00

Okay, so much for New Years resolutions - I have gone a whole month without posting. I've been gardening, sewing, painting (a lot) and haven't been spending much time on the computer. Tonight was our usual Tuesday night sewing night, and Shirlee asked me to post pictures of the quilt she just finished quilting for her friend Jackie who lives in Wheatland. (If Jackie is really Jacquie or whatever, I apologize.) It is a one-block wonder, and is gorgeous. I especially love what Jackie did with the border.

Marquerite came by with her new baby, whose name is McDuff. He's a Westmoreland Terrior, and is so mellow and snuggly, he's a doll. She scratched his belly and he was estatic until he fell asleep in the belly rubbing position.

My garden is going well, especially the weeds. I was worried about flood irrigation, never having had any experience with it, but Dave was right (I hate it when that happens) and it works. We have to go up to 5 days at a time without water, but Dave bought me some big poly drums which I have for emergency water, and so far this spring has had more rain than usual.

Today is my daughter Becky's birthday! She's mumble mumble years old, and since I'm only 20, she's not allowed to be mumble mumble years old.

I watched Michael Jackson's funeral thing today, and was moved. I didn't expect to be, I just watched it because I expected good music, but I ended up thinking a lot more of him than I did yesterday. His life must have been really rough.

I promise to blog more. Not that I have an adoring public out there waiting for my wonderful prose, but just because its a self discipline thing - I've been really lazy.

Snow in June

2009-06-07T12:32:00.003-06:00

What a crazy spring! I set out tomatoes May 15th, and they immediately got frosted, so I set out more the next week. They were surviving if not actually growing, and danged if it isn't snowing today, June 7th! All my corn is up, onions and potatoes should be fine, and the lettuce looks jubilant, but some of the warm weather stuff will probably have to be replaced.
Friday night we went to a wedding in Shell, for Travis Marshall. We've known him since before he was born - his parents were our best friends then, and we watched him grow into a horrible brat and then out of the brat stage into a fine man. He's in the army, and we're so proud of him. And Cara, his bride is gorgeous and nice!

His lab, Bear, was the ring bearer, and performed perfectly!

My favorite month

2009-05-03T21:47:00.003-06:00

May is my favorite month. On Friday, May 1, I made an executive decision to cut our shop hours by 12 a week. Back in the heyday, when we were the first big fabric shop on the internet, it took us all day to cut our orders. We're still the first, but now there are hundreds of others, and our orders are less than a third of what they were in 2000. So my people spend the last two hours of every day looking for something to do. Its silly to pay them for that. I don't want to lay anyone off, my help is the best in the world, so this works. We'll open at 11 and close at 5. On Saturdays we'll open at 9 and close at 3. If the economy picks up, we'll go back to normal, but less utilities and payroll will help with the cash flow. (Lots of orders would help, too!)
Then on May 2, we had Victory Club, and it was bigger than ever. Over 40 people came, had lots of their blocks done, and other inspiring quilts at show and tell. I'd show the pictures I took, but they are in my camera at work and I'm home (it's Sunday night.)
About noon, I went out to our property about 2 miles south of town. We've got raspberrys planted and fenced, and the garden has been tilled once, and I planted potatoes. Today I planted beets, onions and radishes. Most of the work in the garden is still picking up rocks. I've got two goodsized piles now, from what I pick up in the garden. But its planting time, and I love working out there. A mule deer came thundering up to the garden, looked at me and took off in a different direction. There were two pheasants in our ditch, courting. There was an eagle soaring around, and my neighbor's six horses graze on our property and theirs, because we don't have a fence up between us yet. Dave is working on fencing our garden so they don't wreck it. Our other neighbor has longhorn cattle, and one of them is kind of a pet. I took this picture of him, and I'm going to make a quilt from the picture as a surprise for them. I'm pretty sure they don't read this blog, I don't even think they have a computer. They call him Smokey, and he comes when they call for a neck scratch. I'll post the quilt in progress. Tomorrow is our art quilt club meeting in Cody, and I've got to get a couple other ones done for show and tell. I'll post them soon.

Busy Week

2009-04-19T20:30:00.006-06:00

It's been a busy week. Lots of trips to Cody. On April 14 I had my second cataract operation in Cody - so now both eyes are done. Other than the fact that I don't need nearly as much light to read or sew, there isn't a whole lot of difference. My distance vision was always good, and still is, and I'll still need readers to see closeup. (But not ten million watts of light.)
On April 15, we had to go back for my checkup, and since we were there, and totally agree with the tea party philosophy that Washington has gone crazy, we went to the Cody Tea Party. It isn't a democrat or republican thing, both parties have lost touch with reality. The weather was atrocious for standing outside in the park, but hundreds of people showed up and signed the petition.

Then on Thursday, I went back to Cody for our state quilt guild retreat, which ran thursday thru sunday. Basically we just sewed our butts off. No classes, but they feed us and we can sew from 6 in the morning til midnight if we want. I got lots of ufos done, or at least the tops. Mostly scrap quilts. I'll show pictures when I get them quilted. Got two charity quilt tops done, and two big bedsized ones. Plus an art quilt. On Saturday night after supper we have show and tell.

Several of the girls from Greybull showed the quilts they made from Sherry's Bargello with a Twist class - they were all made from the same block.

Sunday afternoon (today) I drug myself home, sewed out. The dogs were glad to see me, and Dave was too (but not as excited as the dogs). Good to be home, but the retreat was wonderful. Tomorrow I'll put new fabric on the website, and catch up on all the new books and patterns Sherry has put in my 'to do' basket.

2009-04-10T10:19:00.002-06:00

I went to an organizational meeting for textile artists in Cody Monday, and we formed TAGY - Textile Artists of Greater Yellowstone. I'm so jazzed, some of my favorite people were there. I haven't blogged for a long time, because I've been so busy in my art classes. My quilting has mainly been finishing up ufos in order reclaim some studio space.

We still have sewing in the shop on Tuesday nights, and my friends have been hearing about my painting classes until I'm sure they're sick of it. They kept bugging me to bring some of my paintings to show them. So I did - I filled up the design wall with paintings. A plethora of mediocrity. The next day, about half of them went in the dumpster.

On the second Saturday of each month, we do arty stuff. I'm looking forward to tomorrow, when I get to get out my paints and beads and play!

On to the next project

2009-01-14T06:57:00.005-07:00

I finally finished my mystery quilt, well, I got the borders on. I'm going to send it out for quilting, so right now I'm working on putting a back together for it. It isn't really big enough for a bed quilt, except maybe for a kid. I did decide not to overdye it, since I had so many comments saying it wasn't all THAT bright.
I've got incipient cataracts, and until I get them chopped off, I have a bad sense of relative brightness.
We had sewin last night, and Shirlee brought her one block wonder top to show us.

Isn't it cool? That pattern makes the neatest quilts!
Marquerite was working on her latest Victory Quilt, she's making it out of
'Indian' fabrics, in honor of Eleanor Anderson, a full blooded Cheyenne Indian that was a much loved member of our community. She decided on blue corner stones, with lots of input from the peanut gallery.

Double Delight Mystery Quilt

2009-01-09T16:16:00.004-07:00

I've been sewing my mystery quilt for 3 days - I finally can see what it is going to look like. I should have gone for less contrast in the nine patches, this quilt is busy busy. Oh well, I couldn't see sewing 1170 one inch squares and having them invisible. Red and yellow seemed like a good idea at the time. Live and learn. Bonnie has just posted the borders, so once I get all these diagonal rows sewn together I'll finish it up and get it off my design wall. You can see the steps at www.quiltville.com.
Tomorrow I'm going to have a lot of fun. Since our Victory Club interests all the people who like to do block of the month type of things, and follow patterns, I wanted to do something with those customers and friends who are the opposite - the original people, the art quilters. So, on the second saturday we are going to do fun, unscripted quilts. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of overlap here. I am an overlapper - I like to do patterns, but I also sometimes feel like just sewing stuff together and seeing what happens. So tomorrow, I'm going to put out a smorgasboard of stuff to play with like paint and foil and fibres and beads and ideas, and just let people play! It will either work or it won't, but the people that I know are coming are fun people, so we'll have a good time. If we all turn out to be uninspired, we'll eat chocolate - how bad can it be?

Been sewing

2009-01-06T21:23:00.008-07:00

I've been sewing like crazy since Christmas. This quilt is made for our Victory club. For our First Saturday club this year, we decided to do the blocks in Eleanor Burns' Victory Quilt book. Once you start making the blocks, its kind of hard to quit. I made blocks in three colors, but only have one color put together as a quilt. Our club met last Saturday, and over 40 people showed up. I can't wait to see all the different interpretations - sampler quilts are really fun. Eleanor has it all over her quilt in a day website (http://www.quiltinaday.com/), even with videos of making this quilt. She dressed in period costumes and uniforms for the videos, and darned if my friend Shirlee didn't show up in uniform for the club!

Then, a bunch of my online friends are doing Bonnie Hunter's latest mystery quilt. You can play, too, if you want to, its on her website www.quiltville.com and it is really fun - lots of itty bitty pieces. The nine-patches are 3 inches finished, and there are a bazillion of them. I'm not as happy with my color choices as I could be, but I've got them all cut out, so its going to be in these colors. I still can't get a feel for what it is going to look like done, but after tonite's Tuesday sew-in, I got all the blue and yellow units done, and most of the brown ones. So, that's why I haven't been blogging. I'll be better this year - at least once a week.

Christmas Parade

2008-12-15T19:42:00.003-07:00

This was our entry for the Greybull Holidazzle parade. Dave is the one with the Santa Clause beard holding up the Christmas tree. I'm sitting on a hay bale behind him, freezing my butt. It was a fun evening. The mules are Pepper and Jackson, and they belong to Jeff McManus, who is in the middle. Dale Clark is driving in this picture, but the guys took turns. We got the 'Holiday Spirit' award because our entry (can't really call it a float) was so non commercial. It was non commercial because we didn't get our act together and make a sign. Also, we were the only one with animals - all the rest had trucks, so they were a lot better lit than ours. This picture was in the Greybull Standard, our local weekly.
Quilt wise, right now I'm trying to get some samples made of the Big Horn Quilt 2009 First Saturday quilt. It will be a sampler quilt, made from Eleanor Burns' Victory Quilt book. I'm trying to make it in different colorways - the ones in the book are mostly red white and blue, so I'm making one in plaids, one in fall colors, and one that is kind of pink and purple. There are 20 blocks altogether, but I'm only about six blocks into it. I'll do pictures when I get a little further along.

Easy Quilt, Part Two

2008-11-11T09:04:00.007-07:00

I had so many comments on the Easy Quilt I posted last week, that I decided to explain it better.

This pattern was inspired by a quilt in the book Loose Change, by By Claudia Plett and Le Ann Weaver. We sell the book. They make the quilt from 5 inch squares, which they call 'nickles'. I make it from 3" strips, but it is the same idea.

Pictures are better than words. Okay, this quilt without borders measures 90 inches square. To make one this size, you need 4 1/2 yards of black. Cut your scraps into 3" wide strips, and the black fabric into 100 (that's right, 100) 1-1/2 inch strips. The blocks are 9" square, and there are 100 of them. Each block takes forty inches of black one and one-half inch strips.

Okay, take a 3" scrap strip. Sew a black strip to each side of it. Press towards the black. How many pieces you get out of it depends on how long your scrap was. Crosscut these strip sets every 5 inches. Anything less than 5 inches gets chunked (hey, the whole idea is reducing scraps, right?) After you make your first strip set, its a good idea to measure it. If your seam allowance is different than mine, you might end up with something wider or narrower than 5". Take that measurement and cut your strips into segments that are square. Make a gazillion of these, using lots of different scraps. You will need 400 of them all together. When I got tired of doing this, I'd sew them together for a while.

When you sew them together, you sew one side to one end. There isn't anyway to get it backwards if you do that. This unit should measure 5 inches by 9 1/2 inches.

Then sew these together on the long side, trying to not duplicate any of the scrap fabrics.

You can't see it well in the picture, but my 'matching' seams missed by 1/4 inch on this block. That's whats so great about this quilt - it doesn't matter! Black mismatches just are barely visible, and all the places where anything meets anything are black! Black is beautiful! These are 9-1/2 inches square.

Anyway, when you go to sew the blocks together, you don't have to fuss about getting them turned any which way, they go together right no matter which way you turn them. Easy as pie!

Birthday Surprise in the Snow

2008-11-07T09:57:00.004-07:00

Today we are getting snow. Marquerite and Julia and I went out and decorated the highway fence at the top of Jan Barnett's lane for her birthday. We've been collecting bras for a month. Her sister Ann from North Carolina came in with Rory, her local sister and surprised her, too.

I'm trying to get all the new fabric up on our website. We've received a lot lately. It is either feast or famine with the fabric.

Easy Quilt

2008-11-06T08:30:00.004-07:00

I finished a quilt top that I started at the quilt retreat a week ago. I still have to put borders on it. The top now is 90 inches square, and if I put the borders I wanted on it, it will be way too big, so I'm trying to figure out about 5 or 6 inch borders.

It is really easy, you just cut a couple miles of 1-1/2" black strips, and take a whole lot of scraps and cut them into 3" strips. Sew black strips on either side of the 3" strips. With me so far?

Then cross cut the strip sets into little 5 inch segments. Sew them together, side of one to end of the other. Those are twosies. Sew the twosies together to make foursies, and so on. It works out really well, because the only place the seams would match is right where all the black strips come together so you can be a quarter inch off, and no one can see it unless they are a couple inches from the quilt. The foursies are about 9 inches square, finished, so 10 across and 10 down makes a 90" square like I've got. It went so fast I could have made it twice as big.

I did it to use up scraps, but unfortunately I turned out the lights and the scraps bred again in my sewing room.

I didn't vote for Obama, but I have hopes that he will learn fast once in office - he is pretty bright. Surely he'll realize our government is big enough and that we have to win the wars, not just quit. Its a little scary having both Congress and the White House the same party, but there are some good people in there with the crooks. Hopefully the good ones can keep the crooks reined in. I rarely wax political. Probably shouldn't.

Retreat report

2008-10-28T14:18:00.005-06:00

Last weekend I had a glorious 3 days of sewing, eating and sisterhood. The Wyoming State Quilt Guild sponsors a retreat in Cody, every spring and fall, at the Holiday Inn. I always get tons of ufos done, and get so inspired by everyone else's work. Michelle Quick is our retreat organizer, and she does a wonderful job. We have no teachers or program. Nothing is scheduled except meals, and this year they were fantastic. We basically take over the big ballroom for our sewing. We drag as many ironing boards and irons out of our rooms as we need, everyone gets a whole table if they want it, and we sew our brains out.

There were 27 of us, and I got lots of ufos done, or at least got bindings sewn on the quilted ones and backs made for the unquilted ones. Saturday night we had show and tell, and I want to share some of the quilts that blew my socks off.
Last year Jenny Singer won a bundle of batiks as a door prize, and she brought this top to show us what she did with it.

Nita brought her finished basket quilt to show. The quilting on this is amazing, you can't really see it in this picture.

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Roberta Brown brought this masterpiece to show us before she gives it to her son - he's a railroader I used to work with in a previous life.
I have tons more pictures, maybe I'll post some more tomorrow. Anyway, I was SO ready for retreat, and now I am nicely retreated.

First day of hunting season

2008-10-15T05:11:00.005-06:00

Hunting is a big deal here in Greybull WY, and today is the first day of regular deer hunting season. The convenience store where I get my coffee early (5am) in the morning was jammed with hunters - lots of orange. Good weather this year, the snow is on the ground but the sun is out.
Last night we had Tuesday night sew-in, and had a good group. Marquerite finished her stack n whack top, made from the same fabric as my one block wonder.

Julia Cheatham and Linda Moser were both embroidering, Shirlee was doing the hand work binding her big pink quilt, Mary and Roberta were going nuts trying to figure out a very complicated paper piecing pattern for a class they are taking in Big Timber Montana next month (twisted log cabin). They spent a good deal of time in the bathroom, drawing things and holding them up to the mirror to figure out what the actual quilt will look like, because you sew on the back and everything comes out mirror image.
Jay Gifford and Sharon Brown were using the big cutting tables cutting out a stack and whack quilt. Marquerite was designing a halloween quilt - its going to be cute, she made great big candy corns that she will wonderunder on the border.
this is what she's got so far:

My design wall is 12 feet long and 8 feet high, so its great for playing and designing.
I cut out borders for a quilt last night, but didn't get much else done. Maybe today I'll sew them on. I joined the quilting bloggers site yesterday, so I should be getting a graphic for my blog soon.

Quilting Again

2008-10-13T11:21:00.003-06:00

I'm finally back to quilting. I got the one-block wonder quilt done, with a little help from Jan Barnett (she wanted to use the Gammill), and I've pieced a leaf quilt that I really like.

Its got a lot of the gorgeous hand-dyes I've been saving because I hated to cut them up. Mary Ellen Hopkins says to go ahead and use them, your husband's next wife will sell them for a nickle at the garage sale. She's right, so I decided to use them.

Back in the saddle

2008-09-20T15:15:00.002-06:00

I've been down the past month, but not out. My chiropractor saw me walking and told me I needed to go see my knee surgeon - like immediately, so I did. The knee guy said my left knee was getting ready to fail. FAIL! What the heck does that mean? I knew the knee was wobblier than the other one, but it didn't hurt.
He wanted me to go into the hospital immediately, but my main customer service lady at Big Horn Quilts had just given me notice, and she and I were the only ones who knew how to pull orders and do all the credit card stuff. So in a week, I managed to replace the wonderful Claire with an equally wonderful Julia Jones (that is really going to cause some mix-ups). I went under the knife August 26, and have a new, twice as big bionic knee. The pins go way up into my thigh and down into my calf.
I'm over the painful part (its been 3 1/2 weeks), but I still have no energy. Today Dave is rototilling our future garden and I went along to pick up rocks. I lasted about 1/2 hour, then I was exhausted. I'm getting more steam every day, but it is so frustrating to sit in a chair and think about all the things I should be doing.
Okay, enough whining. The next post will be all sunshine and fun, I promise.

Plaxo

2008-08-18T09:46:00.001-06:00

There is an outfit called Plaxo, that apparently is trying to be Facebook. But somehow they are getting priveleged information. I have a friend whom I correspond with frequently, and she got an invitation to be my 'friend' on Plaxo, and I got an invitation supposedly from her to be her friend. When you click on the link in the email invitation, Plaxo asks you for a bunch of nosy information you don't particularly want to share with an outfit you've never heard of. Neither of us has ever joined Plaxo or told them that we are friends. Wierd.

Successful painting

2008-08-09T18:53:00.002-06:00

Today we painted fabric again, outside, and this time the weather really cooperated. We got some great fabrics. Some of them did it on frames, a la Phil Beavers, and some did it with the sun prints, using leaves, and southwestern cutouts. Some painted scenery, and that turned out great. I did a little sun printing and one that started out to be a sunset, and ended up looking like a mountain on fire.

I'm trying to get a big garden plot ready for next year. For every spadeful of soil, I get two handfuls of rocks. By the time I get all the rocks out of the top 8 inches, the soil is going to be 2 inches lower than the whole rest of the pasture. But it is good exercise - every night I come in dead exhausted, but every day I can work a little longer before I hit the wall.
Some anonymous commenter named the cross-stitching on gingham - it's called chicken scratch. Thank you! I knew that, but I sure couldn't remember what it was called.
My summer class in color and design is over, and I got an A-. My final project was to design a fabric. It is done in gouache. The idea is to do a painting that won't look too lined up when it is rendered in repeat. People are always asking for fabrics featuring their particular breed of dog, instead of cartoony dogs or fabrics that feature all breeds in one fabric. So someday if I ever become a fabric designer, I'm going to do a collection of each breed. My final project for this course was the dachshund fabric.
Gouache is an opaque watercolor paint, similar to poster paint or tempera.

Painting Fabric

2008-07-26T21:22:00.003-06:00

Today we painted fabric across the alley from the shop. There were all kinds of things going on, so only three people showed up to paint with me, but we had fun. We did neglect to check the weather forecast, and didn't see that a gale force wind was planning to come through Greybull. We started at 1pm, during the hottest part of the day, but luckily there is a wonderful big shade tree where we set up.
We got a couple pieces painted before the sun went away, the wind came up, the sky turned black, a little rain came down, and just about the time we got everything back into the shop, the sun came back out and the wind died. Oh, well, we'll try again next time.

I had to chase my best one down, the wind decided it belonged in Nebraska.

Sherry Fink did some on frames the Fourth of July, and showed them at guild. So I wanted to try doing them on frames. I really like some of the effects, but none of ours looked like hers. These are mine, and Jans are below.

I didn't get pictures of Marquerite's or Merina's, because of the wind - they put them away before I remembered I was going to take pictures.
Anyway, we're going to do it again after the fair, about the second Saturday in August. If anyone wants to come, its free, just bring white fabric. I've got the paint and frames and stuff.

Summer's almost over

2008-07-25T12:12:00.002-06:00

Wow, this summer is sure shooting by fast. Its fast approaching the end of July, and I haven't hardly done any real summer things. Well, I've snuck down the alley and stole raspberries from my neighbor's bushes which hang over their fence, but that isn't really a biggie. I do it every year about this time. I really don't think they mind, they never harvest half of their berries, and they sure are big and juicy.

Claire will be back Monday, so I won't have to work so much next week. I'm trying to get my painting assignments all done, they have to be mailed to arrive in San Francisco by August 4.

This year school is starting for the teachers August 13 in Greybull. Pretty soon there won't be any summer vacation at all, what a bummer.

Yesterday Dave decided to mow the lawn and asked me if I would do the weed whacker thing, the trim where the lawn meets the fences and the house - the parts he can't reach with the lawn mower. I said sure, but about half way through, the weed eater quit on me. Dave stopped the lawn mower, fixed the weed eater, huffing like I was being stupid, and handed it back to me running. He went back to the lawn mower, and still in a state of huffsmanship, pulled too hard on the mower rope and broke it! He had to take the lawn mower all apart to fix it. I'm sure in his mind it was all my fault. Luckily, he gets over things like that quickly.

He's cleaning up the garage so I can use the bowflex. The ceilings in our new house are too low for it, so we put it in the garage, and it has gradually accumulated the kind of junk that any horizontal suface gathers. Basically, it is a huge junk area, but he's actually restoring some order there. This is good.

About time!

2008-07-22T21:35:00.002-06:00

Tonight at sew-in my friend Marquerite reminded me that I havent blogged for almost a month. Yarg!

Last Saturday Jan Barnett invited us out to her ranch to sew. She is an incredible person, she does most of the tractor work on a huge ranch/farm, she bakes most of the wedding and party cakes for our community, she's the best longarm quilter in Big Horn County, and she is fun! We did stack and whack quilts, most of us hadn't done one for years. We did a potluck lunch, which looked delicious. I'm doing the Atkins thing (haven't had a carb for a month) so I ate roast beef, cheese and devilled eggs. It was good, but the rice pudding and cheesecake looked better. Oh well, I'm going to find my bones one of these days.

Last night our guild, the Loose Threads met in Basin. We had a great show and tell - I could bore you with lots of pictures, but this quilt Sharon Brown showed was interesting - her DAD made it! She said her Dad made a pink one, and her mom made a blue one, just alike. It is kind of crossstitched on gingham, I forget what they called that kind of stitch - looks like a little asterisk on each check of the gingham. Then it was pieced and hand quilted, all done by her dad.

My right hand, Claire Schulz, is on vacation this week, so I actually have to stay at the shop all morning and pull orders, remove fabric from the internet, and answer the phone so the rest of the staff can cut orders. I've really gotten lazy because I have such good help.

My art class is gearing up for the final project which is going to take a lot of hours. Right now I'm painting a mandala. In gouache, which is not very forgiving. It is basically just poster paint, but it is a lot trickier than the other kinds of paints I've used. For my final project, I'm going to do some fabric designs (go figure). I'll post them when I get them done.

Update

2008-06-21T21:09:00.002-06:00

I have really been lazy about blogging lately. I promise to do better. We had a huge credit card bill, so I put on a 4 day sale on the website. Whew! The orders poured in from Tues to Friday, and as of Saturday night, we still aren't caught up. Looks like Monday will be a catch up day in the shop, and everyone has really been working hard. Except me - I tend to goof off.
I started my summer semester in my art school Monday. This semester is Color and Design, and the first assignment was just a value scale from lightest to darkest, painted with gouache paint. The next one is a 5 x 8 design, done in grayscale. Boring stuff, so far - well, the 5 x 8s are sort of interesting.

Last weekend was big doings in northern Wyoming. Days of 49 here in Greybull, with parade, tug of wars, street bowling, all your small town fun stuff. It was also Mule Days in Ralston, a little town about 60 miles from here. We did the 49ers stuff, but we had to take a trip to Ralston. We can't afford a mule yet - and although we have the land, we don't have a shed out there yet or potable water. (we have the tap, just havent built a water line) But here's a picture of Dave falling in love.
They have a big mule auction there on Sunday, which we didn't go to. I guess the mules sell from $1000 to $12000. Seems kind of high for an animal that can't reproduce, but they can work for 30 years, and they really are steady and dependable and friendly and smart. And silly looking.

I did a really dumb thing Friday - I was cleaning out my computer of all the dumb programs that think they have to completely load at startup. Like quicktime, real player, aol, google notifier, all the automatic updaters, yada yada. I do it periodically. I looked at all the programs that were running, and deleted one called lsass.exe, which said it had to do with NT something. Since I don't run NT, I have XP on that computer, I deleted it. Instant fatal error. I spent hours Friday and Saturday on the phone with Dell trying to restore my computer, and their restoration disk didn't do it. I still get the fatal error - can't get into windows. So tomorrow, Sunday, I will be trying some solutions I found using Google. I can get to a DOS prompt, but I've forgotten most of the DOS I ever knew. I'll also be cutting more Russian olives. In this part of the country, Russian olives are a plague - they take over pastureland in a couple of years, and we are determined to get rid of all of them but maybe one or two majestic shade trees. I'll take pictures tomorrow.
I have gotten too fat, and I'm determined to lose it. Today I started again on the Adkins diet - its the only one that I ever really lost weight on. Dave is our cook, and he loves to cook with rice and pasta. I told him, if he wants me to eat what he cooks, he's going to have to pretty much stick to salads and meat for a while. Tonight I went out for a bike ride - going to try and do it every day that I've spent sitting, at least til winter. Wish me luck!

Nose to the Grindstone

2008-06-11T07:14:00.000-06:00

Lately I've been putting new fabric on the website every day, working on a cool quilt, and trying to get a blankety-blank (insert some kind of obscenity here) chair finished. The chair deal is for a charity auction - I agreed months ago to do an 'art chair'. Basically you take any old chair and paint it up and make it pretty, or fun, or interesting. In September they will auction them off for charity. The deadline for the chairs was a couple weeks ago, and mine still isn't done. I had to strip it, and it rained for a solid week when I was stripping it. I needed to do it outdoors, and it was a mess. Anyway, I got it stripped, and I've been painting and wood-burning on it for a couple weeks. I'll post pictures when it is done, but who knows when that will be. I've been working on it every day for a couple weeks.

But, on a happier note, my quilt is finally ready for borders!

It is from the one-patch wonder book, and I really like it. More exciting, Dave even likes it - he says it doesn't look like a quilt I would make. No orange or chartreuse. Hmmm. Now I have to lop off the zig-zags and square it up, before putting the borders on.

What I've been up to

2008-05-29T12:48:00.000-06:00

It rained here almost the whole Memorial Day weekend. Dave and I went to Powell Saturday to see the Lippizaner Stallions, but they were seating people on little bitty bleachers in a parking lot, and had an arena the size of my living room marked off for the show. Apparently the afternoon show had turned the real arena (the one with covered grandstands) into mud. It was pouring rain, the bleachers were sopping wet, and they still wanted $24 apiece. We decided we'd see the stallions the next time they come.

Sunday we went to Hyattville for the Cowboy Carnival. It was better than usual - for once we were able to see the working dog trials and still get something to eat (the last few years they ran out of food during the sheep trials). The food was great - barbeque beef, pork, and lamb - corn on the cob, beans and coleslaw. Pie from the pie contest for dessert. And Mary Lou Doyle put on another great quilt show. I didn't enter anything, but lots of my friends did, and some of them won. My favorite part of the day was, as always, the sheep trials. Those dogs are just amazing.

I'm working on decorating a chair for the local decorated chair contest. I've been stripping and sanding for a week, whenever the rain would let me work outside. I'm still not down to bare wood, but it is showing through in places.

Excitement in Greybull

2008-05-20T18:12:00.000-06:00

Today they were to knock down the 5 stacks from the old refinery in Greybull. Some of them are almost 100 years old, and feel like the bones Greybull is built upon. Anyway, BP is cleaning up the site and hired Cleveland Wrecking to blow the stacks. They were supposed to blow at 4 pm today. Every business in town closed, and I think everyone in Greybull and from lots of the towns around were up on the bluffs somewhere around the town to see it. I've never seen so much traffic as there was at 3:30. They had an official viewing area at the ballfields south of town, but we opted to go across the river a little further away. There were 5 stacks, and they were supposed to drop them all at the same time. Let it be noted that there is an underground oilwell/tunnel operation within a few hundred feet of where the stacks stood. Needless to say, they cleared all their people out of there and really shored up their tunnels.

Above left are all five stacks, while we were waiting for the detonation. On the right is what it looked like when the charges all went off at the same time.

Then we saw them falling every which way, but lo and behold, one stack didn't fall! His name is survivor man, and they don't know what happened. Meanwhile, the oil people can't go check their tunnel.

Epilogue: Three hours later, at about 7:20 pm, my Tuesday night sewing group was having fun when we felt and heard another explosion. Survivorman went down. End of an era.

Working the land

2008-05-18T18:38:00.000-06:00

I'm beat tonite - we went out and worked on the property we bought, and I sure HAVE to get in shape. My job is gathering rocks and cutting down Russian Olives, and I don't last very long doing that.

Here's Walter, Dave and Maggie in that order. We have a pretty view of the Big Horns in the distance, and in the opposite direction, the Rockies.

A Saturday in May

2008-05-17T21:31:00.000-06:00

This is my favorite month of the year. Today was absolutely gorgeous, no wind, about 70 degrees, the whole world is pregnant. We drove to Powell, to look at tractors. There was one advertised in the Buyers Guide that looked great, but it wasn't. It was missing one point of the three point hitch, it had a flat tire, and the seat wouldn't move. That was just the stuff we could see. So we went to Littons and got Dave a chain saw so he can start killing Russian Olive trees.
For those of you that live in other parts of the country, our most noxious weed is the Russian Olive tree. It grows everywhere, soon taking over pastures, creeks, any piece of land that it can. I understand that during the 1930s the government introduced it to this area, and now they spend a lot of money on workshops and chemicals to get rid of it. Typical.
Anyway, Dave is now the proud owner of a chainsaw, and we stopped at a greenhouse and I got some peppers and flowers to plant. It was a nice lazy day. Mostly I rode in the car and read.
Tomorrow we're going out to our land and work - my job is gathering rocks for his dam building project. (Not damn, dam - he really is building dams.) And pulling up cockleburr plants. It really is kind of fun since we don't have to do it to survive. We're just going to see how much we can improve the 18 acres we bought.

Last time I subject you to sculpture

2008-05-15T20:06:00.000-06:00

One of my last assignments in the sculpture class was to do a skull. We had a plaster skull, and we were supposed to submit a picture showing our skull beside the plaster one. One of my classmates is obviously a fan of Achmed the Dead Terrorist.
Here are her skulls:
Aren't they funny?
My friend Sylvia keeps leaving very complementary comments on the blog, but we have a mutual admiration society. Here's the last quilt she made for me:

She does incredible work, makes a lot of the booth samples for the Big Fork Bay pattern company. I saw the wolf she made them and fell in love, so I begged her to make me one. She didn't charge me half of what its worth, because she said it was the fourth one she's made and it went together really fast. Like, get real!

I put a new jigsaw puzzle on the website under new gifts and notions, and a few new magazines today.
The girls who work for me have been checking the shelves and have found about 40 fabrics that somehow got deleted from the website before we were sold out of them, so they'll be going online tomorrow.

Our newest stuff

2008-05-14T10:16:00.000-06:00

Hi, I've been kind of quiet the last few days. I finally finished my sculpture class, and I am so glad its over. The next semester starts June 6, and I'm really looking forward to it. The summer class is called 'color and design'. I was warned ahead of time that it involves a lot of homework and gouache paint.

I just took my 50 pounds of clay over and donated it to the Greybull Rec Center, since I really am sure it is not my forte. Got in the way of my quilting, big time. Dave wouldn't let me do it at home because it is so messy. So now my main sewing table can go back to being a sewing table. And I've got 6 more credit hours towards my fine arts degree.

I put some fabric on the website yesterday- Hoffman batiks and Kitty Cucumber. Today I'm going to clean out my book and notions bucket. After Cyndy scans them, they go in a bucket (actually a mail tub) for me to put on the website. It's getting full.

OUR NEW STUFF

Flashy Flamingos and Halloween Cats

2008-05-09T14:02:00.000-06:00

I'm working on a scuplted head - my last sculpture for the semester and probably for my life. I'll post pictures next week when it looks more like the model. He's got a beard and no hair on his head.
Today I put a few fabrics on the website - funky flamingos and some Halloween fabrics.

Dave, my husband, is requiring a lot of attention today. For one thing, I downloaded an upgrade to our mail program to be ready for the new rates May 12. As usual with upgrades, parts of it don't work. Dave is our mail guy, and he's having fits with it.

On top of that, he's just beginning to irrigate for the first time in his life. We bought 18 acres out in the country last fall, with nothing on it but irrigation ditches. The plan is to grow grass and hay and maybe mules. They told us this week that the water is in the ditch. So Dave has been ditching and building dams all week. Yesterday he hit his knee hard with a sledge hammer by accident. Of course, since I'm the wife, it's somehow my fault, but in any case he hurts.

We have skateboarding flamingos, fiddling cats, and lots more new stuff.

Link to our newest things

Dave just corrected me - he HAS irrigated before - when he was a kid, he helped his grandpa.

Caramel cake

2008-05-08T16:34:00.000-06:00

We have sew-in every Tuesday night at the shop, and Marquerite brought this cake last week. It is a NO FLOUR cake, and is really yummy. Kathi asked for the recipe, and here it is:
It's real name is
Butterscotch Nut Torte
6 egg yolks
2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1 1/2 cup sugar
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 tsp baking powder
1 pt whipping cream
2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp almond extract
6 egg whites
Beat egg yolks well, combine sugar and baking powder. Add to beaten egg yolks. Add flavoring. Beat egg whites until stiff but not dry. Fold into yolk mixture. Fold in Graham cracker crumbs and add nut meats. Blend. Line 2 greased 9 inch large pans with wax paper. Bake at 325 for 30-35 minutes.
Frost with whipped cream, and top with butterscotch sauce.

Butterscotch Sauce

1 cup brown sugar

1T corn starch

1/4 cup oleo or butter

1/4 cup orange juice

1/4 cup water

1 egg beaten

1 tsp vanilla

Put together as a pudding or custard and when cool place on top of the whipped cream in a criss-cross design.

Okay, Marquerite, what is BP? Butterscotch pudding? British Petroleum? You only need a teaspoon of it, so maybe it is something so obvious that only I wouldn't think of it. Yep, it was: baking powder.

Laurel Burch Christmas Collection

2008-05-06T21:31:00.000-06:00

I was using the blogging software my host, Key to the Web, supplied, and found it too limiting, so I'm going back to this blog. So I will lose most of the old blogs, but that's okay - there wasn't anything really important on them.
Laurel Burch Christmas Collection
Bountiful Blessings is the Christmas fabric collection that Laurel Burch was working on when she died - much too young, from a rare bone disease. She was quite a lady - her obituary tells a lot about her. We got the whole collection in today, its all posted in the 'newest' section.Tonight is sew-in, and I'll get the no-flour cake recipe from Marquerite to share with you all. Barb Harrison says I must have a very pale green thumb - I think she's right!Julie

Pre Christmas Billings

2007-12-28T06:39:00.000-07:00

We went to Billings the weekend before Christmas to see the Chase Hawks Rough Stock Rodeo, which is nothing but broncs and bulls. It was great, the best in the country, both bulls and cowboys. We took Walter and Maggie to the Pet Resort, where they get to watch tv and have play time with other dogs, and get all tuckered out. We were going to do our usual quick pass through Walmart to get otc drugs and other things that cost double in Greybull, but one look at the parking lot disabused us of that notion. Lordy, everyone in Billings who has a car was out shopping! So we went to Barnes and Noble and curled up and read until we could pick up the dogs at 2:30pm and came home.

Yesterday I decided to walk the dogs doing the dog whisperer thing. It worked really well with Maggie, she loved it, and didn't pull at all. I only had to give her about 2 mild corrections, for wanting to smell the ground. Walter was another story. He pulled constantly on the leash and then made those choking coughing sounds like I was killing him. So he went back home and Maggie and I had a nice brisk walk. Yesterday I was really good on my diet - steak for breakfast, moose sausage and cheese for supper, applesauce for lunch. I started Sunday the 23, and weighed 235, the most I've ever weighed in my life. Now, 5 days later, I'm down 5 pounds. I'm not telling anyone about this blog, because I'm going to emerge from it skinny and gorgeous. I have 100 pounds to lose, and I'm going to do it!

First Garden Catalog

2007-12-27T06:55:00.001-07:00

The first garden catalog came today. Beautiful flowers, and the ground outside is yucky with old snow and ice. I put a bunch of Christmas fabrics on sale, this year I want to get rid of them before I start getting in Christmas 2008.
I've really been getting into the Dog Whisperer. I'm going to start walking Maggie and Walter his way, as soon as the ice melts. For the past 10 years, they have walked me.

Day after Christmas, 2007

2007-12-26T07:05:00.000-07:00

We had a great lazy Christmas. I rearranged my sewing room, trying to make room for all my art supplies and art books. Brought some old projects down to the shop to finish, since I seem to be doing all my sewing here.

Oh, to introduce myself. I am Julie Owens, owner of Big Horn Quilts in Greybull WY. I'm trying really hard to retire from the day to day operation of the shop, and have pretty much turned everything over to my employees except paying bills, doing payroll, and updating the website, http://www.bighornquilts.com/

I've recently embarked on a new interest, getting a degree in fine arts. I originally did it because I wanted to do better art quilts, and that is still a motivation, but I'm also finding I really enjoy drawing and painting. I'm studying online, through the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.

I'm so impressed by all my friends who have blogs, and decided it was high time I do the same.