Quilting Friends with Great Patience

My best friend/quilting friend and surrogate sister, Cindy, has much patience. She gave me this top to quilt for her over a year ago. Then I moved and started my business in Washington and because she wanted to be sure I had all my customer quilts done first, this one was a long time coming. However, its finally done and on its way home!

We were at a retreat and this top was taught as a double-blind mystery. We told the shop what colors we wanted and they picked the fabric. As you can see, they did a great job with Cindy's fabrics--especially when you compare them to the fabrics chosen for my quilt! (Look here --Note to self: No double-blind mysteries unless you're actually IN the shop to show them what you mean when you say "purple.")

Cindy wanted leaves and was out of ideas after that. I spruced it up a bit with piano keys spaced with the piecing on the outside border, then the leaves, then another round of piano keys following the inner piecing. 

I stitched in the ditch around the center star. I just couldn't go over it with leaves, its way too pretty.

Here's a shot of the back. You can see the quilting better if you click on the picture and then stand on your head to look at it!! (Just kidding--the tweedy brushed flannel makes it tough to see and photograph!)

So Busy...

...but not with quilting, unfortunately.  We are back in California at our property in Plumas County, better known as Butterfly Valley.  From the air, where our property is (just outside the small town of Quincy), it looks like butterfly wings, hence the name. However, its been called Butterfly Valley since before airplanes. How did they know???

We own the back half of the second meadow--48 beautiful acres, most of which are meadow with about 10-15 being timber. We have been making trips here and taking stuff North, stuff to the dump, stuff to metal recycling and selling/giving away stuff as well. Dennis has been here for 38 years--there's a lot of stuff!!

I did manage to sneak away for several very important meetings--like dinner with a good friend and lunch with one of my customers (Carolyn made me potato soup!!) and I even went to the School House Quilters get together before having to leave early to head to the Fish & Game Commission meetiing (I'm still doing their minutes!)

The decision has been made to put Butterfly on the market; a hard decision for us both. I love it here and I have so many memories, it will be hard to say goodbye. But life goes on and you have to move forward.

We moved into this house before it was complete and then we never got around to finishing the trim. The doors look so beautiful trimmed--I wish we had done this while we lived here so we could enjoy it!

We are headed back to Sequim soon and then I'm off to another great time at the Quilters Dream Retreat just outside of Payallup, Washington. This is my second year and I have several projects lined up to take with me. I'm really hoping to finish my Judy Niemeyer Agave Garden quilt while I'm there, and hopefully a few others. I'm also taking a class on how to turn a Jelly Roll into this cute floor mat.

Dory