A Visit from Karen

In my last post, I told you that my sister Karen was visiting me, and in another post a couple months ago, I mentioned that I was going to be working on a secret project.  Well, now we can connect the dots, and it is safe now for me tell you all about it.  

The main reason Karen came up to visit is because we came up with the idea to make a quilt to commemorate the 60th anniversary of our parents, and we wanted to work on it together.

Before she came, I sent out pre-cut quilt blocks to as many family members as I could, so they could sign them and send them back to me.  I had gotten most of them back by the time Karen got here.

So she got here on a Wednesday, and as soon as we left the airport, we got right to work!  Even before I brought her home that first day, we hit all 4 quilt shops in Anchorage.  And then another quilt shop in Palmer, and the last one here in Wasilla.  6 quilt shops all in one day.  Whew!  At first, we only wanted to just browse and see what they all had to offer so we could make a decision on which fabrics we wanted to buy.

On Thursday, we spent the whole day making the blocks for the people who wouldn't or couldn't make them.  And that took pretty much most of the day.  Karen made a really cute one for her coming grand-baby by tracing one of my stamp images.  Who would've thought you could combine a stamping hobby with quilting?

We didn't have our "filler blocks" yet, but I had a Charm Pack in neutral colors that we practiced with, and started playing around with the blocks, trying to come up with a good way to represent everyone on the quilt.

We tried several different ideas and finally came up with something that seemed to work.  We wanted to leave a space in the middle to make a panel.

On Friday, we had all of our necessary blocks made, so we went back to Anchorage and purchased the fabrics that we decided on.  We decided to go with blues.

After we got our blue filler blocks cut out, we went back to our layout design and replaced all the neutral ones with blue ones.  The further we worked on it, the more excited we became.

We had to make the middle panel twice cuz the first one wasn't quite the right size.

But we were excited when the 2nd one fit right.

After we got it all sewn together, we had to design the middle panel.

Neither of us were very experienced in doing applique, but with some tutoring from YouTube videos, we did an all-right job.

The words were traced on there.  We printed them out in large print from the computer, and then placed the fabric over it, and just traced it with a fabric pen.  Very easy.

Then we were finally ready for the quilting part.  We got it sandwiched and pinned together, and then I did all the quilting because Karen wasn't comfortable with that part.  I kinda wish she had done that part because she's really good at the sewing machine, and I'm sure she would've done a better job than I did.

After it was all quilted, Karen did all of the binding.

And here it is!  Ta-Daa!

10 kids

23 grandkids

24 great-grandkids

All represented on one quilt.

And then they needed a card to go with it, so we made them a card.

 Sorry I forgot to rotate this picture.

Here is the inside of the card:

And then we wrapped it up nice in wedding paper, slipped it in a Flat Rate box, and sent it on its way!

I was getting on the computer twice a day to track the package.  I wanted to know when it got there so we could call them after they got it.  They had no clue of any of this, so we were anxiously waiting the entire 4 days to call them.  We got up at 6:00 am on a Friday morning just to call them.  I'm glad that happened to be on a Friday cuz me and Karen felt really tired all day after that.  We're not used to getting up that early.

Anyhoo, it was really fun because I like surprising people with things like that.  And plus, it was just fun working on a project with Karen.  She was here for almost three weeks, and we did nothing but quilt the whole time she was here (she had another quilting project that she was working on), but we had a lot of fun just being together.

But before she went home, we decided to break away from the quilting and do something else, just for one day.  So on Saturday we took a drive through Hatcher Pass.

 And then we drove up to Talkeetna and spent most of the day there.  Here is one of the shops that we went in.  

We saw the quilts hanging there, and just had to go in!  You'd think we had had enough of quilts by then, but, I dunno, there's just something about quilts that draws us in.

Sunday was Karen's last day here, and guess what we did?  Yup! - we quilted!

Right up until the last couple hours, when she finally said, "well, I better pack".

I hope we can get together again soon.

Now here is some good news and bad news.

The good news is that my raspberry plants are starting to produce berries!

Not a whole lot, but just enough to give us a little taste every now and then.

And they are super yummy!

Now for the bad news.......

This used to be a cluster of plump red strawberries.  My strawberry patch was full of bright red juicy clusters just like it, and I was waiting for just the right time to pick a basket full of them.

I WAS SO CLOSE TO PICKING THEM!! But something else beat me to it.  Whatever it was picked off EVERY strawberry in my whole entire strawberry patch.

Every. Last. One.

(scream!)

I think I need to put Beanie out there to guard my strawberries.

And I know if she ever caught it, she would have no mercy.

Bossy is pretty much useless on a sunny day.  She prefers to find a shady spot and snooze.