Quilting at Windmills

Made for Walkin'

2008-07-23T19:00:00.000-07:00

How many quilters sit at their Singer 1591 sewing machine and polish their cowboy boots?

John leaves tomorrow to teach in Nebraska. Then he is home until we head for Nashville in late August.

A new quilt is hanging on the wall, an eight pointed star - it will show up here and in the pre-cut kit section of the catalog in the next couple of days. It's handsome!

Stay cool

Brooke

Maggie Agrees to an Experiment

2008-07-17T10:18:00.000-07:00

Okay, here is the story. Maggie lives with Kate and Kevin. She is a miniature Australian Shepard and is a very good dog. She loves the sprinklers and chasing the sprinkler as it turns is her very favorite. If she is inside, she still tries to lick the sprinkler through glass door. Go, Maggie, go.

The experiment, of course, is to see if I can really put a video on the blog. If it works, we'll do some videos of quilt related stuff.

Let's go run through the sprinkler!

Brooke

A Delightful Woman

2008-07-16T17:46:00.000-07:00

Kind, wise, funny, a magical gardener and great cook. And many other things to all of us - John's Mom died early this morning. We will absolutely miss her.

Back to Work

2008-07-10T15:11:00.000-07:00

How was your Fourth of July? We enjoyed the parade in Red Lodge and had a modest houseful for barbecue. Everything went well - the homemade ice cream was definitely soft serve but tasty. Better the next day! We enjoyed all our company but especially the grand nieces, 3 and 5.

Kate and I are helping John get packed for his workshops in Flagstaff Arizona. The following weekend is a state convention in Chadron, Nebraska so he will be on the road and on the road and on the road. I will post pictures of some of the kits he is taking later - there are some nice ones.

You might be interested in what T Boone Pickens is saying about wind power, about foreign oil, about natural gas and about the presidential campaign. For myself, I do think it is really unfortunate to depend on the countries who hate us for such an important commodity. You can check him out at this link.

Stay cool!

Brooke

Happy Fourth of July Anyway

2008-06-30T18:06:00.000-07:00

It still surprises me when, from time to time, someone in our big quilt world decides to take advantage of another quilter just to make a buck, to promote a product, to sell a magazine. This little graphic goes along with what our mothers always told us "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."

Anyway, have a wonderful and safe Fourth of July. We are having a BIG barbecue and, I think, lots of barbecue eaters and maybe some fishermen. And John promised to take me to the parade - watch out for the firetrucks and those water cannons!

Brooke

Rock Creek

2008-06-24T11:07:00.000-07:00

I am back from vending at the Martha Pullen Market in Arlington, Texas. While not a "quilt" show, there were lots of things for quilters to see and do and buy! The heirloom christening gowns were a sight to behold and to admire. You should go to one of the Martha Pullen events when there is one in your area - wow!

John is resting for a few days in Dallas before flying out to teach at the Vermont Quilt Festival this weekend. Repacking the three suitcases of quilts we had with us in Arlington was one of his projects. Vermont is one of his favorite teaching venues.

Kate and Kevin took this picture of beautiful Rock Creek in high water. Rock Creek is swift enough that you need to be careful of it even when it is low - your feet can go right out from under you. No fishing when it is this high but the water rushing by is great for a sound night's sleep.

Brooke

More Wildflowers

2008-06-09T18:55:00.000-07:00

We have had an unusually wet spring and cool days and nights which is saving the snow pack in the mountains. There is a nice patch of Lupine right outside our kitchen door which we really enjoy. I wish it would spread. The Beargrass is in bloom right now too, so delicate.

While we are enjoying the wildflowers and native grasses, our neighbor has paid someone to dig the rocks out of his "lawn" so he can mow it more easily. Everybody is different.

Is this what you Texas quilters call "Bluebonnet"?

Brooke

WOW

2008-06-05T14:30:00.000-07:00

Do you like this one? John and Kate are busy getting ready for the Martha Pullen Market in Arlington, Texas (June 19 - 21) and for the Vermont Quilt Festival which is the next weekend.

Martha Pullen Sewing Market
Vermont Quilt Festival

This bright spiral is one of the class projects for Vermont, a pre-cut kit so students don't have to spend all morning cutting - just go right to sewing. John's is almost pieced and I'm not sure what he is going to work on next.

Brooke

Working Weekend

2008-06-02T14:46:00.000-07:00

John tried to plant his corn here in Billings, but the ground is still too wet. Too bad, now it is sunny and good weather for corn growing. He will be able to plant sometime this week, I'm sure.

We drove up to Red Lodge with our usual car full of projects. (Including laundry, but that's not very interesting.) We have a new track lighting system in the loft where we sew and, boy, that's nice. John pieced the newest colorway of the 6" Wheel of Mystery; it is from fabric Kate just bought at Market. The colorway is pastel. These are kits for John's Wheel of Mystery class at the Vermont Quilt Festival in July, so if you are signed up for the class, here is your project, hot off the press! We will have these available on the website and at shows, so everyone can have one if they like it.

I quilted on a black and bright 10" Wheel of Mystery top that has been traveling to classes and shows almost too long and was starting to fray along the edges. It is a pretty quilt and I got about 1/2 done before it was time to pack up and head back to Billings. What a monster thunderstorm we saw on the way back - impressive.

Well, back to Monday's sorting out and filing and searching and all that. Three boxes of new fabrics came today, so that is fun!

Brooke

BUSY

2008-05-22T08:21:00.000-07:00

It's nice to be home. Kate and I had a fun but fast paced trip to Quilt Market in Portland. There is a lot of new fabric coming our way. Portland is about 1,000 miles away so it was a long drive. I learned that other drivers are a lot nicer to someone driving a Honda than they are to a someone driving a 13 passenger van. Oh well.

John and Kate are busy getting ready for Martha's Sewing Market in Arlington in mid June. One of the classes John will be teaching at the show is Arabic Lattice and Kate designed a new set for it yesterday. John has the top pieced already, isn't it great?

I'm working on the website and getting a newsletter ready. Have a great weekend!

Brooke

Bright Days Ahead

2008-05-13T12:44:00.001-07:00

We are back from vending at our last show for a while. The next one isn't until mid-June; I know, it's not that far away, but we are all looking forward to catching up and actually having a weekend off! Kate and I are driving to Portland, Oregon tomorrow for the Spring Quilt Market, but that is to BUY, not to sell.

Our last show was a regional machine quilting show in Salt Lake City, beautiful this time of the year. It is a nice show and not nearly as crowded and hectic as some of the bigger ones. I believe they had some good educational opportunities and there were some very nice quilts there. John won a ribbon, 3rd place in his category. He liked winning a prize, but did not like having his picture taken! I would probably feel the same way! The quilt is "Supernova", machine quilted on the Multi-Frame, of course.

Well, trying to tie up loose ends before the big drive tomorrow.

Brooke

Spring in Montana

2008-04-29T09:09:00.000-07:00

Well, it is early for spring. Today it will be 80, they tell us but tomorrow only up to 50. Typical spring weather. I took this picture of a pasque flower (some people call them crocus) at Red Lodge on April 19, just before Kate and I flew to Nashville for the AQS show in Paducah. This very modest little wildflower doesn't compare to the spectacular red bud and dogwood trees that are blooming right now in Kentucky and Tennessee but I am always so glad to see the pasque flowers struggle back when the snow has melted.

We enjoyed the show in Paducah and met lots of old and new friends. Quilters are one big family, after all. Even though we were so busy, we did have a chance to visit from time to time. The Best of Show quilt was done by a teacher friend of John's and also won a prize at the IQA show in Houston last fall. There is a very special story about the inspiration for Ted Storm's quilt and I'm sure if you subscribe to the American Quilter magazine, they will have it there later this year.

John is off to teach in Denver this weekend and then we both vend at a machine quilting show in Salt Lake City. Hope your spring is beautiful.

Brooke

Ticking Away

2008-04-13T19:30:00.000-07:00

John is driving home from teaching in Chicago at the Spring International Quilt Fesitval. He liked his students - some in his class had been coming since the very first Chicago show. He left his cell phone in a motel last night so I haven't heard from him much today. (The motel was very nice and is sending it back to us tomorrow.)

I finished quilting a little project this weekend, it needs to be bound still. I also worked on my substitute headboard which is three of those old fashioned rose botanical prints framed with a red ticking. Sometimes I am all thumbs but I got one done and here is the effect. That is a picture of Kate when she was 7 in the upper right, she made that frame in pre-school. And it didn't take her all day either.

Brooke

Spring Brunch

2008-04-03T17:36:00.000-07:00

This young deer and his mother have been wintering here next to our shop in Billings. There really isn't a whole lot deer food around; leftovers from the garden and there are apple trees out in the back. This guy was looking for some greenery today and I hope he found enough to eat. I know John will be fencing him and his buddies out of the garden soon.

He is really shaggy and will be glad to be rid of that winter coat.

Brooke

Show and Tell

2008-04-03T08:26:00.000-07:00

A very nice student in John's Machine Quilting class in Lancaster brought in a wall hanging she started in a Dresden Plate class John taught last year at Lancaster. She really did a great job of choosing fabrics as well as all her piecing, applique and quilting. We really appreciate her letting us take a picture, and I'm sorry I didn't get her name!

John's next classes are in Chicago at the Spring Quilt Festival; we are helping him get ready. I have a little quilt to machine quilt this weekend and John will be putting together the sample for a new colorway of the 10" Wheel of Mystery pre-cut kit, it is very pretty!

Hope you are enjoying early spring!

Brooke

Fly Away

2008-04-01T08:58:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this while I am still mad. Kate and I missed our 5:30 p.m. flight out of Denver back in to Billings by literally 45 seconds and the two fellows who were running behind us missed it by 60 and 62 seconds. We were late getting in to Denver from Washington DC and then were 60, yes, sixty gates away from our Denver to Billings gate. You know the airline knew we were on the late flight and that we were 60 gates away - the obvious question is, Why couldn't you wait for us?

So we got home to Billings at 12:30 last night. To compound the irritation, we waited on the ground in the Denver/Billings flight for 5 more passengers who were on a flight that was coming in late.

I'm not saying that all the gate people and customer service people weren't nice and helpful, it's just that common sense and logic don't seem to fit in anywhere in the equation anymore.

Tomorrow I will post a photo of a very pretty Dresden Plate wallhanging that a student brought to John's class in Lancaster, wow!

2008-03-21T12:01:00.000-07:00

Do the Canadian Geese sit in trees where you live?? For several years, there has been a pair of geese who fly up in to the cottonwood trees across the road from us and perch there like they know what they are doing. It's forty five feet off the ground and they sit up there and peck at the dead branch instead of flying another 200 yards north and eating leftover wheat and corn from the fields like the other geese. To each his own, I guess.

We are finally done packing for our next show which is Lancaster, Pennsylvania next weekend. Unfortunately, John will miss Easter dinner because he will be on the road. We will think of him while we watch the grand nieces hunt for eggs! Kate and I leave Tuesday so the office will be closed until the following Tuesday, April 1.

Hope you have a wonderful Easter, if that is a holiday you celebrate. We can all celebrate the arrival of spring!

Brooke

Catching Up

2008-03-13T09:25:00.000-07:00

Wow, almost a month since my last post. In the interim, John and I have been to Virginia for the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival and the next weekend Kate and I vended at the Sewing Expo in Puyallup, Washington. With all the plane travel, van travel, packing and unpacking, and catching up with orders, phone messages and email, well, it has taxed my poor old brain.

We had Fun at both shows. Well, having one of the vendors conk out with a seizure right in front of our booth in Puyallup wasn't much fun, but much, much worse for him and his wife. Last we heard, he was okay but had 5 staples in his head.

Things have calmed down some and we were able to go to Red Lodge last weekend. John pieced on a sample of our newest template, Drunkard's Path, in the 4" size. I plan to quilt it this weekend. Kate just finished putting the borders on her 6" sample of the Drunkard's Path, it is 46" square with the border and has been named "Outside the Puzzle Box". Drunkard's Path is always fun to plan - sort of like Log Cabin in that the setting's orientation really makes a difference in how the quilt looks.

Daylight savings time threw me for a loop for a few days this week. I am really enjoying the extra light in the evenings. I don't think I have that SAD condition, but it really is nice to have the daylight; I get a little more work done if it isn't dark outside.

John is working on a new template set for our next show which is in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It will be a larger version of "Supernova" which is an original variation of the Wheel of Mystery block. He'll have a sample soon. Enjoy your early spring days!

Brooke

Box Full of Cat

2008-02-16T15:36:00.000-08:00

Patch the cat keeps us company in the shop when we are working on the pre-cut kits. He would love to help us in the office also, but we try to keep his visits to the office to a minimum. He drools when you pet him, for one thing. The other thing is that he will disappear when you aren't looking and nest down in either the fabric or in John's quilts. We usually catch him before he does that though.

He is lots of company for us and completely different from Anna, the Siamese, who only likes to be around humans when John is out working in the garden. Another odd cat.

We finished packing for the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival in Hampton, Virginia today. It was a little harder than usual since Kate and I will be doing another show the following weekend in Puyallup, Washington so we have to divide things up. John leaves tomorrow so let's hope for no snow, and none of that icky freezing rain which I think is lots worse than snow.

Brooke

Takeover

2008-02-06T17:43:00.000-08:00

If you hesitate, sometimes you are lost. I was going to sew this 12" Storm at Sea top together last weekend but goofed off instead. Kate had sewn all the square in square units and diamond units together and arranged them. All of us worked on the final set and, now, John is sewing it together.

Well, it will be nice to have a bigger sample of the 12" inch block at our next shows, although we don't have these batiks anymore The kits we have now are about half light batiks and half brights and darks so they are a little easier to arrange, I think.

Brooke

A Busy Week

2008-02-01T14:26:00.000-08:00

This week has been a busy one with laser cutting more pre-cut kits for our website, upcoming shows and classes. Then we did pre-cut kits for Jinny Beyer and started on Batik Double Wedding Ring kits for Benartex, which is a big job since the fabric comes in strange configurations and has to be "worked on".

John had time to draft 4 different sizes of the "Drunkard's Path", since we get a lot of requests for that old-time block. The templates are ready but we need to do a sample and write the instructions. The sizes will be 4", 6", 8" and 10".

These templates are cut from our new color of acrylic, I call it seafoam - it has a yellow cast in this picture because the paper is still on one side. We leave the paper on one side in case someone wants to write the size/pattern etc. on the back and it adds a little friction for rotary cutting. When someone wants to "fussy cut", it is real easy to peel off.

I'm planning on finishing up the piecing on a 12" Storm at Sea this weekend - John is off to watch some football game??

Brooke

Home Again

2008-01-24T15:47:00.000-08:00

Our trip to Tucson and on to Ontario California is now a warm memory. At the Tucson Show, we visited with old friends (and new!) and had two fun dinners with my "old" roommate (Brooke's) and her husband who recently retired to Phoenix from Butte, Montana. There's a contrast for you! My friend hasn't joined too many clubs or groups in Phoenix yet, except the Gardening Club in her complex and she says gardening is quite a bit different in Arizona than in Butte which is at 7,000 feet!

Road to California is a great show and always very exciting with all the great quilts, special exhibits and, of course, our vendor friends. We were happy to discover our booth was next to Ricky Timms' booth and had some nice visits with Ricky and Justin. For a look at Ricky's "interview" with John, click here and look in the Quilt Show's Blog. It is pretty funny! The Quilt Show

Kate worked like a little fiend while we were gone, doing custom pre-cut kits and designing another pre-cut kit for us to sell in a week or so. The quilt block is called "Arrowhead" but the sample doesn't have an official name yet. Any ideas?

Brooke

Not in a Panic

2008-01-06T12:57:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow John and I leave for our two week swing to Arizona and California and back. Everything (well, almost) is ready and we just have to stuff it all in the van. The two shows are the Tucson Quilt Fiesta and Road to California. Contact information for both shows is in the "links" section of the website, if you are interested.

Last we heard, the roads are not great until we get to Southern Utah. We have the wonderful "Finnish Ice Tires" on the van, so we'll have good traction. It is always the other folks on the road I worry about. Of course, I usually fall asleep in the van, so John won't have much advice on driving from me.

As I work on cleaning up my desk before leaving, I remember this little quote "If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, what is an empty desk a sign of"?

Brooke

Holiday Greetings

2007-12-26T10:49:00.000-08:00

We all hope that this holiday season is wonderful for you, full of happy times with family and friends.

A few years ago, we made felt snowmen (cut out on the laser) and then they looked so much like gingerbread men, we made them the next year. These are our current favorite ornaments - who knows what next year will bring!

Brooke

A Christmas Break

2007-12-17T13:18:00.000-08:00

Click Here to Play FREE RICE

Here is fun Holiday break that you and your family might enjoy. You have probably heard about "Free Rice"; you play a vocabulary game and the site's advertisers donate 20 grains of rice. Well, try it if you want to test your mental powers a little.

Holiday preparations are going pretty good here - we had a family game day yesterday at with cookies, chili and other winter treats. I finally found our box of Christmas lights so the trees are up and presents are modestly mounded.

John and I spent most of Saturday getting pre-cut Double Wedding Ring kits ready to ship - you should see them in your local quilt shoppe soon!

Brooke