I think these photos speak for themselves. We played. We relaxed. We had a birthday party.
We’re recovering from jet-lag
We just got back from a jam packed week in New England visiting Barry’s family. This photo he took is my favorite of the nearly 400 photos we have from the trip. We were quite an anomaly trekking through airports and train stations and big city streets with our crew of 4 boys and a girl. We visited the birth place of a prophet, the home of a silversmith, people we love, and the ocean. Over the next few days I’ll fill you in on some of the highlights as we try to get back to real life and set our biological clocks back to Denver time. (The kids were all up before 6 this morning because their bodies thought it was 8!)
the cloud project
I’ve been really fascinated by the Colorado sky this summer. It is so big and expansive that you can see so much variety. From where we live we can watch the clouds congregate on the mountains and make their way toward the plains, and in the evening light they are quite a site to behold. There are so many times I’m driving around on errands wishing I had my camera to document the towering layers, but I never have it. I can stand on my back porch, though. Here are some of the heavenly sites from right outside my window.
These high clouds are altocumulus. There are 3 basic types of clouds. Cirrus clouds are high and wispy, cumulus clouds are the mid sky cotton balls, and stratus clouds cover the sky low and like a blanket. It gets a bit complicated for me from there because from those 3 divisions they’re categorized into 10 basic kinds of clouds because most clouds are some kind of combination of the 3 basics.
These are cumulostratus– kind of cottony, kind of blankety.
Our very favorite library book on clouds has been Tomie dePaola’s Cloud Book. You just can’t help but love Tomie’s illustrations and humor along with real, sound information. The Man who Named the Clouds is about Luke Howard, the man who first devised the way to categorize and name clouds. It starts with his childhood and shows how following your passion and studying hard can really affect the world. I also need to get myself my own copy of The Cloud Book by Richard Hamblyn. It’s a nature guide for naming clouds full of lovely photos and explanations of why clouds are called what they are.
Have you been looking up lately?
with all the wrinkles
I’ve had this quilt finished and rolled up under my drafting table all summer. I have a friend at church whose oldest daughter just got MARRIED, and this daughter of hers is a photography major and likes artsy things, so I felt like I needed to make her something for a wedding gift rather than head to Target and buy something. I ordered the fabric in time for the big day, got it all pieced too late, but in time for a visit this spring. Unfortunately my free motion quilting wasn’t going quite as planned, so I missed that window to give it to her as well. Finally this past weekend she was here again and I hurriedly unrolled it to take some photos before whisking it over to her. Here it is, wrinkles and all.
I ordered a fat quarter pack of Joel Dewberry’s Modern Meadow line (not the colorway in the link, though). I took 8 of the fat quarters and cut them into big 17 inch squares and made 2 rows of big blocks in the center of the quilt.
Then I added big solid stripes of some Moda Bella Solid and Cross weave on the top and bottom and called it a quilt top.
For the back I took scraps of the fat quarters to make a narrow stripe and used some more Moda Crossweave, all the same color this time, to complete it. I really like the simplicity of it because it shows off the loveliness of the fabric so well– and it was fairly instant gratification. I added ties to one edge so that it can be rolled and tied and taken on picnics for years and years to come.
I quilted it in my signature swirls, but had a hard time getting my machine to cooperate this time around. I was just using the foot my machine came with and my tension was crazy and my thread would break every time I changed directions. It made me want to swear. I didn’t swear, of course, but I really wanted to. Then I tried RaeLyn’s spring loaded foot and was able to buzz through the whole thing in an afternoon at her house. I spent about 4 hours on 12 inches of the quilt before our sewing date and then did the whole rest of it in an afternoon between the hours of 1 and 4– with lots of chatting and eating and kid chasing mixed in. (RaeLyn– We really need to get together again. Soon!)
So, anyway, here’s the quilt that’s been hiding all summer. I have fat quarters cut to make another, just need to get some more solid fabrics to go with them. And I think I’ll keep the next one.