Winnie the Poo Kalidascope

Here is another sample of a Kalidascope. First is the material started with, the second picture shows one completed block. It is fun to see how the different materials turn out.

Rag Quilt Pictures

Love seeing the variety of Rag Quilts!

This first one I completed for a friend of mine to take to a Family Reunion Auction. She plans to bid on it herself.

Susie completed this one for her daughter. It is being well worn and loved!

YW Value Quilt

Mary and her daughter created this quilt as part of a Young Women's Value Project. Listed around the torch are all the values, highlighted with the value colors around the quilt.

Janice's Apron

The Quilting Group is just the name we call ourselves, we do a whole lot more than quilting. Talking would be among the most of what we do, we love the eating part and sometimes we vary from quilting to other projects like Janice did this time. She wanted an apron for her Home Enrichment Night. She brought some material she had sitting around her home and I had a pattern, so before the Thursday afternoon was done, her apron was almost complete, when she came back the next week, this is what she had.

Spiderman Quilt

The adventures of Spiderman are loved by young and old!

My daughter married a man that is one of the avid Marvil fans. I decided to make him a quilt with spiderman. Here it is! Once my other kids saw it it was a fight for who wanted it most. They gave up the fight when I informed them it was made for Clay, they knew they couldn't win over that.

It did turn out prety awesome!!!! I didn't use a pattern, just added as I went with what material I could find.

Memory quilt

I was asked to do this quilt for this lady who took it to her aged grandmother over sees. She designed the quilt with bright colors and big pictures for the nursing home her Grandmother stays in.

Susie teach Chenille

Susie joined the Quilting Group from San Antonio. Recently she learned how to construct a Chenille baby blanket. She took the time to give us a last minute demonstration of how to do this.

It has been so much fun to learn so many different things from those who join us in the Quilting Group. We all have more ideas of what we would like it do than time to do them. :)

It was also fun to have you join us here in Houston, Susie, hope you can come again.

Memory Quilt

When I was working on a 50th Anniversary Quilt for me parents, I used the scraps from the paper I printed the pictures on to print small pictures of the first 25 years Dave and I have been married. this is the quilt I came up with for us. It is really considered a scrap quilt because the material I used is from material scraps I have used over the last 20 + years. It is a fun quilt to recall and share memories. The Grandkids enjoy finding their parents when they were young as well.

This is just a close up of the quilt blocks. As you can see it is a very simple quilt to put together.

Friendship Quilt

Tammy and I have been friends since the 6th grade. I was thrilled to hear she was coming to Houston last month to finish a quilt with a friend. I got to go and visit with them and was impressed with what they had done. Tammy's friend got 12 mutual friends (once lived in the same town, many have moved) and each took a month or season to do a block for everyone else in the group. By the end, eveyone had enough blocks from friends to complete a quilt. Each picked how they wanted it put together and what finishing colors to use, then Jan invited them all to Houston to machine quilt their finished project. This is a picture of Tammy's completed quilt.

Wasn't that a great idea. Many who participated are not 'quilters' but it was an easy enough project that all could participate and feel accomplished.

China - Forbidden City

If you have never heard of the Forbidden City, it is something that you will enjoy researching. Those who were brought to live in the Forbidden City stayed their for life. It is a huge city inside Beijing. We got a tour guide and after 4 hours we barley saw 1/3 of it. There are 999 rooms throughout the city. '9' is a royal number. You will see it symbolized in many areas, on doors, roof tops etc. Only royalty can have 9 of anything. That is the most perfect.

There is a movie called "The Last Emperor" which does a great job telling about the ending of the Forbidden City starting a huge change to the China we know today.

Some of the customs from China's history are extremely interesting! The one that fascinated my a lot was the binding of girls feet. It was a mark of beauty to have a 3 1/2 inch foot, the size and shape of a lotus flower. It was extremely painful but a sign of great beauty. For her wedding, the young girl was judged on the shoes she made for her small feet. This was done for 1,000 years. No one really knows how it began, but it did start with royalty. It only ended in the early 1900's.

Another custom that is seem a lot is raised door steps. Some are just an inch or two, others several inched tall. It is meant to keep the evil spirits out. You must step over, not on top of the door step.

I'd love to put more pictures here, but there are too many to chose from. I am working on a book with LOTS of pictures. I will post it when it is complete.

China - Hu Tongs

This is a picture of my mom sitting with a couple outside their home. Everyone was really great about having their pictures taken.
The Hu Tongs are a part of China I have never heard of before. It is where a large part of the people live, kinda like villages. You find them everywhere if you know how to look for them. You can be going down all the main roads for years and not realize the villages hidden off the main streets. It is like going down an alley that opens up into its own world. Families live down walkways with doors that open off the walkway into their courtyard where 1 - 3 families might live. It is really hard to explain in words! It's like nothing I have ever experienced here.
During the Olympics, hundreds of them were destroyed. People protested and not all of them were lost.
In these villages, they even share bathrooms. Have I mentioned that their toilets are just holes in the ground? I couldn't bring myself to use any of them. I could manage a whole day until I got back to Paula's. I got some pictures of them if you want to see them.

China - Our Adventure Begins

My oldest sister, Paula, lives in Beijing, China. This year I got to go to China to visit her and her husband, Carl. I met my Mom, Merlene (sister) and Tim (brother-in-law) over there for a two week visit. Dave joined us for a week as well. We had so much fun! Paula and Carl have lived in China for 4 ½ years, so they knew all the best places to take us to give us an in-depth feel of China. We got to see the tourist sites like ‘The Nest’, the Great Wall, several markets, Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven etc. but more fascinating to me was the places tourist don’t normally go like the local markets, farming communities, the Taylor shop and then how the x-pacts live, with maids, drivers, American toilets even being able to attend the LDS Church, American branch. They have 3 branches in Beijing; two American one Chinese. The American and Chinese Branches by law are not allowed to mix, even in social situations. I will talk more about this a little later. We also ate at a lot of Chinese restaurants that were GREAT!
I have broken our adventures into sections, instead of waiting until I have the whole thing written up, I will post it in sections. Hope you will enjoy reading about our adventure in China.

China - Great Wall

The Great Wall of China was our first tourist stop. Paula decided to take us to this part of the wall that is a little less visited than other parts where they built it up for the Olympics. This part of the wall was awesome! We were there at an off season, so it wasn’t ‘wall to wall’ people which was nice. From the parking lot we walked through the market at the base of the mountain, Paula told us to just look forward and not stop and talk, we would do that when we came back down. Two years ago my mom and dad came to visit here, my dad was so sick and week that it took every bit of energy for him to walk and at times be carried just to the foot of where you could enter the Great Wall. He wanted to so much to be on the Great Wall of China. He died less than a year later.
The wall was quite amazing. Some of the things I thought were interesting in the construction are the steps. There was NO consistency in them. Some steps were over a foot high others were just and inch or two high. The view was spectacular even at this time of year before all the trees have gotten their new leaves. It would be easy to spend an entire day walking along this part of the Wall, since Paula has been here before she showed us the view but had us walk the easier part. We were all thankful for that!
As we were stopping and taking pictures along the way we had the privilege of meeting a nice young couple from Switzerland. He took some picture of our group, which was nice to have some of us all together. We crossed path with them a few times.
On the way home we stopped at a potter shop. The owner met us as we drove up, remembering Paula she knew Paula liked to see the workshop (not open to the public) so that is where she took us first. It was a relatively small building with 12 or so painters working. It was interesting to walk around and get a close look at what they were doing. None of them spoke to us J I’m sure we seemed weird to them. Then we went into their warehouse, so to speak. Each of us bought something and we were on our way.

Quilts for China

My mom told me about a great project she made some quilts for. I asked her to send me a picture so I could show you and tell you about it. Here is what the flyer she got said:

"The Dixie Quilt Guild in St. George has been making quilts for about 400 girls in an orphanage in China. These are handicapped girls, ages 8 -18 who sleep on 2 foot wide boards, with no bedding of any kind and it gets very cold in China. They have been wearing several layers of clothing trying to stay warm. A company from St. George is making foam mattresses for these girls, but the children need quilts. Any kind, tied, machine quilted, fun, colorful! They need to be about 45x72. Right now they have 250 quilts, but are in need of 150 more and are asking for our help. Bill, from St. George, is going to China the end of July and wants to take each of these girls a quilt."

Mom said: " I don't know who is going all of this, but I just wanted to add to the quilts and Claudia is taking the ones from here to Salt Lake when she goes on Thursday."

So she made up these 3 quilts to send. I think the girls in China will love them!

Teri's Kalidascope

Teri said she wasn't going to start a new project for awhile, but... she just couldn't help herself. She found some great material for a Kalidascope and went to work. Isn't this great! It isn't all sewn together, but here are the pieces laid out. They look like snowflakes which is the look she was going for.

This is the material she started with. It has the mirrow up so you can kinda see what look you are going to end up with.

Here it is completed. Isn't it striking!!!!