Last month our Redwork theme was Spring, but we take any and all show-and-tell–and love it!

Loretta made this log cabin with the tiniest strips.  I think the blocks finished at 3″!

For our Spring Theme, she did bring this adorable chick table topper.

She’s also been working on my Christmas Memories panel in blue.  She does beautiful work.

Robin evidently missed the “Spring” notice!  She brought these adorable Halloween blocks.

Here’s another “Fall” entry–trees and leaves.

Eleanor had finally finished piecing a block-of-the month from Anna Lena’s.

Ann brought her Bloomin’ Jacket to show.

And Linda couldn’t wait to share her finished Chocolate quilt from a few years back.

Here’s a Dear Dorothy kit Linda made, all stitched around in a hand done buttonhole stitch.

I love her labels.

Cortne’ brought this little lamb as a sign of spring.

Here’s a cute spring wall hanging.  I think Mary did this one.

And I love The Stitcher.  I think it’s the hollyhocks that make it so special.

Robin brought this great quilt top that she stitched.

How do we keep getting Halloween in here!?!

And now Christmas!?!

A charming old tea towel.

And  a new tea towel.  They could be companions!

I asked Robin if I could borrow her Redwork folder, and she found these blocks inside!

Those baby shoes are sooooo cute!

I often post our Redwork show-and-tell, usually each month.  I just group everything that everybody brings together in one post.  Well, this deserves its own post!

Melinda recently brought a letter from 1941 that was written by her husband’s sister Donella when she was 11 or 12.  It was written to an older sister who was living away from home.  It says: At school I am using a protractor and compass.  I am diagraming sentences too.  And am just after the Revolution War in History.  Mom is going to write and send you a check. (Moms never change!)

Did I tell you about what I was doing in Camp fire? If not I will tell you.  I am making a bag like a crossword puzzle only using much larger pieces.  I am getting our handles from Mrs. (?)  They are like this, only larger.

Then she draws a picture of the handles.

Not only did Melinda have the letter, she had the bag, too!  And sure enough, those are the handles that Donella drew!

She goes on to say: The bag is like this tho design is like this with different kinds of stitches around them. I am going to line mine.

Once again, she has a great illustration…

…which nicely matches the finished bag!

The rest of the letter says: Next in Camp Fire I am going to make a pillow just for fun. I am going to send to an upholster company and get some samples…

In a different handwriting, perhaps her mothers, a date has been added.

What a fun treasure and a peek back into the past.  Thanks for sharing, Melinda.

 

I’m so far behind posting show-and-tell from Redwork, but I’m determined to get caught up1

Cortne` brought her finished house blocks.  I just love how she framed the black stitched blocks with black and that little touch of yellow.  Also, isn’t it cool how she did her layout four by three rather than the usual three by four.

Here’s a close-up of that great yellow accent.

Here are the same blocks done by Marla.  She used black floss, too, except she added green crayon to her trees and a little bit of red floss when there were chimneys

She also added yellow crayon to her windows.  What a great effect.

Other show-and tell included these snowman blocks.

I think Marla did these, too.

They’re adorable.

Robin had been working on her Over the River blocks.

And y mom’s show-and-tell was her polka-dot raincoat and hat!

And her TWO new canes with Swarovski bling!

Carol O. brought these.  I grew up saying the “Now I lay me down to sleep” prayer every night.

But I had never learned the morning companion prayer.

 

OMG! OMG! OMG!

I am in love!

I found these photos on flickr.com

As much as quilters frown on cutting up perfectly good, vintage quilts….

…what a great look this is.

I’m ready to start re-thinking my new furniture purchases…

…and they haven’t even arrived yet!

According to the flickr poster, this furniture was seen at Patricia Wood & Company, 120 E. Main St., Harbor Springs, MI. 49740

We didn’t get to all the places we wanted to go in Arches, so we went back for a second day.

For perspective, take a look at the two people under the arch.

I do promise, though, that this is the last post of “rocks!”

It was hard to imagine that after a week there were still new and unusual things to see

The arches were great.  This one is called Double Windows.

 

Bob looks pretty good here, doesn’t he?

I think most of these arches have official names, but to me, this is Mamma and Baby.

I prefer to be behind the camera, but Bob did get it away from me!

Look closely at the snow on the mountains in the background!

The arches never cease to amaze me.

 

And I could say the same for the rock formations.

But this was the one we’d been waiting to see.  This is Delicate Arch, the unofficial symbol of Utah!

What a great week we had.  We visited 5 National Parks, 2 National Monuments, 1 National Forest, 1 National Recreation Area, 1 Tribal Park and 1 Tribal Monument!  Whew!

 

We started out our day at Glenn Canyon Dam.

The bridge across the Colorado here is quite amazing.

We walked out on it to have a look at the dam…

…and the Colorado River.  Quite impressive.

Then we headed for Monument Valley, but first we stopped at Navajo National Monument.

It was nine miles off the highway, and the farther we went, the harder it snowed!

We went into the visitor’s center, watched a film, explored the exhibits and were rewarded when the weather started to lift.

We came to see the Anasazi cliff dwellings, and headed down the path.  The snow was already melting, and the landscape was so interesting.

We could hear water running and spotted this waterfall on the other side of the canyon.  The melting snow from the plateau was cascading down.

At the bottom of the trail, we could see the ruins of Betatakin, from around 1270!  It was built into a natural alcove.

It was amazing to see.

The village was only occupied for about 20 years.  The people who lived there were farmers, but crop failures forced them to move on.

From the overlook we could see the waterfall.  It was already shrinking. We were so glad we stopped here.

Then it was on to Monument Valley.

The scenery was more than we expected.

It was like flashing back to every Western movie I saw as a child!

The two trailers in the photo below give you an idea of the scale of these cliffs.

Here’s a Navajo visitor’s center also dwarfed by the mesas.

We stopped and did a little shopping.

As we left, we had to wait for these goats to cross the road!  It was a four way intersection, and the goats were at the corner.  There was a school bus waiting to our left, and we waited, and the goats crossed.

There were no people in sight, just a dog in the lead and a dog in the rear.  Makes me wonder if the dogs were out having fun on their own or if their master said,  “Okay, boys, go get the goats and bring them home!”

 

We had a huge variety of weather today.

We could often see rain storms off in the distance.

And experienced temperatures from 36 degrees to 65 degrees.

I’m amazed at how far across the landscape you can see.

It was really interesting to watch the weather.

I kept thinking we’d run out of monuments to take photos of….

…but that wasn’t the case!

Suddenly the hillsides took on an entirely different look.

It was like someone had been playing with colored sand and running their fingers through it to make designs.

And in front of it all was a cool monument called the Mexican Hat.

I just loved the designs on these hills!

And still there were more red monuments to see.

The shapes are never the same.

Besides the shapes, the colors were amazing.  There were so many shades of red.

Bob was great about stopping for photos, but I finally just started taking them through the car window!  Even those turned out!

Our next stop was Four Corners.

Doesn’t everyone need their photo taken here?

Obviously, we did!

After leaving Zion National Park, we headed toward Bryce Canyon.  An unexpected bonus was driving through Red Canyon.

Fabulous shapes…

…incredible colors…

…cool wear patterns…

…amazing balanced rocks….

…more cool shapes…

…and not one…

…but TWO arch tunnels!

It was onto Bryce Canyon City.  Imagine our surprise when we woke up to a dusting of snow this morning!

But, we weren’t deterred.  It was on to the Park.

The sun was peeking out intermittently.

And even thought the elevation was high…

…and it was cold enough to build a snowman (kind of!)…

…the views made it all worth it!

 

We were right on the rim.

 

Looking down at the amazing shapes was awe inspiring.

We saw hikers below.

We started to follow the trails, but the mud was growing on my shoes with every step!

So we continued to enjoy the views from the rim.

Everywhere you looked there was something different to see.

I love when the erosion leaves rocks looking like they’re precariously balanced.

At first, you’d think nothing would grow here, but that’s so not the case.

Do you see the little “windows” near the top of this ridge?

Lots more photos…

…I’ll just let you enjoy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The other thing that really fascinated me was tenacity of some of the trees!

 

And the snags were beautiful in their own way.

Another great day in our National Parks!

After Quilt Market in Salt Lake City, Bob and I decided to see some of Utah.  As we headed south to Zion National Park, we thought we’d stop at Cedar Breaks National Monument.

After driving 15 miles off the interstate, we found the road wasn’t open yet for the season!

In fact, the snow was quite deep!  I made Bob get out of the car for reference, and I stayed in the car and took the photo!

We had climbed a lot on that 15 mile drive!

And while we didn’t get to see what we had come for, we had terrific views!

So, we headed back to Interstate 15, and took the 6 mile drive into the northern part of Zion.

No snow there!

This is Kolob Canyon.

The views were amazing.

As were the close-ups of some of the rocks!

 

 

 

The next day we entered the south part of Zion.

We took a hike into the Temple of Sinawava along the Virgin River

The water was moving very rapidly.

But it had been higher as you can see by the debris and small rocks atop this large boulder!

The views up the canyon were amazing!

The farther you go up the canyon, the narrower it gets.

Eventually, we could go no farther.

No kidding!  Those steps lead right into the river!

Some one had been busy along the beach!

These stacks of rocks were amazing.

May of them were very precariously balanced!

But they were all so whimsical.

It must have taken some patience to get them balanced just so.

I didn’t test my skills!

But here is what Zion is all about–the cliffs!

I must have taken 75 photos just of the canyon walls.

I’ll spare showing you THAT many!

But I have to share a few with you.

It was an overcast day, so the colors aren’t as vivid as they would have been otherwise.

And while most of the cliffs were dark red, some were white!

The shapes were incredibly varied.  We took several hikes and enjoyed the many views.

The surroundings made you feel incredibly small.

Finally, we got a little bit of blue sky!

As we travelled from the west to the east, the rocks really began to change.

The erosion patterns were very different.

These looked more like windswept sand dunes.

You could see layer after layer of rock.

And fabulous shapes like these.

The colors are so pretty…

…and so varied.

I highly recommend a visit if you ever get a chance!

 

 

 

While we were at Quilt Market in Salt Lake City, everyone kept telling us how beautiful the flowers were at Temple Square.

The trouble is, when you’re at Market everyday, it’s hard to find time to do anything else.

But finally, on Sunday morning, we decided we had to see for ourselves.

And I’m so glad we did!

Words could never describe how beautiful the flowers were.

And I can’t imagine the number of tulips that were blooming everywhere!

I can’t even guess–5,000?  10,000?

They were everywhere.

I love it when flowers are planted in drifts.

It wasn’t all tulips.  There were these pretty purple flowers whose name I should know, but can’t think of just now

There were cherry trees just about to burst into bloom.

But it was mostly tulips.

If you looked closely, however, you saw that they were underplanted with other flowers, too.

These almost looked like poppies!

And this statue was so joyful!

I couldn’t resist a couple of angles.

You must think I’ve posted every photo I took there….

…but I promise I didn’t!

I edited the best I could.

But there were just so many to share.

 

 

It was hard to know where to stop!

So, Ill leave you with these last few.

I hope you enjoy them.

 

Someone just stopped by to show my a vintage Double Wedding Ring quilt she has and ask me for some advice and information.  You know what an effort it is for me to look at vintage quilts.  NOT!

 

This is an extremely lovely example of a Double Wedding Ring.  White it is showing some wear, the workmanship on it is some of the best I’ve ever seen–and I’ve looked at a lot of vintage quilts in my day!  Her circles are perfectly round.

The fabric placement is the same in every arc, indicating she purchased fabric for this quilt.  No scrap bag for this treasure!  I have a feeling it really was made for someone as a wedding gift–or perhaps from someone’s hope chest.

I love the different graphic aspects of Double Wedding Ring.  And I think you can see in this photo how beautiful her quilting is.

The binding is impeccably done, and very narrow.

I wish you could see her quilting stitches.  I’m not usually one to count stitches, but these were so, so tiny, I just had to.  They are consistently 13 stitches to the inch.  Can you imagine!

But, it’s been well used and the fabric is starting to deteriorate in many places.

Around some of the arcs it has split.  I never feel too bad when I see wear like this on a vintage quilt.  It was obviously made to be used, and it was used.  This quilt undoubtedly provided decades of service, keeping the lucky ones sleeping under it toasty warm.

It has one tear where it was caught on something.

Saddest of all, though, is this stain made from candle wax.

Of course the question is, should it be restored.  That’s a hard one to answer.  I did give Donna several things to consider.  And in the meantime, I’m enjoying looking at it on my design wall!