April - Beginning a New Month

First...a bit of news from March.

I almost forgot to share the birthday present my son, Zack, gave me. We landed on Spencer Glacier...way up on the peaks of the Chugach mountain range. Our weather was perfect; sunny and no wind! The snow was almost waist deep powder. We are standing on the snow that the airplane skis packed down when we landed.

Three of my son's friends also landed on the glacier with their airplanes. This photo was taken from our airplane parking spot. If you click on the photo you will be able to see the black lab dog one of the couples brought in their plane. A pretty unique outing for private planes. My son spent a summer working in Denali National Park, flying tourists around Denali and landing on the a glacier there so he has lots of experience with this kind of flying. We patiently waited for a great day for our trip.

I also wanted to share a picture of a quilt I donated to the orphanage my father spent a few years in when he was a wee boy. The Methodist Children's Home in Waco, Texas, has an annual craft sale to raise money through their alumni association. I have donated quilts every now and then. It is getting easier for me to let go of my quilts. The blocks in this quilt were part of a Thangles sampler through a local quilt shop. I came up with my own layout to include the six new star blocks I added to the layout. It was one of my first longarm quilting endeavors which I loved at the time but now I would do things so differently! 

I did get the red snappers installed on the fabric leaders of my quilt frame. I have loaded the backing fabric for my next project...it was so much easier than pinning! I still pinned the quilt top bottom edge to a fabric leader. I'm waiting for about a three hour block of time to get the batting in place and baste everything together. I absolutely cannot leave anything hanging down when I leave the room or my cat might attack it.

My most exciting quilt related news is the new books I bought from one of my favorite longarm bloggers, Margaret Solomon Gunn. She self-published these two books and they are fantastic!!! 

You can check out the books through her website here.

Our cat, Eli, likes to spend time in the dog run. I haven't managed to get a photo of both dogs and the cat on the dog bed together. Every once in a while they all nap together peacefully. This is Kinley. Logan was inside napping.