Utah Ablaze and some Pillow Cases

I took this picture Friday night (Well it was Saturday Morning about 2 AM) this is the mountain's just north and west of Scipo, Utah.  My wife and I drove south over the last weekend to go visit family and have a family reunion and on the way down the smoke was so bad our eyes watered. 

This fire we saw just south of the one above.

This one is what is still blazing of the fire on the top.  All this smoke is getting depressing.  Lucky for me both of these fires are way south of where I live in the Salt Lake Valley.

I did 2 of my blocks (I am behind now the 2 blocks of the other set) and my wife did the block below. We are having struggles with our sewing machine.  It is a serious entry level machine and I think we are killing it with how much we are sewing.  Tanya is sitting right now looking to buy a new machine.  Reading and hunting for just what we need.  The past week we have started to have serious issues with the bobbin and a few other things.   It needs to go to the DR and get fixed and while talking we realised our $200 dollar machine is probably not worth a $100+ dollar repair.  So we are on a serious hunt for its replacement. (Once that is done and here I will pull that silly thing apart myself and see if I can figure out why its broken and fix it as a backup)

My scouts tonight also decided they had to add to the burning here in Utah.  I am a 11 year old scout leader and my 2 scouts and my assistant Doug each built a fire. (Don't you love their fires the 2 boys built bigger fires and the leader built a baby one)

And with a single match (Well it really did take about 20 matches, I am a Eagle Scout and can start fire's with out matches.  My scouts and my assistant on the other hand need a lot of help)

I did sit and struggle tonight and sewed 2 pillow cases.  Though I was about to throw the machine out the window by the time my wife got home from work.  Maybe that is why she is still sitting there reading reviews.

Any way HAPPY 4th of JULY!! I just realized my Tuesday night post is now really a wed morning post. So it looks like my WIP Wed will be a late wed or Thursday post.  Please be safe.

(Oh one more sad though.  Just as I left work today smoke was rolling over the mountains on the south end of the Salt Lake Valley.  It seems that a fire started around 3pm in Alpine They are calling it the Quail Fire.  Sad thing is my boss and another employee I work with live in Alpine, hope they are safe,  If you play with fire works this 4th please be safe)

Soldiers Star

I finished my Soldiers Star Quilt today and I entered it into the weekly themed quilt contest at Quilting Gallery its in the patriotic category and I believe it starts next Friday.  I will try to remember to remind you all to go vote.

This was a fun quilt and it was fun to get a shot of Jared laying on it (was actually hard to get him off it) almost every material in it has stars (except the out side edge if you look at the white by the outside red points that's a wavy white.  Even the back is a white on white stars pattern similar to the front stars but all white

On the quilting on this I did a echo quilt across all blocks that had color change (so the blue red line I echo quilted both sides) the blocks that were same side by side I did not echo those.  This is most evident on the white star that is the solid one piece star around the entire quilt.

The quilt pattern for this quilt came from http://quiltscapesquilting.blogspot.com/ Deonn Stott created this pattern called Soldiers Star for the 2011 Accuquilt barn quilt design contest and won 2nd.

This quilt was a lot of fun.  I think I am going to make another one of these in a littler size as its a fun pattern to do and I want to do.

James Returns Victorious

James my son and his partner Sam above at the start of their competition in 3D animation and visualization  at the National Competition in Kansas City Missouri.

This is them after working 8 hours on their project (this might have been another day, he can't remember, but I will assume they are all smiles because they did a great job).

Jared and I watched the awards ceremony on TV (internet telecast) when they got to the announcements for his competion we watched as they read off the bronze/silver/ and then gold.

What is the first thing Jared blurts out??

LOSER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then he ran out of the room to play.  I don't agree with little brothers assessment of the results (Jame's name was not read), we later found out he placed 11 of 33 groups in his competition.  James is taking it in stride.  The group last year that went from his school (he won second in state last year) placed 19th last year.  He and his partner Sam placed 1st in state and got gold medals so they are winners in all of our books.

For any that don't know my son James has been diagnosed with Aspergers, which is a high functioning Autism.  We paid about $800 to send him to nationals.  Before he left I asked him to take his camera and make sure to take some pictures.  He argued that he does not think their would be a single thing in Kansas City that he would want to take a picture of.  I told him for $800 bucks I expect him to take some pictures.  When he got home the only picture on his camera was a picture of a dead frog.  He told me it looked interesting.  Some times I want to bonk him on his head.  (He for example did not even copy what he turned in, so I can't even show you what he did). The above pictures at the competion were from Sam's camera. 

I took him to dinner to celebrate (his being a LOSER as Jared says). He talked a little bit about his roomies at the motel (they stayed 4 to a room). Two of them were in a competition in video and they were doing some video and had 48 hours to work on it.  They were stuck on how to end their film, when James suggested that they could have some one dragging off a dead body (something about zombies, what do you expect from teens) Any way he got to play the part of the dead guy that got dragged away.

Any way they won 3rd place so he is a winner after all.  Just as a dead stiff.

I finished quilting my quilt tonight here is a sneak peak from the back.  It is right now in the wash and will try to get some pictures Friday or Saturday of it and post its finish.

In the mail today I got a block from a swap partner, it looks great, thanks.

And lastly for today, my wife spent her first full week back to work (acutally almost two weeks now) but this is her week one check.  Yep they paid her 1 cent.  I think I can afford to hire her at that rate. (It should be noted that our medical insurance comes though her work and after 3 months of insurance and not paying for it, they took it out of her first check, thus leaving a silly penny that they direct deposited into our checking account.  Thanks, we will try not to spend it in one place.

Link A Finish Friday #21

The Goal for me this year is 52 Finishes in 52 weeks help keep me honest and show off your own finishes at the same time its a Link A Finish Friday!!  I as counting the other day and in a couple weeks I will pass my 52 quilt mark.  I might have to be upping this goal some.

The most popular quilt last week was from Just something I made. Remember that every link up you do will add a entry into a drawing each month for 2 fat quarters.

Tanya rounded up the first few items, that are up for offers to the winner of the random draw, for those that link up on LAFF here at Richard and Tanya Quilts.  The winner will be picked the Thursday after the last Friday of each month.  This will make it the 5th of July for the month of June.  The winner have their choice of 2 fat quarters from the 9 pictured.  These are from my stash, but have no current project with their name on them.  Some of them are items I got from the shop hop, others are items that came with materials we bought, but did not make it into a project.





<center> <a href="http://richardquilts.blogspot.com/search/label/LAFF"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFlg1CtkP_w_gCP_2zdsIXYXILI3c9WKrATFksD8K0z_EqO4Hw8a_fQlcnMBvjwKjkQ_TSHwLiTcYwoPr25tm-xR_7Mlyoy_JMt-ZEDRpzNjh9eqft7EmSqUexMgXh-VGMf3hH2FpEpaQ/s1600/961059p0w26Lp8.jpg" width="125" /></a> </center>
Thanks again for visiting Richard and Tanya Quilts and supporting  our quilting adventures.

So for the rules.

1) Who likes rules. Toss them out.
2) Add a link to your finish blog or where ever you show off your finishes (Not limited to quilts but I like them the most).
3) Visit a few of the finishes and comment or encourage them on.
4) Monthly random winner picked from all of the months linkups to win 2 fat quarters.

Not Required but fun to do

1) Follow my blog.
2) Follow the blog of all those that link.
3) Link back to my blog.
4) No finish, go quilt and stop reading the web.

Tanya Rocks!

Tanya is showing off again, she had her next block in our Beginner Quilt Along  She is frustrated with her block because her corners don't match perfectly.  I think she did a fantastic job though.

When I sat down to make this post it seems I have extra pictures on my camera.  My Daughter took this picture of my 3 cherries.  I bought 2 cherry trees this year and planted them in my front yard (ran out of room in the back yard for tree's it has way more then our small yard can handle.) I do not know much about cherry's other then they taste good how do you tell when they are ready?

As for me all I did today was finish the quilting of my soldier star quilt.  This quilt took some serious effort.  I wanted to echo quilt both sides of all the blocks that were different side by side (so between blue and read etc and white and blue.  but between same blocks I did not quilt)  It was a lot of effort to drag the quilt though the machine.  Now all I need to do is cut it down (we did a booboo on basting it and part of one side did not get back and batting) so I need to find the least amount I can cut off the edges to make it look good and bind it should maybe have it done by Friday night.

This block is one of my 12 1/2 inch block swap blocks I got this month it sure is pretty.