Starry, Starry Nught

Thomas' wife Monica is a nurse in the post partum unit at LDS hospital. She got her RN at BYU Idaho right after high school, worked for a few years and then finished her bachelors last spring. When John asked her what kind of furniture he could build for a graduation present she asked if he would mind if I made her a quilt instead. I was happy to oblige. 

I asked her to look at patterns she liked on Pinterest and not surprisingly she was drawn to modern quilts with bright colors. She really liked this pattern from Fig Tree Quilts. 

I have never bought a quilt pattern before. I am more of a design as I go quilter, but decided to buy this one because Monica liked it so much. Plus I would never had designed something like this. It was totally out of my comfort range. 

Monica chose bright yellow, pink, orange and turquoise and lime green for the stars and grey for the background. We talked about white, but it gets dirty so fast. Grey is very modern and mom and other traditional quilters I talked to were skeptical. I made sample half blocks to audition color and practice!

The quilt was one of the more challenging quilts I have tried, even though the designer called it "easy". Not. There were more bias edges than I normally like to use. Younger quilters are not as concerned with bias edges as those of us who are traditionally trained.  They spray the block heavily with starch to keeps the bias from stretching. It worked, but still takes accurate piecing. I got better as I went along. 

I quilted it in concentric quarter circles, radiating out from one corner mimicking the feel of the stars as they travel ( or the earth turns) in the night sky, and titled the quilt Starry Starry Night". 

For the back I pieced in the grey practice block and an extra half block that didn't work for the for front and made a striped panel of the left over fabric because I didn't have enough of the polka dot fabric.

I think she likes it. 

37 Years

Happy anniversary to John dear, my eternal companion of 37 years. He gets better looking every year. 

We are in life jackets in most of the pictures taken of us together. I guess the old adage is true:  "The couple that plays together, stays together."

Flipped

We have been home from our 5 night six day Main Salmon river trip for over a week now. It was a wonderful, beautiful, smokey, fun, family filled adventure. Made even better because Jayne and Dave were able to join us from Arizona. 

After spending the night in Salmon, Idaho we got to the river put in in time for the campsite lottery at 9:00. It was kind of nice because John and I, acting as his interpreter for the hearing impaired, had to sign up for our campsites while every thing was being unloaded. John had very carefully planned our campsites according to the daily mileage we needed for the 84 mile trip. There were 3 other groups launching when we did who were also vieing for campsites The rangers then assigned campsites according to need, group size, we had 20 in our group, and availability. If there was a conflict, it was decided by a coin toss. Surprisingly, we actually won the coin toss for one of our sites. There are also numerous non reservable campsites along the river that anyone can use. 

We had 7 rafts to fill with our gear for our group. 

Jayne, Dave John and I were on our boat; 

Thomas, Monica, Kili and Annie on the second 

Brett, Kerri, and Mckenna on the third; 

Roark, Tice and Caleb on the fourth; 

Roger and Rachel on the fifth.

 Brad, Colleen and Lauren Nye on the sixth and Aaron Nye and his friend Cory on the seventh. 

The first day was perfect, warm and sunny with fun rapids. We camped at Motor camp, named for the old motor rusting away in the middle of camp. 

Then the smoke started pouring in from wild fires in the area. The canyon gets regular summer fires caused by lightening strikes. There are burned tress all along the river corridor. 

At one point we could see flames in the rugged terrain. The Main Salmon used to be called the River of No Return because once you launched you were committed, the canyon was too steep and isolated to climb out. We did see a few fire fighters, but they were mainly there to protect property not contain the fire.

Our campsite was smoky with ash and charred pine needles raining upon us. I have to admit we were a little concerned the fire was getting too close. But we were told that anytime there is a fire the river corridor get filled with smoke, kind of like an inversion in the Salt Lake Valley. 

The sunset was eerily beautiful that night. The smoke stayed with us for two more days making for hazy sureal conditions.

The landing for Hainey camp was almost half taken up by this huge yellow pine that recently fallen. That night our boat's crew made John's favorite, Dutch oven lasagna, times two. It was all eaten, Tice even scraped the foil clean. I eat better on the river than I do at home. 5 wonderful dinners and I only had to plan and cook one!

Thomas even made cinnamon rolls.

The river had fun rollor coaster rapids with only a few to worry about. Some of those we scouted. 

Like Black canyon rapid. 

Others were read and run. Jayne got dumped on a just such a rapid. She fell overboard and held onto the boat, but she was between it and a huge boulder in a recirculating wave. Dave pulled her in and John was able to get the boat out of the wave after we circled around a few times. It  scared both of them just a bit. 

But the biggie was Vinegar Rapid, the last rapid a few miles before takeout. They scouted it and figured the run they wanted to take. For some reason our boat got too far left and before we knew it we were in the hole and flipped!  Just like that. Now I have to admit that flipping has always been one of my biggest fears on the river. Anxiety inducing fear. As we went in the hole, I heard John yell, "oh crap" and I was in the was in the middle of the rapid. I held on to the upside down raft and rode the rapid. The waves went over my head, but I knew I was ok. I wasn't scared. Just worried that everyone else was ok. Especially John. I knew he would be mad. The other rafts converged around us and I heard every checking to make sure we were all there.  David emerged under the raft, but calmly made it out, Jayne and I were thrown out on opposite sides and John was hit in the head with an oar. He had a pretty good shiner, a couple of abrasions and a small cut on the side of his nose, but no stitches were needed even though Roark had restocked his medical kit for this trip. 

Then the most awesome thing happened. Thomas, McKenna and Tice were on the over turned raft within minutes, got their flip lines tied to the boat, walked them back using their weight as leverage and flipped the raft back over. Slick as a whistle. Rachel said that as the three up came out of the water they had ecstatic grins on their faces. It worked! And we were ready to go. The only thing we lost were a river map and Jayne's prescription sunglasses.

As an end to a river trip, it wasn't stellar for John.  He felt bad and was mad at himself. Thomas tried to tell him how well the group recovered. We were on our way within 15 minutes of flipping the raft, with minor injuries and loss. That, Thomas said, is the mark of a well planned and well trained trip. The saying goes "if you run rivers, it's not if you flip, but when." 

One incident does not make a trip. I don't think my anxiety will go away because I flipped and survived. But it can't compare to the memories and images that remain.  

Like this. Time spent with Jayne. Not all 58 year old women can say they have done this.

And we got to be with Annie, Thomas, Monica and Kili. 

And experience the breath taking beauty of the world. 

Bounty

I got back from our week long river trip on the Salmon River and this was waiting for me in the garden. 

Now what to do with all this bounty. Peach Salsa anyone?

Pioneer Weekend: Rafting, Fire and More Rafting

Megan, Ezra, Travis and Maggie are in town for a couple of weeks wihile Chris is starting the 2nd year of his endodonic residency. Meg graciously offered to spend the 24th of July weekend with us. Hooray!

We have wanted to do some rafting with the grandkids now that they are a little bit older and their moms don't think they will fall off the raft or drown or anything. 

Due to the Tunnel Hollow fire we couldn't do the stretch that Thomas, Kili, Annie, John and I previewed on the Weber River between Heneffer and Taggart the Saturday before, but we were able to do the lower section between Taggart and Morgan. The only thing that was different from what we anticipated was a 3-4 foot drop diversion dam pour over. It was a little gnarly for a minute as we approached it but John and ran it perfectly. Ezra though it was awesome. (Tubers, not spuds, but people floating on inner tubes, go over it all the time, we just weren't expecting it.)

John gave the boys a lesson in guiding. 

Maggie was our rafting princess.

Because of the fire we saw dozens of firefighters taking a break along the river. They looked hot and sweaty in their yellow suits and I wished they could cool off in the river with us. We saw a fire fighting helicopter going up and down the river filling and refilling its bucket, not directly from the river, but from a pool or something we couldn't see that they pumped from the river. The helicopter got close enough that we could see the both rotors and orange flames painted on side of the helicopter. It was pretty cool.

While we were running the shuttle, the kids got to use the rope swim over the river. 

Ezra couldn't  wait to jump in. 

Travis was a little more hesitant. . .

And Maggie always has to do what her brothers do. 

On Friday we went to visit my mother. The kids were so cute and gentle with her after Meg explained to them that Grandma Great needed soft hugs and kisses.  

John asked Ezra what he wanted to do on Saturday and Ezra said rafting. It didn't take much more than that convince John to try the Provo River after the Lingard family summer party in Mona. 

I haven't been up Provo Canyon in years.  It is beautiful!  But very, very crowded. There were hundreds of tubers on the river.  And not all of them quite sober. Thomas guided with Ezra and Travis helping. There was a bridge on a bend of the river with pylons quite close together that we had to go through. The tubers portaged around the bridge, but Thomas guided us through with inches to spare on each side.  It was kind of exciting. 

Kili did great on the raft. Even with the kids loving her to pieces. 

I love his picture, every looks so happy. But we wore Maggie out.

Vintage Blocks, Vintage Fabric

For those who are reading this who don't want to know the entire design and quilt making process just look at the pretty pictures and move on. 

A couple of years ago mom and I were at an antique show and found 25 or so vintage quilt blocks, probably from the 30s that she bought for my birthday. I love 30s fabric, it is so bright and cheery and innocent. 

I promptly placed the blocks on a shelf in my sewing room and didn't exactly forget about them, but didn't do anything with them either. When I pulled them out last fall I realized that there were 16 blocks in one pattern, Flying Dutchman, a flying geese pattern, and 8 star pattern blocks.  The star blocks were 1/2 inch smaller than the flying geese blocks and though hand pieced, they were quite poorly made with mismatched seams and points and large stitches that were starting to come undone. I did some repair work as I put the blocks together, but only enough to keep them from falling apart. 

I wanted to use all vintage fabrics to finish the quilt. Mom had been given a box of vintage fabric years ago when she was teaching at Mormom Handicraft. There were print scraps and some yardage and yards and yards of solid pastel fabrics. I wanted to used the solids for the sashings but wasn't too sure of the layout. As I was laying the blocks over the different colored solids I like the way they looked with different colored sashings. After deciding to place the blocks on point I was ready to sew. Until I decided I couldn't  live with the star blocks in the quilt. They were too small to fudge, so I made 9 flying geese blocks from Mom's vintage prints to replace them. The background fabric for the flying geese I made was a very light creammy yellow that perfectly matched the muslin the original quilter had  used that had yellowed with age. If you didn't know I made new blocks it is hard to tell which ones are the original, except mine are made a little better. 

A design wall is a wonderful thing. 

Figuring out how to do the angles in the sashing took a little thought, but well worth it I think. I had it machine quilted and am quite happy with the results. 

I decided to piece the back with the stars that I didn't use on the front. I found some orphan grandmother flower garden blocks in mom's block of vintage fabrics that I appliquéd onto the back as well.  In a way the back turned into a it's own separate modern quilt

Happily, I am even keeping this quilt for my self and not giving it away.