Slowly, Catching Up

As the title of this post implies, I am slowly catching up.  I finished all of the blocks for the "2015 Classic Yuletide BOM" and Month 3 of "River Rock BOM."

Little Red School House
16' X 16" - Finsihed

Little Spools
16" x 16" Finished

There are 16 blocks that I will have to sew together.  

I will start that in the next few weeks.  

Of course, I will post photos of it.

River Rock - Month 3

Block A - 20.5" x 20.5"

Spacer 3
8" x 20.5"

Spacer 5
5.5" x 8"

Spacer 5
8" x 8"

Trying to Catch-Up

When we returned to Sacramento, I knew that I had quite a bit of catching up to finish my Block of the Month (BOM) projects.  

I finished month 8 of "Flock of Feathered Stars."  The block is named, Slashed Feathered Star.

12" Finished Block

I had a difficult time with this block.  If you have read any of my previous posts, you know that I do not like to work with small pieces.  Here is an example of how small this was:

This is a 4" x  2.5" piece.  The teeth were 1/2" inch each.  It was hard to finish these small pieces and sewing all of the parts together made it more difficult.

Three border blocks.

I put-off working on "Fig Tree Classic Yuletide BOM" several months ago.  I believe that I have just a few more months until I am finally done with this BOM.  Here are my finished blocks for month #9.

Peppermint Blocks - 16" Finished

Christmas Star - 16" Finished

Our Travels to Phoenix

I wrote this post several weeks ago.  My desktop computer was not cooperating so I am publishing this now.

My husband and I had the pleasure of attending a Golden State Warrior game on March 7, they play at Oracle Arena in Oakland.  We had a very good time and loved the upper section that we were sitting.  The crowd up there was lively and very into the game.  These seats were "nosebleed" seats but it was great to cheer for the Warriors.  We were planning on leaving early but we just couldn't leave.  We stayed until the bitter end and did not arrive home until after 12 AM. My husband had the entire week off so he also planned a trip to Spring Training in Phoenix.  We had to see the San Francisco Giants.

We had an 8:45 AM flight and did not finish packing at 2 AM.  My husband is in his early 60's and I will be 60 in August so, needless so say....we were so tired but made it to the airport and barely made it through security and to our gate. I believe that I slept through most of the flight and my husband also slept on our way there.

To make this post quick and to the point, we went to all of our favorite places to eat and of course, two quilt stores.  I will tell all about those later in this post.

First, after we landed we went to Lo-Lo's Chicken and Waffles, near the Phoenix Airport.  It did not disappoint.  It is a 4-star rated restaurant.  Some of the best fried chicken I have ever tasted and the okra side-dish was to die for.  I loved it.
We went to "The Mission" in Old Scottsdale.  It was very pricey but delicious. The food was Chilean not Mexican as we originally thought.  It is 4.5-star rated restaurant.  We were told that it is usually rated one of the Top 20 restaurants in the country.  I loved the food but when we received our check...expensive! Another place we love is "Bobby Q."  Our son and his girlfriend took us there when they were pharmacy students in Glendale.  We thought it was good then but this time we decided to expand our selection to other food that we didn't consume at our last visit. 

My husband ordered the rib dinner, St. Louis Style. The meat fell right off the bone.  He shared a small
portion with me and it was delicious!

We went to breakfast twice to "The Original Breakfast House." It also had great service and delicious meals.




I forgot to mention that we also ate at a wonderful place, CIBO Pizzeria.  We had my son's favorite pizza, Tartufata.  It had mozzarella, prosciutto, white mushrooms and white truffle oil drizzled all over the top!  DELICIOUS!

Of course, we attended three Giants games and one A's game.  These were all great games but the food and quilt stores were the most enjoyable for me.

The second game that we attended was in Scottsdale.  The Colorado Rockies were the visiting team.  It was much more fun than we anticipated. One of the players on the Rockies, Dan Descalso, graduated from UC Davis.  It was great to watch him play.





We are down to the best part of the trip, QUILT SHOPS!  I visited only two this time:  "The Other Quilt Shop" and "Quiltz"  both in Phoenix.  I usually go to "3 Dudes Quilting" but they have basically the same thing that the local shops have here in Sacramento.  I wanted to see what some of the other shops had.  "The Other Quilt Shop" is small.  I've been there before during the last trip to Phoenix.  It has quite a few batiks and notions but the shop is small that even my husband commented that it was the smallest quilt shop that he had ever been to.  The next shop, "Quiltz" was huge.  It had a little of everything.  I loved the fact that it was a Judy Niemeyer shop.  They had so many of Judy's patterns that I could not decide which one I wanted to purchase.  

Anyway, it was a wonderful week of watching great baseball games, eating fabulous foods and visiting quilt shops.  

Tuffet Completed

Yesterday was the final session (one of two sessions) of the tuffet class.  I finished my tuffet in class except for finishing of the underside.  I did complete it when I arrived at home.  

I feel very happy with the final product.  I purchased another finishing kit from Jill so that I could make one for my oldest daughter.  The next time she comes home, I will let her go through my fabric stash and select the colors that she would like on her tuffet.

The whole process of making the tuffet was fun but it was noisy and a bit disconcerting  for me.  Despite the noise and use of tools, it was satisfying to see that I could actually finish the tuffet.  I spent all of last night with my feet propped up on it but I didn't want to make it dirty so I put a towel over the tuffet.  

Well, I am on to more sewing to catch up with projects that I have to do!