Winter Adventures in Grand Teton

Most visitors to Grand Teton National Park arrive in the summer and early fall when clear trails draw hikers into deep canyons, and up to colorful wildflower meadows and high passes for close-up views of  craggy peaks. Lakes beckon sweaty hikers to cool off in their sparkling waters. And there is always the possibility of encountering wildlife, from large animals such as bears and moose to adorable and charismatic pica and marmots.

Winter offers a completely different kind of magic: snow everywhere, sparkling fairy tale scenes, and an enveloping quiet.

This year we appreciated winter in the Tetons more than ever by making cross country ski excursions throughout the park. Views of this iconic mountain range never get old!

At the northern end of the park Mount Moran dominates. 

If you are interested in your own trip, the park road from Taggart Lake Trailhead is a good starting point. Grand Teton National Park Foundation generously funds regular grooming of this road for classic and skate skiers all the way up to Signal Mountain. Here is a view from just north of the parking area.

More advanced skiers may want to venture beyond the groomed tracks. Make sure you are well prepared and good at route finding though!

Keep in mind that while bears are hibernating, you may still encounter other wildlife.

You might also come across old cabins, most of which pre-date establishment of the park. As far as I know, they are all closed in the winter, and like wildlife, they should be respected and left undisturbed.

My fascination with log cabins clearly extends to quilting. Log cabin quilts are among my favorites and my most recent quilt top finish is a log cabin.

Making it out of what happened to be available - in this case lots of scraps - seems very appropriate since real log cabins were made the same way - using the wood that was available nearby. In this case the scraps came from other quilts I've made over the years and from bits and pieces in a seemingly bottomless box of vintage fabrics that I acquired years ago at the Austin Area Quilt Guild Show. 

I started out randomly picking fabrics for each block but eventually switched to working with one color family per block so it ended up being a crazy mash up of color. At least the pattern is clear due to consistency in color values. The idea for the peaks and valleys border came from Rachel Hauser at Stitched in Color.

It was very satisfying to use up so many disparate scraps. Now to get it quilted.

Scrappy Modern Quilt Top

Over the last six months or so, mostly on flights to various places, I have been stitching together two and one half inch squares of scraps. I finally got this bunch completed and set into a quilt top.

I alternated solids with prints. Though many of the prints are from vintage fabrics, I think the top as a whole has a modern feel to it.

In looking through some of my recent travel photos I came across this image of ceiling detail from the Grand Mosque in Muscat, Oman. The solid, unpainted stone between the panels of decorated stone really highlights the patterns. Maybe I had this in the back of my mind when I chose the big white panels between the strips of scraps.

I'll leave you with this photo of the outside of the Grand Mosque -- and a promise to be back soon with more images from that beautiful complex.

Building Blocks

In reviewing some of my 2015 photos I came across this one of the glass entrance pyramid at the Louvre. It makes me think of quilts made with a grid of blocks, as opposed to say whole cloth quilts or medallion quilts. 

At the moment I have four sets of blocks, all of which I made in 2015. By the end of 2016 I hope to have built them into four complete quilts.

I made the pile on the top left entirely on the go. I carry in my purse a little zippered bag with needle, thread, scissors and a stack of two inch square scraps. Whenever I have a few minutes of spare time I pull it out and stitch up a few seams. And voila!

A few more blocks and I will have enough to make a twin size quilt, assuming I set them with a sashing or alternating blocks of different fabrics, rather than just stitching them all together.

I made this set, in a pattern called "broken dishes," to use up scraps while I was working on another quilt. I never sit down at the sewing machine to sew just one thing. When I prepare something for my "main project" I always grab one or two extra items to sew together. I figure so much sewing time is actually taken up by switching between tasks, that the more I can cram into a session at the sewing machine or cutting table or ironing board, the more total work I can accomplish. Plus, it keeps things interesting.

I have lots of options for how to arrange these, but have at least decided against combining them into larger blocks since that just makes a larger star and loses the broken dishes pattern. The remaining decisions are whether the blocks should be placed randomly or by hue and intensity, and what color and pattern the alternating blocks should be.

The bow tie blocks are from Barb Vedder's block swap last fall. I made eighty blocks, shipped them off to Barb, and got in return a new set of 80 blocks. All these bright colors will be a real treat to sew together.

My last pile of blocks, which are probably more aptly called strings, also grew out of my scrap bag. I used many of these kinds of pieces in a medallion quilt, now nearly complete,

and find that I now have a substantial stack of leftovers. Maybe I will combine them in an entirely different way. I could turn them into a sort of super log cabin block and have almost a Gee's Bend style quilt,

or, for a more orderly and controlled look, I could put them into individual large blocks separated by sashing.

I hope your 2016 is starting off as creatively as mine and that you will share your ideas for building with these blocks in the comments section.

Making Use of Scraps

One of the inevitable results of making quilts is a box of scraps.  Some quilters consider it a curse to have hundreds of bits of fabric floating around their work space, while others embrace it as a creative challenge.  Now that I have developed a habit of systematically using those scraps, I am firmly in the latter camp.  Each time I sit down at the sewing machine while working on a quilt, I simply pull a few pieces from the scrap box and stitch them together.  Eventually I get enough pieces to make an entire extra quilt.  Here is one I finished this week.

Its new home is on a bed on the sleeping porch at our lake house.

It is in the company of a vintage quilt, found at a local junk shop, made with a log cabin design and feed sacks for the backing.  The new quilt at the bottom of the bed was my first practice piece on a long arm machine and fortunately the busy patterns hide my "scribbles."

I used this new scrap quilt to practice the baptist fan quilting design I plan to use on my "Vintage Jackson Hole" quilt .

It was definitely worth the half hour drive from Austin to B&B Quilting in Buda to purchase a 1930's style print backing. The backing is 108 inches wide so no seaming was necessary, and since I could turn it sideways for a twin size quilt, needed less than two yards.

B&B is one of my go-to quilt shops.  In addition to their nice choice of wide backings, they carry a large selection of fabrics, from modern prints and solids to batiks and reproductions, plus pre-cuts, books, patterns and a variety of tools. They recently moved to brighter and more spacious quarters just outside of downtown Buda. The proprietors, Nancy and Lori, are as welcoming and helpful as ever.  They are happy to figure out yardage requirements, advise on fabric choices, and answer any kind of quilting question you may have.