France 2017 Scrapbook Pages

I realized recently that although I posted my scrapbook pages from my trip to France last year on my Facebook page, I never posted them here on my blog. I've decided that they need to be here as well. There are 13 pages, so this will be a long post. You can click on any page to see it larger and read the journaling.

 

Scrapbook Pages

I finished a couple of new scrapbook pages a few days ago. I am using an app on my iPad called Project Life to do my scrapbook pages these days, and it is so much quicker and easier than the way I used to do pages. Partly because I used to agonize over how a page looked, which I don't do so much any more, and partly because the app is just so easy to use. The app uses a grid format that I like, and it allows me to actually get pages done. So, here are my two newest pages:

Our son, daughter-in-law, and two grandsons visited us the last week in June. Our older grandson, Eli, loves to fish with his grampa. Our younger grandson, Owen, is a really happy baby most of the time (as long as he isn't hungry).

I'm really enjoying our new car that we picked up last Friday. It's the first SUV I've ever owned. It has all the new safety features, which is the whole reason I wanted a new car in the first place.

New Car

We picked up our new 2018 Toyota RAV4 on Friday. I have been considering a variety of cars with new safety features for a few months now, and finally decided on the RAV4. It has the following safety features:

Lane Departure Alert with Steering Assist
Automatic High Beams
Pre-Collision System with Pedestrian Detection
Dynamic Radar Cruise Control

I drove it to Oklahoma City after I picked it up on Friday and love the way it drives! I will also enjoy having a car that holds a lot more than my 2011 Camry, and is also quite a bit shorter. We will be giving the Camry to our son in October.

Here it is:

Two New Quilts

I attended a workshop with Jean Wells at Empty Spools Seminar back in February. This workshop took place at Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, California. It was a great class in a beautiful location, although I missed one full day of class because I came down with the worst stomach virus I’ve ever had. I worked on two quilts at the workshop and have now finished both of them.

The first quilt was started as exercises given to us by Jean Wells. She brought solid color fabrics of many different colors, and on the first day we were to choose 6 of her fabrics. We didn't know what we were going to be doing with them when we selected them. She demonstrated cutting and sewing gentle curves, and we were to use our fabrics to practice doing the same. She continued demonstrating  a variety of things that we were supposed to do, always without patterns; we were choosing from among our 6 fabrics and sewing them together in various ways. This is called improvisational piecing.

The next day we were to make blocks from our 6 fabrics. We could use the pieces we had done in the earlier exercises, or not; I used mine in the centers of my blocks. After we sewed our blocks, we were to put them together into a composition; I used some of the leftover pieces from the day before in this composition as well. The only fabric I added to mine was the background; all the other fabrics in the quilt are the 6 that I chose from Jean Wells' fabrics. I call this quilt, "An Exercise In Letting Go." It measures 22" X 46 1/2".

We were also supposed to bring photographs with us to use for inspiration. Although I brought quite a few photos, it turned out that I didn't bring very many that were usable for the way Jean Wells wanted us to use them. But I did find one that I could use.

I traced the major shapes onto tracing paper, then decided to crop it to use just the center section. I used the color scheme and the general shapes from the photo to create this quilt, which I call "A Paris Window." It measures 17 1/4" X 28 1/2".

I highly recommend Jean Wells as a teacher; I only wish I had been able to attend the whole class from start to finish. Not only did I miss one day of class due to illness, I also arrived late due to a last minute schedule change. This meant that I missed the introductions before class and the actual instructions regarding choosing our 6 fabrics. I was told by another student when I arrived to choose 6 fabrics, but I learned later that students actually chose 5 fabrics, then Jean Wells talked to them individually about their choices. After discussing their 5 choices, they chose a 6th fabric (they didn't know in advance that they would be choosing a 6th fabric).

Even though I didn't have the full class experience, I am very happy with how my quilts turned out, and I really enjoy working in this new way.