Best of 2017

Y'all seem to be having so much fun at the party, I thought I'd join in. Cheryl at Meadow Mist Designs is hosting the party. It's open until Tuesday, January 2, 2018, and so there's still plenty of time to join in.

As for my "best of"...well, it's been quite a year, and lots of changes in our lives at the Three Cats Ranch. I'll start with a few of the quilts that I finished this year and then say a little more about the changes at a more personal level.

First, I'm most proud of the free motion quilting I did on this Stars and Stripes quilt.

The quilt was made as a part of an online bee, and so only two of the blocks are mine. The rest were made by five others who were a part of my hive. (Thanks, Ladies!) From there, I figured out the setting and then had to figure out how to quilt it. Free motion quilting doesn't come easy for me, mainly because I can't draw worth beans. Taking inspiration from a star I found online, I created the motif and then did my first and only edge-to-edge design. I loved how it turned out, which makes this my favorite free motion quilting finish of the year. You can read the post from the day it was finished right here.

Next up...my oldest UFO was finished this year, and so you might say it's the one I'm most glad to have in the finished column. It's this one, called Mumm's the Word.

It was started in 2012 and was a free pattern online to celebrate Debbie Mumm's 20th year in business. It took positively forever to finish the blocks, and then, in a moment of insanity, I decided to try big stitch hand quilting it. And that took forever too. I've never been so glad to have a quilt finished, but I love how it turned out. You can read my finishing post for Mumm's the Word right here.

The quilt I'm most proud of is this one made as a memorial to my brother, Richard. It was created from a photograph taken by my dad when my brother was five years old. Then, I took a class from Ann Shaw this past spring to learn to piece the quilt in the style of Ruth McDowell. This is my finished quilt, and I call it Snips and Snails. It was a first place winner at the Oregon State Fair.

You can read the post I wrote when I finished Snips and Snails right here.

On a more personal front, it was the year my husband retired from more than 40 years as an electronics engineer. We counted the days for about two years, and finally reached the big day on April 28, 2017.

You can read the post I wrote on his (our) first full day of retirement right here, and there you can see my penchant for photographing every blooming thing, and my fondness for sweet desserts. We had a celebratory lemon meringue pie for dessert that night.

Finally, as a part of retirement, we dreamed, literally for decades, of taking an RV trip around the perimeter of the USA. If you're a regular reader of my blog, then you know we are on that trip right now. We left our home in Oregon in early September, and honestly, we've seen so much since then it feels as if we've been away for years. There were quite a few things, especially in the Northeast, that were can't-miss bucket list items. If I had to choose a favorite, it would be seeing the Statue of Liberty for the first time. It was thrilling.

You can read the post written after our first day of sight-seeing in New York City right here; however, I should warn you that we also saw the 9/11 Memorial that day, and some of the photographs included in the post could be upsetting if you were personally touched on that day. (And, honestly, who wasn't?) You can skip over them by scrolling down through the post to where we boarded the Staten Island Ferry on a quest to get a really good luck at Lady Liberty.

So those are my five favorites from 2017. Head on back there to the linky party and see what others have been up to during the year.