This is a picture of my beautiful Grandma, Farrell Francis Wich, who was born in 1912 and lived through the Great Depression.
During this time of year, we often think of our family members who have passed - even more often than we usually do. Do you mind if I share with you a little bit about her?
When I was five, my parents split and we went to live with Grandma. We lived in duplexes side by side for many years. We watched TV together and had orange juice and she'd airpop popcorn for us while we watched the Wonderful World of Disney, National Geographic, the Dukes of Hazard, or Quincy Adams, M.D. But Grandma's favorite show was The Price is Right.
Once when I was sick, I got to stay home - but we didn't stay home. Grandma was not going to miss bowling league - she was probably their top bowler! 
Whenever Grandma traveled, she'd bring us gifts when she came home.  We couldn't wait to see what she'd bring us! When she went to Alaska I got a little Eskimo doll. She made us Easter dresses every year - in complementary colors, of course!
Grandma only made one quilt that I can remember. She couldn't wait to get it done. But she was the type of person to finish a project once she'd started it.
She was always available and was always approachable and easy to talk to. When her friends came over for tea, they'd be upstairs in the fancy part of her house and they would all be laughing. She made an incredible Pecan Pie and how I loved her baked beans! Meatloaf or Corned Beef Casserole (with a can of Cheeze Whiz, of course!) were standards for our weekly family dinners. 
Grandma worked at General Motors as a secretary in the Parts Department. For Christmas she would give us stock - teaching us the value of investing. She'd also put up her aluminum tree with a color wheel, which was so much fun to watch change colors. 
Once I really wanted to wear shorts to school. Grandma didn't approve. I was in 2nd grade. I put them in my bag and got caught and was in trouble. She always sat in a big easy chair in front of the TV and I'd sit in front of her chair and she'd play with my hair if I asked. She didn't show her emotions a lot, but she'd tell me "Good job" sometimes. She was such a steady presence in my life and I miss her terribly.
In 1995 when she turned 95, we had a big party for her at Bethel Baptist Church  in south Denver, where she'd been a Deaconness for a time. There was a great turnout!
Grandma would say, "Even if you only live in a 10 x 10 room, if you have your children, you can make things work. No matter how bad things get, you never give up on each other."
Here's to all the lovely ladies who have gone on before us, teaching us, supporting us and guiding us to become the women we are today. May we always cherish their memory and their legacy of love.

​Dawna thought with the introduction of my quilt pattern, “Friendship Mountains”, I should write a little bit about my creative process for this pattern. So my process started with an idea: I wanted to make a mountain scene with all Friendship Stars for the blocks. 

​Once I had this idea in my head I started sketching.  I made a grid of Friendship Stars but was stuck on how to make the peaks.  I had to let this idea stew in my mind which truthfully, I was stumped for some time, then I finally got another idea.  I pulled out my colored pencils and started coloring and defining my mountain edges.  Thankfully my colored pencils were erasable colored pencils as there was lots of trial and error while I felt my way along.

​Next I took my graphs and entered the info into Electric Quilt 8 software.  Here I used various colors and fabric swatches before settling on a design.  I made rules for myself regarding the Friendship Stars.  First I wanted to keep the light and dark fabric colors consistent to keep the integrity of the stars, even when there were more than 2 colors within a star block.  Another rule was that the star points all needed to be going in the same direction.

​After showing my design to Dawna, it was time to choose my fabrics.  We discussed choices and settled on “Grunge” fabric as it would define some extra texture and subtle color changes.  Dawna said she wished we could find a wildflower fabric.  After one search on Google for “wildflower fabric”, I’d found an image of Sentimental Studios Wildflowers Basics – Summer by Moda.  I loved the brightness of the colors and the flowers included, especially the columbine, absolutely perfect in my mind.

​Next the task of writing the pattern.  This took some time, not only in finding the right words, proof reading and ensuring the accuracy of the numbers and dimensions needed, as well as the readability of the pattern.

This was my creative process for this pattern.  I am probably slower than most, but this process for me took about a year from idea to publication.  Next time you are looking at a quilt pattern, please keep in mind all a designer has gone through to write that pattern and give the designer his or her due. 

Remember to be #ContinuouslyCreative and thanks for reading!  Cindy Healey

Last fall a friend of mine requested that I design an all over texture design to quilt some fabric for her daughter. She is a big producer of cosplay and used it to make a costume for Arya from Game of Thrones. You can see her blog about it here http://www.ginnydi.com/blog-2/2017/11/25/quilting-for-your-s7-arya-stark-cosplay
I named it Tumble. You can find it here: https://www.dawnasdesignthreads.com/store/p354/Tumble_Digital.html
Anyway, it's a really fun texture and we did it on this cute construction trucks quilt as a sample for The Quilt Store. https://thequiltstore.net/

Recently I had the pleasure of quilting this amazing collage quilt called "Pinkerton". It was made by my customer Marcia Wilcox. What an amazing quilt. She fussy cut a bazillion flowers to make this labor of love for her daughter-in-law. The pattern was written by Laura Hiene. She took the nclass at The Quilt Store. http://thequiltstore.mersatech.com/?task=get&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthequiltstore.net%2F
I custom quilted this at Marcia's request with a 3/4" grid. This helped to secure all the pieces that she fused on. The inner border is quilted with free motion bubbles and some beautiful free motion feathers in the outer border.

This beautiful modern quilt was pieced by Kathy. We quilted it with a very traditional quilt pattern, "Baptist Fan". Many antique quilts were quilted with this pattern. I love the way it looks on this very modern quilt. It gave great texture and movement to the very straight linear piecing.

This Beautiful quilt was paper pieced by Karen Morgen. She did a fantastic job paper piecing this Judy Neimeyer pattern and I custom quilted it.  Many, many hours by both of us!!! ​www.quiltworx.com/patterns/glacier-star/

The weather here in Colorado has been so beautiful. I can't believe that it's almost the middle of November! I still have some room to get your quilt done for the Christmas deadline. Call today. This beautiful Christmas quilt was pieced by Ginnie and we quilted it with "Larks