An early Christmas gift

Since 2004 our friends Steve and Nancy have traveled with us for two weeks.  We have been to Alaska twice, visited 4 Canadian providences plus 8 other states.  I decided to make a "memory" quilt to highlight our travels to give as their Christmas gift this year.
I used at least one picture from each year we traveled and printed the pictures on fabric.
For the area around the "picture blocks" I used Lynn Graves' "Pineapple" foundation sheets.

There are 10 picture blocks and 10 plain blocks in the quilt.  It was easy to figure out how I wanted to quilt the picture blocks but with the plain blocks I had to put on my thinking cap to figure out the perfect design.  I decided to use my Cricut die cutter and used the 50 States cartridge to cut the 9 states.  I scanned the die cutted states into my computer and then used my Janome embroidery digitizing software to design the quilt pattern.  I then added the state name inside each state with Janome embroidery software and Monogram Wizard Plus software.
For the Canadian providences I downloaded clip art and followed the same process I used for the states.


It was a pleasure making this one of a kind gift as it enabled me to relive the adventures we had on our travels.

Zia Sun Symbol

Spending the summers recently in northern New Mexico has piqued my curiosity about the culture of the state.

The emblem on the state flag is the Zia Sun Symbol, a very simple but very meaningful symbol.

One evening as I took one of these glasses out of the cabinet I took another look at them, it was then that I realized they were "screaming" for a Zia Sun to be etched on them.

I used the New Mexico "flag" option from the Cricut 50 States cart and Armour Etching Cream.