WIP Wednesday

The other day, while my mother-in-law was in town, we decided to explore more of the country, so we headed over to Fort Laramie for a day of history. Ft. Laramie is only about an hour from here and is located on the beautiful Laramie River. It was used as both a fort & a stopping place along the Oregon trail in the mid-1800s. Many of the building are in ruins, but there are several that have been restored over the years.

On our drive out there I decided to start working on my Misfit DQS. This is my first time doing hexies and can I just say I LOVE them. So relaxing & mindless, and in no time you've got a nice little stack going. :)

This was the hospital. The cemetery is a ways off to my right, but there were a couple graves around the back of the hospital. (See the crosses in the foreground?)

Inside the barracks everything was set up as if the men were still living there.

The married officers quarters were set up beautifully.

Beautiful dresses & hand sewn quilts.

The Old Bedlam. The oldest standing building in Wyoming, was built in 1849.

The last stop on our way back to the truck was the old bar. The fun thing about it is that they serve Sioux City sarsaparilla & other "Old West" pops. They had one called Birch Beer. Well, I had to try it. Like root beer, that was once made from roots, birch beer was once made from the bark of birch trees. It had an anise (black licorice)-type flavor & was stronger than the sarsaparilla. It was delicious!

The wallpaper behind the bar was beautiful. The "barkeep" told us that the original barkeep's wife was from New York & although she loved the prairie she wanted the men to have a little "culture." So she ordered some William Morris wallpaper from New York, she put it behind the bar because she figured that was one of the walls that the men probably stared at the most.

Well, I just adored the wallpaper so when I came home I looked up this English textile designer. Immediately I recognized some of his work & realized where I had heard his name before!

On Monday, Sally & I went to my LQS to look around and she was nice enough to buy me a charm pack of my new favorite collection, A Morris Tapestry. :)

I wanted to keep the charms whole to show off the tapestry & yesterday I spent some time arranging them into 4 9-patch blocks. I'm still not happy with the arrangement, but hopefully I'll get it so I can start sewing it together today.

If you have any suggestions on which charms to move for better distribution of color & pattern I'd love to hear them.

Today WIP is over at Don't Call Me Betsy. If you haven't already been there, head on over and say hi.

Yeah, that says "6 sore heads." I love Wyoming! :)