Five Shadows

Now that is a funny title for a post, don’t you think? I just have to tell you about the fun day we had on Saturday - a continuation of my last post. On Saturday morning the sleepover girls and several more, headed out with us to Cinderella Dress Day. It is the seventh year that The Boys and Girls Club has teamed up with Peerless Dry Cleaners to offer FREE prom gowns to local high schoolers. Out of the 8 girls with me, 2 did not find a dress they liked, but everyone else left very happy. Of the two not finding a gown, one already has a lovely one from a Purity Ball she just attended with her Dad, so she can wear that one to the prom. And the other young lady is graduating this year and really wanted a special gown. So she headed on to the mall with her sister and found a gorgeous black and white gown that fits this year’s theme to the “T”. The Prom this group of girls will be attending is “Black Tie and City Lights” and I’m heading up the planning this year! I’ll have more to share on that as the prom draws near! When my daughter signed out at Cinderella Dress day, she was #188! They must give away close to 300 gowns!

Tears. Have you seen the movie P.S. I Love You? Have a box of tissues handy if you watch it. The girls and I ate lunch and then headed to the dollar theater for the movie. It was good, but several of us needed tissues!

Circles! Here are two pictures of circle quilts from a class I taught a while back. We used the 8″ Rainbow Block Templates from Elisa’s Backporch. I taught the simple version on the left in class. While the ladies sewed up their blocks, I played around to add more pieces to the blocks, picture on the right. When I sent the quilts to my longarm quilter, she loved them so and she called to say she HAD to have them! So we worked out a trade. I just got them back to take a picture of them, as I had not done so before sending them to be quilted. The one I played around with at the class is the one quilted with spirals. Isn’t it cool!? Guess I’ll have to photo the other one once it is quilted. Perhaps hanging at a show in her vender’s booth.

Look what was delivered to me last Thursday! Aren’t they beautiful? And a total surprise! A sweet young couple sent them to me as a “thank you” for the quilt I made for their wedding gift! How about that! I didn’t get just a card but a nice bouquet of fresh flowers!

The other fun thing about getting the flowers was they arrived the day before my birthday! I had gone out to lunch with friends, so the celebrating started a day early!

On Friday my husband and I ate at Flat Top Grill. He gave me a Husky Embellisher and a box of DeBrands Chocolates. Isn’t he a sweet heart!?

My daughter and I made the postcard using the embellisher. We will have more to show later!

I’ve been having fun working on post cards today. One I’ll mail off to Susan of Cyber Fyber - I’ll show a picture in a later post. My daughter wanted to see what the swap was all about so we just spent some time looking at some of the ATCs. There are still some available, so I asked to trade for #22. It’s been fun linking to all the artists blogs and seeing their creativity.

At about 6:10 p.m. my plans for the evening changed. I got a call from the Mayor’s Youth Council - my girls attend the monthly meetings - asking for volunteers to do sand bagging as the rivers are about to flood portions of our city. I made two quick phone calls, to two youth group pastors I know, to see if they could arrange to take their teens to volunteer. (It’s Wednesday night, teens are heading to church for 7 p.m. meetings.) Success! both churches sent their teens! I spent about an hour and a half with my girls, a church youth group, a boy scout troop, and a gentleman who just moved to FW - all of us sand bagging. We got cold, wet, sandy, but had a good time and hopefully our  backs will not be too sore tomorrow. I know the sand bags will be put to good use to protect homes in our area.   ….maybe tomorrow night I’ll get to do the painting on felt I was planning on doing tonight. (see previous post)

Sigh, the bobbin tension on my Bernina has been acting up. I did a search to find the closest dealer/repair service, since the shop in my town has closed. Upside of the story is my husband and I took a trip to Shipshewana to the Bernina Dealer today. It’s a fun town to visit. I imagine it was once a quiet Amish community but now caters to tourists, with museums, buggy rides, convention center, lots of shopping, etc. We ate at the Blue Gate Restaurant. Yummy homemade bread and pies! We split a sampler platter and shared a piece of apple crumb pie. We (OK, I tee hee) shopped at several quilting stores, and the B&N bulk food store. And we will have to return next week to pick up the repaired sewing machine. Today I limited myself to just buying items for the white quilties swap I signed up for through Lenna’s swap blog. While at the Bernina shop I learned that they sell attachments to turn a Bernina into an embellishing machine! I’ll have to think about the pros and cons of that over buying a separate machine just for embellishing. Any thoughts anyone?

A while ago, a friend told me about wool bags you can buy for about five bucks from the Army Surplus store. So I took a look and bought two. They look like they could have been made from old wool Navy blankets? My daughters and I have played around with them and here is one so far. It needs lots more embellishing. Anna used the letter tiles for the name - this bag will go to Aunt Jean for her birthday in the fall, so we have lots of time to finish up this project. Janelle added the hearts and stitching.  Charis wants to embellish the strap. I did needle felting by hand - and think one of those embellishing/felting machines would move this project along much faster! I’ve actually looked at two machines and might just convince the nice guy I’m married to that it would make a wonderful Birthday gift!  :-)
   

As a child did you ever make those paper Valentines where you cut two ovals, fold them in half and then cut slits in them? You ‘weave’ the two ovals together and end up with a heart pocket. I’m using that basic idea for the Valentine Swap. Only I’m fusing fabric to a stiff backing - the stuff used at the top of draperies. Then I started playing with couching fibers on to the edges of the slits. It looks pretty woven together. I’m thinking about beading some too. Fun!     

Happy New Year to all who happen upon my blog! This year I am venturing into some new territories. The first is a family activity of geocaching.  I gave John a GPS for Christmas and we have found 5 caches so far since Christmas. Today we trekked out in the snow to treasure hunt. It was a beautiful but cold day and we only ended up looking for and finding 2 caches. This time we took along stickers so we could trade treasures with others participating. The second new item on my list is that I’ve joined  a Valentine swap hosted by Lenna Andrews Creative Swaps.   The picture shows the fabric and fibers I’m using to create my Valentines.  I’m so excited about this swap! To be in touch with other creative souls out side my small circle here at home is something I’ve dreamed of doing, and now I have finally taken the step. I’ll show you pictures of my progress and the final Valentines once I’ve mailed them off to Lenna.