Five Shadows

I’m looking through pictures my son took while in Sweden this summer. And they have me thinking of the next swap, Shades of Sunshine, I must get busy on as it is due later this month.

The last week of July, I went to That Pretty Place B & B with several friends. This is our annual self proclaimed quilting get-a-way. I only took one quilt along to stitch down the binding but I never even got it out of the bag. We ended up doing lots of shopping, eating out, and playing cards instead of quilting. Essenhaus is one of our favorite stops for eating. Yoder’s and Lolly’s have fantastic fabric finds. One afternoon several of us took a card making class at The Calico Frog. It’s a wonderful little scrapbooking  shop in the little town of Middlebury. Scrapbooking and card making is not “my thing” but I thought I’d give the card making a go with my friends. We had a great time! Here are the 4 greeting cards I made.

We just bought a new scanner/printer/copier and the above pictures is my attempt at learning to use the scanner. Hope the quality of the scan is OK. 

Prom, Prom, Prom. That is what is happening in my life right now. I’m pleased to say it is all coming together nicely. Food, chocolate fountain, servers, flowers, decorations, rented items, DJ, playlist, portrait photographer, chaperones, set up, tear down, security  – check them off the list, all taken care of! This is not a huge Prom by any means, but no matter the number of teens attending, the details are all still necessary! We guessed we would have 100 teens attend, and at the last count I heard we had 108 teens registered. Tickets sold to 100 teens pay the bills, so insert me doing a happy dance here! Today I worked on sewing up 15 black ties to go around the vases of flowers for our table center pieces.  I’ll have to take pictures of the decorations Friday night to post here after the Prom.  I have two daughters attending this year. Part of Friday involved shopping for the right accessories – shoes and jewelry. I still need to fix straps on their dresses.

Quilting – has not been happening here lately. But here are pictures of three of the five  6″ quilties I made for Lenna’s swap.  

Even tho the calendar says Spring has arrived my little spring garden flowers are apparently saying, “No, not yet!” So after a wonderful Easter Service and meal with family, we headed out in search of the Snow Trilliums that bloom a few weeks before our garden flowers. We drove to Hanging Rock and alas! the Snow Trilliums are also still in hiding! It is now official, Spring has not yet reached Northern Indiana. We did do some geocaching on our outing – found two caches, and we stopped at a lacy little water fall on an Acres Land Trust which was beautiful and will have to make up for the lack of flowers. The search for Spring will just have to continue.

Here is a picture of the last bed size quilt top I have sewn. It is one of two for my parents who have moved into a retirement community. In moving they have switched from a queen bed to twin beds. The pattern is River City 9-Patch from the 9-Patch Reunion Book by Atkinson Designs. The border and solid 9-patch squares are really a blue, but the photo turned out as gray.

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.

No sewing yesterday, but I did pull out fabric for the white quilties I have to get cracking on for the swap at Lenna’s. She has several new swaps listed. So check out her blog and see if you are interesting in joining one!

I’m up and running again today – a continuation for yesterday. After running my daughter to work, I came home and baked to cream pies, brownies, and two pans of manicotti. I had help with the manicotti (thanks Charis and Noel!) as I was running out of time before heading back to pick up Anna. Then we met up with my ‘boss’ so to speak. I have a temporary job sewing for a company that makes items for autistic people called Sensory Critters. And I had items to deliver and new kits to pick up. Then Anna and I went out for lunch. It was her birthday and it’s a tradition that either John or I take each of our children out for lunch. Next was our monthly 4-H meeting and my youngest had a little report to give – she applied for and was awarded a $750 grant through Youth As Resources for our 4-H group to use to help a inner city camp we support. We will be building a privacy fence on the camp property this summer with the funds awarded through the grant!

Next was back to our house with friends for a birthday dinner. Smiles and laughs. And then out the door again for several kids heading to different parties. And finally back home with too many 15-16 year olds in tow for a sleepover. Why are they called sleepovers? No one ever sleeps, and the parents don’t seem to be able to catch much sleep either!

That was my busy day! And today I’m off running again to pick up kids, drop kids off to various places.

These are the pretty Valentines I received in the swap at Lenna’s. Sorry I’m so late posting them! The blue one is from Mercedes, the red one is from Lenna, and the white one is from Michele.

Which month is the busiest at your house? March is at mine, with April a close second, and then I’d say December. With March already at the top of my list, I have somehow once again over committed to other things I should have said no to! But it is all working out – by skipping the Thursday night class at my church for this month. I promised myself I’ll do the reading and assignments over the summer…. hope that works out! So one happy little thing I have completed this week is the ATC for Susan Lenz’s Cyber Fyber Exhibit. I confess this is my first ATC! I really like how it turned out. On the left is my ATC. The background and back are my hand painted fabric, the squares are batiks, and then there is some beading. Susan’s ATC is on the right. This trade has been so much fun. If you have not visited her site yet – do check out the exhibit here.

And here is my postcard. The background is a log cabin block in creams with a pieced heart machine appliqued on top. The heart is one half a vintage Valentine I printed on fabric and the other half a pretty red fabric. Then I covered the card with a red netting from a tomato bag and zigzagged around the heart. Then threaded ribbon through the zigzag stitch and tied a knot every couple of stitches. Take a look here at the card I received from Susan.

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!

Today I came across Lisa Oceandreamer’s Event sponsoring a way for bloggers to meet and participate in a art give-a-way/trade. Since I’m kind of new to this world of blogging, I thought I’d join in! Now, what to offer as a trade? I’m starting with this little amulet pouch, and since I do far more quilting than fiber arts at this time in my life, I’ll add some fat quarters. Pictured is the back of the amulet. I’ll hopefully add the fat quarters photo later today.But even without the fat quarters photo, I hope others will want to enter their name in my give-away!

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?