Busy creating masterpieces......and some more retreat photos...

My grandson is here visiting. We have been very busy having a very good time. Usually at this time of year I host a "Teddy Bear Picnic" at the library but this year due to some construction at the library and the family health issues, I opted not to do it. Wrong decision on my part! My grandson, who is nine, said "no Teddy Bear picnic! That's why I came!" Sooooooo, quick thinking on my part and we invited our neighbor and her daughter to our own little picnic. And then I came up with the idea to take "Brown Bear" everywhere we went yesterday and take his picture - at the bank, the grocery store, the playground and more. Jacob really got into it when he said the bear was "eyeing" my ice cream cone. Hee hee! Then this afternoon we took on a project - we got out canvas and paints and created masterpieces! It was fun but we're not quite finished so can't post pictures of what we did yet. We should finish tomorrow and we'll post them then.

In the meantime, here are some more pics from the retreat last weekend. Time goes so fast!

Lunch on Saturday! Aren't those napkin rings gorgeous?!! Our meal was a delicious Oriental Chicken Salad topped off with this divine Chocolate Pecan pie! It was sooooooooo good! And in case you are wondering, I got the okay from Bonny to post photos of our weekend at her wonderful retreat home.

We weren't wasting a minute of sewing time and got right back to our machines after lunch! We were sewing like crazy all through the afternoon and by dinnertime at 7:30, Stephanie had finished this spectacular Delectable Mountains quilt top. This was a project she took at a class from Debbie Caffrey in the Chicago area. I only wish I could make something with that many triangles and have it look even half as good as Stephanie's quilt top does! Give me squares, though, and I can do just fine. I finished top number one of the three quilt tops I planned to complete. I laughed as I stitched the blocks together and told my friends that I can hear somebody saying many years from now when this quilt ends up in someone else's hands - "what was the woman who made this quilt thinking with all this mix of colors and prints?!" And if I could answer, I would say "it was all about choosing fabrics that reminded me of growing up with my brother and sister and since life is colorful and often 'mixed-up', well, then this quilt top is juuuuuuuuussssssst right!!"

Saturday evening dinner at Bonny's Quilt Haven is a "formal affair" - well, sort of. You see, Bonny's husband Don, serves dinner in formal attire. He is an excellent butler!!! And in real life, he's also an excellent farmer! Dinner that evening was a delicous (sorry I am using that word so often but it's true!) pasta dish with artichoke hearts and chicken, a recipe by Lynette Jensen of Thimbleberries (her quilt shop, The Cotton Shop, is located on Main Street in Hutchinson - Bonny's Quilt Haven is only a few miles from the shop).

Laura was taking pictures but here we are seated at another beautifully decorated table and awaiting that wonderful meal! From left to right - Stephanie, me, Don and Bonny (on their knees to fit the picture!), Sharon, and Arlis. And for dessert that night....................

we moved to the patio in the backyard where the sun was just beginning to set and so it was a lovely, warm summer evening. Our butler served up coffee and Bonny's divine chocolate and peanut butter concoction with whipped cream on top. See Arlis saying "oooohhh, this is soooooooo good!!!"

We probably needed a walk around the block (something Stephanie did earlier in the day) after all that good food, but instead we headed right back to our sewing machines! Here's Sharon with her dainty Redwork Fairies quilt top. She found the designs in a coloring book and had stitched all the blocks before she got to the retreat (well, except one that she hadn't quite finished). The red and white print blocks are left-over fabric from a king-size quilt she made a few years ago for a library quilt show project. Double-click on the photo to get a closer view.


Laura has a friend who's expecting a baby so she was working on this great, colorful baby quilt. She did a bias binding with some striped fabric that really added to the pizazz of the quilt! Then she started working on a fused swan and water lily runner that was a little more challenging and was not so fun at first. It's going to turn out great, though, and I'll post that pic next time.

I kept stitching until I finished the second of my three quilt tops around midnight, and then I decided I had to focus on something different. Enter the box of lace..................

It's just an ordinary box of lace and then again it's not. I found it at the thrift shop that is only a couple shops north of The Cotton Shop. I stopped there before I joined everybody for dinner on Friday evening. We found the shop the first year we went to Bonny's. There's a little story that goes with it. - - Since it was summer we had all packed clothes for warm weather but we found that we were too cool as we sewed. We all picked up a sweater or sweatshirt at the thrift shop that year. Bonny has laughed every year over the fact that we went out and bought things to keep us warm instead of asking her to turn down the air-conditioning! I wore the little white sweater I found until I wore out the elbows and then had to add checked patches to the elbows to give it continued life! Shortly after I arrived this time, Bonny asked if I had brought my "lucky sweater" and I realized that not only had I forgotten my p.j.'s, I was missing my sweater, too! Anyway, it's more of a story we enjoy than one you all care about but if you're in Hutchinson don't miss a stop at that little thrift shop. This time around, I found a white glass compote to make into a pincushion, a little basket, some blanket binding and this box full of lace. When I pulled it off the shelf, I figured each piece of lace would be priced individually but the box was taped shut and marked "no discount $2.00". I couldn't believe it! Took it to the front counter and asked the ladies if that was right. It was and I bought it on the spot. It's full of lovely laces, some old, some new and they will be great in my crazy quilting and pincushion projects. And that's just what I did with some of the lace! I made a stop at JoAnn's and found a white, pink and silver striped fabric that would be perfect in this concoction I could see in my head. So, after everyone went off to bed for the night, I started working on the pincushion. I stopped at 2:00 a.m. with the piece almost finished and knew that come morning, I could finish the pincushion and the last quilt top. And sure enough, I did. Photos will be in my next post.

And back to the present ------- it's time to get to bed now so I can rise early with my grandson and finish our masterpieces. Toodle-ooh!