What a super busy week I had last week. So much going on I didn't have time to post and didn't take pictures all the time either. But I did remember the camera towards the end of the week so there are bunches of pictures to share. I think I taught classes almost every day last week finishing up the June schedule. A little time off this coming week to prepare for new classes which start on July 3!!
What better way to spend the day than having a parade at Mina's house. Raleigh asked if she could play with my carolers on Thursday while she was at my house. I really didn't want her to play with them because they're breakable and not really meant to be toys. And the last time I let her play with a few of them, they all ended up with broken necks!! But she was so pitiful looking when she asked me and so excited about them, I decided to give her another chance. She lined them all up in my bedroom, getting them ready for a parade. She told me her Uncle Eric was in a parade when he was a little boy and she wanted to be in a parade. Long story short, we only ended up with one broken neck this time. Guess that's progress!!
After the parade was over, Raleigh had all the kids line up to visit Santa. I had the best time listening to her making each "child" give Santa their wish list. She has a great imagination.
Sometimes unplanned days work best. Evette and I both ended up with a Friday off. Of course we had a zillion things we should have been doing, but we also both needed fabric for quilt backings and decided to take a drive to Miss Lou's Quilt Studio in Henderson, where she sells lots of backing fabrics. The drive up was beautiful and we were in awe when we saw Ms. Lou's shop. We were driving down the road with nothing real notable when all of a sudden on the horizon we saw this big red building with flags and STUFF! We veered off the road knowing this had to be Ms. Lou's and sure enough it was. Debbie was a wonderful hostess and showed us all around her shop and her lovely home. I took lots of pictures but will share just a few here on the blog. Thanks Debbie for a great morning and all your inspiration!
This is the front of Debbie's home. The house is connected to her shop.....talk about never getting away from your job!! She just walks through her kitchen door and she's at her shop. Really cool.
These cabinets are in Debbie's kitchen. She has all open cabinets. I loved being able to see everything. Guess that means you would have to keep it neat!
This is a display case that's in her shop, just full of little sewing treasures. It was so much fun to look at all she had in there.
Debbie had told us about a couple of places to stop on the way home. The first was Sweet Peas in Youngsville. What a fun place, plants and stuff outside and inside was full of dishes, decorative stuff, quilts, vintage and antique items. A very cool place to shop.
The second place we stopped was called Suzanne's. There were several small buidlings on the property run by different people and then the largest building was Suzanne's. Another super cool place. The only problem was it was a 100 degrees outside and I was dying in the heat. No air conditioning here so a great place to visit in cooler weather.
On Thursday I also started working on the July recipe card. I've been planning it in my head for awhile and finally decided I just had to get it started to see if it would work out. Well, in the middle of stamping, I realized I was missing some critical stamps for the card. I looked all over my workroom three times over and couldn't find those stamps. Finally, I have a revelation. I emailed my friend Debbie in Oregon and asked if she had them. I had an inkling of a thought that I had loaned them to her but couldn't rememeber for sure. She called me later in the day to say she had them and would mail them back right away. Whew, thank goodness for that. I was dreading the thought of re-doing the card if I couldn't find those stamps. As you can see, I have quite a mess on the table. Creative chaos!!!!
On Saturday we had the girls for awhile. I was again working on the recipe card when Reagan decided she wanted to create something also. She ended up making two beautiful birthday cards for her Poppy. She worked so hard adding scraps of fabric, stenciling letters and pictures, adding fabric and evey some coins to the card. They turned out great!!
Well, it's finally time to start WOOL CRAZY!!! Here's the empty room, all set up for the first six ladies. Each one has her own space to work in. and I have bins of wool all lined up, just waiting for some fun plundering to begin.
I tried to take a picture of each person as they were working on their layouts. It will be fun to look back to see how they started. Pam is doing a fall piece.
Debby is planning her colors to be a summer farm scene. She had lots of great ideas for what she was going to applique on her block.
I think Linda was going for a springy/summery block also.
Oops, we can't see Barbara's block for all the beautiful wools she contemplating. Her colors worked really well together.
Laura is doing a fall block also. I think she was the most stressed over this project. She has a very analytical mind and mismatched pieces just weren't computing for her. But in the end she had a great block for her foundation. I think she'll get more excited as time goes on.
And here's Ms. Debbie Lou's block. Being the quilt teacher that she is, she came to class with her block all drawn out and planned. I would never even have thought of doing such a thing. She wanted to have a quilt block in the center to represent her love of quilting and work around that. It turned out great. Love the colors.
And since Ms. Debbie had her block planned, she got done a little ahead of everyone else and had time to relax and read the Wool Crazy book. Good for her!!
Well, that's about it for that busy week. I'm glad it's behind me and everything got done and accomplished that needed to. I did get a little stitching done in between. I'm still trying to finish up the wool girl blocks. I have three left to be stitched and really will work hard to get them completed. Lisa is busy kitting up the September BECKY block and will let you all know when that is ready.
Happy summer stitching days. Notice I only mentioned our oppressive heat once. That was really good for me since it has been so miserably hot. So everyone enjoy the upcoming cooler days they're promising for this week and try and stitch something every day!!
