At the garden show

Last weekend was the Wichita Garden Show and Prairie Quilt Guild always has a display of garden-related quilts.  Peter and  I spent one morning sitting at the display trying to get people to vote for their favorite quilt.  People are so funny - they'll say "I don't know anything about quilts" so we try to convince them  to just vote for the one they like best. 

We had time to wander around and look at the exhibits.  They have a show for flower arrangements and I checked that out.  I'm afraid my tastes are old-fashioned: I like poems that rhyme, paintings that are representational rather than abstract and flower arrangements that show off the flowers.  You really see some wacky things at flower shows - how about this:

or this:

 I like these better.

Then I walked through the garden exhibits.  The theme was Gardens from the Movies so we had Avatar:

Up:

The Karate Kid:

Jurassic Park:

and my favorite, The Secret Garden:

The Extension Office did a cute one from The Hobbit:

An icebox full of quilts

I love this quilt that Ann made for her son - her piecing is wonderful and I love the Japanese taupe-y fabrics.  She likes me to use wool batting which I also love - it makes the quilting really shine through. 

Today I gave  Donna, a new Innova owner, some help with her machine. Actually, she didn't need a lot of help since she is an experienced machine quilter (with her sewing machine) and is smart and not intimidated by her new machine.  She had quilts all over her house and I asked her if I could take  a picture of some of her quilts in an old icebox - isn't this a wonderful way to display quilts?

Peter and I spent the morning at the Wichita Garden Show - more about that later...

It's Spring-ish

I finished Sheila's Christmas quilt - I don't know the designer but it is a cute pattern.  She gave me a roll of Dream Wool  to use as batting and I really liked it.  I dislike using Dream Cotton on the longarm but I really liked the way the Dream wool quilted up. Sheila used Texture Magic on the snow and on the bunnies.

This is Marsha the Thimbleberries Lady's quilt - I think it is actually Kansas Troubles  fabric.  She does stray  from Thimbleberries every now and then.

It's feeling Spring-ish.  The weather has warmed up, the robins are back and the grass is greening up a bit.  I'm hoping it stays like this next week so we can actually hold a Guild meeting: the first for the year since the first two were cancelled due to weather.

It's a challenge

Last week the Challenge Committee for Prairie Quilt Guild met at my studio to have all the quilts judged for entry in the AQS Guild Challenge at the Knoxville Show next summer.  The Guild entered the Challenge for the first time two years ago and won Honorable Mention.  This year it was decided to bring in a judge from outside the Guild to choose the quilts for entry in the show. The quilts were really wonderful and creative, it took most of a day for Carol Elmore to judge the 38 entries. I can't show the winners because they won't be announced to the Guild until April.  At the March meeting the Guild membership will do their voting for the quilts they like best, so there will be lots of winners!

Peter and I spent most of Sunday getting tax stuff ready for our tax accountant.  I dread that job all year long!!  We see our accountant on Thursday and that part is no problem, it's the preparation that is the killer.  I always vow to be more organized in the coming year but it never works.

I was excited to learn that my miniature quilt Sugar Plum won a ribbon at Road to California in January.  I have been waiting until they posted the winners so I could include a link; ttp://www.road2ca.com/2011winners/road/winners.html.  The quilts look spectacular - I would love to attend that show someday.

Enough already

More snow, even more than last time.  A foot of light fluffy sparkley snow.  It was pretty, but enough already!  I had to cancel another Prairie Quilt Guild meeting!  I will go down in history as the only President of the Guild to cancel two meetings in one year.

I had plenty to do.  I finished this quilt (at the top of this post) for Catherine - it's from a pattern in McCall's Quilting by Rebecca LoGiudice and has a lot of hand work.  Catherine said she had fun making it her own by adding the little details.

The weather is looking up - 60 degrees next week.  I'll have to dig out my shorts!

A short road trip

Last Saturday it was 70 degrees.  In the past week the temperatures dropped to below zero and a nasty blizzard blew through.  Here is my deck in warmer times:

Here it is last week after I shoveled a path to the studio. 

 I think we only received 5 or 6 inches of snow but the wind blew it into big drifts.  Rosie had cabin fever and was determined to go outside in single digit temperatures.  She came back inside quickly.  Rohrschach however is apparently a Snowcat and stayed out for long periods before coming in to warm up.

Today I guess we had cabin fever and decided to make a short road trip to the little town of Alden, home of an amazing shop called Prairie Flower Crafts.  They were having a Superbowl Sale this week - about the only good thing I can think of associated with a football game.  Alden is really tiny - this is basically the main street with the shop on the right and the grain elevators at the end of the street. 

The shop was started in 1970 in the old Alden Mercantile and eventually it took over the whole block of buildings.  It is a maze of rooms filled with fabric going back many years; it's kind of a trip through the history of quilting fabrics!

It's a cool old building, with wood floors and high ceilings and many of the original store fixtures.  This is the entrance room which has craft items and knick-knacks in addition to fabric:

This room is the brightest of all (It's really kind of dark everywhere else) and has Jinny Beyer fabric dating  back a few centuries, well, decades anyway.  Also a nice selection of Liberty cottons and a huge range of imported Japanese cottons.  The older fabrics have the old prices on them - I bought some Jinny Beyer fabric that was $7.00/yard,

This is the flower room, with flowered fabrics and baskets.

In here are kitchen and food fabrics with cool old shop cabinets. 

Here is a room full of solids:

In here are Christmas fabrics, fabrics sorted by color and black and whites. 

Another old store fixture;

I bought a few things and enjoyed my trip through the history of quilt fabric!  They do have a website: http://aldenfabric.com/.  The lady that owns the store is getting along in years and I hate to think of Alden without her shop!

On the way home we stopped at a cafe in Sterling for a hamburger:

Then admired the wintry Kansas landscape;

There were lots of Red-Tailed Hawks, Marsh Harriers, camels and ostriches.

CAMELS AND OSTRICHES!!!!!!!  Yep - there is an exotic animal park outside of Hutchison where we saw them in the field.

I have been finishing up a quilt for our guild challenge, but I can't post pictures for a while - we're supposed to keep them a secret...