RIP, H and S

My in-laws wanted to be buried together, so we had no service when my father-in-law died in 2017. Mother-in-law passed away in January 2019, so we decided to wait until warm weather to have the joint service. It took place on June 17, which would have been their 69th wedding anniversary.

Their remains were put together and buried in one box, in one grave, at Ft. Snelling National Cemetery. FIL had been in the army during WWII, so they had a service with full military honors. It was actually quite nice. I hadn't been sure what to expect, having never been to one of those military services before.

Now on both sides of the family, my husband and I and our siblings are the old generation. It feels odd to think of it; I can only hope we do our predecessors proud.

Quilting and Coughing

I had two super busy weeks in June: first the retreat, then a conference. After that I was exhausted, and I knew I was coming down with something. Dang. I have been sick ever since. Coughing, coughing, feeling miserable, but in between naps I sometimes found a bit of energy to do some machine quilting. So I managed to get these five tops done. Three of these quilts have backings made from free fabrics I got from Darci at Field Trip Quilting. She gave me some big pieces of yardage. They made many, many backs which came in very handy for those 142 tops we made at the retreat. VERY helpful; thank you, Darci. All of these quilts, and the ones we made at the retreat, will be donated to kids gets oral cleft surgeries and to kids in orphanages in underserved areas around the world.

Those last two were made at the retreat and are already done! That feels good. We divvied up the tops and sent some to other volunteers, so almost all the tops were spoken for. Team work! It was amazing. I still have several from the retreat but will be mailing some of them out, so my pile of tops is not that daunting. Yay!

Because I was still sick through all this, my life was just a series of naps, coughing attacks, and sewing, followed by more naps. I finally went to the doctor and found that I had pink eye along with some allergic reactions, which I have NEVER had this late into the season, but I guess it's that kind of a year. The doctor gave me four different medications!

I'm slowly crawling out of the hole and feeling better. Now, some energy is creeping back in, so I think I'll go finish another top.

Found My Quilts in Asia

When I donate quilts, some of them go to Wrap a Smile which gives quilts to the Rotaplast mission for kids who are having cleft lip/palate surgery. I recently looked at some Rotaplast pictures online and found two of my quilts. What fun!

This child is in India; I'll include my picture of the quilt.

This child is in Philippines. It's hard to see the quilt in the picture. It is folded up and is behind, on the left. It is only showing the backing fabric. I'm 90% sure, from the backing, the binding, and the apparent relative size, that this is the pink quilt I made. Here are the photos:

It's rare and therefore exciting to see pictures of my quilts with the kids. I don't give them away expecting to see them again, but when I do get to see them, I feel so happy!

Sunshine On My Shoulders Makes Me Happy

Sunshine Quilt Guild held another retreat (our third, we do them every couple of years).. this one was in my neighborhood. BH and I were the organizers. Fifteen people came from Maine, Texas, Nebraska, Oregon, California, and of course, Minnesota. We had a blast!

BH and I wanted to make sure they had fun, so we didn't expect them to put their noses to the grindstone, doing nothing but sewing. We intentionally included some fun outings in our plans. This included a couple of quilt shop visits. They had a blast at this first one where the fabrics are always 50% off.

We visited the biggest candy store in Minnesota. This is some of us outside the store:

We had a nice dinner at BL's house (it was chilly, but the company warmed us from the inside out):

We did manage to get a lot of sewing done, despite having many fun outings. Our final total was 142 tops made (Wed. through Sat.)!

Another outing, on the most perfect weather day one could ask for! This is Minnehaha Falls. We ate lunch outside under the shade of some beautiful, green oak trees under the most gorgeous blue sky with puffy white clouds. Minnesota was showing off that day! Sadly, my phone stopped taking pictures so I had to be content with just memories and no visual proof.

Other activities and outings included teaching them to ice dye, teaching how to make an improv house block, and visiting an original Dairy Queen built in 1947 which happens to be a half block from one of the best quilt shops in Minnesota. We also went to the Mall of America and ate dinner at the Rainforest Café. My sister discovered a great shop there called Lotus Jewelry and Gifts. It carries 100% Minnesota-made art items, thereby supporting local artists. I love that.

And, of course, we put in many hours sewing our tops. The blocks had been made by many volunteers over the last year, and this retreat was for the purpose of assembling the blocks. The quilts turned out great and so cheerful. I think it was our best quilts of the three retreats so far.

We packed up a bunch of the quilt tops to send off to volunteers who will finish them for us. We had the system pretty well honed this year. It worked out great so that we have very few to still dole out to future volunteers.

There is some talk of where the next retreat will be in a couple more years...I'm not spilling the beans just yet.