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.

Road Trip to Nebraska, Missouri - Part 2

Back-tracking in my story a bit, we had dinner at my friend's house in Lincoln, and she showed us these three wonderful quilts she has made recently. She loves little scrappiness. These are gorgeous quilts!

Back on the road from Nebraska to Missouri, the skies looked menacing, but luckily we only encountered a little rain; the changing skies were interesting to watch.

(They even have a man cave.)

Next day we hit Hamilton, Missouri to visit Missouri Star Quilt Company! What fun! First, it was a beautiful day, and second, the stores were so much fun! Each store carries a certain theme. For example, one is florals, one is batiks, one is called Penney's, as Hamilton is the birthplace of J.C. Penney of the department store fame. Almost every store along the main street is a Missouri Star Quilt store. We each dropped off quilts to be machine quilted and mailed back to us. And we indulged in procuring several lovely chunks of fabric. A fun day! I recommend it as a fun road trip for any quilter.

the obligatory selfie, and a sample of some of my purchases - these are for bindings


We ate at the Blue Sage Restaurant which was YUMMY! It's a high-end place with a real chef. The food was fabulous. We each ordered dessert and this was our reaction -- Cousin: "this is the best cheesecake I've had since London." Me: "this is the best chocolate cake I've had since Paris." Truly, it was delicious, and a great way to top off our little road trip... a short six-hour drive would get us back home. Whew! We were tired but happy.

Road Trip to Nebraska, Missouri - Part 1

Last week my cousin and I traveled to Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska where we visited two friends: one in Lincoln, one in Omaha. We hit some quilt shops and the Quilt Museum in Lincoln. The museum is really good; if you get a chance, go see it. They are working on rotating more exhibits through there so that people can go more often and see new displays. This is what we saw:

plus one more exhibit called Man-Made - quilts all made by male quilters.

Here are a few shots from the museum. I can't show you much, because my photos from inside turned out really bad, with the colors of the quilts very much off their true colors. This will give you an idea, however.

(the above blue one was part of the Blue Echoes exhibit. All of those were stupendous, made by a quilter from Japan.)

From these you might get an idea of my color distortion. In the above grouping, two and three are the same quilt. Bah! I'm so disappointed with the bad coloring in my photos. Even editing them didn't help much. The last photo in this grouping is from Gees Bend.

This one is from the Man-Made exhibit. It depicts a space station and includes a whole story about the people and their community in space. Very imaginative. My colors in this photo are also inaccurate.

This is a couple of shots showing the museum itself.

Above: quilt shop "Cosmic Cow" in Lincoln, my friend's place of employment, and the Little Free Library (LFL) outside her work building. I like to visit LFLs when I travel.

After visiting Omaha, we landed at our retreat center... the Carol Joy Holling Retreat Center. This is the building we stayed in. Isn't it beautiful? (This picture is taken from their website.)

Various shots taken during the retreat. I'm working on my words quilt! Some of you may remember that. I started it for my 60th birthday, with your help. I'm determined to finish it before my 64th birthday which is next fall.

above: a couple of LFLs in Lincoln, and interesting sky when we were on the road from Nebraska to Missouri. See the continuing saga in my Road Trip Part 2 post which is coming soon!