Getting Away, to Kansas City

For four days, over the weekend, we were in Kansas City.

On Saturday I went on a day-long, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., quilt retreat with my good friend, Carla. It was our first time sewing together, and - no surprise - we had a great time. We met up, and I rode with her to Bucyrus, Kansas, where our quilt retreat was in a church building on the grounds of this beautiful old church. 

Queen of the Holy Rosary Catholic Church, Bucyrus, Kansas

The retreat space was very large with banks of windows on three sides, and good overhead lighting.

Retreat space

Carla and I had a special project planned to work on together.

Carla

Robin joined us, bringing along her hand embroidery. She also rotary cut Carla's sewn strips since Carla is a little hand-icapped from a tumble down the stairs. Though Carla assured us she could rotary cut, watching her use her elbow to stabilize the ruler didn't reassure us!

Robin

The retreat coordinator was sewing binding on this quilt. It's a solids only quilt made from a Kaufmann Kona charm pack. What an effective, dramatic design. It's quilted with circles within circles.

One of the especially prolific quilters I became acquainted with is Nikki who blogs here. She recently finished this Spider Web quilt top. 

Her Spider Web has some unexpected details.

Nikki's hand embroidered spiders!

Carla and I both sewed a design called "Picket Fence." It's from an Elsie Campbell book String Quilts. Picket Fence is design in which assorted width strips are sewn together according to lights, mediums and darks, and then cut into 60-degree diamonds.

The diamond blocks Carla is happily "ta-dah-ing" on our design wall are a mix of diamonds each of us cut and sewed from our own strips stash.

Before we parted company, we swapped light, medium and dark-colored diamonds with each other, so each of our two quilts will be even scrappier.

I'm on the left; Carla's on the right

Though, based on just my strips, I don't think I'll have much trouble making my Picket Fence fairly scrappy!

After the quilt retreat, an unexpected activity found us very literally quaking in our boots! Saturday night, while at our daughter's house, were awake at 10:53 p.m. when the 5.6 magnitude earthquake rumbled three miles below ground near Prague, Oklahoma. Even in Kansas City, 300 miles (428 K) away, we felt the bed tremble and listened to the closed bedroom door rattle in its door frame. Though I knew what it was, having felt a similar tremor back in 1965 when living in Ohio, it's still not something you expect here in the Midwest. Tornados? Yes, aplenty. But an earthquake? Certainly not!

Another reason for visiting KC was to celebrate this little guy's first birthday which was Sunday. Would you believe he wouldn't eat birthday cake?! He'd never had cake, and even after a couple attempts were made to put it in his mouth, he refused it.

Aesa and Bapa

Last year I started washing and saving containers from my favorite yogurt: Yoplait. These containers are durable for chewing on, and throwing around without a chance of hurting anyone - great fun with little ones, building towers and making roads. My grandsons know I'll play "stacks" with them anytime. Here's one of their favorite things to do.

Linda