Tuesday, November 8, 2011

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

28 comments:

  1. We had a fun day, didn't we! We will have to do it again for sure, Linda. Great pics!!

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  2. Hi Linda,

    That looks like a fun fun retreat!!!

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  3. that is such a funny video. Boys....

    I lived in Kansas for seven years and have never heard of Bucyrus! That church is beautiful!

    Looks like you had a spectacular time. Wish I could have joined along...

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  4. I LOVE that scrappy quilt you and Carla made!!!! Do you think Team Di need to collaborate like this and make our very own versions? I do! Quiltmaking is grinding very slowly here at the moment, but there is light at the end of the tunnel :-))
    Happy Birthday little Aesa - you and your big brother look like great mates!

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  5. What a fun time! How are you old enough to have grandkids? Dang!

    Love your scrappy quilt. It will be awesome!

    Also, I saw your placemats and never got around to telling you how fab they are. Really cool.

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  6. Looks like you have a lot to get done. :)

    Mary
    http://www.quiltgenius.com

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  7. that solids quilt is amazing!! i love the design!

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  8. That retreat looked like so much fun, and so much inspiration! Your grandbabies are adorable!

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  9. Those diamonds blocks are amazing. Totally looks 3-D.

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  10. I love your use of scraps, so creative and you look like you had a blast at the retreat!

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  11. Looks like you had a wonderful time. It's so inspiring to go to such a meeting, no>

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  12. Your scrappy quilt is going to be great!

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  13. This looks like such a great day!

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  14. that video is so cute. That is a lot of containers to stack. lol
    That is so funny that the 1 year wouldn't eat the cake. Maybe he doesn't like the texture.
    Your retreat looked like a lot of fun. What a huge space to spread out in.
    That quilt that you are standing in front of is awesome. Looking at it on the computer makes it look like it has dimension with actual folds.

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  15. That quilt retreat looked like a lot of fun! I want to do something like that one day!

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  16. Looks like you had a lot of fun at the retreat! Fun to see all those quilts too. The hand embroidered spiders made laugh!

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  17. Wow, what a fun retreat! Love that Picket Fence quilt, such a cool idea!

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  18. I'm in Kansas too and haven't heard of Bucyrus...lived here all my life. Is it a suburb of KC? That might be why.
    I would love love love and love some more to be able to go to a quilt retreat!

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  19. Your grandsons are just adorable! I enjoyed your trip to the quilt retreat and especially liked the quilt you and Carla put together. It is stunning! Thanks for sharing.

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  20. The Picket Fence is a lot of fun - great idea :)

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  21. The picket fence is amazing. All the values really make the design pop.

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  22. Love your picket fences, looks like a lot of fun on your retreat (especially if the earth moved for you ;o) )

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  23. sounds like a wonderful quilt retreat!

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  24. Who knows when you might need three tubs of scraps. :) Looking good!

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  25. I love those tubs of scraps you have! I bet one could spend hours didn't through them ;)

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  26. What a super fun day! I also love that you saved the yogurt containers, I bet kids do love those, great idea!

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  27. Glad you had such a great retreat! I love the stripey diamond quilt!!

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  28. I love seeing the quilts that you all made from the patterns in my String Quilts book. Glad I did some 'googling' around today and found these pictures.

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