While in Kansas City

I get to spend time with grandchildren only a couple times a year. For me to visit them, I most often have to fly. I detest flying! I'm not sure when or where my fears began - possibly when seeing and being near the edge of the Grand Canyon for the first time, as a teenager - but pre-trip anxiety is enough to spoil any happy anticipation of a visit.

During take-off, I always pray for the pilot and people in the air traffic control tower - that they've had a good rest, and are clear-headed. Whenever there's turbulence, my mental picture is of God holding the plane in the palm of his hand.

You see, my 2010 experience during a United Airlines take-off from Sydney, Australia haunts me. I blogged about it here.

Once I'm back on terra firma, I pray with thanks, and gratefully return to my more normal resilient self. Very early Monday morning, I flew home from Kansas City to Orlando, after spending eight days with family.

Celina is home from college having completed her sophomore year at Colorado State. In this picture she's ready to head to her summertime job at a technology company. She's also taking two on-line classes this summer. Such a lovely young lady she's grown into after joining our family at the age of eight.

For the two boys, school finished May 24. Tay will be in the fourth grade this fall. For dinner one evening, I mashed an avocado and seasoned it for Jill and I to add to our salads. The boys tasted a some of it and went nuts, asking if I'd make guacamole for them. So, after dinner Tay and I went to Hy-Vee to buy ingredients, and he proceeded to help me make a big batch, chopping and mashing four avocados.

On our day together - just the two of us - we visited Uncle Evan's store - Olathe Pet Shop. Evan's always great about letting kids hold a variety of critters - lizards, turtles, snakes. I just like to take pictures. 😁

Aesa will be in the third grade. He's really interested in plants, so after choosing perennials at Home Depot, he and I planted this small bed of lilies and lantana. He also helped his mom plant a few veggies - tomatoes, zucchini, pepper, cantaloupe (?!), and strawberries.

For our day together, Aesa and I visited Scheel's! The store has a variety of indoor things to do. Aesa is up front, (lime green shirt) on the Ferris wheel. He also bowled, and did some laser shooting in the gallery.

A visit to KC isn't complete unless I spend most of a day with Carla. We met through our blogs (She's www.LollyQuiltz.blogspot.com) about ten years ago. This time we met for coffee at Starbucks. Two-and-a-half hours later we lunched at Pot Belly followed by a visit to the relocated Prairie Point Quilt and Fabric Shop. I love spending time with Carla! Our quiltmaking interests are very similar, so we never run out of things to talk about. The last time we met-up was in February, at QuiltCon Nashville.

The quilt shop I really wanted to visit while I was in the area was The Fabric Chic, a modern quilt shop that opened about a year ago in Parkville, Missouri. Right now, the Missouri River is so high that parking access is rerouted, and threatening Fourth of July festivities at English Landing Park.

Jill took me here, and we found fabrics for a quilt Jill has requested - Moroccan Tiles by Anka's Treasures. She chose Kona Waterfall and Painter's Palette Gulfstream as her main colors. I'll be sharing more about that quilt in the days ahead.

The first thing I did upon returning home was prepare to share English paper piecing with members of Big Cypress Quilters, a 70-member chapter of Quilting Guild of The Villages. I was pleased to see 15 quilters in attendance who hadn't tried English paper piecing. They each had a small grandmother's flower garden kit with which to try hand stitching, and I invited them to take some of my 1" hexagon papers, and fabric hexies I'd cut using a borrowed AccuQuilt.

I shared information about needles (I gave away two sample packs of Jeana Kimball straw needles) threads, thread conditioner (I gave away two Thread Heaven) methods for basting, showed various clips for holding pieces while stitching (Wonder Clips, Sew Tites) and whip stitch and ladder stitch piecing stitches. I suggested they watch a YouTube video to see the "flat back" method of piecing, though I personally don't care for it.  

I also showed some of my EPP books. My favorite is English Paper Piecing by Florence Knapp @FlossieTeacakes. All this EPP talk has me re-enthused to finish my TulaNova quilt - a quilt I renamed LindaNova since I chose stash fabrics and don't generally like or use Tula fabrics. I think I'm due to post an update on that project! 

The only stitching I've done lately is this. While I was traveling, I thought I'd fill this 8" X 12" piece of linen with random stitches in a style called Wabi-Sabi stitching. I loftily thought I'd be able to completely fill a second piece of linen too. Ha! Great expectations!

I'll complete this, and once I have two stitched pieces, will turn them into a wristlet. I'm making as an this example of several types of hand-stitching that I'll share with Central Florida MQG on August 12. My program that evening is "Big Stitch Quilting." (See tab above: "Programs and Workshops") Everyone will get a little kit to stitch using a variety of sample threads. If you're a Central Florida MQG member, I hope you'll come!

I always travel with an audiobook for listening while hand-stitching. On this trip I finished "The Silent Patient" by Alex Michaelides. It's a well-written physiological thriller, in a style similar to my favorite 2018 read, "The Woman in the Window." This story is about a happily married couple, Gabriel and Alicia - she's an up-and-coming artist - her descent into silence following a traumatic experience, and a psychotherapist's determination to get her to talk. The spellbinding story had me guessing until the end.

Linda's score: 4.3/5

Linda