14 posts tagged “friends”
Well, I'm back from my quilt camp at Toni's. It was a very productive five days. I managed to finish the bindings on 5 quilts, start an English Paper Piecing class sample, and work on my block of the month project. When Linda saw all of the quilts I was finishing off she was not to be outdone so she brought 5 quilts that needed binding (though she does hers completely by machine) and got them done.
In this top picture the two quilts hanging on the wall are Toni's and were completed several years ago. Starting from the left: Linda's Underground Railroad, the basket quilt Jimmie is hand quilting, (on the floor) one of my fractures, Linda's Just Can't Cut It, my sawtooth star, Linda's scrap quilt, (on the couch) Double Wedding Ring for John's parents.
There was a lot more accomplished besides those finished pieces.
Yup, I'm spending the next few days all the way across town at my friend Toni's house. Her husband is out of town until the middle of the weekend so she's having quilt camp at her house from today through Saturday. I'll be staying up there full time until I come home Saturday evening so you may not hear much from me while I'm gone. But I'll catch up with you guys when I get back!
8:-)
Thankfully, it's pretty much over.
The high points:
1. Friday was my step daughter's 24th birthday. We went out to dinner with her, her husband and his family. We always find his family to be delightful and we had a wonderful time.
2. This weekend was the Road to Oklahoma Shop Hop. I hopped with Darcy and my sister. We had a fabulous time.
3. I had a customer pick up a quilt today. For the first time ever I received a tip! (about 10%)
The low points:
1. On Friday Ken took the dog to the vet and had her put to sleep. A very difficult thing to do, but it had to be done.
2. While Ken was burying the dog on Saturday* he got a phone call telling him that one of his really good hunting buddies died in a drowning accident on Friday. The funeral will be Wednesday.
3. Tomorrow would have been my dad's 80th birthday. I had really expected him to still be around for that.
*Friday night I dreamed that when we went out to the workshop to get Cuddles so that we could bury her we discovered that the drugs had worn off and she was running around waiting for someone to let her outside. On Saturday when I told my sister about my dream she told me I was nuts, but when I told Ken about it later in the day he admitted that before he buried Cuddles he double checked to make sure she was really dead.
Ken went pig hunting again this weekend and I've been left to my own devices. Normally I would use such a weekend to get absolutely tons of work done, but today I socialized a good part of the day. John came to town to spend the weekend with his grandmother, but was kind enough to take a little time away from her to take Wendi and I out to lunch. He also brought presents for us and the fabric he picked up for me on his big mystery vacation. I already know what I'm going to do with part of the fabric he brought, but I'll save that for another post. The visit was lots of fun, but as always, far too short.
This evening I had dinner with Paxton and Strixaluco. A few months ago Strix and I got to talking about Ethiopian food and she mentioned that she hadn't had any in years. I told her we have a very good restaurant here in OKC and if they were interested I would take them there the next time they were passing through. Today was the day. As I had promised there was way too much food and we all ate until we thought we were going to pop! It was lots of fun to finally meet someone in person I've made friends with on VOX. Meeting people online is not new to me (that's how I met my husband), but this somehow takes blogging to a new level for me. I hope to someday meet more of my VOX friends in person.
I'm back from my retreat. Had a fabulous time. Well, except for the massive allergy attack. My sister and I decided to sleep with the window open Thursday night as a cold front had just passed through early in the evening. The air was cool and crisp. Perfect for sleeping. I forgot about the tree pollens being through the roof and so didn't double up on my allergy meds ahead of time. I paid for it the rest of the weekend. Now that I'm home I'm feeling much better. Didn't let all the sneezing slow me down though!
I took way more projects than I had time for. I started off working on a quilt top that I began 2 years ago. I had purchased a fat quarter pack of Moda's Picket Fence while visiting my friend Pam in Ft. Worth. I worked on it all day Thursday and got it finished on Friday. The pattern is one of my own designs.
Saturday afternoon I finished up an old shop sample that still needed borders. After that I started doing the same to another old sample, but didn't quite get it done.
Friday night was show and share. There are many talented women in this group and we had lots of lovely quilts to share.
I'm on my way out the door for a big weekend of quilting. 40 women at a church camp in Perkins, OK with a fabulous quilt store just 6 blocks away! Lots of food, lots of friends (new and old), and lots and lots of sewing. I'll take pictures and let you know about all the fun after I get home Saturday evening.
I've always been amazed by the people I know who have large networks of friends. How do they do that? At most any point in my life I've been able to count the number of good friends (you know, the ones you can count on in the middle of the night) I had at that time on one hand. With fingers left over. And most of those have been of the opposite sex. I generally seem to find women to be...what? Too competitive? Too judgmental? Too illogical? Too....? They just don't seem to be from the same planet I'm from. But men are different. I can talk to them. Take me to a party where the men and women have segregated themselves and I will most likely end up with the men. They talk about things I'm interested in. And they do it in a way I can relate to. But that's not really the point of this post.
Something very strange has happened to me in the five and a half years since I opened the quilt store. I've made lots of friends. Good friends. The kind that would drop everything at a moment's notice to come help me. And they are all women. They are also all quilters. This has been the biggest payoff of opening the shop. We are always there to help each other in a time of crisis.
I first started to become aware of this change in my life when my dad got really sick and was dying. The only day we had to close the shop was the day of his funeral (and we chose to do that so that everyone could attend) because our customers were there helping to hold down the fort in our absence. We didn't have to worry about anything business related during that time.
I know these women are really my friends because they didn't go away when I closed my doors and came home. I still see them nearly every week and we are all still there for each other. We filled an entire pew in the church for the funeral of Becky's husband/Linda's brother back in July. We did the same thing today for the funeral of Sharon's husband. We gave Jimmie hell a couple of weeks ago for driving herself to the hospital at 11:00 at night when she thought she was having a heart attack (she wasn't, but she is the owner of a shiny new stent) instead of calling one of us to come get her (her husband was in Florida at the time). We kept an eye on Peggy's husband for six months while she was in St. Louis taking care of her son during his cancer treatments. We give Toni plenty of shoulders to cry on when her daughters in Canada (she has 4 of them up there) are having problems (one has a brain tumor and another has battled breast cancer twice).
One Wednesday a couple of weeks ago while we were sewing we got to talking about these friendships we've developed and how important they are. It seems I'm not the only one in the group who has always preferred the friendships of men. I don't even seem to be in the minority. Somehow we've all managed to find each other as we're approaching a phase in our lives when this network is vital to our survival. Or maybe we've just gotten old enough to see the value in each other. I don't know. I just know how lucky I am to have them. And they seem to think that they are lucky to have me. How cool is that?
Yesterday at Sooner I spent the majority of the day putting together another sample top for the shop hop.
After finishing up that top I finally got around to putting the borders on the little quilt with my business logo.
I fractured the background and Darcy added the applique. This little harlequin toad is from one of her books. Next step is for me to quilt the darn thing.
I had some of my friends over for the weekend for a quilt camp. It was kinda like having my own little sweatshop except I didn't get to keep what they made. They loved working in my studio and can't wait to come back. From left to right they are Laura, May, Linda, Marcia (my sister), Toni, and Becky. We ate too much food and got lots of work done. Since they were taking up all the table space I quilted all weekend. First I did a quilt for one of Toni's daughters to raffle off for the Brain Tumor Association.
I mentioned the other day that I spent my weekend at quilt camp (the things we girls do for fun!). Toni is getting ready to go up to Canada for a few weeks and will be missing three organized camps sponsored by quilt shops so she decided that she needed to have one of her own before she goes. We started arriving at her house a little past noon on Thursday. There were 7 of us including Toni on Thursday. Even Linda was there (she was playing hooky from teaching 2nd grade). Pam was supposed to be there, but Ponca City was covered with ice and she couldn't get out until Friday morning. Becky and I spent the night with Toni. Friday morning we were all back to our sewing and Pam arrived shortly before lunch time. She stayed the night at Toni's but had to leave Saturday afternoon to go stay with her dad a couple of nights. Everyone went home Saturday evening except for me. I spent one more night with Toni and helped her clean up before I came home Sunday morning.
I got lots of sewing done over the weekend. I started off working on postcards. First I experimented with some gel pens I had purchased to see if they would show up on the dark blue background of the cards I had already made. They did and I was able to fill in the bare spots with colored stars so they now look much better. Then I proceeded to fuse more of the blue fabric onto Timtex so that I can make some more cards. I only had enough fusible web to cover 8 cards and then I was done with postcards until I could go shopping.
Next I moved on to doing something with the leftover fabric from a Jinny Beyer kit I had put together for the quilt shop. I recut the leftover triangles into a usable shape and sewed them together into a kaleidoscope block format. Figured out what I want to do with them next, but didn't have the fabric I needed so that project got put on hold until I could go shopping.
I then moved on to a quilt that I had started making in 2006. 10 of 20 blocks were done when I had to put it aside. I now have all 20 blocks finished as well as the smaller blocks that will go in the four corners. It was about 9:00 Saturday night when I finished those up so I stopped there.
All in all it was a highly productive weekend. In addition to all of that work I did the two fractures while I was teaching class on Saturday. We have time for one more camp before Toni leaves on her trip. It will be at my house in two weeks.
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