Retreat time!

Early this afternoon I'm off to go to our group's Spring Retreat.  I'm ready for a weekend of sewing, fun, lots of laughs and good food.  So who's the most excited about this weekend?

 Those silly bananas, also known as the Bananas in Pyjamas. They've been to a couple of retreats now so they think they automatically get to come along each time!  Have a great weekend everyone and I'll be posting pics next week sometime.  Until next time...

April Finish

Here's my CGGQC finish for April

Block #10 from the Designer Mystery BOM.  This weekend I plan to make block #11 and start assembling the finishing kit.  I can't wait to see it all done up!  Until next time...

Thursday Tidbits

 Last night was our weekly Wednesday quilting get-together.  Last week the gals who didn't get to go to Chicago wanted to hear all about it.  There was a lot of talking going on.  Anyhow last night the talk was about a couple of different things.  First of all, the quilt retreat this weekend.  We're excited!  Secondly there was the sneaky secret passing of pizza boxes to the pizza box coordinator DW.  One at a time we'd give her a pizza box and we'd get another one back.  If you haven't guessed some of us are doing a Row Robin. 

 

 It's just like a Round Robin (create a centre block and each person after that adds borders) but with rows of stuff.  Could be applique stuff and/or piecing stuff.  Whatever you want to add is fine as long as it's 48 inches long and between 4 inches and 12 inches tall.  Those were the only parameters we decided. After we all get our original pizza boxes back we can then decide how we want to put the rows together.  With sashing in between the rows or not. That sort of thing. You know what I mean.

This is extremely top secret stuff so I can't show any pics as some of the other partipants read my blog.

Remember I mentioned things were crazy around here lately?  The trend continues.  At my house on Tuesday morning were the following people:

1. Roto-rooter man to fix the pipe under the sink.  Dirty water was backing up into both kitchen sinks.  Turns out the clog was someone in the pipes in the basement
2. Manitoba Hydro to mark where the natural gas line was buried in the front yard
3. The contractor who here all day and was doing some work for us (related to #2 and see below)
4.  The AC/heating repairman who needed to tweak our new AC system
5. The treadmill repair man
6. The plumber was on call in case we needed him if there were problems (related to #1) 

  So I thought I'd show you what going to be happening around the QGB house.  Ready?  Here's some clues ....  

 

                      

Did you guess correctly?  Our house is becoming a construction zone!  Some prep work was done this week including installing  new fence for the front yard for Winslow and dismantling the fence in the back yard.  We also rented on of those "pod" containers to store some junk stuff from the garage as well as 20+ years of junk stuff from the house.  Of course my sewing area is not included in that description!

So you wanna see some real construction pics?

 

A view of part of the back yard.  You can see the "pod" on the right side of the pic.

 This was Winslow's reaction to this sight (remember the back yard is his territory)  Poor guy, he's not happy at all.  But he has a nice fenced area in the front yard with lots of shade. 

Life is good, right?  Until next time...

Chicago Part 3

There were several quilt display areas in the convention centre.  Please click on the pics for a closer look-see.

My favourite quilt is the one I shared in an earlier post, called Lets All Spring Forward.

The quiltmaker, Rosalie Baker, was there answering questions and posing for pics on Friday.  Judging had been held Thursday night after the show closed to the public.

Here's the poster with the info about the award she won.

  Pics of more quilts, taken from various exhibits

There were some exhibits where photography was prohibited.  There was also an amazing antique quilt display as well.  I also spotted Karey Bresenhan, founder and director of International Quilt Festival taping a segment about an antique quilt on display.  I would've loved to overhear what she was saying but no one was allowed close enough.  Maybe it'll show up on Quilter's TV on the internet or something.
I hope you enjoyed the quilts.  There were so many to look at it was overwhelming and so much to take in. I definitely suffered from sensory overload!  Until next time...

Chicago Part 2

After making a few purchases at the IQF show on Thursday night (and that Chocolate Martini, yum!) we were ready bright and early on Friday to take advantage of the show.  Here's a pic of the convention centre and the hard working police directing traffic.  It was an extrememly busy 4 lane road with no traffic lights or pedestrian crosswalk to enable you to cross the road.  The police did a fabulous job!

 There was some power shopping going on, not only by me but all my friends too.  I also had a Quilt Celebrity sighting, book signing going on at a booth and look who was there...

none only but Kaffe Fassett!  It was hard to get a good pic of him from being jostled around by all the people walking around the aisles.  They were jam-packed! 

We had to leave the convention centre by 3:45 pm or so because we had a hot date with our tour bus and our driver Richard.  At 4:30 pm we boarded the bus and headed toward downtown Chicago.  Our driver is quite familiar with the city and gave us a 2 hour tour of the downtown area.  I was so impressed by all the different styles of architecture.  Once the tour was over we headed to our evening destination:

Tommy Gun's Garage, a 1920's dinner theatre.  The company was great, as well as the show and the food.  A great way to spend the evening.  If you're in Chicago, try to go, it's a  fun time!

Saturday morning we had time to return to the convention centre for about an hour before getting ready to check out of the hotel and board the bus.  We left at noon, driving west back toward Hudson WI to spend overnight.  We stayed at the same hotel like we did on the way down to Chicago.  I was even in the same room, LOL!  Up bright and early and on the freeway by 7:30 am on Sunday.  We had a 500 mile drive ahead of us, so 2 rest stops and a stop for lunch in Fargo ND before heading to the US/Canada border and then home.  Watching the husbands and other family members watch the bus being unloaded of all our purchases was hysterical to watch from inside the bus.  The expressions on their faces was priceless!!!

  I was home sweet home just after 6 pm and my hubby just brought home Chinese take out for supper.  Early to bed for me, asleep by 9 pm and I slept until noon the next morning!  I kid you not my dear readers...Next blog post will be pics of some of the quilts that I saw on display in Chicago.   Until next time...

Chicago Pics

Ready for some pics of my bus trip to Chicago?

Here's a pic of our awesome bus, don't you love the colour?

We left on Wednesday at 6 am.  That meant me being up at 5:15 am. I'm NOT a morning person but I made an exception this time for this particular trip, LOL.  After driving for an hour we made it to the Canada/US border.  Passports all checked along with a bathroom break.  Next stop Fargo, ND for lunch/shopping stop. 

So you want to know what I purchased?  Not much since I was saving my money to spend in Chicago! But I'll show you anyway...

 A great pattern, 2 little Omnigrid rulers and a remnant that I bought with my DD in mind.  Instead of studying French in highschool (which is typical in Canada) she studied Spanish.  If you look closely the words are the names of colours and numbers in both English and Spanish.

 

Our next stop was at St. Cloud, Minnesota.

It was my first time at this shop and it did not disappoint!  Again I restrained myself from spending too much money because I was saving it for Chicago.  But I'll show you: an awesome Amy Butler bag pattern (I saw it done up in the store), the wonderful BunnyHill Designs pattern YoYoVille and a great notion!

 An early dinner in St. Cloud, some more driving and then we spent overnight in Hudson, WI.   Up early on day 2 (Thursday) and the bus was on the freeway again by 7 am.  None of the stops today were at fabric stores but that was okay because at 3:30 pm we were at our hotel in Chicago!  The bus was buzzing with excitement, I kid you not!  Fortunately our hotel was right across the street from the convention centre.  We dumped our luggage in our hotel rooms and lined up at the convention centre waiting for preview night to open, which it did promptly at 5 pm.  We had purchased programs which conveniently had a map.  We plotted our plan of attack of which vendors to visit.  Four hours zoomed by and suddenly at 9 pm everything shut down for the night.  

Now all that shopping and oogling the quilts on display made me hungry!  Headed back across the street to meet up with friends at this bar/restaurant that was reccommended to us.  Good company, good food and one of these, a Chocolate Martini!

 A cocktail and desert all in one!  The first one I've ever had and I sure enjoyed it! LOL

Off to bed, full of excitement of what Friday would bring.  That's it for this post. Until next time...

Home from Chicago!

Got home last night from Chicago. Had an awesome time!

I haven't sorted through my pics yet but here's one for you to admire:

"Let's All Spring Forward" by Rosalie Baker from the special exhibit "Celebrate Spring 2010"  Until next time...

Chicago!

Spring 2010 International Quilt Festival in Chicago here I come.
Woot! Woot!

I'll be getting on a bus at about 6 am Wednesday morning with lots of other quilters to make the journey to Chicago.  I'll be back home Sunday night.  Will all my readers forgive me for not posting pics of my FL holiday or the quilt show?  I hope so!  There'll be a pic extravaganza on my blog next week!  Until next time...

Quilt Show

                                                                                               

Guess where I was today?  At a quilt show!  Pics to come soon.  Until next time...

Goals for April

It's time to say what I'm going to accomplish for the month of April for

This month the list is short:  piece block #10 from the Designer BOM.
I'm still recovering from my vacation, catching up on mountains of laundry. Next week will be busy,  I'll explain why in another post.
Until next time...

Home!

We're finally home from our vacation safe and sound.  Driving over 2200 miles over 3 days sure is tiring!

We did have a great time, especially the dog!

Looking forward to catching up with everyone soon, once I've caught up on sleep and laundry!!!

Until next time...