Visit from my parents

My parents were here for a little over two weeks. They just left yesterday. It was great to have them here and sad when they left.
While they were here, my daughter tried to ride one of her horses bareback. He was so scared! After JoAnna got on him, he turned and ran bucking, up a hill. JoAnna had an unplanned dismount and was knocked out for about two minutes. We took her in to an emergency room and they did a CT scan and checker her out. She had a concussion that resulted in a bit of amnesia, but no broken bones. The Dr. said she could go home, but we had to wake her up every few hours to check on her thru the night. She vomited a few times the following morning, but when I called the emergency room, the nurse didn't sound like it was a big concern.
JoAnna was not wearing a helmet and she still won't wear one. She is 21 years old, so I don't give her a hard time about it. I understand that accidents will happen and I don't see any good coming from nagging her about it.
JoAnna turned 21 on May 23rd so I finally quilted her T-Shirt quilt for her. We also bought her a new queen size bed. When did beds get to be so expensive!?
My mom wanted to go to AR to do some genealogy research, so I drove her around AR for four days. She didn't find much of what she was looking for, but we had fun anyway. We have found that a lot of the records (birth, death, marriage, etc.) were burned in AR. I guess they just didn't see any reason to keep them. It makes research really hard.
Some of the "towns" that we visited were pretty much dried up. Auvergne consisted of about a half dozen houses along a single road. And the town of Cotton Plant was mostly boarded up. We also visited Searcy, Little Rock, Augusta and a few other towns in NE Arkansas.
While we were at the county courthouse in Augusta, I saw a tiled floor that I thought would make an awesome quilt pattern so I took a few pictures.
My mom's birthday was on May 16th so I made her two quilted jackets. She chose the fabrics and I put them together and quilted them. It's a bit too warm for wearing jackets right now, so she will have to wait for fall to enjoy using them.
She also decided that she liked a quilt top that I had made so I put it on my longarm and I'm working on quilting it for her. It's the turquoise and black quilt that's listed on my quilting projects list on the right side of this page. After I finish the quilt for my mom, (probably this evening) I will get back to work on customers' quilts.

Retreat continued.....

Here is a picture of my mystery quilt. I managed to finish it in spite of the gremlins who kept messing with my machine and hiding things from me. Now the quilt top is in my pile of tops waiting to be quilted.


I was given a prize because I was the first one to finish my quilt top. Here is my cute little cupcake pincushion.


When I got home from the retreat, Mr.Frogg started complaining about how cold he was without a quilt of his own. I went right to work making him a quilt. I used embroidered blocks of his family members so he would sleep well, knowing his family was surrounding him with hugs.

Mr. Frogg

The quilt retreat was so much fun! When I first arrived, I went into the room that I would be staying in to drop off my bag of clothes. I was very suprised to find this handsome young gentleman laying on my bed. waiting for me. He introduced himself as Mr. Frogg and he told me he wanted me to make him a quilt.














My awesome friend (and roommate) Gale, had escorted Mr.Frogg to my bed.














Here is a picture of Gale's feet. She makes the cutest socks!

RETREAT!

The quilt guild is having a retreat next weekend! We will be at the retreat April 24 -26. I think I'm all ready for it. Bee Sew Inn was having a sale so my friend Carol and I went shopping yesterday. I bought some stabilizer and thread and then Carol reminded me that I needed to buy a comfortable chair for the retreat. We went over to Office Depot and I bought a very comfy chair. I think I have everything I need for the retreat now... except for maybe a new pair of pajamas. Hopefully I can find the time to run out and buy some before Friday. If not, I suppose I can just wear my old ones. One of my friends who is also going on the retreat, is afraid that we will put her bra in the freezer while she sleeps :-) She has never been on a quilt retreat before so I think she's a little nervous about it.
The place where we are having our retreat doesn't get cell phone service (Yeah!) so we will have the whole weekend with no kids or husbands interrupting our extremely important and very serious work.

Plans for today

Today I am going with my husband to a pottery class. He wants a pottery wheel and I thought it would be a good idea to take a pottery class first. He did take a pottery class in High School, but that was about 30 years ago.
The class meets on four Saturdays. I thought the class was an all-day class, but I checked and it only lasts 2.5 hrs. That means I will still have time to do some quilting today :-)

New Blog

I'm starting a brand new blog so I can escape the spammers at the other blog site. It will probably take me a few days to get this blog going, so please be patient. I'll post the jacket tutorial on this blog when I'm ready, instead of posting it on the old blog.
I just received an order from Lakeside.com. It's my laptop bag! I couldn't find one that my laptop would fit into until a friend told me about this one. I ordered three of the laptop bags because two of my friends wanted one each and it saved us some money on shipping to order them all together. So, Carol and Vickie, I will bring your laptop bags to the guild meeting on Tuesday.