Weekend quilting

 I spent some time on Sunday binding the Snake Dance Mystery quilt. I had this striped fabric left over from another project and decided it matched my snake dance fabrics perfectly. Plus it looks really good with the back.

 Which is all you get to see today...but a bound quilt is a finished quilt.

When we stopped at Hobby Lobby on our shop hop on Sat. I found these melamine plates on clearance.  I have been collecting a few different dinner plates, all melamine, all different patterns. The chef plates really match my kitchen well, but I just got them because they are cute. Yep, that's reason enough.

I found this fabric at Quilters Haven Saturday and fell in love. I have been thinking about making Kaffe Fassett's Bicycle Wheel quilt for several years and this fabric will be perfect for the background.

 Some of the circles are very large...I put the roll of masking tape on top to show comparison.

 Here is a pic of the quilt in the book....lots of circles, but most of it is circular fabric. Only five big circles. It looks like fun!

 One of my daughter's gave me a gift card to Connecting Threads for Mother's Day. I have been drooling over some of their newer batiks, so it wasn't hard to pick what I wanted. Then I waited patiently by the mailbox until the box arrived.

 Yummmmmm.....

Love these colors and can't wait to start a project with them.

Today is my last day of school for this school year, so I will be doing the happy dance at Sampler Club tonight. I have lots of things to do this summer, so I guess I'd better start making a list now!

Our own Kansas City area shop hop...

For several years my retreat friends and I have driven to Kansas City for the Machine Quilter's Showcase. It was a lot of fun and something we looked forward to every spring. This year the show moved to Wichita,which is a little far for us to drive in a day, so we decided we would go to KC and do some shop hopping. Rose has navigation on her phone, so we used that to find our way around. 

Our first stop was Quilted Memories in Overland Park. It's a small shop chock full of fabrics. 

Pat has spied some green...she loves her greens!

As you can see from the first picture, they found many beautiful fabrics to take home!

Our next stop was  Harper's Fabric and Quilt Company, conveniently right across the street from Quilted Memories. They had a nice selection of modern quilting fabrics and lots of machines to try out.

Then on to  Addadi's Fabrics. When we pulled up in front of this shop,  they couldn't jump out of the van fast enough because they saw some exciting signs in the window....

This shop had a large collection of a little bit older fabrics at a great price. They also had a selection of  108" backing blenders that they wanted to make us a great deal on. We enjoyed chatting with the owners, a husband and wife team. After we got home, I looked up their website and found this cute story about how they met. 

Bags full, on to the next quilt shop!

As we drove to our next stop,  Prairie Point Quilts, we kept an eye on our surroundings for a good lunch spot....that's always an important part of any shop hop, right? This shop seemed to specialize in reproduction fabrics, but had something for everyone. As you can see, we managed to find some fabrics here too. We really know what to do on a shop hop, ok?

After lunch at Subway (fast so we could get back to shopping), our next stop was  Quilters Haven. As we walked up to this shop, they others got excited about it as they had been here before. It was a beautiful shop with lots of displays and modern fabrics. They told us about the last stop on our hop....

 Quilting Pits and Pieces. It's in Eudora, Ks, about 20 miles from the KC area and a wonderful shop. They had many displays and seemed to have a lot of hand work projects as well. We were fascinated with the twilling.

They had a huge supply of batiks...you know how I love batiks!

I got this cute cupcake pincushion for a gift. I fell in love with it!

We closed the shop, as we got there about 1/2 hour before closing time, and will definitely come back again.

We headed home after that, with a dinner stop planned in St. Joe on the way home. When we got there, we decided to go to Hobby Lobby too, since there was one a few blocks away. (We just couldn't stop shopping!) It was so much fun spending the day chatting and shopping! 

Yesterday I spent the day doing a little bit of this and that. I cleaned a bit, then cut the binding for the Snake Dance Mystery quilt. I got it bound, then cut out the background fabrics for a new design I'm working on. Then I worked in the garden for awhile. It is coming along, but not fast enough! I had to run to the store, so picked up some flowers for my pots and the front of the garden. They didn't have the tomatoes and peppers I like, so I need to go today and get those. It stormed during the night and is still raining this morning, so I probably can't plant today anyway, but I want to get them...if I don't watch out, there won't be any left! Enjoy your holiday! It's back to work for one more day for me tomorrow, and then summer break! I'm ready!

Snake Dance Mystery begins.....

Now that the second group has started the mystery, I can finally post some pictures! When I teach a mystery quilt, I like to have the students make a swatch page. For this mystery, they chose three sets of color pairs...a light and a medium in each color. They also needed a background fabric and a something that read "dark" with all of them.  Since they don't know what the quilt looks like, it would be easy to grab the wrong fabric and having a swatch card gives you something to refer back to as you work. 

They got their first clue with their supply list...it was some cutting directions. That way they could start out with most of it cut. They worked their second clue during the first class...half square triangles made using their backgrounds and some of their light fabrics.

As you can see, they have lots of different color combinations, but they are all beautiful!

I have set up Yahoo groups for each class so that they can share pictures if they want to and check in and see how everyone is doing on the mystery.

I have a German blogging friend who wanted to play along as well, so she is working with the first group. Here are her HST. She is guessing there might be some pinwheels.....hmmmm....maybe Kerstin! I'M NOT TELLING!

Here are some more hsts from the first group.

They have had their second class and could definitely have enough pieces to try out some layouts. It will be fun to see what they come up with by the time we meet for the last class.

Down to the last two days of school. I finished my inventory and got all of the books that have been returned put away yesterday. I still have about 275 books out, but some of those are teacher checkouts and they were still using them. I have to do a state library survey online, so will probably tackle that today after our awards ceremony. I also work with the safety patrol kids at school, so I get to hand out their certificates at the awards day presentation. It's always interesting to look back on how they have grown over the past year.

For several years my retreat friends and I have driven to Kansas City for the Machine Quilter's Showcase. It was a lot of fun and something we looked forward to every spring. This year the show moved to Wichita, so that is a little far for us to drive in a day, so we decided we would go to KC and do some shop hopping. So that is our destination for tomorrow and I can't wait. I am so ready for a day of quilty fun! I will try to remember to take pictures of our adventure.

What? My daughter...sewing?

 You might think that with my love of fabric, sewing and quilting, that at least one of my 3 daughters would like to sew. As it turns out, they love fabric and have even been known to buy some, but haven't really done a lot of sewing. My middle daughter, Wendy, did make a rail fence quilt a long time ago, and has hemmed some curtains, but that is about it. So imagine my surprise when we were shopping at Big Lots one day and she found fabric. Jelly rolls to be exact. She really liked the fabrics and kept asking me what people make with them.  More specifically, what could she make with them.

So I suggested a Jelly Roll Race quilt...quick and easy for a beginner. She got her jelly rolls and we made plans to get together and work on it. She came over last night and I showed her how to sew her strips together with a 45* angle. We both like that join better than the straight seam. 

 Isn't that a pretty pile?

 Resident quilting expert Smokey came along to give her opinion about the quilt too.

 She got them all sewn together and had started pressing them when she realized that she had sewn some of them together right side to wrong side, so she cut them apart and redid them. Then we noticed a few other problem seams, so she spent some more time fixing them.

 Finally she was ready to begin sewing the two ends together. We think it took her about an hour to get that first 800" seam sewn.

I explained how to do the next step, so she is going to try it at home. I will keep you posted on how it goes!

Snake Dance Mystery quilted

 I have had the Snake Dance Mystery quilt on the quilting frame for a couple of weeks...it's just been too busy to get it finished. After doing some cleaning (yuck! both bathrooms, among other things!), I finished the quilting. I used the panto Leafage by Karyn Emmerson. It's one of my favorites because of the way it fills in and has a soft, swaying effect. Since I can't show the front of the quilt until after June 5, I have to be happy with showing the back.

 The first group making this quilt had their second session Saturday, and are well on their way to finishing two more clues. I have them sworn to secrecy, though I will say that their color choices are really pretty!

The second group meets for the first time Wed. night, so I will be able to post some pictures of the first clues after that. It will be fun to see what fabrics they have chosen! They meet twice before the first group meets for the third and final time on June 1. Group 2 will finish on Wed. June 5.

I started inventory in my library the other day...didn't get too much finished as I still had some classes coming in for storytime. I should be able to get a lot scanned in the next few days. Then comes the fun part...trying to get all of the books back! I still have over 400 checked out, but some of those are books the teachers have checked out. They will turn them in when they are finished using them this week. My last day of school is Tues. May 28...

I trimmed the quilt and Conrad gave it his purrrrrr of approval. He is also sworn to secrecy.