Sweet Sixteen!

Day one of our sixteenth birthday party in pictures!

A pretty cake - and it was good too!

The shop is decorated.

Cake and punch ready to go.

Sue stitched out a Sweet Sixteen with Hoop Sister's new embroidery CD called B4 Spellcheck.

The brain trust - you could get tickets for solving brain puzzles!

More pictures with our hourly drawing winners tomorrow!  Thanks everyone for a great Day One Sweet Sixteen Celebration - we had FUN!  Tomorrow is the auction!

The Gardens

  Some years the gardens are just so so, other years they're ok and some years, well some years they are really nice - IMHO.  This is one of the really nice years.  I took some pictures the other day - I hope you enjoy them.

Roses - love them, dislike having to spray them.  I've tried teas, heirlooms, floribundas, trees, minatures and  knockouts - they all get blackspot and the bugs love them.  But the flowers!  LOVE the flowers and the auroma . . .mmmmm.

Knockouts

Heirlooms

Heirlooms

I love this color! 

Teas

A really old climber that's been moved four times now.

Snap dragons that overwinterd.

And we have perennials, bi-annuals, and things we have no idea where they came from!

Delphinium the third year.  I have to admit, I threw some of these away thinking they were weeds last spring . . . .

Iris in the pond

Snap Dragons from last year.

One of the front borders

Mail box garden.

Side Border

That's my front gardens.  I won't show you the back gardens - let's just say they're having a so/so year.  Can anyone say overgrown?

Where Does Time Go?

It's been absolutely, positively CRAZY around here!  And it looks like the craziness is just going to continue well into the summer.

Jim and I just returned from a quilting cruise to Bermuda with 39 people joining us.  What fun!  It was quite a bit of work and the weather wasn't exactly the best, but we enjoyed cruising, enjoyed Bermuda and enjoyed everyone who went with us - a perfect way to spend 5 days!


Here we are celebrating making it to the ship on time, getting the classroom set up and actually making it to dinner on time!  I've posted more pictures on the shop's Facebook page, just put Quilting Possibilities in the FB search engine and be sure to like us while you are there!




While we were away the 11th annual NJ shop hop was finishing up.  Ten days of extended hours, 400 and some odd shop hoppers - it was fun but I was ready to get on that ship!

Home again and we're gearing up for a visit next weekend from LuAnn, a Janome educator, who is going to host a hands on class and a Horizon 12000 party.  Call the shop for details or click here. 

The weekend after that is Mother's Day and Colin is being christened that morning.  My annual make my kids do yard work day is being postponed this year.  And it will be a year since I fell and broke my ankle in two places.  That's something I hope I never do again!


Then it's off to Minnesota to celebrate nephew Tony's wedding and see the family for a few days.


And then ladies and gents, it's Memorial Day!  Now how the heck did that happen?  We'll be having our annual Sidewalk/Classroom Sale, more details on that will be coming but save the date.  

Then Joan is coming from Baby Lock to do a Stabilizer Savy Event June 2nd.  If you own an embroidery machine, you NEED this class!  Click here for more info.

June 4th is Nathan's birthday.  He'll be two - what???  Not possible - but it is possible.  That tiny, little baby I held two years ago is growing to be quite the little boy.  


Then it's my birthday - we won't discuss how old I am, ok, Karen Montgomery is the same age as me and forced me to figure out how old we would be this year - double nickles this year 55!


Which brings us to the shop's birthday.  QP turns SIXTEEN this year!  Holy smokes!  Sweet Sixteen and we're having a party.  Plan on joining us June 9th and 10th as we celebrate.  I've floated the idea that the staff dress like they did when they were 16 - do I need to tell you how well that went over???


Till next time.

Wordless Wednesday

Out Of My Routine Part 2

Love the Border!

Nothing inspires you more than to be surrounded by creative people creating!  Kaye gave us vague supply lists which made perfect sense to her and almost no sense to this Kaye's College newbie.  It was hard to let go, to just bring what appealed to me, in amounts that appealed to me.  I'm not usually an organized person but I've traveled enough to know that if I don't have a detailed list of what needs to go into the suitcase - well you end up in Minnesota in the winter with ONE turtleneck and a bunch of undershirts.  Ask me how I know that . . .

So Kaye's list of just bring 2-3 yard cuts of backgrounds, light and dark FQs, a good variety of FQs had me wailing to Jill and Karen.  I finally sat down one morning and took all Kaye's emails and made a list of what she wanted in some sense of order.  I am sure Jill laughed her head off when she opened her email with her copy but Karen's reply of "Bless you!" made me feel much better that at least someone else was as lost as I was!

Now Karen is more of a control freak than I am, Jill maybe a bit more and I'm willing to go with the flow -IF I have some clue of where the flow is and a somewhat general direction of where it's going.  HA - throwing all the fabric into the suitcase and machine box and HOPING some of it would work for whatever we were going to be doing was a total leap of faith!

The magic of the whole week was Kaye enabled us to design.  To take her projects and go in a new direction with them - combine them, change them, make new from them and it was amazing to watch what was happening around the room.  Of course once I got something in my mind's eye -did I have the fabric to actually do it?  Noooooooo.  Everyone shared - fabric, tools, opinions, suggestions.

I was surrounded by a group of amazing women - creatively and business wise.  If you were stuck on a design, someone could help you.  Didn't know what color to choose for a border, someone offered an opinion - lots of someones.  Kaye was a constant inspiration.  Had a question about staff, classes, fabric companies, you name it - someone in that room had been in that same position and told her story.  Networking, it was wonderful!

Delectable Sunrise

I scribbled furiously in my graph paper notebook, itched to get to the lap top and Electric Quilt and designed on the fly playing with colors and fabrics.

Did I finish anything - not one blessed thing!  I came home with as many UFOs as I thought I would but best of all, I came home with ideas.  Ideas for classes, clubs, events, staff trainings and more.

Summer's Breeze

I have finished one thing since I came home.  Notice the pieced border?  Love it!

 It was an amazing week, one I'm definitely going to do again next year!

Get Out Of Your Routine

Sometimes you just need to get out of your routine - or rut - and do something different to stimulate your creative side.  I think we can all easily slip right into the rut of looking at the same things, doing the same things, making the same things and then wonder why we are bored.  Why wouldn't we be bored?  We never see anything that excites us!  Or in my case, you slip into the rut of never having time to sew and before you know it, you don't have time to sew or design because you don't make the time, there's too many other things you've gotten used to doing.

So, two friends of mine talked me into attending Kaye England's College for shop owners in Fort Meyer's Florida week before last.  Jill Reicks has been attending for years, telling me I should be going for years and of course I never had the time.  Karen Montgomery decided she was running away to Kaye's College this year and I was running with her.  So we did.  Yup, I chucked it all - the store, the grandbabies, you name it, I chucked it and ran away with Karen and Jill.  Should have done it years ago!

First I had to gather up all my supplies and the list was loooooooonnnnnnnngggggg,  Jim neatly packed some of my fabric in with my machine that was shipped.  40-50 YARDS!  What didn't fit in here, went in my suitcase with rulers, needles, threads, rotary cutting mat, scrapbooking supplies (?), journaling supplies (?), and I still had to fit clothes!






This is what was in my suitcase.  I did manage to get clothes in there and have it weigh 48.5 pounds!

All this stuff belongs to Therese Gansen (Jill's daughter) and I .  I could look window and watch the boats go by . . . .

When I turned around, this was the rest of the room. There were 42 lucky people here this time.

Mine and Karen's stash under the table.

I arrived at 10:30 and was sewing by 5.  Kaye had a mystery project & a pizza party for us that first night.

This is all I'm going to show you of the mystery.  If I show you anything else, it won't be a mystery will it? Look for this on the class schedule this spring.  (First I have to finish it or borrow Karen's sample!)

All this and it was just the first night!  Next post I'll share some of the projects and inspirations from the wonderfully inspiring week I spent out of my rut but here's a teaser of the view off our balcony . . . . .

Till next time.

Wordless Wednesday