Seeing Stars!

It has been a busy few days. We spent the weekend at the cottage and got to spend the time with Chris and Anne, always a fun time. Our niece is getting married in May so there was the family/neighborhood bridal shower to attend and we had lots of laughs. We did a cookbook for her and since she loves to garden, we each took a vegetable and gave her recipes and some seeds for those vegetables. My vegetable was carrots and fortunately I had a few carrot recipes. Wal-Mart also had Easter items on their clearance and guess what - lots of crazy carrot items....a fiber-optic carrot, a carrot baseball bat, carrot bowling pins and a pick up sticks in a carrot. Jim made her a goofy gardener's survival kit with the silly carrots and it provided a lot of laughs. On Sunday morning the dock went in but with white caps on the lake and snow in the air, the boats will wait for warmer weather. Yesterday we woke to 22* and snow. April???

The Rosemont IQA Show was a lot of fun. We went on Preview Night but only had 3 hours to see the whole thing. Not enough time! Preview was shortened by 2 hours this year and it really made a difference. There were some awesome quilts and too many vendors for such a short time. I spent too much and didn't get to see everything but what I did see was great.

The quilter returned seven quilts to me on Friday so I have lots of binding to be done. All but one were scrappy, utility kind of quilts and I wasn't thrilled with any of them when they were sent to her. However, the gal made silk purses out of sow's ears! I was sooo pleased with the way those simple quilts turned out. The 7th one was one that will be appliqued after the quilting...a new technique for me. I'm hoping to get it done soon and will post a picture of it. It is called Columbine and was in AP&Q about a year ago. The stars quilt at the left is one of 3 identical ones that I made out of a bunch of blocks that were hanging around after a summer weekend retreat at a friend's lake house. They will make great gifts for Michael's pals or for some needy kidlets. Amazing what some nice quilting will do for a bunch of scraps! :>)

Tomorrow, a special thank you to Carolyn for the tag. Tonight I'm off to put my feet up, watch the dancing stars and do some binding on one of the star quilts.