Doing Dallas

Early Friday morning Aunt Maggie, Aunt Lois and I hopped in the car and headed for Dallas!
When we got there the first thing we did was go straight to the Dallas Quilt Show or also known as Quilt Celebration 2013, hosted by the Dallas Quilters Guild. Our first order of business was to deliver Matt and Val's wedding quilt to Kathy Bradbury of Bear Paw Machine Quilters so that she could take the quilt home with her to long arm machine quilt it!

 Aunt maggie was so kind as to take pictures of the whole process! Let me tell you, It was kind of a relief to hand the quilt over to Kathy! Kind of like handing in a final essay or something! She has some great ideas and I cant wait to see what she does with it!

We did a general walk around the rest of the show but didn't stress about seeing everything, because we knew we'd be back Saturday. So we headed to the hotel which was across the street from Matt and Val's apartment to get Aunt Maggie, Aunt Lois and Pat checked in! (I got to have a sleep over at my sisters.)

 Check out the floor on that bathroom! I LOVE it! It will go in the floor on my dream house.

Valerie received a last minute assignment Friday afternoon/evening, so Matt, her husband, drove all of us ladies (my this time Cousin Pat had joined us) to a fantastic pizza place called Fireside Pies.

Pat, Maggie, Lois

 Matt, Me

Aunt Maggie has Celiac which means she cannot have anything with Gleuten in in and Valerie (my sister) did her research for the trip! She found out that Fireside Pies has a Gluten free pizza crust (above) so Aunt Maggie could have pizza too! The rest of us had the regular crust but upon sampling them, there was hardly a difference! We all had more than enough pizza and ate some of the leftovers with dinner the following night!

Valerie joined us toward the end of our meal and tried each of our pizzas for her dinner! (That's the way to avoid entree envy if I ever saw one!) Then went to their apartment for some visiting time!

It was so nice to be re-united with my sister again! I have MISSED her! 

On Saturday morning the quilt show didn't start until 10:00 so Matt took us to Children's Medical Center, where he works, and showed us the Train Room!

It was so neat to have an official tour guide! The train room was thought up by one of the CEO's of the hospital and features many trains zipping around on the many tracks. In this section you can see the Dallas skyline. They change the scenes multiple times a year so that the children who unfortunately have frequent visits to the hospital can have some distractions. They even have a scavenger hunt! (Matt didn't tell us about that until after, for fear that we might want to spend all day looking for things!)

 After our train tour, Matt dropped us off at the front door of the quilt show. Now we didn't actually know the quilt show would be there until after our trip had been planned, but what a great coincidence!
I've been eyeing  long arm quilting machines and Aunt Maggie and I had a great time trying them out! I also found some fabric I'd been hunting for, my favorite thread, and a  walking foot to replace the one I broke last week or so.

 Another highlight of the show was that the Dallas K-9 search and rescue was there. Aunt Maggie participates in the California Search and rescue so that was pretty exciting for us to see!

Valerie had been able to get out of work earlier than she had originally thought that afternoon so she picked us up from the show and us girls went out for burgers! Once again all of her research was apparent because she found Village Burger Bar and they had just added Gluten Free hamburger buns as a menu option!

 Aunt Maggie said it was one of the best Gluten Free bun's she's ever tasted!

My Burger and fries were delicious too! These fries were some of the tastiest shoe string fries! So tasty in fact that they were half-way gone before I remembered to take a picture!

We went back to Matt and Val's apartment for more relaxing visiting and its at this point that you start to notice more and more of their apartment buildings charm! It's an old building and you see great signs of it everywhere! Start with the woodwork over the entry:

and beautiful scroll work on their mail boxes.

Then notice the OTIS elevator!! I couldn't think of what movie it was in....then I finally remembered just today! It was Kate & Leopold!

 Anyway, the elevator to get to their floor is this great Otis Elevator!

  Metal door gate and everything!

 There was a big storm Saturday night and Matt was actively tracking it on his iPad and out the window. 

We also played a round of this fun game they found called Tsuro. 

Then Val and I talked and talked until we both fell asleep on the couch!

Sunday morning we were dealing with side effects from the time change (and staying up too late) so we got a slow start.

Valerie and I grabbed some Starbucks coffee. (Yes they have Starbucks in Garden City, but it's in Target and that's just not quite the same.)

 I'm really glad, that I remembered to get a group picture! (Thank you Matt!) There are three generations in this picture!

From Left to Right: Aunt Maggie (My Dad's Sister), Valerie, Great Aunt Lois, Cousin Pat (Lois's Daughter, Maggie's Cousin), Me (Jessica)

The grand finale of our Dallas weekend was a trip to Lulu's Gluten Free Bakery. 

Whether you have Celiac or not, this place had confections fit for a queen!

And a queen she was! Aunt Maggie found lots of goodies to take with her!

  So did the rest of us!

 Aunt Lois had a cupcake,

Pat tried two different breads and took the rest home for Monday's breakfast (smart move!)

 and Valerie and I each got a different kind of quiche to share. Her favorite was the spinach and mine the tomato ham.

 I also got to meet these guys after seeing them through the window! They're poodles! I never would have guessed and they were SO SOFT! Their owner says they get groomed about once a month with the same length cut allover.

Aunt Lois, Aunt Maggie and I drove back to Olton Sunday afternoon. 

When we got here, Uncle Van had these two beautiful surprises waiting for us! Whata guy!

WIP Wednesday-Mariners Compass

 One of our projects while in Olton, before we go to Dallas, is to finish Valerie and Matt's (my sister and brother in law) wedding quilt! This has been one grand group effort! Last fall there was a whole group of us at Quilt Camp working on it! (Including the happy couple!)

 After quilt camp we still had some things left to do, and I hadn't done them yet sooo I brought the quilt to Texas and Aunt Maggie and I are finishing them up! Here Aunt Maggie is doing one of the mitered corner seams on my cute little featherweight!

We've got two of the final border strips on so far. Only two left to go!

By the time a quilt is THIS BIG even a little border is a big task!

The blocks are paper pieced in the Mariner's Compass pattern! My mom started this quilt many years ago and had 5 of the 12 blocks completed before she passed away. 

Now for the final two border strips, to pick out a back and find a machine quilter!!!

I'm not even going to attempt to free motion this bad boy!

I'm linking up with Freshly Pieced WiP Wednesday.

Quilt Camp 2012

On the 20th of September I flew from Colorado Springs to Fresno, California and got to attend a four day Quilt Camp at one of my favorite places, Camp Keola at Huntington Lake!

Here is just about the whole group in attendance! It's great because we're composed of two core groups but now that this is becoming an annual event we get so excited to see each other every year!

Here is our core group that started as the North Fresno Church Quilters, but we're bringing people from all over now!

Our main project for this quilt camp was a wedding quilt for my sister Valerie and her new husband Matt! My mom had started a Mariner's Compass quilt, and completed 6 blocks before she passed away  from Multiple Myeloma. When we were going through her projects Val mentioned that she thought that would be a fantastic wedding quilt for her and Matt. Since they weren't engaged I wasn't in any hurry. Then they got married in Las Vegas and we were too late. SO this quilt is kind of an after the fact wedding quilt.

At quilt camp there were a number of people working on this beast: Aunt Maggie, Tanya (Cousin), Kim (Cousin), Cindy (Matt's Mom), Me (sister), Jennifer (Friend) and even Valerie and Matt!

It is seriously quite the group effort!

The food NEVER fails to impress and this year one of my friends Keila was the cook! She saved me some of my favorite (French Toast) and made some of the most delicious cinnamon rolls ever!

Both Keila's and my parents worked at Camp Keola as young adults and then we both worked as head cooks at the camp as well! Our recipes and cooking styles are very similar so her cooking tasted just like a home cooked meal!

There were many fantastic completed quilt tops!

And even some purses and aprons!

Though they're not pictured, we had some knitting and weaving too!

It was a great time. I cant wait to reserve my spot for next year!