Quilt Monday

Kevin the kids and I spent a nice weekend on his parent’s tree farm this past weekend. I asked Laurie, my Mother-in-law, about some of the quilts in the house and unfolded them and told me all about their history. I learned that Kevin has quilters on both sides of his family (yes, I’m feeling a bit inadequate right now) and that those women could do some pretty interesting things with feedsack fabrics. I really want to try a quilt of my own this winter. Although nothing this complicated at first. Or this big (one of the quilts was nine feet by seven feet!). I think I’ll start with something crib-sized for Quinnie.







Laurie also showed me this nice bit of redwork done by Kevin’s grandma.



She also gave Quinnie these two dolls made of wool that she used to play with in the late forties.


The kids had a great time on the farm. It’s woolybear season and the kids found a bunch of them to watch. They also enjoyed “driving” the tractors and doing other farm-related activities.

This week I’m hoping to make some headway on the kids Halloween bags. I’m not happy with my color choices for the wool felt I bought, but It’s getting too late for me to order anything else. I’m going to just keep going with what I have. If you don’t hear from me before then, I’ll post my progress on Friday.

Autumn Hail Storm

About 20 minutes after getting home with the kids this past Wednesday evening, an enormous hail storm blew in. Kevin and I have never seen anything like it. The kids were pretty scared (it was really loud) so we spent some time in the basement. When it was over, we came back upstairs we went outside and marveled at our backyard with it’s quarter-sized hail pieces scattered among the autumn leaves.


We brought bowls outside and the kids started collecting the hail pieces. Did I mention it had been 82 degrees during the day? It was so weird to suddenly have ice covering everything.

The hail damaged both cars. But even worse, our slate roof is in very bad shape now after the storm. Along with the gutters, window casings, and a couple of screens. So it looks like I’ll be spending a lot of time on the phone this week trying to put things back together.

I. Can't. Wait.

The premire issue of Craft is available on newsstands Oct. 17th. Just signed up for my subscription today. Hope it arrives on time!

Happy Sunday

Happy Sunday, everyone. Kevin and I just got back from a lovely two-day getaway to Chicago to celebrate our anniversary. While we were there we had a wonderful dinner at Café Spiaggia where my cousin Dave works as the sous-chef. We let Dave surprise us and prepare dishes that he thought we would like. It was amazing – by far the best meal we’ve ever had in this country. Definitely a night to remember.

Unfortunately, my ‘plan’ of shopping for vintage fabric went unrealized, as I didn’t really have an actual plan, didn’t do any research before hand, and didn’t stumble into any fabric shops while walking around. Next time I’ll have to plan a little better.

In any case, we had a great time, and even met up with friends Sarah and Jason on Saturday night for dinner and drinks.


The photo above is one of the few we took on the trip, Kevin snapped this one of me standing on the Michigan Ave. bridge.