Karen’s Opinion

I had a blast with my sisters and my mom this past weekend. We went to the quilt festival in Cincinnati and shopped until we dropped.
I amazed myself by not buying any more projects. Well, except one. I did buy a pattern to make a pillow. I still have things to make that I bought at the Houston quilt show. That was 2 years ago!
I bought two quilt hangers to display things I have made. I had looked at them online so I saved shipping charges by buying them at the show.

I came home to find that my husband and our daughter had put down laminate flooring in the master bedroom. I love it! We actually took it out of our showroom in our flooring store. The style was discontinued. We put new down in the showroom and this flooring has been sitting in our barn (storage building) for a year, waiting to be installed. That is another advantage to laminate floors. They can be taken up and re-installed! I absolutely love the look in my bedroom. My daughter said I would have been shocked at how much dust was under our bed. I can believe it. We have a Select Comfort bed. It is not easy to vacuum under that type of bed. I think our sinuses will feel better having a hard surface floor in our bedroom. I can’t stop going in there to marvel at it!

“What do you give?” is how the auctioneer began his spiel when starting the auction for each item from a large estate sale. Mom and I headed to a quilt show Saturday but decided to check out an auction first. We were “just going to look”. Famous last words.

Little did we know that this auction had boxes of fabric and quilts. We were as excited as a shopper with a 700 credit score! We had our eye on a quilt top that looked to be from the 1930′s. It was a Grandmother’s Flower Garden pattern. It was not a finished quilt and the rest of the box held “cheater quilts”.

The auctioneer went through box after box of old dishes that included some carnival glass and depression glass. I did pick up a few salad plates and discovered that two of them might be valuable.

I also bought some old fashioned mixing bowls. I knew I better be careful or I’d be checking my free credit score in order to have some money left over to bid on some quilts.

Mom and I were keeping close tabs on the boxes that held the quilts we were interested in and were a bit put out as we watched several ladies rearranging the boxes contents. We rearranged them back to their original contents more than once! I hoped there wouldn’t be a fight before the auctioneer finally got to the boxes of which we were longingly waiting to bid.

The box that held the quilt went for way more than it was worth, ($80.00), but I did get a box that held 19 quilt blocks. I only paid $5.00. The quilt blocks are paper pieced using newspapers dated 1928! I am so excited to have acquired these old blocks.

When we got in the car to head to the quilt show, the temperature was 98 degrees! We were red in the face and sweating profusely. We were kinda gross to go to a quilt show but off we went.

My sister’s “celebration of her birth” is today. She hates the word birthday. We usually wish her a happy day. LOL

I thought about sending her an artificial plant to celebrate her day. Have you seen the flower arrangements used for weddings and receptions? Artificial flowers are so intricate, look as beautiful as the real thing and they don’t need to be watered! No watering is the best thing because my sister is busy. This is a picture of her riding her Harley.

She is also a wonderful grandma to three little girls. She sews clothes, purses, quilts and backpacks for them. She has always been a fabulous seamstress. You should see the beautiful quilts she has made. I hope she likes what I made her for her day. It has a bit of all the new things I have been learning to incorporate into my craft; Embroidery, applique and prairie points that use two colors of fabric.

I am constantly at my sewing table these past few days because my daughter is bringing guests from Michigan when she arrives tonight. My daughter’s friend has a five year old who will also be our guest. That means having a busy little girl in our home. She has been here before and is such a well behaved young lady. Still, it is best not to have valuable projects laying around. Especially ones that entail the use of scissors, pins and needles. Here is a purse I finished recently.

Now, I am cutting fabric to put a binding on a recently finished quilt.

The house feels so quiet. We had such a good time over the Thanksgiving holiday. My husband and brother in-law visited a cool motorcycle museum and then headed to the casino in Michigan City. They each won a little and that made it even more fun. They ate a huge dinner at the buffet and then lost a little bit of their winnings when they revisited the slot machines.

Here is what I worked on: