What a week!

Wow - I have so many fun things to share with you! My friend Nancy came to visit from California.  Her son lives in Minnesota, so she was with him for a week, then we met in Waverly, IA and he handed her off to me for another week.  The original plan was to stay home and sew on Monday and Tuesday, but then I was invited to have lunch with Tommie of TJ Lane Thimbles!  I met Tommie's apprentice, Jenny, at the quilt show in KC.  Are you familiar with their thimbles?  They are sterling silver and are all just amazing works of art.  Nancy gave me one with a bee on it for my birthday and I cherish it.  I knew she would enjoy meeting Tommie and seeing her studio and hearing about her process.  It was soooo fun!  We saw some of her masterpieces and also learned about her process and saw some thimbles that were still in the works.  Very interesting and fun! I'm so glad that I met Jenny and that she extended the invitation for a visit and lunch.  I've known about TJ Lane for a long time, but I didn't always know that she only lives about 12 miles from me!  Such a small world!

Here are my thimbles - the one on the right with the bee is the one that Nancy gave me.  When we visted, we saw these cute little thimble charms and just couldn't resist.  Nancy got hers on a bracelet, but I want to combine mine in with one of my paper pieced pendants.

We didn't have a full day of sewing, as planned, but we certainly enjoyed the visit!  And, we did sew after that.  My hubby took a few vacation days to make ruler boxes for me to take to the retreat, and he also did most of the cooking for us - which was just awesome!

Tuesday we sewed at home all day.  One time while visiting The Little Red Hen in Muscatine, IA, I bought this Funky Chicken kit. Certainly not my normal taste, but I thought the chickens were cute, and I wanted to try stitching blocks.  I fell in love with it!  The blocks were so fun to stitch (and you know...I needed to add more hand work to my list!).  When Nancy saw this, she wanted to make it too, so she ordered the kit. We both had all of our blocks stitched, and decided this would be a good project to finish while she was here.

Here are a few of the blocks close-up - aren't they cute?

Nancy left her quilt here so I could take it to be quilted by my friend Kym Ward.  I need to piece the back together for her, and also one for me.  Nice to have a finish!  If you NEED to make one of these, they are still available at The Little Red Hen - if they aren't on the website, I know they have them in the shop, so give them a call.

I will save our next adventure for the next post.

Have a great weekend!