Long Time Gone

I haven't blogged since February.  Wow, time flies.  I hardly know where to start.

 It's been a very long 6 months.  I mentioned in my last post that our son was ill and had surgery.  Well, his recovery took way longer than we thought.  He finally came out of it by May/June.  During that time, my husband was traveling a lot.  And when he was home, he was sick.  (one of the joys of flying these days)  I got something too, that took me too long to recover from.  Like I said, not a good 6 months.  And I was so busy and/or sick, I couldn't get any sewing in, or blogging or anything to blog about.  So, I was quite frustrated.

However, in May I took the trip of a quilter's lifetime!  I took a trip with my California friends and guess where we went?

Yup, we went to Missouri to visit Missouri Star Quilt Company, and about 6 or 7 other quilt shops, some in Missouri and a few in Kansas.  OMG, that was sooo fun!  Needless to say, I've shot my fabric budget for the year!

This was one of our 1st stops.  Harpers Fabric & Quilt Company, in Overland Park, Kansas.  This was a great shop and we all bought fabric here.  Actually we all bought at least something in every shop we visited!  I love the quilt on the bed.

I think our last stop on Thursday was Angela Walters' shop Quilting Is My Therapy in Liberty, Missouri.  If you've seen The Midnight Quilt Show, you've seen Angela.  We were hoping to get to meet Angela in person, but sadly, she was at Quilt Market at the time.   

This was our group at breakfast on Friday as we were about to go to Missouri Star.  I think you can tell how excited we were!

When you first walk into the main building of MSQC in Hamilton, MO, this is what you see.  A display of the latest weekly tutorial from Jenny, as well as any Daily Deals.

And this was the new display on Saturday.  We were hoping to meet Jenny while we were there, but again, she was at Quilt Market.  Bummer!

This was the stairs up to one of the shops in another of the MSQC buildings.  I thought it was real cute.

By the way, we found out that JC Penney grew up in Hamilton.  His childhood home was just down the street a little ways from MSQC's main building.

We stayed at a hotel in St.Joseph, MO.  We learned that it is the home of the Pony Express.  It ran from St. Joe all the way to Sacramento, Calif.  This is a mural across the street from the museum.  The museum was fun and also educational.  Just down the street from here was Jesse James' childhood home.  We didn't get to see that, as we had to head back to the airport.

If you ever get the chance to go to Missouri Star, I urge you to go!  It was so fun, everyone was so nice and Missouri is a beautiful state!

I know I mentioned in my last blog post that I was doing an on-line swap of wonky stars.  This is just about half of the stars I received.  Aren't these fun?  I haven't yet gotten a photo of all of them together.  I've got two quilts to finish and then I want to start working on this.

I mentioned on my last blog post another swap I was going to do this spring, the 6 inch Churn Dash block swap with Barb of Fun with Barb blog.  

Here are my 4 different fabric runs for the blocks made for the Modern group.  We had to use at least 2 different fabric pairings.  

After lots of cutting and sewing, here are all 54 of my Churn Dash blocks ready to swap!  

If you're interested in making some 6 inch Churn Blocks for yourself, here is the link to Barb's tutorial for them.  Actually, the tutorials for all the blocks for all the swaps are on this page.  The Churn Dash blocks are at the bottom of the page.

Here are all of the blocks I received in the swap, laid out in color order.  Aren't they wonderful?  Rainbow order always makes me happy!  A huge Thank You to my swap buddies!

I plan on being back soon, as I still have more to share with you.  Have a creative week!