An Awesome Saturday

.It was a day full of driving and shopping with my two buddies, Bailey and my hubby. We headed out to Lancaster County with our own agendas. First stop was Beikers for lots of juices peaches to make peach jam. 

There was an adorable Amish girl and her mother sitting outside selling peach smoothies. 

I couldn't resist and I realized that I guzzled down half my smoothie before I thought to take a photo! The girls mother was happy for me to snap a photo of my smoothie maker! (Usually they are camera shy. )

The next stop was our favorite produce stand. 

Bushels of Roma tomatoes for $4 each. Watermelons for $2. Heirloom tomatoes for 50c each. All on the honor system. Most of you know that I have turned the kitchen over to Don. Lots of work!

The next stop was for me. 

Hinkletown Sewing Center. It's Bernina heaven. 

And if you think the Amish are shy and retiring, you haven't met Irv Zimmerman and his daughter Irma. They have a twinkle in their eye and a lilt to their voice and can upsell anything. I had done my research and had a good idea of what I wanted. Besides a great price and a good trade-in price, I went home with this beauty. 

There was still daylight, so we headed to Lititz. Patti Strine, Program Chair for a guild I had visited last week told me about a fabric store that I had never visited. In Lancaster? Really? How could that be? I thought I knew them all. Of course I had to check it out. 

Weavers Dry Goods. Don't let this view fool you. Once you enter, the shop goes on and on with some very good prices. The fabric was well organized and I found lots of bright, clear fabrics. I'll be heading back. Among my purchases was this great matchbox car fabric. 

I used it for my first sewing project with my new machine to make pillowcases for ConKerr cancer, now called A Case For Smiles. It's my quilt guilds community outreach project for the month of September. Most people choose pretty fabric suitable for girls. Of course, being the mother of boys, I had to choose fabric suitable for boys. 

A wonderful day, capped off with an outdoor lunch at a dog friendly restaurant in downtown Lititz with a little more shopping - just for fun. 

Quadruplets!

The Jewish High Holidays(HH) mark the end of summer for me.  They will be here soon and I will be sad that the summer will disappear. Three years ago, I made two HH covers for my synagogue, Temple Sholom, in Broomall.

This year I was asked to make 2 more companion covers for the other 2 Torahs  that we have in our possession. The clergy loved the pomegranate quilting so much that they wanted that included in the new covers.  We decided to continue with the panels in the bottom center and chose 2 more holiday themes.

The new ones were the Torah

And for the second one Ithey chose the Etrog and Lulav, symbolic of the holiday, Sukkot.

I started making the Torah covers as a wrap around quilt.  The Rabbi and I came up with this idea as a collaboration.

with a wooden top

The tops for these covers were handcrafted by a fellow congregant named Richard Wagner.  He did a beautiful job and carved the edges:

The lip has Velcro and so does the cover.  It makes it easy on and easy off.  This facilitates storage and cleaning, since these covers are only used for less than a month.

It will be a joy to see these in use this year.  I feel like a Mother Hen when I sit among the other congregants and watch the clergy open the ark and take out the Torah with "my" cover on it.

Floor Cloths, The Fusco Way

Teresa Fusco is an amazing quilter and teacher. She is not afraid of color. She visited my quilt guild, Calico Cutters and I was lucky to take her floor cloth workshop with my DIL. It was a very fun day and not having to pack up and schlep my sewing machine was a bonus. 

The floor cloths are created by gluing fabric to a linoleum base. 

My DIL is a natural. She loves crafting, as she calls it. 

This is her floor cloth In progress. She is going to use it in her kitchen. I love the coffee cups. 

Teresa spent 2 nights with me. We had a home cooked meal the first night, thanks to my hubby. The second night we went out to a local restaurant, which was perfect after a busy day of gluing fabric! Creating is such tiring work. Ha! During dinner we decided to head home and make a Curvalicious floor cloth. I cut out the pieces for her and while she was working on that floor cloth, I was finishing mine from class. 

The purple batik was the one that Don made in Bali!

Here are both of mine. 

Both of us glued down the circles. 

If you want to learn more about Teresa and see some of her quilts, you can visit her website: www.TeresasQuiltingStudio.com. 

At our guild's regular monthly meeting the next day, I was so happy to see a finished Beachalicious by Beth McNutt. 

And a Curvalicious quilt in progress by Jean Fox. This is such an unusual design. 

Syracuse Wrap Up

The show is over and I am decompressing at home. I had no time to post photos while I was there, so I have a buch to share. AQS did a wonderful job of advertising the show on TV and through quilt shops. There were a bunch of buses each day. The ebb and flow of quilters was unpredictable. Some days I didn't make a sale until 10:30 and the show opened at 9:00AM. It took a while for people to migrate down to aisle 600. I connected with a few shop owners and met so many wonderful quilters, lots of Canadians, who were willing to watch my demo. Curvalicious peeked out of lots of bags as my customers walked around that I developed a reputation as the woman selling those green rulers!

Quilters that I've met other places and some friends stopped by to say hi. Cheryl took one of my silk dupioni workshops in Delaware. Instead of making a wallhanging, she made a bag. How clever is that?

There were 10 longarm dealers. Companies are jumping on this bandwagon. It was a good place for comparison. Believe it or not, I had almost no time for shopping. All I bought was three 1/2 yard pieces of fabric. A couple of pieces for Curvalicious backgrounds and I just loved the one with the Adirondack chairs. 

The competition quilts were top notch. Some of them were just so brilliant that it made my jaw drop. Here are some of my favorites, although maybe not the top winners. 

Best of show. 

Kathy McNeil

Susannah Kipp created my favorite. Can you guess why?

I love every quilt that Janet Stone creates. 

I just love anything cake related and the quilting was amazing. Linda Neal and Jackie Brown from Texas must have so much fun making this together. 

My friend Terry Kramzar had a beautiful quilt in the show. 

There was also lots of special exhibits. Thomas Knauer, who hopefully will be coming to our guild in 2017, shared a bunch of quilts with the title, "The Message is the Medium" or was it "The Medium is the Message". 

This quilt was the gay pride flag quilted with the traditional wedding ring pattern. Lisa Sipes quilted almost all of Thomas' quilts. 

Dresden plates representing pie charts. 

We tried to have some fun dinners, even when we were exhausted. After Dinosaur BBQ, we ate at Funk N Waffles and Wegmans!

The waffles were a bit strange and the paintings on the wall matched. 

I think it was a college dive. 

By the time the show ended on Saturday at 5 PM, the hall was quiet and the vendors were chomping at the bit to start packing up. 

It took one hour to pack all my stuff and we hit the road. It felt so good to sleep in my own bed.