Fourth of July

My sister Leslie and her friend Maureen came up from Los Angeles on Friday morning and we had a wonderful three full days of quilting!! I set up my 'sewing room' so that Leslie had her own little area table to sew on. We are both taking the online Quilters Palette class, so we put our heads together and got some blocks completed. Here is a shot of Leslie burning the midnight oil.


Solvang has a great Fourth of July parade, but we decided to keep on quiltin' instead. The baby needed her nap and maybe next year she will be able to go and enjoy it more. The weather was great - it maybe reached 88 degrees, there was a good breeze all day, and we had a good day! The fireworks spectaculars on TV provided the color and music we love on this day. And, Neil Diamond sang with the Boston Pops, which was WUNderful!! The neighborhood restrained itself from firing off any of the illegal rockets it had done in past years, so even our dogs found the evening to be okay. They usually cower and pace and run all over the place, trying to get away from the sound of rockets firing.

All good things must come to an end, so Leslie left this morning and our little quilting retreat has ended. We will be going to Long Beach for the BIG quilt festival in late July. In the meanwhile, we do have this quilt to work on. The sampler blocks are very interesting, much different from the standard ones you do in a sampler class. Kudos to Annie and her husband BigGuy for putting it all together! Here are photos of my latest completed blocks, the Butterfly block, created by Annie herself, and the Thistle Block. I will eventually embroider some antennae on the butterfly.