The good news is – the missing quilt, “Mon Grand Pere” is found and not a moment too soon as it has been accepted along with “Lazy Afternoon” to hang in New Visions’ “Culture and Agriculture”, a multi media exhibit in Wisconsin – their 24th annual exhibit of art with an agricultural theme. I don’t usually enter shows that are not primarily quilting except for the local art guild, but this one seemed right up my alley!

The bad news is – I have been so busy lately that I missed the deadlines for AQS Knoxville and Aullwood Audubon shows!

I had hoped to get the binding on the Longhorn quilt yesterday but it was a rare lovely day with no rain so we tackled the damage that occurred last winter to the fish pond/water garden. This involved resetting all of the rock work for about half of it and it is pretty good sized. We got a really good start and will be able to finish in another day, but not today. It’s raining. Again.

No problem, I’ll finish the binding instead!

The good news is, my entry to Celebrate Spring in Chicago, “Spring Burning” sold! That was an unexpected surprise. I hope the new owner enjoys it a whole lot!

The bad news is that my prize winning entry to Denver Int which closed May 2 is not home yet and I’m getting worried. Mon Grand Pere is a favorite and I don’t want to loose it!

All four of the Azaleas I planted this spring are blooming. Crossing my fingers and hoping they survive Kansas. We’ve been having cool, rainy weather which is perfect for them, but summer is coming! I finished the quilting yesterday on the Longhorn piece, blocked it, and now just have to square it up and bind it and it will be done.

I’ve been quilting off and on all week and have the piece less than half finished. As usual I am putting an insane amount of quilting on it.

It is still in the machine so I had to get close to snap this photo which seemed a little washed out so I adjusted the intensity and don’t know how accurate it will look on other monitors.

The dishwasher decided to die and the repair man said it would be cheaper to buy a new one than to repair it so that entailed a couple of trips to town. My appliances are Bisque – decisions, decisions – upgrade to Stainless? Our kitchen is small and dark so we decided to stay with Bisque. The salesman said some companies are phasing out Bisque, so we decided to go ahead and get a new refrigerator too while we still could. Probably should replace the stove soon as well! Then we should be good to go for another 10 years which unfortunately seems to be the predicted life span of new appliances these days.

I’m running out of Coneflowers patterns, so had to take the time to update that and get it to the printer – that’s a couple of hours trip – and today we have to go and pick them up. So it’s been a crazy week and again today I will not get to quilt very much.

Mon Grand Pere is showing at Denver National and won second place in the wall hangings! The two quilts arrived home yesterday in good shape from AQS along with the ribbon from Lancaster. No judge’s comments, which may come separately.

The Chicago show is on now and you can go here to see pictures. Click on Exhibits in the side bar. All of the entries for “Celebrate Spring” are shown with the winners noted. Nothing for “Spring Burning” this time around, but it looks like a nice show!

Meanwhile, I got the books to a point where I could do the sales tax yesterday, planted four azaleas (Conversation Piece) and worked some more on the Houston entry.

I’ve never had good luck with azaleas, but these were on sale for a good price and healthy looking, and now that I have a shade garden I thought it was worth a try.

I’ve made good progress on the new piece in spite of only having had maybe two days of uninterrupted work on it. I’m at an impasse though right now- not being happy with any of the choices at hand for background. Today with a fresh eye, I will revisit the stash and hope I will not have to shop elsewhere.

Saturday’s mail brought a thin envelope from AQS and the sinking feeling that my entry had been rejected – but NO! – my last entry was the fawn quilt and it is already gone for Paducah. The envelope contained my prize money check for Burlingame Fire at Lancaster. Now that’s a good kind of thin envelope!! (For those of you who are not entering shows – no one wants the thin envelop that only contains a rejection letter; the desired envelope is the one that contains all of the paperwork of acceptance, shipping instructions and a contestant’s ribbon usually. The FAT envelope!)

It was a great trip!! Rose gave me an unexpected treat- lunch and the afternoon in Washington, D.C., hoping to see the famous cherry blossoms, but we were a week too early, though there were a lot of other blooming trees and daffodils out. We couldn’t get very close to the Capitol, they were assembling a motorcade,

so we walked over to the U.S. Botanic Garden and enjoyed the hundreds of orchids on display as well as all of the other exhibits inside the Conservatory – it was pretty cold and windy outside so the tropical atmosphere felt nice!

After that we went to the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian which was very impressive! A special exhibit on display there is art by Brian Jungen who make things out of common items like this Whale skeleton made out of those cheap white plastic lawn chairs.

It was getting late but we managed to squeeze in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History as well, where I really enjoyed seeing the Gems and Minerals and the Hope Diamond.

Then it was time to catch the train back to where we had left the car which for this country girl was an adventure in itself!!

The AQS show in Lancaster was the main reason for the trip, but the next morning we went to the MCC (Mennonite Central Committee) facility where Rose volunteers every Wed and helped with preparations for the big annual quilt sale which will be later this week. I hand sewed sleeves on a couple of wall hangings, cut a bunch of 5.5″ squares and started the marking of a large quilt. After lunch we toured the facility where they are hard at work preparing things to send to Haiti and other disaster sites round the world. Then we had a little show and tell where I showed some of my work. I do think they enjoyed seeing something very different from what they are used to, these ladies are wonderful hand quilters, doing traditional work.

By late afternoon we had to leave and head out to the show for a quick look around before grabbing something to eat and finding the venue for the evening lecture by Karen Stone. When we found “Burlingame Fire” we discovered that it had a Third Place ribbon!! That’s always pretty cool!

The show was on three floors of the Convention Center, downtown and this is it’s first year. There are things that will need tweaking, but all in all, it went well. Some areas were poorly lit and there could have been better signage/information as to where things were. Parking was far away and you needed to take the free shuttle buses back and forth. The vendors were mixed in with the displays and I managed to spend some of my money and return home with a heavier bag, though I did not find the “rock” fabrics I was looking for.

By Friday we had seen everything we needed to at the show, so we spent that day running around. Visited Hershey’s Chocolate World for the factory tour- yum!

More tomorrow!

It occurred to me that I never did show you a full image of Spring Burning. I didn’t want to show it before it was accepted somewhere, but it will be at “Celebrate Spring” in Chicago and is already safely in Houston to go there.  It has a lot of beads that really don’t show up well in the picture.

I felt badly about keeping it so under wraps and that’s the reason I decided to open up the process with the next quilt “Colorado Kids”. Go back to Jan 25 the follow along with the step by step making of that one.

Yesterday I taught a Machine Quilting class at Stitching Traditions in Topeka. It was the class that had to be canceled back when the weather was so bad, but that was not a problem yesterday. Spring was in the air with temperatures in the 60′s! The class went well and everyone made great progress on their way to becoming super machine quilters.

The morning e-mail brought news that “The Merchant’s House” won Viewer’s Choice at the current show at The Topeka Art Guild Gallery.

The show, “Paint Pink” will be up for another month.

When I got home my acceptance letter for AQS was in the mail. “Spring Encounter” was juried in and will be going to Paducah!

Lyric Kinard just wrote a wonderful post about the jury process on her blog. If you have ever wondered about that process check it out. I met Lyric in Houston the year we both had pieces in “I Remember Mama” and she is one of the nicest people I know! How she finds the time to do all that she does with small children at home is beyond me!

Yesterday went well and there should be an article in the paper in a couple of weeks. It was about the AQS show in PA and the two quilts that will be there, “Burlingame Fire” in the contest and “The Old Homestead” in the SAQA exhibit. I am looking forward to flying out to PA to attend the show next month – thank you Rose!

Between that and watching the men’s short program (Olympics Figure Skating) that I had recorded from the night before, I only put in a couple of hours on the kids.

Most of this is not yet sewn and subject to change.

And finally- we have an ear!

Can you stand yet another acceptance announcement? Yesterday I got the news that “Spring Burning” will be going to IQF’s “Celebrate Spring” in Chicago! I am having such a lucky month I think I may go buy a lottery ticket!