Teacher Appreciation

This week is teacher appreciation week at our school and I got the best present ever. A kindergarten student came into the media center yesterday with a handful of clover flowers and said, "These are for you for teacher day for reading to us." I thought it was the sweetest gift a child could have given me. I still have them on my desk, which that could be the reason my allergies are really bothering me today.

Where did the weekend go?

I always have such grand plans for the weekends,
and never get around to doing everything that I plan on doing. I spent mostof Saturday cleaning house. It definitely needed it, since we were out of town last weekend and will be out of town for Mother's Day. I know I have the afternoons, but by the time I get home and cook dinner I don't feel like cleaning house. I did finish up to applique blocks. My friend Krisite, got me hooked on the Carrie Hall Sample from Homestead Hearth. I have two months completed now. The block to the right is the first month. It was actually a lot



easier than I thought it would be. Kristie is doing the country version, and I decided to do the batik version. The other two blocks were actually the third month, the block for the second month looks really had and I skipped it. I have started working on it. I really like the way Homestead Hearth does their block of the month kits. Everything is clearly labeled and there is always enough fabric.
I also finished the book I was reading, Down Where my Love Lives by Charles Martin. I have read several of his other books and really enjoyed them. This was actually his first book, which I think has been republished. If you are looking for a good read, I would highly recommend it.

New Magazine

I have really been trying to not buy as many magazines as usual. I subscribe to several quilting magazines, plus Martha Stewart, Country Living, Paula Deen, and Cook's Country. It is all I can do some months to keep up with those. However, last week I saw the newest issue of Fons & Porter's Easy Quilts and I loved the quilt on the cover. I am attracted to any pattern that includes stars. I picked it up and started looking through it, then found two other quilts that I loved. The one on the cover is called Primary Stars and was made from scraps, and my new mission is to use as many of my scraps as possible. Another pattern that I really liked is called Charade and could easily be made from scraps. It also has stars on it. These were my two favorite patterns in the magazine, although there were two others that I really liked. Both of these will have to go in the "Quilt in Waiting" stack.

One plus to both of these patterns is that they are quick and easy, with fairly large pieces and simple settings.

Wildflower Festival

For the last several years my husband and I have gone to the Wildflower Festival in Gatlinburg, TN. It is the last full week in April every year. Due to our jobs however, we just go up for the weekend. I left school early on Friday and we headed up to get there in time to pick up our hike information. Our first hike was scheduled for Saturday morning at 8:30, there were three guides, each with a different speciality. We felt lucky that one of the guides was an expert on survival in the wilderness, (he is a consultant to Man vs Wild on the Discovery channel) Joe great outdoors man wanted to listen to him. It was a wonderful hike, the wildflowers were all in bloom and I now know what I can eat, and where I can find water in the woods. But with my luck I would not be lost in the spring and if the plants didn't look the same I would have no clue. Our second hike in the afternoon was also very good. It was in an area of the park that we had not previously hiked. The trillium's were in full bloom, the one above is a painted trillium. We took our time driving back yesterday, stopping to do a shop walk on our own, people watching in Cherokee, NC. Cherokee has a Bike week the same week as the Wildflower Festival every year. I enjoy the ride through Cherokee just to look at everyone.

One thing I did enjoy seeing this year was the

painted bears. The Cherokee commissioned

25 native artist to paint bears representing

their culture. This one represents sunset. They are all magnificent.

Virtual quilt show

I first read about the virtual quilt show last several days ago on the Quiltville Yahoo group. I then saw that my friends Becky and Gretchen had blogged about their favorite quilts. I wanted to include my favorite quilt but I had two problems. The first problem I couldn't decide on my favorite quilt, secondly I had camera problems and needed to take new photos of my the tow that I had narrowed it down to. The first one I thought of was my Olivia quilt, this is the quilt that I keep at school. It is made from the Olivia fabric that came out several years ago. Olivia is one of my favorite characters and I really like pigs so this was my first thought for favorite quilt. It is also the first quilt that I went all out on the label. I went online and found an image that I could use of Olivia carrying books and saying reading never wears me out; since quilting and reading are two of my passions this was perfect.

After thinking, I decided that my favorite quilt is the one below with the neutrals and the red stars. Red is my all time favorite color, and I had been collecting neutrals for a while. This is one of the first quilts that I made that wasn't a kit. I love it. I am really thinking about making it again using black fabric instead of the red for the stars. That will probably be a project for another time!
Check out all of the beautiful quilts at Park City Girl. It has been a treat to look at all of them.

April UFO finished

So far I am on track with my goal to complete one UFO each month. The ones I have completed so far, just happened to be the ones that I really didn't have that much more to do. My remaining UFO's aren't as close to being finished. The one I finished last night is the batik version of Pat Sloan's Book Club BOM from last year. I was pleased with the way it turned out. Thanks to Bad Melissa for suggesting the dark turquoise for the corner squares and the middle border, it makes the blocks stand out a little more. I was actually surprised when my husband saw it last night and said he liked it. He usually doesn't like batiks, and this isn't something I would usually do. I used leftovers for everything except the turquoise fabric. Now, to get it quilted someday.

Weekend Fun

Weekend's are so much fun, but they go by soooo quickly. My husband and I went up to our cabin in Blue Ridge over the weekend. It was so good just to get away for a couple of days. On Saturday we went over to Dahalogena for their Bear on the Square arts and crafts festival. We had a lot of fun just looking at everything. There were a lot of crafts booths, fortunately I didn't see anything that I had to have. This year there was also a lot of different music groups playing. We had a lot of fun just listening to music and watching all of the people.

We drove back over the cabin on the "back roads", the drive is beautiful but very, very curvy. The weather was beautiful on Saturday afternoon so we went on a walk to look for some wildflowers. It was really too early for most of them to be blooming. We did see a lot of yellow wood violets, these were right behind our cabin. We also saw several baby, and I do mean baby mice, they are cute to look at out in the woods, I just don't want to find them in the house.