4th Grade Field Trip to Madison

Last Friday I chaperoned DD's 4th grade field trip to Wisconsin's state capital in Madison, WI. Since I grew up in Indiana, I had never been to the Wisconsin state capital. I found it really a great place to see. Here's a picture of the front of the capital building.



We had a great tour guide (we were in a group of about 50 kids and 10 adults) who was very knowledgeable about the building, its history, and events.

The rooms in the 2nd floor wings had beautiful glass ceilings to let in the light. Of course, I saw quilt patterns everywhere!

This is the parquet floor in one of the conference rooms. Look familiar?

There were wonderful mosaics on the wall around the rotunda. This one was my favorite one; its Lady Liberty. Sorry the picture is so bad, I took it from about 100 feet away (across the rotunda).

This is the railing for the gallery overlooking the assembly room. See the "W" in the iron work for Wisconsin?

More wonderful architecture in the main area of the wings (2nd floor). Alot of natural sunlight with the glass ceilings and this clerestory.

After we went to the capital building, we went to the museum, then to the Cave of the Mounds just west of Madison. Pretty cool caves, easily accessible, and great colors and formations. Here's DD in front of some formations inside the cave.

And here's DD curled up on her seat in the bus for the trip back to the school. She took a 45 minute nap on the way back (so did her teacher and the principal, but they didn't curl up in the seat like she did).

It was a great trip and I'm glad I went.

Spring Bloom Mini Quilt Progress

Here's where I am on the Spring Bloom Mini Quilt I'm making for the swap. I'm in the middle of blanket stitching down the applique on the flowers and leaves. I've got all the leaves done, now I need to do the flowers. Then I have buttons for the center of the flowers.

I have to figure out how to quilt it. Any ideas would be appreciated.

Look What I Got in the Mail!

My swap parnter sent me a wonderful package this week all the way from Ontario, Canada!

I got this beautiful wall hanging, a really cool notions box, scissor fob, and pin cushion! She also included some neat stationary. Thank you so much Kaaren! Here's her blog: http://thepaintedquilt.blogspot.com/

I fianlly decided that the tulips just weren't working for me (I probably made about a dozen different layouts and wasn't thrilled with any of them, so I'm now working on an entire new design from the same magazine.

I'll keep you posted on the progress.

Need Help from You

As you may be aware if you're following my blog, I'm working on a Spring Bloom Mini Swap project. I finally got the tulip pieces cut out and somewhat put together.

I've been planning on mounting them on the background fabric in straight lines, but I also kinda like the scattered approach. What do you think?

Of course, the scattered approach will be a big pain to applique'. Maybe I'll reduce the number of leaves.

We're going camping this weekend, so tonight I've got to mow the lawn, buy the groceries, pack food, pack suitcases, etc. So I won't be able to get back to this until Monday after we get back (assuming I'll have any energy).

What do you think?

Spring Bloom Swap Quilt

Here's the fabrics that I'm using for the swap quilt. I love the colors. I picked them specifically because they remind me of tulip colors (one of my favorite spring flowers). The floral with the white background is for the backing.

I'm going to take the idea from this magazine example (McCalls Quick Quilts, I think) and modify it (no purple, and needs to be much smaller). All tulips. What do you think?

Well, I'm packing up to go to Dad's for the weekend. I'll get to use my new quilted tote!

Have a good weekend, all.

Quilted Tote Done!

Here's my quilted tote, DONE! Well, I'm supposed to but a button on the flap for decoration, but will wait until I can find one I like (a wooden one to match the dowels, I think). The tote is huge, big enough to carry a couple of quilts in. It's for carrying projects to retreats and classes, so it has pockets for rulers and cutting mats and stuff. I'm so glad it's completed. I love the colors, so bright and warm.

I've got two projects that I need to start next. One is a wall hanging for the Quilting Gallery Spring Blooms Mini Quilt Swap that I signed up for. I received my swap partner's name and color preferences yesterday so I have some direction on which way to go. I have a couple of ideas running around in my head and need some time for that to percolate.

My other next project is using the Fruit Ladies fabric that came out a few years ago and make a throw for a friend of mine. I saw this fabric for the first time over Christmas this year. It really makes me giggle. Pictures of the fabric coming soon for those of you who don't know what it looks like.

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all of you.

Here's a picture I took in my garden Friday morning of my flowers in bloom. As you can see, here in Wisconsin we're rather behind on the garden. Some of my friends in Indiana are already seeing flowers on their strawberries, but here we're just getting daffodils (and the beginning of one of my peonies). In the upper right hand corner you can see what's left of my tulips. The deer got in my beds about a week ago and ate most of the tulips and the crocus. We have a herd of about 7 deer here in town that just go after anything they can get their hands on.

Here's my pink bleeding heart. Gotta love this sweet little plant. Its about 12 inches tall and every year I wonder if its going to come up and every year it does. I'm waiting for it to get bigger, but it seems perfectly happy at its current size.

I was home on Friday morning because the men came to install my new patio sliding door. My house is 40+ years old and the slider to the back yard was original to the house. Well, as we all know, heat efficient windows were not all that great in the 60's and that aluminum slider sucked enough heat out of the house to keep my back deck warm all winter long. So I bought a new slider and it was installed on Friday morning. Here's some (bad) before and after pictures.

Before









After

Ignore that deck that needs to get stained (again) this summer. Its something else on my list of things to do.






I'm very happy with the new door, although I didn't realize that the glass (super duper efficient) was going to be shaded (not clear glass). But it's wonderful and beautiful. I guess now I'll have to think about window dressings for it.