Humble Quilts visits McMinnville

 Yesterday, Lori Dejarnatt presented her program "Why I Quilt" at my quilt guild meeting (Gone to Pieces Quilt Guild) here in McMinnville!  We had a wonderful time and of course she brought a lot of quilts to share with us.  Here are a few pictures.

George Washington Medallian Quilt

Blind Man's Fancy

Wilderness Trail

Lori had a table to sell some of her patterns and fabric.  This is what I bought.

World Map Fabric

I love this quilt!

Thanks, Lori, for coming to share your quilts and enthusiasm with us!

Cats and Houses!

My sister has 2 cats; Button and Zuzu.  I took some pictures of them so I could show some cats on my blog.  

Zuzu likes the room I'm sleeping in, but I don't let her in for the night.  However, she will go in there any chance that she gets.  Here she is lying on my pillow (which I had embroidered for my sister a few years ago).

My sister got a "house" for her cats, which they sometimes go into.  Katie, notice the fish that I made for Zuzu for Christmas.

Zuzu on the coffee table.

This table in the living room has a drawer with catnip in it.  It also has some old slides that we were looking at to determine if they should be tossed or kept.  Zuzu, of course wanted the catnip and was sticking her head down in the drawer.

This is Button.    Button takes longer to warm up to people, but she is a great cat.

 

Boxes always make good beds.

My sister is a piano teacher and Button is helping with the Mendelssohn Concerto!  Always likes to be where the action is.

One day we went to a historic house in the next town that we saw as we were driving past.  We never knew it was here, at least I didn't.  It was actually a house on the Underground Railroad! I didn't take a picture of it.  Very interesting though.  There are more places like that in the area.

We also went to another historic house  that had a doll house which was a replica of another house close by, so we drove by the original home which someone is living in now.  The docent said that a famous movie was made at this house, but I don't remember the name of it.  Doll house and original house below.

I haven't lived here for many, many years and growing up we weren't aware of all the history!  Now that I'm old, history interests me a lot more.

One more house that we went to see was the house where my grandparents lived.  After we moved to the suburbs of Chicago (into the  house that my Grandpa and Dad had built), my grandparents lived with us while my Grandpa built a new house for them about 1/2 mile from our house.  A few days ago my sister and I left a note in the mail box asking if we could see the house and the owner called us and invited us to come over.  My Grandpa built the house in about 1949.  We don't know how many owners have lived there since 1957 when the house was sold, but this couple has been there for 23 years and have made a lot of changes to the house.  It was beautiful and they were so gracious to let us come in and look at it.   See below.

No quilting is being done these days.  I'll be going home on Tuesday.

Trip to Visit My Sister!

 I decided it was time to visit my sister who lives near Chicago since I haven't been here for about 4 years. I have been here almost a week and will leave on Tuesday.  Of course I wanted to visit a quilt shop, which is a shop that specializes in civil war reproduction fabrics.  The name of the shop is The Quilt Merchant in Winfield, Illinois.  I have been there before several years ago and my sister has purchased gift items for me there.  The first thing I saw was a beautiful churn dash quilt and I couldn't resist getting the pattern (I hardly ever buy patterns any more as I have so many books & patterns).  Here is a picture of the pattern and other things that I bought.

I had to limit myself because of only having a small suitcase with me so this shows the fabrics I purchased along with the darling hanger that I can use to hang small quilts.

I hate to say it, but my local quilt shop doesn't have nearly as many CW reproductions as this shop, which is a lot smaller.  I think The Quilt Merchant is similar to Two Thimbles in Washington state.  So, that was really fun and I could have over done it very easily!

One day (which was a very nasty, rainy day) we drove into Chicago to go see the Glessner House, which was built in the 1880s.  The reason we went was that one of our relatives was a maid there in the 1920s and I had never seen it (my sister had).  It turned out to be a lucky day for us in that we got a parking space right in front of the house and were able to get in earlier than allowed for our tour.  Plus we were the only people there for the tour so it was like a personal tour.  They were excited to know that our relative (my Mom's first cousin) had worked there.  I'm sorry that I didn't take pictures of the inside, but if you are curious, you can look it up on the internet at https://www.glessnerhouse.org/the-house.  I did take a picture of the front door.  The owner of the home was a vice-president of International Harvester and in that era, this neighborhood had 90 mansions in it.

This house wasn't your average mansion and when it was built, the neighbors didn't like it at all.  But the inside was more like a cozy family home with gorgeous furnishings that weren't real opulant but were well made and lovely.   They had wall paper and draperies designed by William Morris.

Here are a couple pictures of the neighborhood.

I need to get busy as some family members are coming over today and we are getting ready for that.  BTW, my sister lives in the house we grew up in which was built by our father and grandfather!  Lots of happy memories here.

Thanks for visiting!