Applique Letters

Remember my good friend Shannon who just made her first quilt ever? Well she had her baby shower on Saturday. It was a beautiful day so it was set up outside the host's house, and we ate delicious food, played fun games (I even won one - the prize? A pack of gladioli bulbs which are already in my garden! Yay!) and gave gifts. What else could I do but make my usual monogram applique letters. I had forgotten about the shower so ran out of time to needleturn them, but raw-edge applique does the trick too, and from my experience, people seem to like it better. I knew the baby would eventually be in a room with his big brother, and it just didn't seem right that only the baby had his initial on the wall so big brother got one too. I knew from the quilt Shannon made what colors to use, and I was able to do some fun square-quilting on them. Lots of fun! Can't wait to meet the new baby in just a week's time :)

Days 6, 7, and 8

OK folk, I feel like it's time to wrap this journey up and get back to the quilting at hand.

I feel like I'm that annoying person doing a vacation slideshow that nobody really wants to see but watches out of politeness! Really, I've been writing about my trip more as a journal for me, as I know I will forget a lot of things about it if I don't get it down on paper so to speak:) So I promise, this is the last post about my trip!

Wednesday was a really fun day. Anna homeschools her children and also teaches a group of other homeschooled children. They happened to be studying Oceania for an upcoming exam, so I got to be the guest speaker, telling them all about where I'm from, New Zealand, and a bit about Australia and the Pacific Islands. I also made some regional food... Pavlova (which didn't turn out that well, but I do have a picture of a successful one I've made in the past!)

Sausage rolls
Pani Popo (Coconut Rolls)
Samoan Copy Suey

Now I can't remember exactly which day we went to a quilt shop in Virginia called The Quilt Patch but I'm sure Anna will refresh my memory:) This may have been my favorite store, due to the fact that they had a boatload of bargains. Many bolts for $4/yard, and 50 cent Fat 1/4's and $1 half yards. The row at the top are the regular priced fabrics I couldn't resist, and the rolls at the bottom are $1 half yards!...And here are pieces that set me back a whole 10 cents each...There were so many great fabrics, we could have spent hours in there and maxed out our credit cards! But we didn't - weren't we good girls?!

Friday we went to another quilt store, Jinny Beyer's Quilt Studio. It was fantastic to see all of her fabrics in one place. Anna has raved about this place for years and always sends me chunks of the fabric she buys there. So it really was great to go there myself and see it in person! Some shots of the store...
Yes that is my son jumping up on the top left! And my purchases...


don't you love the bags she uses? And lastly, Anna and I outside the Studio.This was just such a wonderful trip with a ton of memories. Thank you Anna for making it so memorable!! And thank you all for sticking around...now back to our regularly scheduled programming:)

Day 5, Tuesday

Three main things happened on Tuesday.

First, we went to the zoo. Can you believe that in DC it's free to get into the zoo? OK so you have to pay 15 bucks to park, but when you have 10 people in one car it's a complete bargain! The best part of the zoo for me, was this wire contraption that traversed the zoo, right over you out in the open. The Orangutans would climb onto it and walk anywhere they wanted, right overhead. It was amazing, and some Orangutans made the trip right as we were there...


It was a very hot day and we were so glad we had brought drinks and snacks with us...This next photo is especially for my family and friends back home in New Zealand...you never know what you'll find at the zoo... This next photo is on our way out - can you tell they were just done?? We were all hot and bothered and if you look closely you can see the hungry one trying to eat the stop sign...

The second thing...after the zoo, we dropped all the kids off at home and Anna and I went to....wait for it....a quilt shop! Woo Hoo! Finally, after faithfully reading my travelogue you get to read something about quilting! It was called Cottonseed Glory and was in Annapolis, MD.
Anna said they had over 4000 bolts so I was very excited - now looking on their website, it says they have over 6000 bolts! No wonder it was so great! They have something for everyone, from prim to contemporary, from repros to batiks. Great shop.
Here was my little haul...

Straight after Cottonseed Glory we went to a place called Mike's Crabhouse.
And now for the third thing we did that day...Anna had asked me before I came where I would like to go out to eat - I told her, well isn't Maryland famous for crabs?!! She knew the exact place she wanted to take me. We also took Anna's Mother-In-Law (like me, she loves her MIL!) so Mike's was faced with a triple threat - 3 hungry women! I was a complete crab virgin and had to learn the ropes. Anna's MIL ordered a half dozen crabs for us to share (those suckers are NOT cheap!) and I was taught 2 different ways to 'pick' the crabs. Boy oh boy what an experience! It is A LOT of work for a little amount of crab meat, but oh so worth it! They were so delicious. I don't know how I have lived without them in my life! You can see the mess we created from just 6 crabs...We also had what I would call the best soup I have had in my entire life - cream of crab soup. I cannot describe how good this was, and the photo doesn't do it justice, but if you enjoy crab, then you know what I'm talking about...And to finish up, here are the views we enjoyed as we sat outside eating our crabs...

Day 4, Monday

Monday was a great day (OK, so they were ALL great days!). Anna wanted to show me the DC landmarks, so we threw all the kids in her monster truck and just drove all over DC. The first thing I saw was the Washington monument. Her kids were all laughing at me because in my mind, I thought the monument was about as tall as a telephone pole. Oops, was that ever a wrong assumption! I had no idea it has stairs and an elevator and that you can go up inside it! For some reason, I thought it was more like a statue. Hey I'm a foreigner - that's my excuse :)This was my first sighting of it - can you see it way in the background behind a tree?! And then driving past it - darn bus ;)

Then we drove past a bunch of other famous monuments - the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial (my favorite), the Capitol, WWII Memorial, Bureau of Engraving & Printing (where all our money is made!), Watergate, and even some wall/stairs that was in the movie The Exorcist....oooooo scary!Anna's kids had seen it all before, and my kids had zero interest - the tour was really just for me and I loved it! So with whining kids in the back, we went to 'The Creek' to give them a good time. It's a great place in Anna's neighborhood that is pretty much undiscovered by the locals - they always have it to themselves. I think it was my kids' favorite place of the whole trip. You can see why....







And finally, we went to this fantastic place that makes the BEST Italian Ice ever...I had peach and passionfruit flavors. So good on a hot day!


Tomorrow, fabric and.....crabs!!!