Sunday, April 17, 2016

"Uh-oh. We have a quality control issue. Am I going to get fired?"

After Maddie came to help with the December Quilt Camp at Tecumseh and the Hot Chocolate Club she caught the quilting bug and wanted a quilt of her own. With only a little convincing, her mom Mel was on board to too. I took the girls to Crimson Tate down on Mass Ave months ago to pick out fabrics and we'd been waiting patiently for Quilt Weekend to arrive.

Friday afternoon we loaded up the Jeep and drove with the top down all the way to Holland, MI. Bethie had gotten a jump start on cutting all of the fabric and starting to make a stack of  blocks so we were in great shape. Everyone got their jobs (ironing, cutting, pinning, sewing) and we got busy. 



Saturday morning started early with a yogurt parfait bar, pastries from DeBoer's bakery and coffee. Then we were back to it, piecing blocks together. 




Until you're part of making a quilt, you really have no idea how much time goes into the finished project and how many steps there are along the way. It definitely makes it easier when there are four of us working on just one quilt. 


 Late in the morning we laid out all 182 blocks to figure out the best layout. Then each row would have to be sewn together with white triangles between each block.



Even though there is still so much more sewing to do it's so fun to see it all laid out. 


While Mom started sewing the rows, I took Maddie and Mel on a quick tour of Hope and Holland. We walked through campus, found my alumni CILT friend Sydney in the bookstore, picked out Hope clothes, loved the Outpost, found stickers for water bottles, got drinks at JPs and ran into my old YL girl Allison. Never a dull moment.


Nick and the boys came over for dinner which meant scootering down to Lake Mac, dropping a net in the water and Nick almost diving in after it, Red eating dinner with goggles on, playing with grandma's tape measures and lots of laughter.


Seeing my sister Katie is always one of the very best parts of coming to visit my family in MI. I wish that we lived close so we could see each other more often. I'm so thankful she was so happy to be our master chef all weekend.


I took Maddie and Mel out to Lake Michigan to see the sunset and walk out on the pier.



We stayed up till 11:30 ironing, pulling threads, measuring, cutting and sewing but it's finished! And isn't this quilt a beauty? Maddie's just in love with it and her room will be even more beautiful.


Once you make the top of a quilt it's not quite finished yet. We stopped in Monticello on the way back to Indy to drop the quilt off at our friend Marilyn's house. She'll do the quilting that  puts the top, batting and backing together. The route back to the highway took us right by Camp Tecumseh--the best place in the world. We didn't have time to go in camp but Mel pulled over to take a picture of the sign.


Back in Fishers, I picked up Audrey, Luke and Ava to take them to Brooks School Park. There were so many people there this afternoon. The weather was incredible and it felt like it was the middle of the summer. We were so hot by the time we went back home that we had to get some slushies from Speedway.


The Halkyard's invited me to their pool party this afternoon-- delicious food, new pool, riding the jet ski with Laura and Cecilia, laughing with Maddie and Line, putting Maddie's new stickers on her new water bottle and pretending we don't have to go back to school tomorrow.


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