Recent Travels & FNSI Update

The weekend before last I took a little mini-vacation to the Ozarks and Kansas City for some quilting and rug hooking fun. We started the long weekend down at the lake with a stop at Renee Nanneman's open house. Renee's studio is located just a few miles from our lake house but this was the first time I have been able to go there.  We were very surprised when we turned onto the road to her house and ran across three zebras and an emu.  We had to stop for a picture...

We later found out from Renee that there's a camel that lives there too. He must have been hiding as we never saw him.  

Renee's place is absolutely gorgeous!  The photo below of the outside was borrowed from her last newsletter as it never occurred to me to take one.

The studio is beautiful and there were gorgeous fabrics everywhere! I don't seem to have taken many pictures of the actual fabrics, but she had a great selection of fabrics (mostly or all Andover) and some great fat quarter bundles.  There were quilts hanging everywhere.

The windows along the back of the studio overlook the lake - what an inspiring place to work! It would be a wonderful place for a class or retreat but unfortunately fabric and quilt designing keeps Renee too busy to host those kinds of things so we will have to settle for open houses.

I have been admiring Renee's basket and tumbler quilts in her last few newsletters and was very excited to see both in person.  Although I am not a fan of pink there is something about the colors in these that I absolutely love!  I had to have the kits even though I have no plans to make another tumbler quilt.

Everything was staged so beautifully that it was impossible to leave there without a healthy addition to the stash....

After the stop at Renee's we headed over to Blue Springs/Lee's Summit for lunch at the Salty Iguana (the Iguana dip is awesome!) and a visit to Quilter's Station.  I managed to find a few more pieces for my stash there - all intended to become orange peels.

Then it was time to head to Janice's. This is definitely my happy place. The wool is gorgeous and Janice and Jim are incredibly wonderful hosts. 

Every direction you turn there is more beautiful wool!

I had planned to work on one of Janice's designs that I purchased a year or so ago but within minutes of arriving I had changed my mind.  Janice tempted me with an enlarged version of her "April's Floral" design.  It is 50"x 62". Yes, I have lost my mind! 

Janice has fantastic color sense. Here she is working with Betsy on a modified version of her "My World" design in which the cats were replaced with a horse.

Leah was working on a Maggie Bonanomi design.  She hooks really fast - she was even farther along than this when we wrapped things up on Monday.

Jeannette was hooking her "Cat of Many Friends",a fun design that she hooked with wool scraps she had collected from many hooking friends at camps and workshops over the years. He is so cute!

I got a solid start on my rug, even though it doesn't look like much when spread out over a giant pattern. I love the colors we chose! I need to get back to it soon so I can make sure I have sufficient notes to be able to remember what we decided.

I spent the rest of last week in New York after returning from Janice's and was anxiously awaiting the arrival of the first BOW shipment from Primitive Gatherings. I was planning to spend the whole weekend playing with the new BOWs. Unfortunately, though, I came home Friday to find it hadn't arrived. It didn't come Saturday either.  I was SO disappointed!  I am hoping it comes today but that likely means I won't really get a chance to play with it all until next weekend.

So, because I didn't have my BOWs to play with I decided I would dip my toe in the water and make one - just one - Panama Pyramid.  I love hand piecing so much! I really don't have time to start this now but I don't think I can stop here. I think I need to prep a few more.

I decided to spend my FNSI and other weekend machine time working on my Allietare blocks. 

Amazingly although I wasn't all that inspired to work on these I managed to finish all the rest of the blocks and the setting triangles.  I'm ready to assemble the top now. Perhaps a good objective for my upcoming retreat?  I would love to check this one off my UFO list!