notes from Terry Ann

What's the Score?

I recently had the opportunity to go to a Minnesota Twins game at the brand new Target stadium. I'm not much of a sports fan (maybe that's an understatement), but there was an article in the food section of the Minneapolis paper that told about the great food at the new stadium so I thought it would be fun to go. I went with Rosebud's Cottage to a "Bindings and Baseball" event. What could be better than a game where you could sew?

I got to ride the Northstar commuter rail downtown for the first time. I met lots of interesting people on the train. The train was packed, and my seatmates both down and back were riding for the first time too.

Look at this brick mural that I saw on a parking ramp as I was walking to the entrance - wouldn't this make a great quilt?

And these bricks were really pretty - they remind me of a Yellow Brick Road quilt that I made all in neutrals. Look at the sky - we weren't sure if we'd be soaked or not - it rained all day and was cloudy right up until game time and then the sun came out YAY! (better light for stitching of course)

 

I think the stripey pattern in the field looks like it could be a strip quilt hmmmm . . . interesting angle.

Here's the view down my row - lots of binding getting sewn on. See the guy in the neon yellow shirt selling stuff? These guys were all over the stadium going up and down the rows, and it was fun to see how they were evenly spaced out - just like you'd space a bright color in a quilt. And about the food - I had planned to have one of the locally made brats - but they were touching sauerkraut on the grill, and I just couldn't do it! So I had a pork chop on a stick, yum, and kettle corn, and a beer in a plastic bottle.

There were lots of really fun quilters at the game. I met a quilter from Alaska that was in Minnesota for a family event. And look what Randi brought to the game - a Star Sprinkles quilt.  She quilted it on her long arm machine, using a pattern that was designed especially for the quilt.

What a fun time. When I got home, my hubby asked me what the score was - and of course I didn't know. He asked if the Twins won and I told him I was pretty sure they did . . .

Good Morning Amelia!

This afternoon I met a bus full of quilters from Iowa at Quilted Treasures in Rogers. They were on their way home from the Minnesota Quilt Show with Sew Great Tours. What a friendly bunch! I had a great time visiting with them.

Here I am with Amelia, an avid blog hopper - good morning to you in Iowa!  Have you unpacked all of those bags yet?

Zippers from A - Z

Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes, but we are swimming in zippers this summer!

Our UPS driver brings us big boxes of zippers almost every day and we are developing zipper muscles carrying them up and down the stairs. NOTE: The muscles are a secret and we keep them well hidden.

We sort them into boxes of assorted colors and them send them out to our special elves to tag them into bundles.

The tagged zippers are stored in bins. We pull the zippers from these bins and ship them out to quilt shops.

Here's the final result:

Yikes it's summer already!

These past few weeks (months?) have been a blur of frenzied activity! In early May, American Patchwork came to do a photo shoot here and that involved LOTS of cleaning - right when we were getting everything ready for Quilt Market. They won't use the photos until next spring - so we have to wait to see how everything turned out.  

Then it was on to Quilt Market in Minneapolis. It was our busiest show ever and we are fondly referring to it as "The year of the Zipper". The past 6 months I've been working on a zipper program to make it easy for quilt shops to carry zippers. We were amazed at how well everyone liked the 36 colors. Look for them at your local quilt shop! After Market, I attended American Patchwork's  "Creative Circle", an amazing retreat in Iowa. It was wonderful.

While I was gone things were changing on the home front! My annuals were shriveling up (did I forget to have someone water them?)

 

My perennials were coming up, (look at all of the new little babies!)

And I think Sawyer might have doubled in size!