Quilts & Cucumber Sandwiches

Hi Everyone,

Long, long time ago or so it seems, I used to be an avid quilter, maker of large and small quilts for beds and walls, tables, blankets and clothing to cover one's self with and totally into all things involving quilt making.

My Favorite Quilt
Hand Pieced and Hand Quilted

You could say it was an obsession or lifelong hobby depending how you looked at it <wink wink>.  Ever hear the phrase Eat, Sleep & Breathe .......?  I ate, slept and breathed quilts and quilting, couldn't get enough of it.  Just ask my family, they will tell you that there was colorful fabric on bolts, fat quarters in drawers, tiny snippets of fabric on the floor that seemed to follow us thru the house..... patterns everywhere, Oh and did I mention Quilt books?

Quilt Books for Keep.

Books galore on every aspect of quilting. I spent a lot of time making quilts, researching patterns (before Internet), teaching, organizing groups, going to meetings, symposiums and it was such fun!

 The quilting bug started when I took my first Community Education class in Beginning Quilting with Anne Marie (I'm sorry I can't remember her last name) and met the most wonderful group of ladies (they knew each other)!  After the six weeks of class were over, we decided that we really enjoyed our time together and in order to finish our quilts we would meet weekly and work on them. Those weekly gatherings were a blessing to a young wife and mother of very young children, a grown-up diversion of epic proportion. These ladies were gracious hosts and lovely role models and became life long friends, in fact we are still friends to this day after some 30+  years!
 Even though we don't see one other for long periods of time (mainly since I moved away) when we do it is an instant re-connection which never skips a beat when we are together. Do you have friends like that?  Isn't it wonderful that the bond is so strong between us even after so many years have gone by?

We had a weekly quilting group that met in each others homes until the group got so big that we began meeting at the community center and eventually we formed a quilting guild that met once a month, The Coastal Quilters of N.E. FL. are still going strong at the beaches in Jacksonville.  The core group continued to meet weekly and that group Kindred Spirits is going to this day!  I love that about quilting and the women who quilt, it (quilting) weaves the threads that binds us all together in love and friendship.  To my quilting sisters, a SHOUT out of love to you all (Florida, Virginia, Colorado...) where-ever you are I miss you and love you!

Flower Sample made with thread. 

Now what does this have to do with Bonnie and I?  Both Bonnie and I love to sew and so it was a natural progression that I would share this new love of quilt making with her.  She probably resisted my prodding as long as she could but then she caught the quilt bug and the rest is history as they say. She and I have spent many hours together making quilts together which reminds me of a story about when we went to stay at her mother's condo for a weekend. Our first Road Trip was one and a half hours from home.
THIS WAS BEFORE GIRL TRIPS AND ROAD TRIPS BECAME "THE" THING TO DO. 
In order for us to have a "girls get-away" weekend there was strategic planning to be done, who would take care of the kids, meal prep while we were gone and of course:  what we would be taking with us.  Our goal was to each take a "in progress" quilt and finish up other projects. Oh AND we had a new quilt pattern to try, naturally we might have slightly over estimated what we would get done.

The Plan: I would meet Bon at her apartment in town on a Friday night, and we would drive down to Ormond Beach, grab some dinner and start working on our projects.  Bonnie would bring cucumber sandwiches (w/o crusts) because we both LOVE cucumber sandwiches, so she made a shoe box full for the trip.  Little did we know that shoe box full of cucumber sandwiches would come in very handy as the weekend progressed.

Cucumber Sandwiches and Quilt Weekend

It took longer to load up the car (abundance of projects and luggage) and get out of town (Friday night traffic) than expected and we arrived later than planned at the condo, by the time we unloaded the car we were too tired to go out for dinner so we stayed in and ate cucumber sandwiches and talked into the wee hours of the morning.

Next day we decided we would try to find a quilt shop that I thought (remember, this was before GPS and Internet) was "near by", I couldn't remember the name of the town or the name of the store, I just knew it was a log cabin on US1 South of where we were.  Turned out it was almost 2 hours South but we finally found it and had a great time purchasing fabrics, in fact so much so that we barely  had enough money for dinner and gas to get home!

Fabric Stash Collecting over the years.

 The rest of the weekend was spent at the condo quilting and eat cucumber sandwiches and whatever we could scrounge from her mother's freezer! Those were great days and so much fun together!

I would again encourage you to take class on-line or better yet in a community class to learn a new craft or improve your art work.  You never know who you will meet or where it will lead you in the future.

Stay Creative!
Suzy