Seven days of absence

I've been gone for the past 7 days and spending my time with the first ever Menomonie Quilt Festival!  And now it's finished--and I feel like I'm finished too!  Oh, My! I never expected this to be so much work, even with a team of fabulous volunteers who organized and coordinated each of the events. There just are a lot of last minute details that I had to take care of--that I never expected.

In a nutshell, it went off like clockwork!  We began on the 10th with two classes--Make your own Barn Quilt,

and Beginning Sewing--that lasted all day. I stopped by twice that day--once to greet the students and to make sure the instructors had everything they needed (they didn't) and at the end of the day to pick up the things I'd supplied earlier and to find out how it all went.

The next day, we had a half day class and again I checked to see that all went well--and it did.  After that, I coordinated presentation of 9 Quilts of Valor that were presented by the quiltmakers to the veterans on the stage of the beautiful Mabel Tainter Theater here in downtown Menomonie.  Needless to say, it was a very moving ceremony for both the veterans and the quilters. (The piano had been moved off the stage for us. LOL)

 

When that was finished, we set up the stage for a talk by Laurie Aaron Hird, creator of The Farmer's Wife series of sampler quilts and her recently released The Bible Story Sampler Quilt.  

Laurie and her family live in the extreme SW corner of Wisconsin and she made the journey to Menomonie to share her delightful talk with us. She read some of the letters written by farm women during the depression era and pointed out how contented they seemed with their lives even though they had very little in the way of material things.  I feel inspired to emulate their attitude. 

I bought her book, the Farmer's Wife Pony Club Winners Sampler Quilt

which includes letters from children who won ponies as their prize for selling subscriptions to the magazine.  Since my 12 year old granddaughter, Lily, is currently crazy about horses, I think the Pony Club quilt is the right thing for her. Can't wait to begin stitching it!

Was the day finished yet?  Not by a long shot!  After Laurie finished, I hopped on the bus to take a 2 hour tour of barn quilts in the county. This is a new venture to promote rural tourism in the area and I found it to be exactly what I needed after such a hectic day. The barn quilts are just delightful, popping up where you least expect them.  The one pictured at the top of this post was one we got to visit on our tour.  

The last "event" of the day was to go to the church and help set up the Country Store that we've been working on for over a year--planning and making items to sell.  Believe me, when it was all set up and finished it looked amazing!  The shelves and tables were overflowing with all the things we'd made.  Yesterday was the sale day and we had customers in the shop all day!  I don't know how much volume we sold but I was told we raised nearly $2000!  We'll split that 50/50 between our guild and the domestic abuse agency that we fund raise for.

So, now my spare room is again filled with crafts that were leftover from the sale. I'll be going through them and deciding what I'll be taking with me to another sale on Thursday. After that, I'm done with this craft business. I want these things out of the house before Thanksgiving as I have a houseful of folks arriving for the weekend and I need that room.  Wish me luck on that, okay?

So, my week was filled with activity and that was a great thing in many ways, not the least of which was it took my mind off the election.  Not going to get into politics here other than to say that I think our country is on the cusp of a radical change and I'm not sure what the change will look like as it happens.  And that has me on edge.  But each day brings its demands of things to do and I'll do them and try not to think about politics too much. I think it's important to be a well informed citizen and to be active in democracy and I'll continue to be that person, but I refuse to be overwhelmed by politics.

That said, I'm going to get on with my day!