It's finally feeling like summer outside! The sun is shining....the sky is blue...flowers are blooming and birds are singing!!! We've had so much rain and gray skies this spring that it didn't feel at ALL like summer would EVER come! I think we need to have dinner outside tonight....OOOoooo!! BLT's!!!! Yep, summer is here and I'm WILLING it to stick around!NOW!!! Look at all the pictures we have! The one above is from Donna Babbitt. She wrote that there is cat hair in one of the buttons but ...they're from "my sweet deceased Mom's button box and the cat hair stays!!!" It's beautiful Donna! AND! I LOVE your wallpaper too! The Breath of Spring pitcher below is by Donna also. Gorgeous! So sweet and soft. Her background fabric was a really good choice!
Last weekend...no, the weekend before... I was in Spokane at Haberdashery Designs & Needlework teaching a couple of workshops. Unfortunately the only time I really had to get the camera out was during lunch! My apologies to everybody I caught eating (never how you want to get caught on camera!! LOL!!) This was the class on Saturday. LOOK AT ALL THE FLOSS AND STITCHERY STUFF IN THE BACKGROUND!!!!! Heaven.....sigh........ And everybody was SO nice! It was VERY warm that weekend and the shop, unfortunately had no air conditioning, just fans. Nobody got cranky ALL weekend!!! We DID at one point talk about going out and buying a couple kiddy pools so that we could fill them up with ice water and sit around them with our feet in them to stitch! LOL!!! There was also a big container filled with water bottles on ice and we talked about the benefits of filling our bras with the cold bottles.....yup!....real twisted group of girls!!!...MY kind of people!! LOLOL!!!
Spokane and the surrounding towns & area are really pretty too. We stayed (in our camp trailer....my tent days are SO over!) in a campground in Riverside State Park just a couple miles outside of town. Pine trees, wildflowers and the river......Ahhhhh..... not a bad place to be after being at the classes all day.......... The whole weekend was just great! 
See the little tin on the table with the clear lid??? The shop did these as kits for everyone...they had their entire kit (including needles and a hoop!) and THEN ...(they had a theme of yo-yo's and buttons) ... they gave everybody a set of ALREADY MADE goodies!!! A little bag filled with a yo-yo encased measuring tape (the end you pull out has a ribbon with buttons attached to it! CUTE!!) A pin keeper made from 2 yo-yo's with buttons on each side and ribbons and bows...cute!! A needlecase made from 2 yo-yo's with wool pages...ribbons and buttons....cute,cute! A little fabric ORT bag (stands for O-something, R-something, Thread) to put your little leftover scraps of thread in as you work...you pull it closed with ribbons with buttons on the ends...cute, cute, cute! And an absolutely adorable little pincushion that looks like a ball with a cap of 2 yo-yo's stacked...buttons and ribbons and a pin...get this.....with two tiny, tiny, miniscule yo-yo's at the top so it looks like a pouf-ball!!! DARLING!! Then two little kits..one with round yo-yo's to make a little ruler holder and one with graduated heart shaped yo's to make an embroidery scissor holder!!!! Not only was this just really sweet of them to give everyone these things.....DO YOU REALIZE HOW MANY YO-YO'S THEY HAD TO HAVE MADE????
Well.... no yo's involved, but beautiful stitching!! on Ina Maslana's Snowflake Angel wallhanging! This was made for her by her BFF. She wrote that it's hanging on the cabinet she keeps her fabric in.
She says that Luna, her dog, is supposed to be guarding her fabric stash but "Obviously, doesn't take her job seriously!" Ina... I have to admit... I had a hard time finding Luna in this picture.......but I couldn't figure out why you kept your quilt batting in a cage! LOL!!!! What a sweetie!
Our last picture is from Gabriela Gaudet from Canfield Ohio. She took this with her to work on, on a trip to South America. I love the way she used different fill stitches to fill in all of the flowers! It's very artistic isn't it?? It always amazes me that twenty people can take the same pattern and come up with twenty different ways to finish it! Every one a winner!!!
Lona... Zelda's Fancy Hat is a witch's hat with lots of embroidery on it! It should be with the Autumn patterns on the website. We've heard from whole groups of people who have made them, but didn't make them as decorative pillow-ish hats.... actually made them into REAL hats! Also, I heard from someone a week or so ago who blew the pattern up and was making one that would fit over a traffic cone.......YES!!! A traffic cone!!! That's just TOO much fun!!!Have a great summer day!!!
xox Meg
