This day I went with two of my quilting ladies to Shady Maple... a smorgasbord restaurant in East Earl, PA. They have a convention center/meeting room that can hold up to 850 people. And yesterday and today one of my quilting idol/guru, Jenny Doan from Missouri Star Quilt Company was presenting her "Jenny on the Road" shows and I had a ticket!!!
Sharon DiNardo and Sheila Williamson also bought tickets. Sharon drove up from Delaware and arrived at my house at 8:30 AM. We arrived at Shady Maple at 9:15 AM for the 10:00 AM show. We met Sheila in the lobby. The place was already getting quite crowded. The center area was full, so we had to go into one of the side wings to find seats. I know they had tickets for sale at the door, but by the time Jenny came out, I did not see an empty seat in the room.
We were not allowed to take videos of the show, but we could take pictures. This is the best I could do, as she was always in motion on the stage as she talked. I have never been to a trunk show before, so I do not know what is normal, but Jenny would put up the basic building blocks of a quilt block on the small design board on the easel and then show how cutting the blocks a certain way and then turning the smaller blocks could create beautifully intricate quilts with limited cutting and ease of sewing. She started with basic baby quilts from charm packs and ended with Dresdan Plates from Layer Cake fabric in all sorts of designs.
She shared how it all started and her first video experience. She explained that there was no grand plan and that things just seemed to fall into place. She is working for her children who are running the company and doing a bang-up job at it. And she is having the time of her life... and it is infectious.
She spoke and laughed and shared and taught. She had us oohhiing and awwwwing at her creations. She had us laughing with her and had us in tears when she talked about the generosity from around the world during disasters from many talented quilters.
Here is a small pile of the quilts that she shared with the group.
Then my group got into a long line and we slowly but surely headed to the stage to meet Jenny in person. I knew it was probably my one and only chance to meet my quilting idol. And after more than an hour in line (I was not the only one who wanted to meet Jenny), I was able to get her to autograph my newest Block magazine, chat a moment and then get a picture with her. She is every bit as lovely and gracious as she appears and she wished me well with my move to Alaska.
Sharon, Sheila and I headed to the smorgasbord and had a lovely lunch. After which, we took a quick trip to the Missouri Star Quilt pop-up store where I got a couple of patterns and a couple of slotted rulers that I have been drooling over. Then we headed home. Sheila came with me as we were going out to dinner together later in the day.
After a phone call from my BFF, Marji Lantz, Sheila and I met Patches DeGregorio for dinner at Signature Pizza in Parkesburg. We shared a cheese steak pizza and some onion rings. We all caught up on our activities as we have been going in lots of opposite directions recently.
So, my purging did not do much today. I had gathered a great many things together yesterday, but it was raining and I did not want to put them out. Starting today, we are probably going to have several days of nice weather, so I will need to get busy to get things out and gone while the weather is nice.
I set my alarm for 6:45 AM, threw on my caftan over my pj's and set up my card table that said "free" and my garden flag stand that said "free" and covered the table with DVDs and cameras and books and greeting cards from yesterday's sorting and purge. By 7:00 AM, I had everything out and I came in to shower and get ready to go see Jenny. Sharon arrived at 8:30 AM and we headed out shortly there after. When I backed out of the driveway to head to Shady Maple, the table was empty. There was nothing!! NADA!!! ZIP!!! Just the table and the flag stand.
After returning from the "Jenny on the Road" show, Sheila and I rested and headed up to meet Patches around 5:30 PM. When I pulled into the front of my house...the TABLE and the FLAG STAND were GONE!!! Needless to say, I got a giggle out of that. I did not intend to take the table to Alaska, but I was hoping it would be around through August. Tonight I am making new signs that says the items on the table are free but NOT the table!!! Fortunately I have another table that I would not mind if it walks, but I am hoping I can control when. I have another flag stand, too, but I think I will keep that on the back porch until the later weeks.
Tomorrow I get back to purging.
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