Caring, Sharing, Every Little Thing that We are Wearing

Sisters, Sisters,
There were never such devoted sisters

Lord help the mister, who comes between me and my sister...

I couldn't help but reference one of the classic Christmas movies that isn't really a Christmas movie. The tune was running through my head all weekend.

I had the honor and pleasure of spending Mother's Day weekend with my Big Sis. She's on the left up there played by Rosemary Clooney. But in our real sister act, I'm more of the Rosemary while Big Sis is more of the Vera-Allen. But guess what, a little movie trivia here, Rosemary was actually seven years younger than Vera-Allen! It must have been a real burn to be cast as the "big sister." I hope they paid her well for the slight.

The misters are a pretty close representation. The Height is right but you need to flip the hairdos. I think my follically-challenged Danny Kaye is pretty cute, mind you.

Here we are on Mother's Day in our unintentionally matching t-shirts. At the moment this is the only clothing item we own that matches and when we are together it never seems to fail that we both don it on the same day. The visiting sister always gets to wear it and the other has to go to her closet and change. But not this day, in honor of Mother's Day, I thought it would be fun to play twinsies!

My youngest son took this picture for us. He's the only one of our five kids who was with us for the day but Sis had just spent the week with her son and grands. We missed our other four kids, DIL, fiancée and Sis's grands but it was softened a bit because we got to spend the day with the funniest of the kid crew. It's okay to say that cuz I checked with the close second on the humor scale and even he agreed hands down that Son #2 is the most humorous. 

When he brought the iPhone to us so we could check to see if we looked okay in the photo, his comment was..."Looks pretty good, you can hardly tell you all are pregnant," then he walked away with a straight face while Sis and I absolutely lost it.

Hubs had his twins day on Saturday when he did the Up the Creek Without a Pedal ride in Rome, GA with his buddy who also happens to share the same first name! In this case, Hubs is the "Bing" on the left. I am not sure if their photographer was as witty as ours.

Sis and I had fun on Friday and Saturday too. The quilty, fabric kind of fun! Sis recently became a member of one of my guild since so many of her frequent visits include their events. Her first official member activity was a workshop on Friday put on by the Pizza Box Girls. Their concept is so much fun and they are sisters too!

One of my fellow guild members has a blog and she got her post out lickety split so I recommend that you go to Siobhan's blog, Scraps and Threadtales to read about the event. By the way, I am the last person in line in that shopping picture.

Here's what we made:

I want to make a whole quilt with my own fabric. For the class they issue everyone the same fabric kit, the pattern and a ruler. We all made the exact same two blocks. It made the presentation very efficient. I am going to make my blocks into Christmas Pillows for gifting. But look at the quilt below! I want to make a lap size in this flavor.

Cindy, the instructor also shared a number of great tips that had even the most seasoned quilters in the room oohing and aahing. A favorite was to make adding borders easier by treating them as part of the rows. Genius!

My Sis is still working through her sewing apprehension and she had a rough start when her travel machine decided to have tension issues. This is a machine that always seems to have perfect tension and it gave her fits from the get-go. She had to rip and start over several times and her nerves were making her tremors worse. She has an auto-immune syndrome that attacked her nervous system twelve years ago and she only recovered about 90% so she has to deal with some extraneous movement. 

Well, while rethreading her machine she had a stray jerk and she stuck the needle into her finger tip!  I was busy sewing and thought she had sewn into her finger-tip at first. It was wedged between the foot and the needle. The big problem was for some reason when you turn her machine's hand wheel either direction it always dips before it goes up! The instructor and I double teamed it and removed the foot and the needle to extricate her poor finger. Luckily, I keep band-aids in my sewing kit. There were two more calls for band-aids during the class so she didn't feel so clumsy by the end of the day.

We had to put the finishing touches on our blocks in my dining studio on Sunday but we are both done.

We followed the class with a visit to Joann's.

On Saturday we had a guild meeting. Great food, great people and more Pizza Shop fun!

We saw our first quilt trunk show. Amazing! I may be modern but I love to look at anything quilty. I also want to touch them all so I started to stand up when she asked for a helper but someone in the first row had quicker reflexes. 

Note to self...get a front row seat at the next trunk show just in case a helper is requested.

I am quite tactile. I am the reason they post signs and have people in white gloves at quilt shows. I love to pet anything I think might feel cozy. Think Lennie Of Mice and Men tactile; but not the Steinbeck kind, more of the Looney Tunes variety.

 

There was shopping! I bought the "Kaleido-Ruler" and the aluminum stiletto. The 15 degree wedge was our Pizza Box Kit tool and the "Purple Thang" is a few months old. I bought it instead of a stiletto and have never gotten the hang of using it. Now that I have a real, shiny, sharp stiletto I'm going to put that "Thang" in my travel sewing kit so I can keep the serious tool where I stitch more.

When show-and-tell started I was checking out and I almost left my purchases behind when I rushed over to see all the quilts. Like the huge trunk show wasn't enough quilt viewing for me! 

Most of the quilts shared went into the pile below. It's our first delivery ready for the VA Hospital. We have about 25 quilts! Two of these are my creations and I have another just about ready for the quilting frame.

After the meeting we went to our two LQSs because they had Mother's Day Sales! I bought five yards of RK Quilters Linen at 30% off. 

I have developed a slight addiction to this stuff. I am blaming Heather and Meg of the Augusta MQG for this affliction. They chose it as the solid for our last guild challenge and I absolutely fell in love. It is so elegant that I had to have it for my personal bed quilt. I am ready to start cutting now.

After the meeting and shopping we put together an ironing pad for Sis to take home for her craft room. Isn't that cute Ikea home dec!

That pink T looks great in my green room. Shocking!

Sis left for North Carolina on Monday but she'll be back May 21st and we have fabric plans in the works already. I love having her close enough to visit often. It's such a bonus that she drives through my area on her way to visit her grands.

BTW, my email has been on the glitch for a couple months so if you are feeling slighted because I haven't replied to your comment lately it's because I am rarely able to get an email to send. I hope to figure out the magic fix soon. In the meantime, I will be using the blog comment section reply feature for comments that require an answer. Sorry about that. 

Thanks for visiting!

Linking up with:

Sew Fresh Quilt's Let's Bee Social

Freshly Pieced's WIP Wednesday

This is How We Roll Thursdays

My Quilt Infatuation Needle & Thread Thursday

TGIFF hosted by A Quarter Inch from the Edge

Quilt Story's Fabric Tuesday