A Quilt-y Post

We have been here 3 weeks now and I suppose I should include a post about quilting. Actually I have lots of stuff about quilting… to tell, but I am going to start back in Chicagoland…

My "Bee" Quilt

I want to share with you the Bee I belonged to Near Chicago. I joined the Bee sometime in the summer of 2008 and have met with these ladies on the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of the month. We became very good friends, as our bee name suggests -Piece n Pals. There were 9 or so members, occasionally we were above that… We have Susan L, Susan B, Peg G, Pegg H, Sandy, Lynda, Ute and Janel and myself.

When I first joined we would meet at one and stitch and chat until about 3, during the visit the hostess would serve refreshments… then we started to meet at noon and the hostess would serve lunch. Oh and what a treat the lunches were!!! And again we would stitch, and share and chat until 3. Often when one of us wanted to go shop hopping there was at least one or more members willing to go along for the ride if not to shop as well and sometimes it was the whole group.

Sometime around the first of the year it was proposed that we all swap a block and ‘Stars’ was the theme. I knew I was in for a change, and opted to not participate… but I was eager to see what everyone was doing and since I wasn’t participating, I was able to peek in the boxes.

My last meeting with the bee was on June 16th. We met at Sandys home, where she served a fabulous lunch and then we moved out to the deck for some of the wonderful summer sunshine, (I understand it was the one of last moderate days). Before Sandy let us go outside, they had me sit in a chair and presented me with a gift bag… It was large and I bet most of you can guess what was in it!!! Yep a QUILT!! Not just any old quilt, it was a BEAUTIFUL Red, White and Blue Stars quilt! And it is absolutely beautiful. I do not have it here with me yet, it is on its way. I can hardly wait for it to get here. I think I have decided to use it on one of the sofas (of course I have to see what they do for curtains in the living room) with my quilt from the Nebraska Guild or Red and White fabrics… to commemorate my years living in Nebraska!, otherwise I think I will hang it up in the upstairs landing.

Label on the back of the quilt.

Each member made a star in red, white and blue using the star they were making in the swap. The setting was designed by Ute and Susan L, and the quilting was done by Sandy. On the back of the quilt is a label and each one signed the quilt next to the block they made! It is so unique, that I will find myself showing that off to everyone as well.

And just in case you can’t tell I love the quilt and THANK my wonderful friends for the beautiful thoughtful gift from their hearts and hands! I do feel truly blessed and fortunate to have met these ladies and was able to spend some really fun and interesting hours with them!

One item in the category of The Same but Different:

Is the Internet here in South Africa. I won’t be posting too many pictures… (and if I do, will be low quality), we are finding that uploading pictures takes up all our air time on the aircard… Here in South Africa, you buy your Internet by the Megabyte or Gigabyte… not by the month… and some of the services say when you are out you are out for the rest of the month. We are currently on an aircard (3G), which is very sloooow, because we don’t have telecom at the house yet. That means we don’t have telephone, TV or Internet. We are hoping to have that next week sometime. On Thursday they pulled the wires into the house… after they pulled them through the driveway. Now they just have to schedule the Telecom company to come out and splice the wires to hook the phone up… and give us a number, (apparently they are very similar to the US in the scheduling department, it’s a big maybe on exactly when). Then everything else can move forward.

More Later!!!!