They Threw Me a Heck of a Party!

Today was my last day of school. To recognize my accomplishments and celebrate my great work, the whole school had a party today with an awesome "Beach Music" Band, the Band of Oz! Okay, not really, the whole school just had one big fun party to celebrate the last few days of school. And this old retired teacher was doing the electric slide and singing "Brown-Eyed Woman" on stage with the band. It was a wonderful last day. I will miss the kids and many of the staff members at this great school. But I am looking forward to being retired again!

Now I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of my son and his family as we begin our beach vacation! Lots of pictures of sun, sand, surf, seagulls, and grandchildren to come, I'm sure!

Winding Down

Only two more days of school...my classroom walls are bare and the back of my car is full of plastic storage units. After school today, I got a pedicure and manicure. Oh, my tootsies were aching and I was tired. There is nothing like a little pampering to restore the soul. And my feet are always definitely in need of professional help, with my little clubby toes and bunions. I picked a delicious shade of peachy pink polish.


When I spoke at the Piedmont Quilt Guild earlier this year, I made bookmarks out of my Mini-Moo business cards. I decided to do the same thing for the people in the office and the teachers and assistants I have worked with most closely. I taught children from four fourth grade and four third grade classes. Two are for men, the principal and a fourth grade teacher. Hope they don't mind a little colorful fiber in their lives!



My granddaughter, Lily, was born while we were on our beach vacation two years ago. I have been wrapping her birthday gifts and decorating her card and envelope with glitter glue and inks. She is getting a new bathing suit, shorts outfit, hat and backpack, and a net to catch little fish in the surf. There is a gift shop close to my home called Lily Mae's- almost personalized wrapping for DGD Lily Rhea! This is a little silver necklace. What fun to finally have a little girl! I can't wait for Friday!

This may be my last post until after our beach vacation. The people we rent our cottage from are somewhat Luddite...I doubt they have added Wi-Fi to the cottage. So, have a great week! Our temps are supposed to be around 99 for the next week. I hope there will be a breeze! If not, the surf during the day and frozen Margaritas at night will have to do the trick.

Quilts at School

Here I am doing my "dog and pony show" for the third grade classes at my schooll. It went pretty well! They especially liked when I passed things around for them to feel and touch. I think many were surprised at the non-traditional quilts I showed. Quite a few asked if I could teach them to quilt. Might be a few future quilters in the bunch!
I wore my patchwork dress for the occasion. I did not make it, but it was only appropriate! All in all, a fun experience. My favorite was when I showed the Green Man quilt. One of my students made a face that truly revealed her feelings. I wish I could have taken her picture. Can we just say, that one was not her favorite?

Traveling Trunk Show

Only six days until my beach vacation begins: and my trunk is packed! No, not for the beach trip. Tomorrow I will be doing a presentation on quilting to all of the third grade classes at my school. The tie-in is using real-life math: patterns, geometry, measurement, and fractions and mixed numbers. I am looking forward to it. The kids are so cute and inquisitive in third grade.I'll try to have some pictures from this event, but we are not allowed to use the children's photographs on the Internet. By the way, notice the hooked seats on the dining room chair? Charlie's grandfather did a set of these on the dining room chairs that we have inherited. He used to do rug hooking when he was a traveling salesman.

We have been enjoying our stay-at-home weekend to catch up. DH has been more industrious than I have. He has washed both our cars, mowed our rather sizable lawn, and is now shopping for the beach trip. What a keeper! Yesterday we bought a new Motorola phone for me- a real pretty purple number. Thank goodness, they now will transfer your contact list and pictures for a small fee. I hate re-typing all the names and phone numbers in!

We had a real humdinger of a thunderstorm yesterday evening. We sat on the front porch to watch as it approached from the west. Lots of impressive lightning bolts in the distance as we practiced drinking margaritas on the porch. Then, when the storm cleared, we were treated to a beautiful sunset with the remains of the dark clouds providing contrast.

All Things Birdy

Textile Bird by Michelle Bonds

My friend Michelle Bonds began her blog at about the same time I began All Things Quilty. Michelle is an amazing artist who specializes in recycling found objects like bottle caps and even toilet paper and paper towels into jewelry, postcards, quilts, and other objets d'art. Anyway, I loved Michelle's birds when she posted pictures of them on her blog. Much to my delight, I received a package in the mail this week containing my very own Bond-Birdy! She is made of a dyed fabric that has been stamped and painted. The wings are made from a map of North Carolina that has been painted and stitched. They gleam and glitter! Thank you, Michelle, for such a generous gift that truly brightened a rather bad day.

Hummingbird, Felt-tip markers, by Kyara, age 9

Bird #2 was created by one of my third grade students. She made it to illustrate a story she wrote about a hummingbird. Kyara traced the outline of a bird from a calendar picture, and then went wild on the plumage! I think her Mexican heritage is showing through in the bright colors and swirls. To me, it is reminiscent of a Mola. I would have to say her variety of bright colors may be because she loves my scented markers, and wanted to use as many "flavors" as possible. The kids in my classes often walk around with little colored dots on their noses from smelling the markers a little too closely!

Six baby bluebirds

Last bird's-eye view of the day is this brood of baby bluebirds that live in my front yard. I don't remember ever having six in the box at one time. I think they are about a week old now. When they first hatched, they looked like little fuzzy thumbs with beaks. Starting to look more like birdies now!

Here's to Us!

Today is my wedding anniversary. Charlie and I have been married thirty-seven years! Yikes! We met in college at N.C. State University in Raleigh, and started dating in January of my sophomore year. We were married at the end of my junior year. He dropped out and worked as a loan collector until I finished. That job was enough motivation for him to go back and finish his degree. It was a lot of fun being married while in college. We had lots of married friends, and we loved going to each others' apartments for dinner or a party. Both of us made much better grades. We were poor, but happy. Now we are no longer poor, but still happy! I am so thankful for the years we have had together. Now we have two handsome grown sons, two beautiful daughters-in-law, and two perfect grand-babies (and more to come some day, right, Dave?) Life is good!

Older Quilts

Since I returned to teaching school in February, I have not had much time for quilting except for the online class I took with Pamela Allen. You might enjoy seeing some photographs of some of my older quilts that I made before purchasing my Gammill long-arm machine in 2003. These were all quilted on just a domestic sewing machine.

The first one shown above is a wedding quilt that I made for my brother Tim and his wife Beth. I used bright colors for the stars and sashings. The centers of the stars include novelty fabrics reflecting some of their interests. For example, Beth is a great cook, and I think I included some fabric with peppers. Tim used to do engineering work for NASA/ Jet Propulsion Labs, so the stars were an appropriate theme. The last star on the lower right has a picture of their combined family in the star.This is the back of the same quilt. I like to use up extra fabric with pieced backs, and add a little "back art" if possible.This little wall-hanging is from an Internet swap, back in the days when Al Gore first invented the Internet. Each block has a quotation in the plain center strip. Some are humorous, some inspirational. One of my favorites: "I wonder how deep the ocean would be if the sponges didn't live there?"And here is a look back to my nieces' graduation from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Rachel had just earned her doctorate in Pharmacy, and Amy had finished pre-med. She is now a dentist. Too bad no one in my family enjoys hamming it up for the camera!