Margaret's Hope Chest

(photo from Pam @ Mama Spark)

At the end of July, I made a little road trip over to Grand Rapids to attend the Margaret's Hope Chest Summer Work Party and to meet Amanda Jean of crazymomquilts. We stayed in this gorgeous bed and breakfast in the Heritage Hill area of Grand Rapids (right across from Frank Lloyd Wright's Meyer May house. side note: I'm a huge FLW fan, as evidenced here and here).


On Saturday morning, our group met up at a local church (if only I had this much space in my own craft room to spread out!) and got to work on Amanda Jean's pattern, Fair and Square, that was specifically designed for Margaret's Hope Chest. (you can get the free pattern here).


Amanda showed our group the quilts that she designed and made and walked us through cutting out the fabric, working with scraps, and gave us lots of great quilting hints and tips.




We all got to work making our own versions of her pattern. I used some squares brought by Pam and we both made the same quilt but with different sashing. It's fun to see how different colors of sashing look in a quilt.


One woman at the sewing day made this fantastic top with all of her blue scraps. She just sewed all of her scraps into small blocks and used pieced blocks instead of fabric squares for her quilt. I'm definitely going to use this idea with my fabric scraps.


Amanda and I

I had a wonderful weekend meeting these fun quilters and learning more about Margaret's Hope Chest. It was so much fun to work on a collective project with so many enthusiastic quilters!

If you'd like more information on Margaret's Hope Chest and how you can help, be sure to check out the MHC's blog and CraftSanity's Episode No. 105 interview with the founders, Carin and Carol.

ahh...the memories

Good news: I have friends living all around the world that I've been fortunate enough to visit.

Bad news: My friends live all around the world, so I don't get to see them too often.

Lucky for me, I was able to meet up with Kate in Grand Rapids last weekend. She was back from Nicaragua for her yearly visit home for the summer. Kate and I met in Calvin Band (surprise, surprise - I really am a band geek!) in college and we lived in a house together (and shared a room) our junior year. We are actually a Myers-Briggs type indicator compatible personality match and she is the perfect zany to my seriousness  After all, only Kate would give me a large piece of smoked salmon wrapped up in a Victoria's Secret bag for my birthday! (for MBTI geeks out there, she's an ISFP and I'm an ESTJ)

For nostalgia's sake, I dug through my archives to find other trips and things I've done with Kate since starting the blog...exploring Jackson Hole, WY, learning how to play Guitar Hero, a Detroit-a-thon museum tour, visiting Ohio with a rainy trip to Cedar point with 4/5 house roommates, and, of course, traveling to  visit her in Nicaragua with Jon two years ago.

My camera caught a picture of a car driving through our heads back in our old stomping grounds on 60th St. - perfect!

We caught up with each other over a visit to Frederik Meijer Gardens and Fields Fabrics and a leisurely dinner together. I really miss having close friends living nearby, so it was the perfect pick me up after my long week!

Dale Chihuly's glass sculptures were on display at the Gardens and I loved seeing how he incorporated these in with the garden landscapes. I wish they had shared details about how each piece of glass was physically added to the space (chains, buoys, long poles, etc.?), but it was fun to guess on our own.

Fenton, MI Road Trip

My mom and I took a mini day trip up to Fenton, MI to visit Heavenly Scent Herb Farm. If you love looking at pretty flowers, gardening, or visiting cute boutiques, this is the place to go! The store is filled with herbs, fun kitchen tools, gift books, and home decor.


The greenhouse is filled with lots of basic herbs, plus a few unusual varieties thrown in for good measure.


The farm has a miniature faerie garden and has lots of supplies for creating your own faerie garden at home. Seeing this photo kind of makes me want to get into model train building, but I will never go down that road. :)


I loved this shade container garden. I think it's the first time begonias have ever looked pretty to me. There are begonias, double impatiens, ivy, maidenhair fern and one other type of fern in this container.


One part of the garden has this giant flower kaleidoscope. You can twist the kaleidoscope to see the flowers in front of it form really pretty fractured images.


I loved this area of the gardens most. The pergola and fountain look so formal, but the raised beds on either side are actually vegetable gardens. It's definitely the prettiest veggie garden I've ever seen!


Here's a picture of my favorite flower (an honor also shared with Baptisia) - Bear's Breeches.


If you're in the area, definitely stop by for lots of inspiration! They have a Summer Faire coming up at the end of August with lots of artisans, workshops and a delicious catered lunch. My mom and I will be returning to visit soon.

You can see the rest of my photos of the gardens on flickr here.

After visiting the farm, we stopped at The French Laundry for lunch. I didn't take any pictures at the restaurant, but it's a fun mix of Zingerman's Deli and a typical French Cafe and the food was delicious. They even had several vegetarian sandwiches on the menu, along with lots of soups and salads.

Gee's Bend Improvisational Workshop

I was so excited to see that the Gee's Bend Quilts exhibit was coming to Michigan last fall and added the date to my calendar right away. It wasn't until I was browsing the Flint Institute of Art's website two weeks ago that I saw that they were offering improvisational workshops with the artists. I called the museum right away and was got the last spot in the Sunday workshop (talk about perfect timing!).

The workshop was totally laid back and our only assignment was to select some fabric donated by the Goodwill and get to work. The ladies from Gee's Bend walked around from table to table and gave us encouraging praise and practical tips for handsewing and we got to soak up their talent and listen to their personal histories with quilting. The greatest piece of advice that I took away from the afternoon was to stop self-editing and judging my work and to just go with the flow. It was such a valuable lesson!

The ladies ended the afternoon by singing together and leading us in a group prayer. It was such a powerful moment. I'm so glad that I was able to meet these women in person!

Here's my flickr set with the rest of the photos from the day.

And here's a link to another improvisational quilting exhibit I saw a few years ago.

jon's birthday canoe trip

We celebrated Jon's birthday with a successful* canoe trip down the Huron River. The weather was sunny and crisp and we got to see lots of trees starting to change color. It was a fabulous afternoon.

We shared the river with a few different sets of swans that came surprisingly close to our canoe. Jon is quite the animal lover and was practicing his bird calls (the birds were not impressed!).

The sky was so beautiful that day!

*I made the same canoe trip about 15 years ago with my friend, Laura. Let's just say that we had an awful time. I would say that it was all her fault for not paddling the right way, and I'm pretty sure that she would say the same about me! Ever since that trip, we have decided that canoeing was not a good partner activity for us.

Cranbrook Gardens

Jon and I went on a photo adventure to Cranbrook gardens on Sunday afternoon. We used to go to Cranbrook all the time when we were dating and just recently realized that it had been a while since we visited. They have a beautiful Bog Garden and Oriental Garden on the property. We spent most of our time in the Oriental Garden enjoying the views.

_{gingko leaves}

_{Japanese anenome}

_{requisite shot of Jon filming}

We're looking forward to more trips to the gardens this fall and in the wintertime. The gardens are really well maintained and remind us a lot of our time in Kyoto, Japan.

_{yellow japanese anenome}

You can see the rest of the photos from our afternoon here.

walk in the woods

Jon and I enjoyed a trip out to the country to his mom's house on Saturday. We celebrated her birthday and took our annual fall color tour through the trails behind their house.

You can see a few more pictures here.