Community Quilts Day

I belong to several quilt guilds, among them The Redwood Empire Quilters Guild (www.reqg.com). We have a Community Quilts program which provides quilts for Dialysis patients, for teen parents graduating from high school, for premature babies, for fire victims and more. Last Saturday we hosted guild members here at Scottie Dog Quilts to help the cause. We filled the classroom for most of the day. Here is Sharon S. She's in charge of the program this year and she does a fabulous job. She's so organized and has lots and lots of kits all made up of the donated fabrics, pre-cut so as to quickly sew up a top. Here are Pat D. & Jen D. (with her awesome little aqua Janome sewing machine). It's fun to get together and sew for a good cause. Thanks to all those who gathered. God bless you for your giving hearts.

We made the newspaper!

Last Saturday the Times Standard newspaper of Eureka, CA published a little blurb about the Humboldt Accordionaires. We made the picture! You can see Liz and I on either side of Sydney on the far wall. We were doing the Chicken Dance and I'm glad they didn't get me wiggling my bum.

A Night to Remember.....

Tuesday night Liz and I hurried up the closing of the store....we had plans.... a place to be....The 3rd Tuesday of each month Mr. Scottie Dog plays with the Humboldt Accordionaires. That night at Swiss Hall in Loleta, CA there were 12 accordion players, male & female, young (13th b-day celebrated that night) & old (OK--I'm not touching that one with a ten foot pole!), and one guitar player. There's not a lot of structure...they just sit down and someone calls out a song, they turn in their music books and they play. It's that simple. People bring snacks to share. About 100 people come each month to listen, dance, clap, hoot & holler and one guy even did a bit of yodeling.

I danced with Sydney a few times and then a boy named Caleb danced with the two of us. Pretty soon they were dancing every dance. For a 3 1/2 year old, such attention from an older man (7 years old) is such a wonderful thing. They did the polka, the two-step and more. We all did the Chicken Dance and promenaded around the hall with parasols to "The Saints Go Marching In."

Then in SHE came. An older, more mature woman....probably 11 years old. What chance did Sydney have against the promise of a partner who could (and did!) lift Caleb off the ground....a woman with boobies....Sydney won't wear a bra for a few years yet! This gal had everything going for her. Sydney couldn't figure out why Caleb wouldn't dance with her.....she was perplexed and then sad.

Finally, one of the most important men in her life (2nd only to Daddy, of course!) took a break and asked her to dance! The evening ended on a high note as Caleb asked Sydney to dance once more. She left to dream of her first beau...... We all had fun and will be back next month.

Lighthouse Quilt Guild

Crescent City's Lighthouse Quilt Guild has a project making quilts for wounded US soldiers. I was so taken by how they offered each and every attendee of their quilt show an opportunity to help. The sign at the left tells it all.


One of my regular customers told how her husband and her son (a Marine wounded in Iraq) made their blocks...in total silence. Brigette's son had received such a quilt in intensive care in Germany!

First you pick up a flannel board marked with a 3X3 grid. Then, from the thousands of choices of 3 1/2" squares on three 8' tables you pick your squares.













Next you arrange the squares as you wish. These two munchkins were doing a great job.














Then you put your flannel board on the table for one of the member sewers to do their magic on their sewing machines. These ladies were so diligent and modest.

Sydney loved making the blocks. She made nine over the course of the weekend. The sewing ladies were so sweet to encourage her. She was happy to make a quilt "to keep the sojers warm."





Here is just a small portion of the blocks on a very, very long design wall. One lady took 20 blocks home to sew a quilt on Saturday night.

Lighthouse Quilt Guild members, I salute you! You humble me with your dedication to our Nation's Armed Forces. God bless you and God bless and keep our troops from harm.

Quilt Show

Last weekend we were vendors at the Crescent City, CA Lighthouse Quilt Guild's annual quilt show. We (BrendaLou, Liz, Mr. Scottie Dog & Sydney---along with our super friend, Bev Harrison) arrived on Friday about 1 pm to begin set-up. Our booth was a double, so we had a 20' X 10' space. Oops--they didn't tell us that there would be a wall column support that stuck out almost 1 foot from the wall. Our floor plan with the provided 8' tables wouldn't work...the story when vending is always: improvise, improvise, improvise.


Bill sets up a frame that provides us with wonderful lighting and electrical for the register.












Liz is the stylist...she has a wonderful gift for hanging the sample quilts and how each table is set up. What most people don't realize is that we always bring twice as much merchandise as we can possibly sell. This is so that our booth never ever looks picked over. The show attendee at 3 pm on Sunday has the same selection as those who were waiting on Saturday for 1/2 hour before the show opened!









For this show our booth was colorful and had lots of Fall and Holiday samples, kits & fabrics.

Sydney travels with us when we go to quilt shows and she needs a special place. So the front table next to the cash register becomes "Syd's Cave." It has a quilt, a bag full of books and toys and not visible in this picture a DVD player. At one point

there was a little girl in the booth. Sydney whispered in Liz's ear, "Mama, can that girl come to my house to play?"
Many thanks to all the wonderful quilting friends who visited our booth! We had a great time.

Alaskan Quilting Cruise Update!

We got a phone call from MJ, our awesome travel agent yesterday. She has been on vacation and some of our quilting friends couldn't get through to sign up for our 2009 Alaskan Quilting Cruise in time for our special, rock bottom pricing. So she convinced Royal Caribbean to keep our prices the same until mid November. If you thought you'd missed out, tada!

Inside Room: $1199.00

Outside Room: $1399.00

Balcony Room: $2049.00

Staterooms are beginning to fill up so if you *think* you might want to go it would pay to put down your FULLY REFUNDABLE deposit as soon as possible.

You can contact our travel agent, MJ Bryant at (888) 278-7875 or email her MJBryant@ak2trvl.com