Adventures in St. Louis!

 

My trip to the Bits ‘n’ Pieces Quilt Guild in Ballwin, MO (the St. Louis area) was quite the adventure! My lecture, “The Beauty of the Imperfect” got an outstanding reception and it was very well attended. IMperfection is a topic near and dear to my heart:

I taught both days at a faaaabulous shop, Jackman’s. Oh my, it was huge AND they had exquisite garment fabrics. Since I didn’t have a specific project in mind, I held off. But lookie:

What a color wall!

And I met their famous IG star, Oliver, who deigned to do a selfie with me. He was soo cute and so sweet!

And look at this classroom:

It was huge, very well lighted with plenty of electrical, right where you needed it, with no cords to trip on. It was heaven.

Note the tshirt! And I had just given my Imperfection lecture the day before. Don’t you just love that?

Somehow, I only took one photo of the Start With a Square class:

When I teach that class, I poll the students via a simple Padlet board and they vote on their favorite motifs to learn. I then build the class around their vote.

I brought along a lot of samples of the motifs we learned and this particular sample showed the effect of different fills around feathers.

Somehow I remembered to take more photos for Sheer Bliss:

I made kits for those who wanted them. Doesn’t even the inventory look colorful?

Oh I am soooo happy with what the class produced! We all had so much FUN! This is a super fun class, very playful, low stress and everyone’s project is unique, even though almost the entire class opted for the kit:

Several students were brand-new free motion quilters!

Candy Grisham (you know, she does cool things with Dresdens), was in the class:

She took her scraps and did this. Kinda loving that. I may have to play with the concept.

My class sample is on the bottom and her latest pattern is showing on the phone to the upper left. Hmmmmm, see some similarities?!

Once class was done, Candy and I headed to the Missouri Botanical Garden to see the Chihuly exhibit. Did I mention that the entire time I was there, temps were record setting, in the upper 90’s or over 100 with very high humidity? Sorry, I do not miss humidity! We trekked the gardens in that heat, but it was worth it:

There was Chihuly in the Climatron area too, a covered dome conservatory.

My adventure was not over. I was able to drive about 2.5 hours to Tuscola, Ill to see my 94 year old young Aunt. What a treat! If I follow the path of my elders, I will age well.

Returning the rental car in the dark, with construction and UNMARKED detours was quite the trick. In desperation, I eventually asked a cab driver; he gave me the wrong directions. Finally, after over 50 minutes of driving around and around, I threw myself on the mercy of a policeman at the terminal. He gave me a Police escort to the rental car return area. I was sooo grateful!

And there was a LOT of art at the airport; this is just a taste:

Don’t you just love running into great art at the airport? It made my day. Good thing, because there was a significant delay at St. Louis due to heavy rain/lightening/hail. I had to sprint, at altitude, in the Denver airport, to barely make my connection.

I sat right next to the bathrooms, at the back of the plane with babies and people who had a hard time fitting into a seat. And ya know what? Everyone was delightful and that newborn was just so stinkin’ cute the entire flight and my seat mates were a joy. Just goes to show I should not judge.

It was a great adventure! I do love to travel and meet other quilters, see new sights.

I’ll be sharing at:

Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday

P. S. – The link to sign up for my newsletter has been Missing In Action for apparently a good while. It is now a tab at the top of the page, or you can sign up here. You will get my weekly blog plus a lot of other content about art, quilts, my life and every week I have a snort laugh😊